he said, “but the Happy Wanderer has hot water, which is a plus.”
“We could skip taking showers for a couple of days,” Matt suggested. Unless he was going swimming, the kid hated to get wet. “Where’s my room?”
Steven led the way through the dining room. Although there was a second floor, there was no way anybody would be sleeping up there before the renovations were finished and the fire alarm system had been wired and tested.
“Here you go,” he said, opening a door and stepping back so Matt could go inside. It was, as Steven remembered from his visit with the Realtor a few months before, a spacious room, with lots of light pouring in through the tall, narrow windows.
“Where’s your room from here?” Matt wanted to know. He stood in the middle of that dusty chamber, his head tilted back, staring up in wonder like they were visiting a European cathedral instead of an old ranch house in Arizona.
Steven smiled. Cocked a thumb to his right. “Just next door,” he said.
“Can I see?” Matt asked.
Steven ruffled the boy’s hair. “Sure,” he said.
His room was smaller. There was a slight slant to the floor, and the wallpaper hung down in big, untidy loops.
Steven thought of his expensive condominium in Denver and wanted to laugh. There, he’d had a fine view of the city, skylights and a retractable TV screen that disappeared into the ceiling at the push of a button.
What a contrast.
“It’s not so bad,” Matt decided, taking in the results of years of dedicated neglect.
Steven rubbed his chin, considering options. “I guess we could go back to town and buy ourselves a tent,” he said. “The weather’s good, so we could take baths in the creek. Carry our own water, cook over a campfire, sleep under the stars. Back to the land and all that.”
Matt grinned. “Awesome,” he said. “Let’s go buy a tent.”
“Better unload the camping gear and the grub first,” Steven answered. “If we don’t, there won’t be room in the truck for a tent.”
“They don’t come all set up, silly,” Matt informed him as the two of them headed back through the house, toward the kitchen door. “They’re sold in boxes.”
“Thanks for bringing me up to speed on that one,” Steven said, mussing Matt’s hair once again.
Matt supervised while Steven carried in suitcases, supplies of dried and canned food, sleeping bags and the camp stove, piling everything in the kitchen.
He returned to find Matt standing in the bed of the truck, one hand shading his eyes from the sun, following a trail of dust down on the road.
“Look,” the boy cried, sounding delighted. “Somebody’s coming!”
Steven was relieved when the rig, a big, fancy red truck, turned in at their driveway. Matt would have been pretty disappointed if they’d gone on by, whoever they were.
He recognized his cousin Meg right away. She leaned out the window on the passenger side and waved, beaming, her bright blond hair catching the dusty light. Her husband, Brad, was at the wheel.
As soon as the truck came to a stop, Meg was out, sprinting across the yard to throw her arms around Steven’s neck. “You’re here!” she cried.
Steven laughed. It had been a while since he’d felt this welcome anyplace.
Matt scrambled down out of the truck bed, eager for company.
Brad unfolded his long, lanky frame from the interior of the pickup and approached, and the two men shook hands while Meg bent to look into Matt’s eyes and smile.
“You must be Matt,” she said.
Matt nodded. “And you must be Steven’s cousin,” he replied. “I forget your name, though.”
“Meg,” she said gently.
Brad, looking like a rancher in his old jeans, long-sleeved chambray work shirt and ancient boots, jabbed a thumb in the direction of the house and said, “Looks like this place is in even worse shape than I thought.”
Meg surveyed it with her hands resting on her trim, blue-jeaned hips. Her white cotton top was fitted and sleeveless, and it didn’t seem possible that she was old enough to be married, let alone the mother of a couple of kids.
She could have passed for seventeen.
“Brad O’Ballivan,” she scolded, sounding wholly good-natured, “I’ve told you a thousand times that it’s a train wreck over here.”
Brad grinned. “It’s better than the barn, though,” he drawled.
Matt had recognized him by then. “Are you that famous guy who’s on TV sometimes?” he asked. Before Brad could answer, he went on. “We know somebody else with the same last name as yours. Melissa.”
“Melissa is my sister,” Brad said, obviously enjoying the exchange.
“You have a sister?” Matt made it sound like the eighth wonder. He was an only child, of course, and so was Steven. Did the child long for a sister, the way Steven himself had, growing up?
Brad crouched, so he could look directly into Matt’s face. “Actually,” he said, “I have three sisters. There’s Olivia—she’s a veterinarian and she can talk to animals. And Ashley—she and Melissa are twins.”
Steven felt a pang at the mention of twins, the way he always did when the subject came up. It made him think of his cousins Conner and Brody and their complex family history. They were a matched set, those two.
“Do they look alike?” Matt asked. “Ashley and Melissa?”
“Nope,” Brad answered. “They’re not those kind of twins.”
“Oh,” Matt said, absorbing the information. Then he brightened, looking from Brad, who straightened to his full height and must have looked pretty tall to the child against that sunlit Arizona sky, to Meg, then back again. “You’re famous, though, huh?”
“Yeah,” Brad admitted, sounding almost shy. “Sort of.”
Matt nodded and moved on, over the celebrity aspect of the encounter, evidently. “We’re going to get a tent and camp out!” he announced. “And we’re adopting a dog, too!”
Meg beamed. “That’s great,” she said.
Matt absorbed her approval like it was sunlight.
“You could use Brad’s old tour bus,” she told Steven, a few moments later. The two of them had only known each other for about six months; turned out Meg was something of an amateur genealogist, and she’d tracked him down on the internet and sent him an email. Steven didn’t have a lot of kin, and he wasn’t taking any chances on alienating his cousin by imposing on her generosity.
Brad nodded,
