“Now that’s a sight I’d never get tired of,” Hank said.
“Agreed. Getting hungry yet?” Winter asked.
“Anytime you see me, I’m ready to eat,” Hank replied.
“Well, let’s get this party started.” Winter flipped the truck’s headlights on and off several times and stuck his arm out of the window to signal.
Sean waved to acknowledge that she saw him, pointing at the grove of twelve pecan trees growing on a gentle rise ahead.
Winter slipped the truck into gear and aimed it toward the grove, leaving parallel depressions in the pasture grass.
Sean had purchased the three-hundred-acre parcel as a long-term investment, but one that she knew they would all enjoy. There was no question that the land would increase in value, because the area, just twenty miles from Charlotte, had been growing for years, and large tracts of land like this one were increasingly rare and expensive.
The farmland was surrounded by a whitewashed rail fence on the front and an electric fence on the other three sides. The one-hundred-year-old main house, where Winter, Sean, Rush, and their new daughter spent weekends, contained two thousand square feet of hardwood floors, tall ceilings, and pine board paneling. They could have lived there full-time, but Winter couldn’t bring himself to vacate the house he and his first wife had lovingly renovated before she was killed in the flying accident that had blinded their son. Eleanor had crashed in the craft she had learned in as a child, on a clear day when she was giving her son Rush lessons in touch-and-goes. A descending Beechcraft Baron had swatted her Cessna from the sky.
Rush didn’t remember the accident, but there wasn’t a day that passed, no matter how wonderful and full it was, that Winter didn’t see Eleanor still and motionless in a hospital bed in the hours before they pulled the plug on the battered and broken shell of his perfect wife. He mourned her daily.
For the past six months, Hank Trammel and his niece Faith Ann had lived in the farm manager’s house on the property. Hank, newly widowed, had sold his home outside Charlotte and, with his newly orphaned niece and his horses, moved to the Massey farm. Hank had been Winter’s superior officer when they had been U.S. marshals, but the two men were as close as a father and son, and Faith Ann Porter had quickly become family to Winter and Sean. So far, the livestock included six horses, an unknown number of feral cats, and one Seeing-Eye dog, the Rhodesian Ridgeback that Rush had named Nemo.
After the truck came to a stop, Winter turned and looked back at the infant seat. Olivia Moment, Sean’s and his three-month-old daughter, was sound asleep.
Winter let the dog out, unclipped the baby seat, and set it on the warm hood. That done, he grabbed Hank’s crutches from the truck’s bed and handed them to him. When the three riders entered the grove, Nemo barked ecstatically.
“Sit and stay, Nemo,” Winter commanded.
Nemo whined impatiently, eager to join his young master, but because he was trained to obey, he remained seated on the ground beside Winter.
Charger was Rush’s eight-year-old mare. They had bought the animal after looking at a dozen horses in three states. A blind child who is going to ride a horse needs a special one. Ideally, they had wanted an animal that would sense it was serving as his rider’s eyes and at least be intelligent about its own safety. They had to find a horse that had a gentle disposition and that responded to its rider’s commands, as well as having a noncompetitive nature that would allow it to ride alongside or behind other horses without feeling insulted. Charger met their criteria and now, although Rush never rode without companions, he was always in the saddle alone.
Winter’s instincts were to be overprotective, to build a wall around his impaired son to keep him safe. Sean and Faith Ann refused to allow that, and as a result his son was doing things-like riding a horse and climbing trees with Faith Ann-that Winter would otherwise never have permitted.
Faith Ann reached over and took hold of Charger’s bridle, while Sean slipped from her horse, a chestnut gelding named Rattler, tied his reins to a tree limb, secured Charger’s reins to a fallen limb, and helped her stepson down from the saddle. After Rush was aground, Faith Ann slipped off Red Man and hitched him to another branch.
As the riders walked away from them, the horses lowered their heads to the lush grass.
“Where’s my little angel?” Sean demanded as she came over to the truck. “Hello, Miss Olivia,” she crooned, as her daughter opened her eyes and smiled up from the infant seat. “I hope these rough old men didn’t teach my sweet-cheeks any naughty words.”
“You know better than that,” Winter said.
“Won’t require lessons,” Hank added. “If she never hears a single one uttered, Olivia will still be able to cuss a purple streak. That’s because Winter’s from Mississippi. .” He winked. “So cussin’s in her DNA.”
Sean laughed, unhooked the belts, and lifted the child into her arms.
“Does Olivia need changing?” she asked. “Is that why you flagged me down?”
“I smell fried chicken,” Rush said. He reached down and rubbed Nemo’s head, which was pressing against his leg.
“Me too,” Faith Ann said.
Winter said, “I thought we’d eat a picnic lunch under the trees.” He reached into the truck’s bed and lifted out a basket and a pair of blankets. “Time to eat.”
“A picnic!” Faith Ann exclaimed. “I’m practically starving to death.”
“I don’t know why you don’t outweigh your horse,” Hank teased the girl. “You eat twice as much as Red Man does. Maybe I better get you checked for tapeworms.”
“She might have one,” Rush said, laughing.
“I don’t think so,” Faith Ann said, frowning. “Tapeworms get transmitted by fleas who eat the eggs, and you have to ingest a flea to get them.”
“You’d get them if cooties ate flea eggs,” Rush shot back, giggling.
Faith Ann leaned over and mussed Rush’s blond hair, which erased the smile from his face. He used his fingers as a comb to repair the damage.
Winter and Faith Ann unfolded two blankets on the grass so they overlapped and formed a large rectangle. He opened the basket and took out a bucket of chicken.
“Winter, you went to so much trouble,” Sean joked. “Hours in the kitchen slaving over a stove.”
“If you’re pleased, the intense manual labor was worth it.” He dropped ice from a small cooler into two plastic cups, opened a large cola, and poured them full. “For Faith Ann and Rush-the brown stuff.” Using the corkscrew on his Swiss Army knife, he uncorked a bottle of chardonnay and poured some in three plastic glasses.
“And you even packed the good china.” Hank handed around paper plates from the basket. Winter saw his friend wince in pain from the movement, but said nothing.
Sean lifted a shawl, placed it over both her shoulder and the baby, then opened her blouse and positioned the baby to suckle. Winter smiled when her eyes met his.
“Girl’s gotta eat,” Sean said.
“That poor child is going to be a teenager and every time she gets hungry she’ll start hunting for something to cover her head with and not have the slightest idea why,” Hank said.
Sean laughed. “I seriously doubt that, Hank.”
“That’s silly, Uncle Hank,” Faith Ann said.
“They did a hundred-thousand-dollar study all over the world. Harvard sociologists found out that seventy-nine percent of women who were breast-fed as babies while under a blanket become nuns.”
“What?” Faith Ann said.
“It’s so they can wear those head rigs-veils.”
Faith Ann laughed louder than anybody else at her uncle’s stupid jokes.