Changes of Heart (24 page)

“What were you doing in New York City?” Tessa asked.

“I was working as trim carpenter outside of Albany during the vacation. A friend’s father got me the job. The money was good, and I liked the work. It was pretty much hammering nails and helping the real carpenters—the finish guys. I was the one they sent for coffee and sandwiches. Anyway, I had a couple of days off, so I thought I’d go to the city for New Year’s Eve, just to see what it was all about.”

“You went alone?” Tessa asked.

“Yeah. It was kind of a spur-of-the-moment idea.”

Tessa seemed fascinated. “Tell me more about it. It must’ve been exciting. I’ve never even been near a crowd of people like that.”

“If you’re anything like me, Tessa, I hope you never are. It wasn’t exciting—it was frightening.” He paused for a moment. “Huge crowds like that don’t seem right to me. It’s like the lowest common denominator takes over. The noise is awful, and the alleged ‘fun’ seems like some sort of forced... I don’t know... just on the verge of violent mass insanity.”

A long silence followed. Finally, Sarah spoke up. “Enough of this grimness. This is supposed to be a celebration, people. Let’s lighten up a bit, OK? Let’s play ‘If I Could.’”

“Mom,” Tessa protested, “that’s a kid’s game. It’s dopey.”

“Dopey or not—what is it?” Danny asked.

“Tessa’s right,” Sarah said. “It’s a kid’s game, but it’s fun. Each person tells what he or she would do or see or experience or own if there were no boundaries of any kind at all—time, place, money, whatever. It’s a statement of what would make the speaker most happy.”

“Not so childish at all,” Ian observed. “Let’s do it.”

“Tessa, you go first,” Sarah said.

The girl considered her words for a full minute as she munched popcorn from the bowl on the coffee table. “OK,” she said. “What would make me most happy is pretty much what I have now. I thought about going back in time to Woodstock to hear all that great music, and then I thought maybe I’d say I’d like my arm back. But the thing is, what I have right here with my mom and my friends and Turnip is about as good as it gets.” She paused and then concluded with a slightly embarrassed, “Ya know?”

“Wow,” Ian breathed. “Our little girl’s all grown up.”

“Your turn, Danny,” Sarah said.

Danny spoke seriously. “I flashed on some fancy stuff before Tessa gave us her ‘If I Could.’ I thought about a huge Olympic-sized swimming pool—indoor—so I could swim all year round. And a Porsche 912. But those things are toys. I have one dream or goal or whatever one cares to call it, but I’m afraid that one isn’t for publication.” His
face colored slightly. “Anyway, I’d have to go along with my friend Tessa. What I have right now is pretty good.”

“Maggie?” Sarah said.

“I guess there’s no big secret to what time I’d go back to and whom I’d be with, but I don’t want to say that. Ian’s right; Tess made me see just how very good all of us have things. Danny’s right too—all the things that came to my mind were toys. I dunno—I guess in the real world I wouldn’t change much.” Maggie smiled at her hostess. “What about you, Sarah?”

Sarah grinned. “Essentially ditto. And that’s the point of the game. Ian, what about you?”

“If I could...” Ian said, “I’d be a father of a child. I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl or how many legs or arms it has or what color his or her skin is. It seems to me that the most splendid thing a Christian—or any person—can do is to raise and love and play with and enjoy a child, and get the child started on the right path in life.”

Tessa nodded her head. “Cool.”

“Quit hogging the popcorn,” Ian said. “Pass the bowl, Tess.”

Danny smiled. “It’s ten after midnight. We missed the ball coming down in Times Square.”

“We didn’t miss a thing,” Maggie said.

“No,” Tessa agreed. “We didn’t. I think we even gained something.” She looked up at Ian shyly and said, “Do you think we could pray?”

Maggie reached for the girl and drew her closer. “If I ever have a daughter, I’d want her to be like you, Tessa,” she whispered.

Tessa hugged her. “Maybe one day—no, for sure, Maggie—you’ll have a...”

Maggie’s embrace stifled the girl’s words, but Maggie was sure that there was no one present at the Morrison home who didn’t realize what those words would have been.

Maggie steered carefully over the patches of black ice that appeared on the road between her home and the Morrisons’, snug in the cab of her pickup. Danny had gone out to start the truck as Maggie was saying her good-byes, and she was as warm as she’d be if she were sitting on her couch facing the fireplace at her home.

Ian wants to be a father, wants a baby. A child was what came to his mind first if he could choose from anything in the world
.

The rear end of the truck skidded sideways slightly, the tires grabbing for traction on the diamond-hard ice. Maggie eased off the accelerator and steered into the direction of the slide, bringing the truck back under control. She looked at the speedometer: she was going twenty-five miles per hour. Without touching the brake she brought her speed to twenty and kept it there.

And Danny—Danny of the manure spreader fame. Danny and Sunday, the dog with a heart bigger than his big, furry body. In her mind she watched the vet working on Dusty the night Dancer was born.

His hands are strong and gentle. I can still see him assisting at the miracle of birth... Danny loves me too, just as Ian does
.
I must be the luckiest woman in the world—or the saddest, because one of these wonderful men is going to be hurt
.

Maggie pulled up close to her barn and turned off her engine. Her land, her buildings, everything around her was a moonscape under the soft light from above. The wood of the big door creaked in protest as she pushed it open, stepped into the barn, and turned on the lights. The scents of good hay, leather, molasses feed, fresh straw, and the fine, natural aroma of curried horses greeted her.

