And she could no longer witness his grief.
Chapter Nine
Aterrible racket startled Grace awake at dawn. There was a dog barking in her yard, chasing something that was protesting being chased even more loudly. A man hollered, and if she wasn’t mistaken, she could hear a goat bleating.
Grace climbed out of bed and set a pillow where she’d been to block Baby from rolling off the bed. She slipped into the pair of Mary’s shoes she had hunted up yesterday and headed out into the kitchen. She didn’t have to dress; she had slept in her clothes.
She opened her broken kitchen door just as a chicken went flapping by in a panic, a huge black dog slipping and sliding on the ice right behind it.
“Ben!” the man hollered again. “Leave that bird and get over here!”
He slammed the tailgate of his pickup truck and started toward his still open driver’s door. “In the truck, Ben,” he said again.
Grace scrambled off the porch toward him, nearly falling as soon as her feet hit the icy driveway. “Wait!
What are you doing?” she hollered after the man, who was just getting into his truck.
He got back out and faced her, his stance defensive. Grace slid to a halt in front of him, having to grab the fender to keep from falling. She took a tiny step back.
He smelled like a farm, and from the looks of his clothes, he’d been sleeping in the barn with his animals.
His weathered face was scrunched up into such a glower Grace couldn’t tell if he was red from the weather or if a cow had stepped on his cheek. The right side of his mouth bulged out as if he had a golf ball stuck in it.
“I’m returning your blasted animals,” he told her, spitting a wad of brown tobacco juice on the ground.
Grace took another step back.
He raised his blunt, calloused hand and counted off on his dirty fingers. “Three cats, one goat, and sixteen hens. Two of them died, and I’m not replacing them. They’re old hens, and they don’t produce enough eggs to keep them in feed.”
“But…but why are you bringing them here?”
“They’re Mary’s,” he told her succinctly, just before he spit another wad of tobacco juice on the ground.
“I saw the porch light on last night. She’s home now, she can have them back.”
He pointed at the detached barn at the end of the yard. “That damn goat is a menace. She’s managed to break every fence in my place. And she ate my best pair of long johns,” he finished, signaling to the huge black dog, who had finally obeyed and come running and jumped into the front seat of the truck. The man climbed in behind him and slammed the door shut.
“Wait! Mary’s not here. And I don’t know anything about taking care of these animals.”
He rolled down his window and looked at her. “Just give them food and water. They’ll take care of themselves until Mary gets back.” He looked up toward the barn. “And don’t turn your back on that Jezebel of a goat. You’re liable to find yourself not able to sit down for a week.”
That said, he had the truck started and was racing out of the driveway before she could protest. The ice-coated gravel caused his truck to slide first in one direction and then the other. He never stopped, even when he reached the main road, skidded around the corner, and slammed into the opposite snowbank. Grace cringed at the sound of tires spinning for traction. The man swerved his truck back onto the road and roared out of sight.
She stared at the spot where he had disappeared until something pecked at her foot. She looked down to see a plump, mahogany-red chicken interested in eating her shoe. Several more birds quickly joined it, descending on Grace as if someone had suddenly rung the dinner bell.
“Shoo. Get, you birds,” she said, backing away. She slowly headed toward the barn and retrieved the two half-empty bags of animal feed she could see sitting just inside the door, being careful not to fall for fear the birds would eat her.
She unrolled the tops of the paper bags and looked at the pictures on them. One had chickens all over the front of it, and the other one had a herd of goats grazing placidly in a pasture.
Well, that was easy enough. She scooped a handful of the chicken feed out and scattered it over the floor of the barn. The entire bunch of chickens immediately started flocking inside, quickly gobbling up the feed. Grace spread a few more handfuls for good measure.
She stood inside the door, out of the rain, and looked back down the driveway. She was stunned. The entire world for as far as she could see was covered in ice. Trees bowed with the weight of the freezing precipitation, some of their tops touching the ground and now frozen into place. The forest crackled around her as if in pain, the sound carried on eerie, moaning echoes through the cold but very humid air.
The sky was low, completely masking the mountains that surrounded Pine Creek, so low in places that even the tops of tall trees were hidden. And her house looked as if it was covered in a crystalline skin.
An urgent, angry bleat came from inside the barn behind her. Grace turned to see the head of a goat, with two pointed horns and two huge black eyes staring at her from behind a half-chewed wooden stall door.
The Jezebel. She grabbed the other bag of feed and dragged it over to the impatient animal. She dumped several handfuls in a pail by the stall door and opened the door to set it inside. But she didn’t even get the latch sprung before the pail went flying and Grace found herself sitting on the floor. The goat jumped over her, just missing her head with its sharp little hooves, and ran out of the barn before she could scream.
Dammit. She didn’t know a thing about handling animals. She stood up and brushed herself off. Let the stupid beast run around in the rain if it wanted. She righted the pail and refilled it with more food, then pulled down a bale of hay that was stacked in the next stall. She spread it out over the barn floor, away from the chickens.
As she was leaving, Grace saw the baby monitor. Mary must have used it to monitor the animals at night.
Grace unplugged the transmitter and took it down off the shelf. The receiver would be in the house someplace. She could use this with Baby. She’d put this transmitter in her bedroom and carry the receiver on her belt whenever she had to come outside and tend these blasted animals. She’d have to look for a book on animal care while she was at it. She hoped Mary had an entire library of them.
Grace hurried back to the house to check on Baby, nearly tripping over three cats who were determined to beat her inside. Damn. She hoped there was cat food in the cupboard.
“There you are, sweetie,” she whispered to the just waking baby. “That was a good nap you had.” She laughed as she picked him up. “It’s the first time in a long time you’re actually waking up in the same place where you went to sleep.”
She kissed his warm, soft cheek and cuddled him against her, inhaling his unique scent. He was so precious. She hoped for some quiet time for just the two of them, so they could get to know each other on a one-to-one basis.
Wishful thinking. Their peace lasted less than an hour.
Grace looked up from the book on animal husbandry she was reading aloud to Baby when she heard the now familiar sound of the snowcat making its way up her drive. She set the book aside and carefully rearranged Baby in her arms as she stood up.
As she walked into the kitchen, she heard the engine shut off and then the voices of men talking. The murmurs suddenly turned into a shout of surprise. She looked out the only window not covered with ice just in time to see Morgan running for his life from Jezebel.
She didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to know the outcome. The man lost the race. Grace heard what sounded like a curse, only in a language she didn’t recognize, and then Morgan was sitting on the frozen gravel, shouting at the triumphant, retreating goat.