The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (5 page)

At that fateful moment, she and her brother, Paul, had become the heirs of this old house, two barns, a loafing shed, a storage building and some miscellaneous ranch equipment. And three hundred prime acres that backed up to Callister Valley's tallest mountain. Years back, their parents had been offered an insulting price for the land by Art Karadimos. When their father refused to sell, Art diligently tried to steal the place, setting off enmity between neighbors that existed to this day.

After Frenchie Rondeau's death, with her living in Texas and her brother owning a home in town where he lived with his family, logic would have dictated they sell the homeplace for a premium price. Buyers from out of state were crawling all over Idaho towns like Callister looking for land and homes, both for investment and for relocating from urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco. And Hollywood.

She hadn't even been tempted to sell and Paul hadn't mentioned it once, as if they both knew she would return someday.

Her conscious self hadn't made such a plan, at least not immediately after their father's death. She hadn't even returned to Callister for his burial. Her brother's wife had handled the details.

God knew, she had no scrapbooks of happy memories of growing up here, but much had happened in Texas in the past three years. The allure of an unmortgaged roof over her head and the opportunity to build a secure nest near her only family had finally drawn her home.

Now, looking back, she supposed she had been simply homesick. In the humid summer heat of North Texas, her body began to long for nights cool enough for a blanket, sleeping with a window open, escaping the constantly blowing air from an air-conditioning unit. Her eyes began to hunger for the sight of pastures breaking into spring with brilliant green and for the dark forests that rose like regiments of monoliths, dwarfing all around them. In the non-winter of the southern latitude, she missed banks of snow and a fire roaring in the fireplace and on a cold morning warming her hands on a cup filled with hot coffee. Most of all, she missed the electric blue of the Idaho sky.

Home, sweet home. Nowhere could ever replace Callister in her heart.

Oddly enough, Billy's leaving hadn't been the trigger that drove her to sell out, pick up and move back home. The idea had formed in her subconscious before that, when she learned her only brother's wife had left him and taken his two kids to live in Boise. On hearing that news Isabelle looked at her life and her surroundings and knew she was a misplaced transient. Her north country roots reached out and wrapped themselves around her ankle. On that day, in her mind, she left Texas.

Almost without a second thought, she put the Weatherford property—a house and barns and two hundred sixty acres—on the market and began scaling back her activities, making plans for the move. She sold what she couldn't conveniently haul. She said good-byes. Though she went through the motions for weeks, not until she actually hooked her horse trailer onto the Sierra's bumper, loaded Polly, Trixie and Dancer and headed northwest, did she actually believe she was doing it.

Her brother, her aunt and her cousin met her and Ava in a joyful reunion her first day back. The euphoria lasted a week.

Now, three weeks later, reality had set in, bringing a torrent of doubt and insecurity. Returning to Callister appeared to be the biggest mistake she had ever made.

With her neck pain growing worse, she eased from beneath Ava's body, arranged her daughter's sleeping form on the sofa in front of the fire and spread the afghan over her. Conscience urged her to go outside and bury Jack, but she didn't want to make the ten-year-old a part of the process, nor did she want her to wake up and wonder where her mother was.

Instead of going outside, Isabelle went to the kitchen and downed two aspirins for the neck pain and the dull headache that throbbed behind her eyes. Then she pulled a muffin tin, a bowl, and a box of chocolate cake mix from the cupboard. Why sweet food would be a balm to a child's wounded heart she didn't know, but the offer of kittens had fallen flat and she had to do
something.
She would be the first to admit that a mother-of-the-year prize would never share the mantel with her many horse show trophies.

She had just dumped the powdery mix, water and cooking oil into a bowl when she heard Ava's voice. "Mama?"

Isabelle turned and saw her standing in the doorway, her thin face set in a grim expression, a too-big green sweater hanging halfway to her knees. "Oh, hi, sweetie. I thought you were napping. I'm making some cupcakes." Lousy cook that she was, Isabelle could muddle through making cupcakes from a cake mix. The directions were shown in pictures. "Chocolate. Want to help?"

Ava came and stood beside her, ducked her chin and pressed fingertips on the counter edge, watching as Isabelle cracked eggs. "I let Jack out the gate," she said in a small voice.

