afternoon sunlight streamed down between snowy clouds, and Matt danced a hopscotch path on the patches of light and shadow across the backyard.
“I get to do it! I found her!” he cried, glancing over his shoulder and picking up his pace as he heard Nate catching up behind him.
Lagging in their wake, Isabel glanced across the stone path to her rose garden and sighed. She had planted the bushes shortly after her marriage, her one indulgence. Some years roses flourished in the high country; other times the extremes of hot days and cold nights, fierce sometimes even here in the valley, drained the life from their fragile petals.
Better to be sturdy than beautiful in this wild place, she thought, looking at several tender new pink and silver blossoms and wondering if they’d have the stamina to survive.
“Mama, hurry!” Matt yelled over his shoulder. “Nate is going to let the roadrunner loose before I even have a chance to say goodbye to her.”
Nate gave a disgusted snort. “Am not! You’re just trying to get me in trouble.”
“I think this is something we can all share,” Isabel said, ruffling Matt’s hair and rubbing Nate’s shoulder. She moved up directly between them and released the wire latch on the cage. “Go ahead, Nate. You can take her out. Gently now.”
Gingerly, Nate reached into the cage and cupped his hands around the bird’s wings so the small creature wouldn’t panic. He spoke softly to it as he eased it into his arms, stroking its tiny head.
“Come on, little one. You can go home today.”
Pride surged through Isabel as she watched him. He was learning. Learning as she had from her mother and Nana that healing was more than medicine; it was also touch and the power and music of the voice. Learning that sharing another’s pain meant sharing their hopes and also rejoicing in their recovery.
An image of her new reluctant patient flashed across her mind. Absently, she glanced upward to where the white lace curtains fluttered in the open window of the room where Jake slept. She’d given him another dose of a willow powder elixir for pain, and had started applying hourly mashes of blue corn to his leg. Despite her care, the wound seemed to want to fester and she worried infection and fever might set in, delaying his recovery, possibly jeopardizing his leg.
And having Jake Coulter under her roof longer than necessary wasn’t something either of them wanted, she reminded herself.
“My turn. My turn,” Matt insisted beside Nate, wriggling with his eagerness to hold the roadrunner.
“Slowly, now,” Isabel encouraged. “Hold her firmly.”
As though lifting a priceless treasure, Matt wrapped his small, sun-browned fingers around the bird and squatted to set it on the earth beneath them.
“Adios, amiga,” he whispered. “Come visit us again one day.”
As soon as he released the long-legged bird, its head darted up at one end, its tail perked at the other. With a quick twist of its neck to look back at his caretakers, it shot away, dashing across the yard toward the evergreen mountains beyond.
“I’m going to miss her.” Matt snuggled close to Isabel. “I wish she could have stayed with us.”
Isabel hugged him to her side. “She’s a wild creature, and she doesn’t need us any longer. But don’t worry, darling, you’ll find another lost or wounded creature who needs a home before you even have this cage cleaned out. Which by the way, you can do after dinner tonight. For now, I need you two to run out to the shed and get a hammer and nails and go up and knock on Mr. Coulter’s door. He may need that dresser space, but the drawer has to be fixed before he can use it.”
“Yes, ma’am. C’mon, Matt, I’ll get the hammer and you can take the nails.”
“I want to hammer! You always get to do the fun part,” Matt grumbled, hopping again from light patch to light patch across the yard after his brother.
Isabel laughed to herself as she turned to head back up the path to the back kitchen door. Those boys…my boys, best friends, worst enemies. At least they have each other, she mused, recalling how all her life she’d longed for a brother or a sister, until Katlyn had come unexpectedly into her life.
She wished she’d known about her half-sister earlier. But their father, a gambler who never stayed in one place longer than his luck held out, left Isabel’s mother before Isabel was born. Five years later, he found his way to Missouri and charmed a vivacious riverboat singer into his bed, leaving her with three-month-old Katlyn.
Something, perhaps guilt, had finally motivated Katlyn’s mother to tell her daughter about her half-sister in Whispering Creek. Shortly thereafter, Katlyn appeared on the doorstep at a time Isabel most needed a sister. She recalled with warmth how Katlyn’s spunk and vigor had been tremendously cheering to her and to the boys when the news came that Douglas wouldn’t be coming back.
As Isabel pushed open the back door, she saw Esme had already begun to set out the simple blue-and-white floral-patterned china on the kitchen worktable for dinner.
Isabel took a brightly painted pottery vase from a shelf on the kitchen wall and arranged a handful of yellow-and-white daises in it she’d plucked on the way back to the house.
“I’ll get the white tablecloth with the little yellow tulips around the edges to go with these,” she told Esme. “Katlyn loves that old thing. I don’t even think she sees all of the stains. She’s always the optimist.”
Esme held a spoon up to the light then wiped a spot from it with the corner of her apron. “Katlyn is too restless to see what is in front of her eyes. She is always looking to the horizon, seeking something she cannot even name.”
“Oh, Nana, I’m sure you said the same about Mama and about me at one time.” As soon as she said the words, Isabel regretted them. It would only give Nana an opening to talk about husbands and Isabel’s refusal to consider another one.
“No, my daughter was not restless, not like Katlyn is. Sonalda dreamed of family, a place for her spirit to rest. My daughter always trusted a man would bring her that happiness.” Esme shook her head. “I warned her, but she could hear nothing but that gambler’s pretty words. He left her before he ever saw you. And you were no different when I told you Douglas Bradshaw and that devil Jerico Grey would do the same.”
Isabel started at the name. She certainly didn’t intend for Esme to bring that up. She stepped over to a simply crafted pine dry sink and pulled open the latch to the shelves beneath to rummage through the linens for the tablecloth. “Yes, well, I can’t say I listened to you about either of them, but Jerico at least was never more than a girlish crush for me. He always frightened me, even then.”
Esme followed Isabel into the dining area and helped her smooth out the cloth on the scuffed pine table, perked up with a good rubdown and a thick coat of beeswax.
“And with good reason,” Esme said, clicking her tongue in disgust. “Ay, that one is more wicked at heart than any I have seen.”
“Well, our new boarder seems determined to find him, one way or the other,” Isabel said lightly. She brought the vase in and centered it on the table, giving her hands something to do as a distraction for her troubled thoughts.
“I do not approve
