Thicker than Blood

  Here was an opportunity to broach that subject, though she’d tread carefully. “Her religion . . . it rubbed off on you, I guess.”

  May slowed her eager mount so he would walk in step with Christy’s. “I suppose it did.”

  She chose not to take the conversation any further for the time being. They spent the next few minutes riding without talking, both of them focused on the fence. Then May gestured to the hill looming in front of them. “That’s Squatter’s Mountain. My favorite place to go when I want to be alone.”

  “You can get to the top of it?”

  May reined in her horse and stared at the hill, mesmerized. “See that trail?” When she pointed, Christy thought she saw a break in the trees at the base. “Come warmer weather, it’ll make a great hike.”

  The snow had let up, and they were close enough to see the top of the peak with its rocky outcroppings. Aspen skeletons and ponderosa pines graced its slopes. Christy didn’t have to be an outdoorswoman to appreciate the beauty.

  “I can’t even imagine losing it.”

  Christy twisted around in her saddle to face May. “Losing it?”

  May sighed, wiping her eyes with the back of her gloved hand. “We’ve been behind on the mortgage payments for a long time. We have to pay it off in sixty days or they’ll foreclose.”

  So that was what the envelope from the bank was about. “You’re kidding? Can’t you sell some of the cattle or something?”

  “It still wouldn’t be enough, and if we did, where would we be then?” May stared at the peak, her voice getting quiet. “This time I think we’re at the end.”

  Christy didn’t know what to say. What could she, of all people, offer that would be any consolation? Yet her first instinct was to somehow comfort her obviously distraught little sister, a feeling she was glad she still had.

  “Anyway,” May said, urging her gelding forward with a click of her tongue, “we’ve got a fence to check, and I’m sitting here blubbering.” It took Christy longer to start up again. She couldn’t take her eyes off Squatter’s Mountain.

  When they trudged into the kitchen two hours later, Ruth was stoking the woodstove, Scribbles by her side. “You both look freezing.”

  May wriggled out of her coat and started peeling off layers. “Those cows’ll need wire cutters if they want to get out now.”

  Ruth brought chairs to the stove.

  Christy sat in one of them, her open palms stretched toward the warm metal. May stripped down to a T-shirt and jeans. She was just as skinny as ever as she sat on the floor beside Christy, tugging off her boots. Her cheeks were chafed from the cold, and she wiped her runny nose with her shirt. Seeing her sister like this reminded Christy of how May would play for hours on end outside, even in the winter.

  She tried to comb her damp hair with her fingertips. It was hard to stop thinking of May as her kid sister and get used to the fact that May was a thirty-year-old woman, living her life just fine without Christy.

  A series of short knocks came at the kitchen door. May rose to answer it. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t want it.”

  “Guess you won’t be having dinner then,” came a female voice.

  “In that case . . .” May swung open the door, and a woman around their age stepped inside. She plopped two pizza boxes on the counter and a plastic grocery bag on top of them.

  “Hope you guys are hungry,” the woman said, hanging her parka on the rack by the door and turning toward Christy and Ruth. Surprise flashed in her eyes when she saw Christy. “Whoa.” She came over and gave Christy a firm handshake like Ruth had. Over her shoulder she asked, “Is this who I think it is?”

  May beamed. “Sure is.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Beth.” Then she pointed at May. “Let’s get this straight right off the bat. Whatever you do, don’t listen to anything this girl says about me.”

  May laughed, but Beth kept a straight face. “Two facts you need to know: I do not have a bottomless pit for a stomach, and I hate your sister.”

  Christy found herself smiling. Beth certainly was friendly.

  “I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine,” May said. “She’s our vet, and between her and her dad, they doctor every sick cow, horse, dog, cat, goat, and sheep within a hundred miles.”

  “And iguana,” Beth chimed in.

  “Iguana?” May said. “When?”

  “Two weeks ago. Had to break it to the owner that Bob was really Bobina.”

  Ruth explained to Christy, “Friday’s our game night.”

