be by the time he walked out.
Dr. Shaver had damn near killed him while Sam sat there watching. Walt had fired Sam three times in the next few days, but Sam had ignored his orders. The problem was, his foreman could be as stubborn as Walt himself.
“Drink this.” Ginny thrust a glass under his nose.
“What’s in it? Arsenic?”
“Water, you old fool.”
When he didn’t obey her fast enough, Ginny grabbed it back and gulped it down herself.
“I thought you said that was for me,” he grumbled.
“I needed it more than you.”
Ginny collapsed in the rocker next to his own. Molly’s rocker. For forty years she’d sat on the front porch with him each night. She’d darned socks, crocheted, knitted. His wife hadn’t believed in idle hands. Every now and again he’d find a way to steal a kiss. It had never ceased to amaze him that a woman as beautiful and talented as Molly MacDougal would marry the likes of him. Her one regret was that she’d only been able to give him one son.
Now they were both gone. Adam killed by a drunk driver while still in his twenties and then, later, his Molly. He’d be joining them soon. But not right away. There was work that had to be done. Affairs settled. Arrangements made. He wanted time with Molly and her boys first. God would grant him that much, Walt was sure. The good Lord had seen fit to take Adam and Molly early in life, and as far as Walt was concerned God owed him this additional time.
“You gave me the scare of my life!” Ginny cried. She was rocking so fast she damn near stirred up a dust devil.
“What’d you do with my mail?” he demanded, hoping to change the subject.
Ginny glared at him, her dark eyes burning holes straight through him. “I saved your life and all you care about is your stupid mail?”
“You’ve got it, haven’t you? Suppose you read it, too.”
“I most certainly did not.”
He snorted in disbelief.
“How about thanking me?” Ginny muttered. “If it wasn’t for me, you could be dead by now.”
Walt made a disgusted sound. “If I’d known you were going to nag like this, death would’ve been a blessing.”
Three
“It’s probably the biggest, most beautiful home I’ve ever seen,” Molly told her boys wistfully as they sped along the two-lane highway. Eager to reach Sweetgrass, she drove fifteen miles above the speed limit. They hadn’t seen another car in more than half an hour, and she figured the state patrol had better things to do than worry about an old country road.
“How many rooms does it have?” Clay asked.
“More than I could count,” Molly said, smiling to herself. As a child, she’d considered her grandparents’ home a mansion. It had taken her two entire summers to explore all three floors. The original house had been built just after the turn of the century, a grand home for its time, with a turret dominating the right-hand side of the wooden structure. There was a wide sweeping porch along the front of the house, added in later years; it looked out over the rolling green paddock where the horses grazed. A narrow dirt drive snaked in from a marked entry off the highway.
“I can have my own room, then?” Tom asked, showing some life for the first time since lunch.
“There must be four, possibly five bedrooms not in use now.”
“I’d sleep in the attic without electricity if it meant I wouldn’t have to share a room with Clay.”
For Tom, that had been the most difficult aspect of their move into the apartment. He’d been tolerant about it for a while, but living in such close proximity to his younger brother had quickly become a problem.
“My grandmother kept the house in meticulous condition,” Molly said. During her last visit, the month following her grandmother’s death, she’d marveled at how clean and neatly organized the house still was. Molly Wheaton had regularly waxed the wooden floors and washed the walls. She’d line-dried all the clothes, ironed and crisply folded almost everything. Even the dish towels.
Out of respect for his wife, Gramps had removed his shoes before stepping into the house, to avoid tracking mud across the spotless floors. Every room had smelled of sunshine, with the faint underlying scent of lemon or pine. Molly could almost smell it now.
“How big’s the barn?”
“Huge.”
“That’s what you said about the house.”
“I named you right, son,” she said, reaching over and mussing his hair. “Doubting Thomas.”
Tom slapped at her hand, and she laughed, in too good a mood to let his surly attitude distress her.
They were within an hour of Sweetgrass, and Molly felt a keen sense of homecoming. It was an excitement that reminded her of childhood and warm summer days, a joy that wanted to burst forth. After the long hard months of Daniel’s trial, months of struggle and embarrassment while their names were dragged through the media, this was a new beginning for them all. At last they could set aside the troubles of the past and move forward.
“There’s a weeping willow beside the house,” Molly said. “When I was a girl, I used to hide behind its branches. Gramps would come looking for me and pretend he couldn’t find me.” The remembrance made her laugh softly. Her grandfather might be crusty on the outside, but inside he was as kind and loving as a man could be. While her grandmother fussed over her only grandchild, coddled and pampered her, Gramps had growled and snorted about sparing the rod and spoiling the child.
But it had been her grandfather who’d built her a dollhouse and hand-carved each small piece of furniture. It’d taken him a whole winter to complete the project. Instead of giving it to her, he’d placed it in the attic for her to find, letting her think it’d been there for years.
Her grandmother had never allowed any of the dogs or cats in the house, but it was her grandfather who’d smuggled in a kitten to sleep with her the first night she was away from her parents, when she was six. Molly wasn’t supposed to have known, but she’d seen him tiptoe up the stairs, carting the kitten in a woven basket.
All the memories wrapped themselves around her like the sun’s warmth, comforting and lovely beyond description.
“Does Gramps have a dog?” Clay asked excitedly.
“Three or four, I imagine.” Gramps had named his dogs after cartoon characters. Molly remembered Mr. McGoo and Mighty Mouse. Yogi and Boo Boo had been two of her favorites. She wondered if he’d continued the practice with more recent dogs.
“That’s it!” she said, pointing at two tall timbers. A board with BROKEN ARROW RANCH burned in large capital letters swung from a chain between them. The brand was seared on either side of the ranch name.
“I don’t see the house,” Clay muttered.
“You