Dusty’s head appeared over her stall door, her liquid eyes blinking slowly, looking as dopey as only a suddenly awakened horse can. There was a piece of straw standing almost straight up in her forelock, like a small spire. Dusty nickered warmly, the sound another sweet welcome. Maggie tugged the blade of straw free and rubbed the horse’s muzzle with both hands. Dakota’s head appeared, and then Turnip’s and Happy’s. Maggie scratched necks, touched ears, and patted heads as she walked to Dancer’s stall.

The colt was facing into a corner, sound asleep. He was standing squarely—each of his hooves in full contact with the barn floor, each carrying all the weight nature intended it to. Maggie opened the gate and eased into Dancer’s stall. She stood at his right hip and pushed lightly against his rump. The colt’s instinct told him to move away from the slight pressure, and he did so, putting proportionately more weight on his left rear. The leg carried the added weight without a problem.

Dancer snuffled, winked rapidly a few times, and came awake, turning smoothly to face Maggie. “Good boy!” she
told him. “What a good, strong boy! We’ll get that awful cast off of you real soon, Dancer. I promise.”

The colt extended his muzzle toward Maggie, looking for a carrot or a piece of apple. He stopped midmotion, and his eyes became confused. He blinked twice, as if he were pondering a deep secret, and then lifted his left rear hoof from the floor so that its toe barely touched.

“You faker,” Maggie laughed, sliding past him on his right side and again applying pressure to his hip. Surprised, Dancer yielded to the push the only way he could—by accepting the weight on his left rear. His eyes opened wide, not in pain but in astonishment, and he swung his head back to gape at his leg. It took a moment for him to understand that he was, once again, carrying his weight as he had before the Thanksgiving storm. He sniffed the cast thoroughly, as if he’d never seen it before, and prodded at it with his nose. For a second his toe came off the floor again, wavered a bit—and then settled back comfortably, as it had been. He rocked his rump a few inches side to side, testing the absence of pain. Then, satisfied, he turned in the stall to face Maggie and again sought a treat.

Maggie’s unrestrained whoop startled all the horses and shattered the late-night silence of the barn.

The next hundred and twenty or so days passed as Montana winter months always did, offering a few days of delightfully warm temperatures and the promise that spring would eventually come but then negating those short respites
with endless weeks of below-zero temperatures and howling winds.

Now, though, the sun seemed to be flexing its muscles and was cascading Montana not only with brilliant light but also with a modicum of heat. Maggie noticed a valiant little crocus poking its way through the partially frozen soil as she walked to the barn that morning.

Her kitchen—actually quite spacious—felt strangely like an overheated jail cell because of Ian Lane’s pacing between the sink and the table.

“Please, Ian,” Maggie said, “sit down. You’re driving me up a wall. I mean it. Danny knows what he’s doing. If he says today’s the day, then it is.”

“Yeah,” Tessa added.

“I’m sorry. I’m a bit nervous is all. I don’t do terribly well with medical stuff.”

“He’s afraid of Danny’s saw,” Tessa said to Maggie, grinning. “He’s afraid the blade will cut into Dancer’s leg.” She pretended to think for a moment. “’Course, it probably will. But still...”

“Tessa,” Maggie sighed, “stop your teasing. You’re just going to make him worse.”

“I’m not afraid of Danny’s saw!” Ian said, quite a bit louder than necessary. “I just get a little queasy thinking about the whole thing.” After a moment, he added, “I broke my own leg when I was a kid, and I still have nightmares about the surgery and the cast.”

“It’s not surgery, Ian—it’s nowhere near surgery. The blade of the saw doesn’t even have regular teeth. It’s a kind
of vibrating, spinning thingie that sort of chips away at the fiberglass. It’s not like a saw for wood.”

Tessa’s eyes lit up gleefully. “Of course, there’s always the danger of—”

“Cut it out!” Maggie demanded.

Ian stopped at the window facing the barn. “There’s Danny,” he said.

Maggie joined Ian at the window and saw Danny taking a briefcase-sized aluminum case from the back of his SUV. She and Ian and Tessa rushed out to him.

“Big day.” Danny smiled and hefted his case. “Let’s get to it.”

Dancer stood in his stall, his eyelids drooping from the effects of the injection Danny had given him a few minutes ago. “The sound of the saw is awful,” Danny said. “That’s the only reason I gave him the shot. Right now, Dancer doesn’t much care what I do to him.”

Maggie led the colt out of his stall and into the aisle, where she cross-tied his head and stood at his shoulder, stroking his neck. Ian watched from a couple of feet behind Danny, swallowing hard every few moments. Tessa crouched next to the vet. Danny switched on what looked like a carpenter’s circular saw with a flat-surfaced, toothless blade. The tool hummed quietly until Danny applied the blade to the cast. The screech of the separating fiberglass and the high-pitched whine of the saw combined to form the frightening shriek of a dentist’s drill hard at work.

The dry, acrid smell of burning plastic almost instantaneously permeated the air around the horse and the
humans. Motes of fiberglass floated upward from where Danny worked, like strands of spiderwebs caught in rays of sunshine. Danny cut downward first, easing the tool in a straight line to the midpoint of the cast. The last part of the procedure took only moments. Danny cut up from the bottom, meeting his first cut. He pried the cast apart and slipped it off. He handed it to Tessa without looking away from Dancer. The colt put weight on his leg immediately.

“Got any coffee, Maggie?” Danny asked.

Ian, white faced with a line of sweat over his upper lip, applauded the veterinarian’s work.