“I’m going home early,” she said to Kristin. “If anybody needs me, have them call me there.”
“Are you okay?” Kristin asked. “I mean, it’s only three o’clock. You’re not sick or anything, are you?”
“Lots of people go home at three o’clock,” she said. “And today that’s me. I’ve done all I can do, unless there’s an emergency, that is.”
She left her office via the private door. Once back home at High Lonesome Ranch, she changed into a T-shirt, jeans, and boots. Then she hurried out to the barn, where she started mucking out the stall where Jenny kept her sorrel quarter-horse gelding, Kiddo. It was hot, dirty, smelly work – just the thing to take Joanna’s mind off Marliss Shackleford’s latest piece of attack journalism.
She became so involved in her shoveling and cleaning that she lost track of time. When Jenny came home from school and spoke to her from a few feet away, Joanna was so startled, she jumped.
“Mom, what are you doing that for?” Jenny demanded. “I told Butch I’d clean the stall out today, as soon as I got home from school. I haven’t had a chance to do it before because of play practice and-”
“I just felt like doing it myself,” Joanna said. “I was sick and tired of sitting behind a desk. I decided a little physical labor would do me a world of good.”
A look of alarm flitted briefly across Jenny’s face. She paled. “Nothing bad happened at work, did it?” she asked.
“Not really,” Joanna reassured her daughter. “All I’m saying is, my day was rotten. How was yours?”
“Okay, I guess,” Jenny said unenthusiastically.
“Let’s go wrestle a few bales of hay together,” Joanna suggested cheerfully. “Maybe throwing a couple of those around will make us feel better.”
Once the chores were done, Joanna came out of the barn to find Jenny leaning against the topmost rail of the corral with Kiddo nuzzling her jacket pocket, searching for the sugar cubes she routinely carried there. With their matching blond manes, girl and horse leaned on each other in an unspoken communion that made Joanna marvel.
Kiddo had come into their lives not long after Andy’s death. As a single mother with a demanding full-time job, Joanna had been wary of taking on any more responsibilities. She had objected to the idea of Jenny’s having a horse, but on that subject she had been overruled by her in-laws. And rightly so, she realized now.
She had watched in amazement as Jenny and the gelding had bonded. She had also been astonished at how caring for the horse had somehow helped ease Jenny’s terrible grief after her father’s death. In a way Joanna didn’t quite understand, she realized that allowing Jenny to be responsible for this huge, four-legged creature had helped transform her from a child into what she was now – a self-possessed young girl verging on womanhood.
Silently Joanna went over and joined Jenny at the fence, noticing as she did so that she and her daughter stood almost eye-to- eye. Within months, Jennifer Ann Brady would most likely be taller than her five-foot-four mother.
“Did you and Butch have a fight or something?” Jenny asked as Joanna reached out a hand to touch Kiddo’s sleek neck.
“Why do you ask that?” Joanna returned.
Jenny shrugged. “He was real quiet last night when he took me to play practice, and he was gone this morning by the time I got up,” she said. “He usually cooks breakfast, but today he didn’t. I had cold cereal instead.”
“We had a disagreement,” Joanna conceded after a pause. “Not a fight. And it’s all settled now. He said he had a meeting over at the new house this morning. I’m sure that’s the only reason he left the house so early.”
“What was it about?” Jenny asked pointedly.
“The disagreement?”
Jenny nodded.
“About his trains,” Joanna answered, thinking how silly that must sound.
“What about them?” Jenny asked.
“He wants to build a permanent track for them in the family room and run it over the doors and window frames,” Joanna replied. “I want a regular family room with a couch, a couple of chairs, a television set, and no trains.”
“If he’s still mad about it, then I guess you won,” Jenny said.
“It’s not a matter of winning or losing,” Joanna replied. “Being married means you have to discuss things and work out compromises you can both live with. I told Butch we’d find someplace else to put his trains, and we will.”
There was a long pause after that. Joanna assumed the conversation was over. It wasn’t.
“Did you and Dad have disagreements?” Jenny asked.
This was tougher ground. With Andy dead, it might have been easier to pretend that everything between them had always been perfect, even if that wasn’t true.
“Yes,” Joanna admitted finally. “Yes, we did.”
“What about?”
Joanna thought about those first stormy years in her previous marriage. She and Andy had both been young, and having a child only a few months after the wedding had added a whole other dimension to the usual newlyweds conflicts. For years, there had always been too little money and too many bills. Thinking back, it seemed to Joanna that she and Andy had fought about almost everything – about whether or not he had filled the car with gas the last time he drove it, about why he was late for dinner or hadn’t picked up his dirty clothes, and why he always seemed to leave an unsightly sprinkle of whiskers in the bathroom sink. Then, after five years or so, things had smoothed out. Joanna and Andy had made it to their tenth anniversary and most likely would have made it longer if only…
“A lot of little things, I guess,” Joanna said finally. “Things that I see now weren’t important enough to fight over in the first place.”
“I never heard you fight,” Jenny said wistfully. “Or if I did, I don’t remember.”
“Good,” Joanna returned, meaning it. Her relationship with Roy Andrew Brady hadn’t been all good or all bad. Neither was her relationship with Butch Dixon. Jenny needed to have a more realistic idea of how the world worked.
“It’s better to forget quarrels than it is to remember them,” Joanna added.
Then, as they stepped off the rail and started toward the house, Butch drove into the yard. Again the dogs rode in the back with their heads thrust out the open windows.
As soon as Butch opened the door, the two dogs leaped out and gamboled over to Jenny. Only after greeting her did they make for their water.
“I see you let them ride again,” Joanna said, walking up to kiss him hello. If he was still angry about the train situation, it didn’t show.
He kissed her back and then frowned at the dogs. “I remembered what you said about spoiling them,” he said. “I tried to get them to run home, but Sadie wasn’t having any of it. She lay down in the middle of the road and wouldn’t budge. I had to go back and get her. Once she was in the car, Tigger wanted to ride, too.”
“It’s all right,” Joanna said. “I was teasing.”
Butch glanced down at Joanna’s clothing and then checked his watch. “It’s only five now. How long have you been home?”
Joanna shrugged. “A couple of hours. Jenny and I have been cleaning Kiddo’s stall and putting out hay.”
“Why so early?”
“I gave myself part of the afternoon off,” she said.
“How come?”
“Politics,” she said.
“I see,” Butch said. “Come tell me about it while I fix dinner.”
Inside the house, Jenny and the dogs disappeared into her room. Relieved that things were better with Butch, Joanna sat in the breakfast nook and sipped at a soda while he hustled around the kitchen. There was no point in asking if she could help. Years of being a short-order cook made Butch’s culinary efforts far superior to Joanna’s limited skills in that regard. His movements were quick, decisive, and economical.
Joanna told him everything – about the Rochelle Baxter/ Latisha Wall case as well as the difficult board of supervisors meeting and Marliss Shackleford’s hurtful column. Somehow, though, she neglected to mention the heart-to-heart she and Jenny had shared outside Kiddo’s corral.