The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby (29 page)

“I promised Gramps I would do it. Is it all right if I take this upstairs with me?”
Emily picked up her cup of coffee.

“Of course it is,” Clarice said.

Dotty stood up at the same time Emily did. “Clarice was right about Marvin. She said
that she thought he was about to ask her to marry him. She’s the only one of us four
that isn’t a mail-order bride. That’s the way I come to live in these parts. I was
from Kentucky and he lived here. I thought any place was better than Harlan County,
Kentucky, so I climbed on a bus and come out here. Married Johnny and loved him to
his dying day, but the best thing that come out of me bein’ a mail-order bride is
that I met Clarice and we become best friends.”

“Four of you?”

“Yep.” Dotty nodded. “Me and Rose and Madge all come to Texas right after the war
was over more than sixty years ago. I got here first in January and the other two
came on later that spring. It’s a long story how it all happened. Rose and Madge are
cousins. Madge was writing to a soldier that she met through the church pen pal group.
So she came out here to meet him, and then Rose came to visit and wound up married
to a local guy too. Our husbands are all gone now and we are widows.”

“You were all kind of like mail-order brides?”

“Mainly me and Madge were, and Rose kind of got in on the deal like shirttail kin.
Clarice is the only one of us that was raised right here in Ravenna,” Dotty said.
“Now get on up there and get some rest.”

“Supper is at six?” Emily checked the clock and glanced at that picture one more time.

“Yes, it is.” Dotty smiled.

A two-hour nap, supper, some talk about her grandfather, and then back to the hotel.
Tomorrow she would be on her way to Florida for a whole month on the beach.

“Oh, my!” Emily gasped when she opened the door into the bedroom.

Back when she was in high school she would have hocked her tomcat, Spurs, to have
her own room like the one before her. A queen-sized four-poster bed covered with a
pretty quilt and lacy bed ruffle sat on one side of the room. A big, deep recliner
and a vanity with a three-way mirror were located over beside the door into the bathroom,
which sported a deep claw-footed tub. She’d always shared the one bathroom in the
small three-bedroom ranch house with two men who did not understand why one girl needed
so much hairspray, lotion, bath oil, and her own pink razors to shave her legs.

She washed her hands, dried them, and then rubbed lotion into them—sweet-smelling
lavender lotion that reminded her of Great-Aunt Molly, grandmother to her favorite
cousin, Taylor.

Her grandfather’s words the day that he and Molly went to the courthouse together
came back to her as she looked in the bathroom mirror. Molly had deeded her ranch
to Taylor, and Marvin had given what was left of his adjoining ranch to Emily. On
the way home he had said, “I’m not real sure your future is on Shine Canyon Ranch,
Em.”

When she’d asked him why he’d say a thing like that, he’d just smiled and tapped his
heart. “Ranchin’ is in your heart and you’ll always love it, but something in my soul
tells me your future is not on Shine Canyon. When I’m gone, I want you to take a month
and think things through before you commit to this land for the rest of your life.
You’ll have a hard row to hoe even with family to help with just a hundred acres.
I’m not sure in today’s economy that you’ll ever make it without taking a job in town,
and that means ranchin’ at night after you work your ass off all day at your job.”

She blinked away the tears and turned away from the mirror. “A hundred acres might
not be much, but it’s mine, Gramps. And I love the land as much as you did. I’m not
afraid of hard work, and piece by piece I’ll buy our land back from Taylor. He promised
he’d sell it to me when I could buy it, remember. That was the rule when you sold
it to him.”

Lacy curtains covered the narrow window overlooking the backyard. She drew a corner
back and peeked out. She dropped the curtain and took a step back, stumbled over a
small footstool, and went down on one knee.

She wanted to cry, to curl up in a ball and weep, but she couldn’t. She limped over
to the recliner, flipped the handle on the side, and leaned back as far as it would
let her, looked up, and right there on top of the chest of drawers was another picture
of Greg. A bust shot of him in his high school graduation robe and mortarboard hat
with a tassel hanging to the side. The gold charm told her that he’d graduated two
years before she did and that his school colors were orange and black. A sticky note
attached to the side of the frame held the message, “I’ll bring home the best bull.
Miss you!”

He was younger, but the eyes were the same and they still looked right into her soul
like the picture down in the living room. She threw her arm over her face and forced
herself to think about the beach, to hear the seagulls and the slapping of the waves
against the sandbar. The soft smell of the lotion on her hands sparked a deep memory
of her mother in her dreams. They were playing in the wildflowers like the ones in
the picture of Greg Adams. She was a little girl with dark braids and a cotton dress.
The grass was soft on her bare feet but cool, so it had to be spring. They’d sung
the “Ring around the Rosy” song, then fallen back in the flowers. Her mother touched
her cheek and said, “Don’t ever give up your wings. Always know that you can fly,
my child.”

Then out of nowhere there was a door right in the middle of the pasture of wild colorful
flowers, and there was a yellow cat peeking around the corner. A mouse darted through
the cat’s front legs and was coming right at her when she sat straight up in bed and
her eyes popped wide open.

