“Mother can always write him back in after you’re gone.” Mary smiled to herself as she watched her mother separate eggs and slide the yokes into a bowl of sugar. “That was another joke.”
No one was laughing. He’d never be gone. If ever a man was earthbound, it was Dan Tutan. If there was any justice in the world, Mother would outlive him long enough to sell the ranch and blow the proceeds on herself. But Mary had seen enough of the world to know that justice was hard to come by for too many women, and her mother—stirrer of milk, sugar, eggs, anything but controversy—was one of them. She had been living in her husband’s pumpkin shell too long.
“We’ve got the same kind of humor, Daughter. Nobody else gets it.”
“Including you and me.” Mary folded her arms and watched him walk away. “I wish I could’ve brought one of the dogs with me,” she told her mother quietly. “I miss having one around.”
“I wouldn’t mind having a dog here again. Would you pour the milk in while I stir?” Mother sidled along the counter to give Mary access to the kettle of scalded milk. “Make sure it’s cool enough.”
Mary was no judge of cool. She offered the kettle for her mother’s parchment-skinned finger test.
Mary nodded, stirred, called for a slow pour and smiled. “Even if you’re not doing all the training yourself, Sally’s contest might keep you here a little longer than you’d planned.”
“I’m here to see you, Mother. The last thing I want to do is cause stress, so…” So don’t spill the milk, Mary. You might end up crying over it. Her throat stung a little as she swallowed. Damn hormones. She took a deep, cleansing breath and set the kettle aside. Can we talk, Mother? Can we please, just the two of us? “So you’ll tell me if it gets to be too much, won’t you? Because obviously nothing’s…” Changed? Wrong choice. “Nothing’s more important right now than your health. Getting you back to a hundred and ten percent.”
“Except my hearing.” Audrey’s eyes brightened with a slow smile. “I like to keep that turned down to about fifty. Every other word is plenty.” She nodded toward the refrigerator. “I’ve already mashed up the strawberries. They’re in the—”
“Blue Tupperware box.” Mary laughed. She was glad Mother’s kitchen hadn’t changed.
“The salt is on the front porch, and I have ice in the chest freezer.” Audrey folded strawberries into the rich, custardy mixture. “Remember how we used to go out on the porch on summer evenings, and you and the Drexler girls would take turns cranking until you said your arm was going to fall off?” She raised her brow. “You could call them. Tell them we’re making ice cream. I’ll bet they’d come right over.”
“It’s just us, Mother. I’ll hold the canister, and you pour.”
The porch glider squeaked, the ice rattled between the walls of the turquoise bucket and the silver canister, and two meadowlarks called to each other somewhere in the grass. Summer music, Mary told herself as she turned the crank that spun the canister. What had once been a chore now felt like a warm-up for a welcome workout. She’d gone for a run early that morning, but she missed the gym. She wasn’t going to give up exercising no matter what. Her face was no prize, but she had a damn good body, and that wasn’t going away.
She switched arms. The more resistance, the better the results.
“What the hell is goin’ on?”
Stop the music. Here comes Damn Tootin'. He was waving a piece of paper in one hand, an envelope in the other.
“I just got a notice from the Bureau of Land Management, says I can’t run cattle in the hills west of Coyote Creek. Says they’re designating that area for wildlife. Designating for waste is what that means.”
Mary flexed her fingers and stepped back from the ice cream freezer, which she’d set on a stool. “It’s so isolated, Father. Why can’t you just let it go?”
“You give ‘em an inch, they take a mile. Once they start telling you how to run your business they don’t stop.”
The glider started squeaking again, albeit tentatively. Audrey’s gaze had drifted to the cottonwoods and the Russian olives that formed the windbreak on the north side of the yard. Mary could have followed her mother’s lead.
But she didn’t.
“Who’s they?“
“People who don’t know what it takes to make a living off this land. They should just stay out of it. Take their damn programs and their so-called endangered.” He slapped the envelope against the letter. “There’s horses all over this country. Endangered my—” face red, jaw set, he swung his leg up, set the sole of his boot against the edge of the stool and gave a raging shove “—ass!”
Everything flew across the porch—stool, bucket, ice, salt water, canister, pink and white slush.
Mary gaped in horror. “You broke it. Grandma’s ice cream—”
“It’s not broken,” Audrey said, seemingly unruffled. Mary questioned her mother’s cool with a look. “I can fix it,” Audrey assured her, just as she had the time her father had backed over her tricycle with his little Ford tractor. “Don’t worry. I can make more.”
“Who the hell is this now?” Dan scowled up the mile-long dirt road that connected the ranch gate with the gravel driveway. A blue pickup pulling a two-horse trailer rumbled in their direction. Three pairs of eyes watched until the vehicle was parked and the driver emerged.
Mary felt a funny little flutter in her chest.
“It’s that damn Indian off the Tribal Council. He’s the one got them to take my lease land for those mustangs. Dog Track or some damn—”
“Shut up, Dad.”
“What?” It was his turn to be horrified. “What did you say to me?”
“You heard me. Do you want to lose the rest of your leases?” She tuned in to the sound of the visitor’s footsteps, but she held her father’s full attention with a cold glare.
“Looks like somebody spilled her milk.”
“It was going to be ice cream.” Mentally Mary switched the light off in one room and turned it on in another as Logan mounted the porch steps. “Mother, have you met Logan Wolf Track? Logan, Audrey, my mother. You know my father.” Logan glanced at her on the way to shaking her mother’s hand, and she reminded him, “You know who he is.” With her boots covered in what would have been strawberry ice cream, she didn’t feel like saying the name.
But Logan acknowledged him with a proffered hand. Then he turned to Mary. “Let’s go pick up our horse.” “Now?”
“You signed us up. Sally says it’s first come, first served. You wanna ride over there with me, or do you have other—”
“What horse?” her father demanded. “You’re not bringing any horses here.”
“I’m sorry, Logan. My father’s a little cranky. He just received some news that didn’t sit well