  “How are you at cards?” Beth said, pulling up a chair next to her by the stove, which let Christy get a good look at her. The wool sweater, hiking boots, and lump of turquoise dangling from her neck with a silver chain pegged her as an outdoorswoman like May, but she had more meat on her bones than May did. And her clothes didn’t have the holes and tears she’d seen in May’s either.

  “Not that good,” Christy said.

  Beth shielded her mouth to keep May and Ruth from hearing. “Neither am I. But it’s fun anyway.”

  May let out a whoop as she discovered something in Beth’s grocery bag. She held up a box of Triscuits for Christy to see. “Normal people go to bed, and if they can’t sleep they count sheep jumping fences. But I swear, Beth here, when she gets insomnia, she counts Triscuits leaping gracefully over a lunch plate. She brings these every time.”

  “So I like them,” Beth said. “Sue me.”

  “And she can eat the whole box!”

  “What is this? Tattle-on-Beth night?”

  May pulled her jacket from the rack and stuck her boots on again. “No, it’s your-turn-to-decide-what-to-play night, and when I get back you better have made up your mind.”

  “Where you going?” Christy asked.

  “Checking on those cows in the shed. Won’t be long.”

  Beth quickly added, “I’ll go with you,” and before Christy could think of anything to say they were both out the door.

  ***

  May shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her coat. She’d left her gloves inside.

  Beth hurried to walk beside her. “Something wrong?”

  “Just needed to get out and think for a minute.”

  “If you want to be alone, I can—”

  “I’m glad you came,” she interrupted. “Maybe I can bounce my thoughts off you.” Beth was always a good sounding board.

  May led the way to the calving shed, not really needing to check the animals. Jim had just been in here, but she’d give them a glance so she wouldn’t be lying to Chris. Inside, May dropped onto a bale of straw.

  “How long has she been here?” Beth sat down next to her.

  “Since this afternoon. She just showed up.”

  Beth whistled. “Oh.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  “I just got here, remember?”

  “Any thoughts would help.”

  “She looks like you.”

  That got May to smile. Ever since she was a kid she’d always wanted to be like her big sister. Chris was beautiful, and May was the scrawny girl with scars on her knees. May remembered often sneaking into Chris’s room to play with her makeup and perfume. Even though she now realized it must have been obvious to Chris what she’d been up to by the mess she’d left behind, her sister never scolded her for it.

  “I was thrown when I first came in,” Beth said. “But I remembered that photo you showed me.”

  “Try walking into this shed expecting to find Jim and the cows and discovering the sister you thought wanted nothing to do with you.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “No kidding.” May pulled a piece of straw from the bale and twirled it in her fingers. “She ditches me at the funeral, then comes gallavanting out here expecting me to welcome her with open arms? No apologies, no nothing?”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s here. To apologize.”

  “Well, she didn’t exactly take the bait when
I gave her the chance.”

  Beth rested her elbows on her thighs. “At least you know where she is now. She’s not dead. She’s right here in your house.”

  “What even gives her the right?” May bent the piece of straw in half, then quartered it. She’d done her best this afternoon to be nothing but kind to her sister. That was the Christian thing to do. But it hadn’t been easy. She kept waiting for Chris to answer all the unspoken questions she’d kept bottled inside over the years. When she hadn’t, it only deepened the scar on May’s heart.

  May leaned back against the stall, closing her eyes. “I used to lay awake at night wondering how she could hate me so much she had to leave. What if she still hates me?”

  “I doubt she’d be here if she did.”

  May rubbed her eyes. “I thought I forgave her. I really did. But seeing her again like this . . . And now I gotta go back in there and treat her like some prodigal.”

  “How long is she staying?”

  “Another thing she didn’t bother to tell me.” May got up, brushing the straw off her jeans.

  “Weren’t you the one who wanted to spend more time with your sister?”

  May shook her head. “I sound horrible, don’t I?”

  “You could just think of it as a chance to show her what true forgiveness is all about. Maybe she’s never experienced that.”

  “If only I knew what happened to her,” May said.

  Beth smiled. “You’ll never know out here.”