“Damn it! I don’t get to dream about Mama very often. Why’d you bring that thing into
my dreams?” she asked.

Someone rapped gently on the door, but she thought it was part of the dream until
it happened again. She cocked her head to one side and said, “Come in.”

Clarice pushed inside and sat down on the vanity bench. “Thank you. It’s been more
than an hour and I was hoping you were awake. Would you please tell me more about
Marvin? I read the letter and it said what I thought it would. Strange, that something
sixty years old can still be so bittersweet.”

“Is it all right if I sit on the bed?” Emily asked. “This chair would be a lot more
comfortable for you than that bench.”

“Honey, this is your room right now. Make yourself at home.”

“Is that your grandson in that picture too?” Emily asked.

Clarice nodded. “When he graduated from high school. He leaves me little notes when
he has to be gone. It’s to convince me that he’s coming back. I have a fear that he’ll
change his mind about ranchin’. Now please tell me about Marvin.”

Emily kicked off her boots and crawled up in the middle of the bed. She crossed her
legs Indian-style, kept her gaze on Clarice and off the picture on the chest, and
said, “He fought cancer for five years and last week the battle ended. It won. I thought
he’d kick it for sure right up until that last week. He was diagnosed the week I graduated
from college five years ago. I had planned on coming back to the ranch anyway, so
it didn’t change my life drastically. I took care of him. He was always too stubborn
to hire a foreman, so I took care of that too. As the ranch dwindled to pay for his
bills, there was less ranchin’ and more caretakin’.”

“How many children did he have?” Clarice asked.

Emily held up one finger. “Just one son, my father. But Nana’s family lived on the
next farm over. She came from a family that had five girls, so I had lots of family
around me and lots of cousins to play with when I was growing up. My father died nine
years ago in a horse accident. I was a senior in high school and the shock was horrible.
Even worse than when Mama died, but I was just barely four that year and too little
to really understand what an aneurism was. He was fine that morning at breakfast and
that evening he was gone. I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever endure, but watching
Gramps go by degrees was even tougher. How many children did you have, Miz Clarice?”

“Just one son, Bart. He and his wife, Nancy, only had one child—Greg. He’s thirty
now. And you?”

“Twenty-eight,” Emily answered.

“Did Marvin ever mention me?” Clarice asked softly.

“He talked about you that last week and to you the last hours of his life. I really
thought that you were probably dead and had come to help him cross over into eternity.
He made me promise that I’d find out if you were alive and see to it that you got
those letters and understood that he hadn’t been a jackass. It all started when the
mailman drove out to the ranch with that letter they found at the post office,” Emily
said.

“Thank you for keeping that promise. You’ll never know what this means to me. Did
Marvin, was he, did he suffer?” Clarice dabbed at her eye.

Emily shook her head. “He was sick for a very long time, but there at the first he
was still able to be up and around. It wasn’t until that last round of chemo that
he wasn’t able to at least sit on the porch swing with me every evening. At the end
I prayed that God would take him on to a place where he wouldn’t hurt anymore. That
sounds ugly, doesn’t it?”

Clarice shook her head. “No, it’s the way life is. Why didn’t he come to Ravenna all
those years ago? He knew where I was.”

Emily shrugged. “I asked him that, but he just smiled and said that God must’ve had
other plans for both of you or that letter wouldn’t have gotten lost.”

Clarice nodded. “Can’t undo history. I was happy with Lester Adams. We had a good
life, raised a good son, and he married well. Now I have Greg to help me run the ranch.
I’m glad you brought the letters home to me, Emily, and I’m glad you agreed to stay
for supper.”

“Thank you,” Emily said.

“Want to come with me to the kitchen and help Dotty get things on the table?” Clarice
asked.

“I’d love to.” Emily bounded off the bed, stomped her feet back into her boots, and
followed Clarice on do

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Carolyn Brown is a
New
York
Times
and
USA
Today
bestselling author with more than sixty books published, and credits her eclectic
family for her humor and writing ideas. Her books include the cowboy trilogy
Lucky
in
Love
,
One
Lucky
Cowboy
, and
Getting
Lucky
; the Honky Tonk series with
I
Love
This
Bar
;
Hell, Yeah
;
Honky
Tonk
Christmas
; and
My
Give
a
Damn’s Busted
; and her bestselling Spikes & Spurs series with
Love
Drunk
Cowboy
,
Red’s Hot Cowboy
,
Darn
Good
Cowboy
Christmas
,
One
Hot
Cowboy
Wedding
,
Mistletoe
Cowboy
,
Just
a
Cowboy
and
His
Baby
, and
Cowboy
Seeks
Bride.
Carolyn has launched into women’s fiction as well with
The
Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee
. She was born in Texas but grew up in southern Oklahoma where she and her husband,
Charles, a retired English teacher, make their home. They have three grown children
and enough grandchildren to keep them young.