chest eased as he watched Rufus lick and nudge her pups. Even if Dad wouldn’t be able to do all the fun things he’d promised, there’d still be puppies to play with, and Keifer wasn’t going to be homesick for Mom and all his friends back home.
He backhanded a hot tear before it had a chance to fall. Nope, he wasn’t going to miss them.
Not much at all.
AFTER A SLEEPLESS NIGHT on the sofa, Abby cracked an eye open to look at her wristwatch. She flopped back against the cushions and pulled the afghan up over her shoulders. Five o’clock.
When had she last been awake at five?
The storm had finally passed, but Rufus had barked anxiously at the door at least three times. She’d blearily shuffled out to the kitchen and then had stood on the chilly porch until the dog returned. Amazingly enough, Keifer had barely stirred.
Drifting and dreaming, only half awake, Abby snuggled deeper under the afghan, thankful for the marshmallow-soft sofa.
It was so peaceful here, the silence of the forest broken only by the distant hoot of an owl, a chorus of coyotes…gentle mooing….
She sat bolt upright. Mooing?
Throwing back the afghan, she hurried barefoot across the cold hardwood floor to the window and squinted out at the gray predawn landscape. Heavy fog hung low to the ground, leaving the tops of fence posts and bushes hovering weightless several feet above the ground.
Farther away, large dark shapes drifted past like ungainly rowboats floating on a sea of fog. Very oddly shaped boats. One of them mooed.
Keifer pushed open the kitchen door and stood next to her, his hair tousled. “Weird,” he observed after a loud yawn. “So, are you gonna do chores?”
Chores. Interesting concept, that. What, exactly, did chores entail? She rubbed her upper arms and considered. “I don’t suppose your dad has a list?”
Keifer looked at her with the patience of a person dealing with the mentally incompetent. “He just does them. Why would he need a list?”
Lists were comforting. It was fun, making lists of things to do and crossing off each success. Without a list…on foreign ground…she was at a complete loss.
She crossed her arms and tapped her fingers on the bulky sleeves of the sweatshirt she’d borrowed. “If there’s no list, have you seen him do chores? I assume those cows get food. And what about the horse and those goats you mentioned yesterday?”
“I don’t know. I just got here.” Keifer shrugged. “Their food’s probably in the barn.”
“I’m sure it is, but I don’t know how much or what kind to give them.” She had an unsettling thought. “Um, he doesn’t milk those cows, does he?”
Keifer rolled his eyes. “They’re the beef kind, but he doesn’t eat them. He says, ‘Anything that dies here, dies of old age.’ He gave them all names.”
“Names?”
“Yeah. He was gonna raise cattle for money, but then they all sorta got to be pets. So now he says they’re the lawnmowers for his meadow.”
Feeling more and more like Alice after she’d tumbled down the rabbit hole, Abby sighed. “So, this mowing crew of his, have you ever seen your dad feed them?”
Keifer shrugged.
“Maybe we’d better try contacting him. He probably had his arm fixed last night, and he might even be on his way home. If I can track him down, maybe he’ll tell us what he wants done.”
Far more confident now, she tousled Keifer’s hair and went to the phone in the kitchen. In the far corner, Rufus raised her head over the box, then dropped back down, clearly occupied with her new family.
The line was dead.
Abby reached for her purse and rummaged for her cell phone. Her hope faded at the words No Service.
No way to contact the outside world.
No car—because hers was still mired in the road.
And, she remembered with a heavy heart, she’d promised to contact the animal shelter this morning about that poor dog on death row.
But surely the shelter wasn’t open to the public on Sundays, anyway. And surely the staff scheduled to feed the animals wouldn’t actually euthanize anything today…would they?
Biting her lower lip, she leaned against the kitchen counter and rubbed her face, the image of that sad, wary dog all too fresh in her mind. “I’m going outside, Keifer,” she called. “Can you tell me where the barn is?”
He came to the doorway. “Past the house. Driveway goes back there.”
Here, at least, was a ray of hope. She remembered driving through Wisconsin’s dairy country and seeing herds of black-and-white diary cattle lining up to get into their barn. Did beef cows know that trick, too?
“Maybe the cows will, um, follow me if they think they’ll be fed.”
Keifer wandered into the kitchen with a sullen expression. “The TV doesn’t work. Not the computer, either.”
“The electricity’s out. Maybe you’d like to just crawl into your sleeping bag and go back to sleep while I go outside. It’s too early to be awake, anyway.” When he glanced nervously at the curtainless kitchen windows, she added, “Rufus will be in here with you, so you’ll be fine.”
“Uh…maybe I better come along. Just in case.”
She hid a smile as she went to the back door. “If you prefer. I’m sure you’re more of an expert at all of this than I am.”
She sorted through a pile of boots, found a small pair that had to be Keifer’s, and handed them over. The rest were size elevens. After considering her muddied shoes, still wet from last night, she took a pair of rubber work boots, found some ratty yellow gloves and stuffed one into each toe.
“These are going to look like clown shoes,” she muttered, looking up at Keifer. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
He nodded solemnly, though his mouth twitched.
The fog still hung low and heavy, tinged now with the faintest shade of rose. The cows had moved farther toward the road, where—luckily—she’d closed the gate last night.
“Do you ever see wildlife around here?” she asked casually as she followed Keifer down the lane toward the barn.
“’Possums. ’Coons. Deer. No wolves, though, if that’s what you mean.”
He stepped into a mud puddle with a splash and nearly fell, his arms flailing. “Whoa!” She steadied him.
She glanced around at the forest still shrouded in mist…where something rather large could hide.
“I think I saw a bear once,” the boy continued, “but it was pretty far away. Dad sees wolves, but not this close, so I never