  Chapter 15

  Coffee?” Ruth asked, holding up the pot.

  Christy shook her head. What she really wanted was a good hard drink. Normally by this time of day she’d be winding down with a glass or two of sherry.

  Ruth poured herself a cup at the counter. Christy hadn’t minded her company. She’d kept up the conversation talking about the early days of the ranch when her husband, Luis, was still alive, telling how they’d married young and spent the first years working on other ranches. Buying the Triple Cross had been their dream realized. They’d endured many trials and shared many joys, but when Luis’s horse threw him on a remote corner of the ranch, nothing prepared Ruth for the stiff, bloated, and very dead husband she found three days later.

  “Luis loved this place,” Ruth said, her voice cracking slightly as she returned to her chair with the mug and an ashtray for her. Christy guessed Ruth’s emotion wasn’t only because she missed her husband. She hadn’t forgotten what May had shared about the ranch’s financial situation.

  Christy lit a Winston, marveling at the thought of one woman running a ranch completely by herself like Ruth had in the years after her husband’s death, before May or Jim arrived. How had she endured the isolation? And what about the fear of something terrible happening to her with no one to know for days?

  If anyone could handle it, Ruth looked like she could. Her weathered features spelled endurance, and with her sleeves rolled up to the elbows Christy saw her forearm flex with each lifting of her cup.

  Yet her eyes revealed a gentle spirit. She bet those same arms that could surely throw forty-pound hay bales into the back of a pickup would just as deftly coax a stray dog to food or rescue an injured bird.

  “How’d May come to work here?” Christy asked. She still hadn’t figured out what had brought her sister and this aging woman together.

  “I met her four years after Luis passed,” Ruth said, smiling. “It was actually the dust cloud I saw first. Then this old truck rattled up the drive with a skinny girl behind the wheel. I was sitting on the porch, and she marched right over and asked to work here. I liked her boldness, and she could ride. But she admitted she knew little about cattle. I decided to try her out anyway. I wasn’t gettin’ any younger, and the stock was becoming more than I could handle by myself.”

  Ruth slurped her coffee. “One thing’s for sure. I never regretted my gamble. Your sister worked her tail off that first year and wouldn’t let me pay her until she could hold her own. Don’t remember her complaining either, though there were nights she’d be so exhausted I’d find her asleep on the porch. I liked her spunk. She had the guts to come here and go for it. I saw fire in her eyes. Fire to learn. She wanted to work here so bad, even though she knew it wouldn’t be easy.”

  From what Jim said earlier, Christy figured May had been eighteen or nineteen at that point, and five years later she bought into the place. When Christy was that age she’d accomplished nothing but squandering all her parents’ life insurance money.

  “She was just a kid,” Christy said.

  “Yeah, but you start ’em early in this business. ’Course, most grow up with it. That’s another thing about May. Wasn’t raised knowing cows and had to learn from scratch. Took her fair share of tumbles, bites, and kicks.”

  Christy fell silent, and Ruth did the same, but somehow it wasn’t uncomfortable. Ruth didn’t fill the space with meaningless chatter. She let Christy sit warming by the stove with her own thoughts.

  Several minutes later May and Beth returned. Beth blasted the radio to play the Top 20 country countdown. A deck of cards was produced, and they broke into the sausage and cheese pizza. Hearts was chosen as the first game by Beth, who joked about not being able to make any decisions without tremendous inner turmoil.

  During the game Christy observed the interaction of the three women. The person joking with May should’ve been her. Instead, someone else was filling her role. Why would May even want a relationship with her again? Forget what Aunt Edna wrote; Christy wasn’t needed. May had these people in her life now, and Christy was insane for thinking there might still be something between them. Being family wasn’t enough.

  She tried to focus on the game, but it was getting harder to do. She really needed a drink.

  Two hands later Jim blew in from outside, stomping the snow off his boots. She noticed it was now dark outside. “Ladies,” he said.

  “Hey, grab a chair.” May said. “We’re just gettin’ started.”

  Jim shook his head and pulled a slice of pizza from the box on the counter, eating it without a plate. “Got that carburetor replaced in your truck, Ruth,” he garbled, his mouth full of pizza. “Couple more inches came down. You guys feel like sledding?”

  May brightened and looked around the table. “How about it?”

  Beth readily agreed, and Ruth was game. Then May looked at Christy. She wasn’t sure what to say. Were they kidding? “You all go ahead. I can wait in here.” Maybe if they left she could finally get the drink she craved.

  “If I can do it, you can,” Ruth said.

  “I’m not—”

  “Come on. It’ll be fun,” Beth said.

  They weren’t going to let her off easy, and it was starting to irritate her the way they were pushing, but then she realized it was the perfect excuse. “All right, all right,” she said, lifting both hands in surrender and trying to sound jovial like them. “Just let me grab something out of my car.”

  She slipped out before they could respond. They’d think she needed an extra sweater or a scarf.

  It took her three tries to unlock her car with her hands shaking so badly, but when she finally closed herself inside, she eagerly pulled out the bottle of vodka. Unscrewing the cap, she sniffed the aroma, similar to that of rubbing alcohol, then took a swallow. It burned as it slid down her throat and poured into her stomach. Just a few swallows would be enough to get her through. They wouldn’t smell it on her, and here in the shadow of the barn behind the horse trailer no one would see her.

  Popping open the glove compartment, Christy pulled out Aunt Edna’s soiled letter. “Listen,” she said as if her aunt could hear, “I’ve tried to do what you wanted, ’kay? But she doesn’t need me, and I don’t need her, either. Too much has happened. It’s been too long.”

  She rubbed her eyes. She was getting tired, and she really should’ve left by now. But one glance at the newly fallen snow confirmed that was impossible. The roads out here would be bad, and she
didn’t have tire chains or four-wheel drive. She’d have to stay the night and hightail it first thing in the morning. Christy turned on the engine and cleared the windshield with the wipers. It felt great to have a break from all the “fun” that was going on inside.

  Guzzling more vodka, she leaned back into her seat and imagined what May and her friends would really think if the truth about her life were known. What they’d do if they saw her now. Gone would be the hospitality and friendliness. These were religious people who lived right. They would never understand.

  She better get back. May was probably wondering what was taking her so long. She switched on the interior light to stash her bottle. Only then did she see Jim walking around the horse trailer toward the car. Rush of panic. Had he seen the alcohol? She doused the light and hid the bottle back under the seat, clambering out of the car and locking the door.

  “Get what you needed?”

  Christy nodded, then realized she was empty-handed. Hopefully he’d assume she’d taken lipstick or something else that could easily be pocketed.

  “You know, we don’t have to go sledding if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m sure the girls will understand.”

  As crazy and childish as sledding might be, she didn’t mind as much now that she’d given herself some strength. And she had a voyeuristic curiosity to see how May lived. “Like Ruth said, if she can do it, I can.”

  Making her way around the car, she hurried to the house. The kitchen was a flurry of activity with everyone bundling up against the cold. May loaned her a pair of boots, and Beth had an extra ski cap. Now she would have hat hair like all of them.

  She followed them out to one of the pickups, and Jim jumped in the driver’s seat. Ruth and Beth sat with him in the cab.

  May climbed into the truck bed and held out her hand. “We’ll sit back here. Cab only fits three.”

  Christy wasn’t pleased with the idea of riding in the back of the truck, but she grabbed May’s hand anyway, hoping this would all be over soon. They crouched across from each other, Scribbles leaping over the two toboggans already in the bed and lying low beside May.

  “It’ll be bumpy,” May said. “Hang on. Jim doesn’t slow much for the dips.”

  The truck rattled across a wooden bridge over a small half-frozen stream. The sky was almost clear now. As the moonlight reflected off the snow it created a world of blues and grays that reminded her of the magical land of Narnia written about in the classic series by C. S. Lewis. She half expected to spot a fawn or dwarf peeking around a distant tree trunk. Instead, through the creaks and groans of the truck, she heard cow bellows and saw their forms moving in clusters toward the truck as it passed.