A mix of sorrow and love piled onto guilt and pierced Isabelle's heart. It had never been necessary to punish Ava for a misdeed. The child had always punished herself. Isabelle wiped her hands on her jeans and hugged her. "Oh, Ava—"

"He was crying, Mama. He didn't like being locked up. I was going to let him loose for just a minute, but he ran off and he wouldn't come back."

"I know, I know." Isabelle sank to her knees in front of her daughter, looked into the troubled eyes and took the small hands into her own. "Listen to me. What happened to Jack, if it hadn't been today, it would have been another day. I don't know how we would ever have made him stop going over to those sheep. He wanted to do it. We couldn't have kept him penned up forever."

"Do you think he'll forgive me?"

"Yes. He will. He's in doggie heaven and he knows you loved him. It's my fault. I should have taught him better."

She began to cry again. "But I wasn't supposed—you told me not to—"

"Sweetheart, it was just one of those bad things that happens." Isabelle hugged her daughter fiercely, feeling the trembling in her slight body and fighting back tears of her own. When she could speak with a strong voice, she set her daughter away. "Now. You know your mama's not the best cook. These cupcakes will turn out a lot better if you help."

The corners of Ava's mouth quirked ever so slightly. "Okay," she said, sniffling.

Isabelle handed her the muffin tins and paper liners. "Here, you do this while I stir up everything. Let's don't cry anymore, okay?"

Later, they cooked pizza and ate cupcakes for dessert. They talked about Jack and how sometimes events, despite everyone's best efforts, spiraled out of control. Then they watched the video of
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
again. By now, Isabelle knew some of the dialogue by heart. Ava fell asleep before the end of the movie, exhausted by the emotional upheaval of the day. Truth be told, Isabelle was worn out, too.

After tucking Ava into bed, Isabelle donned a slicker and rubber boots and made her way to the ramshackle barn. The night was dark as a mine shaft and the drizzle had developed into a cold, steady rain drumming on the barn roof. Missing shingles made for a leak here and there, but one of the lights worked and gave dull amber illumination.

She lit her Coleman, picked up a shovel and went outside. Around the corner, she found a place for Jack's grave where the horses wouldn't trample. She began to dig.

Busy hands didn't keep her mind from repeating the recrimination she had heaped on herself for two weeks over the foolishness of coming back here. Losing Jack only added an exclamation point. If she spent every dime in her savings account, it wouldn't be enough to put this tumbledown place in good shape. And she owned only half of it.

The sad truth was, except for her clothes and a few pieces of furniture, she didn't own
anything
that was hers alone, not her horses or her truck and trailer. When Billy walked out, neither she nor he did anything about the legalities of dividing assets. She had been too devastated to deal with it and he had been too eager to follow his girlfriend to Oklahoma.

With a knee-deep hole finished, she retrieved Jack's tarp-wrapped body from the pickup bed and placed it in the grave. Being unable to see him made the burial easier. She began to shovel mud, covering the tarp.

Forcing thought away from the hurtful task only replaced it with nagging fear. Could she develop a horse-training business without Billy? How long would it take in an out-of-the-way place like Callister? How much of her nest egg would be eaten by living expenses while she tried? And if the venture didn't succeed and her money ran out, what would she do then? A woman's opportunities for making a living in Callister were few and far between, especially a woman with limited ability at basic skills, like reading and writing.

She
had
to sell the horses. That hadn't been her intention in the beginning, but now she could think of no other solution. As much as she loved them and wanted to keep them, their maintenance would consume her money even faster.

She knew a few potential buyers, but to sell them she had to get in touch with Billy. Though it had always been understood between them that the horses were hers, his name was on their registration papers as half owner. She had to get him to sign off his interest. Making that call to Oklahoma hung over her head as black and endless as the stormy night sky.

By the time she shoveled the last bit of dirt and mud onto Jack's grave, the slicker had slid down. Her thick hair was soaked and hanging heavy on her neck. For the second time today, she was wet and shaking with cold.

All three horses had ambled to the sheds and waited for their supper. Nine o'clock and they hadn't been fed.

She returned to the big barn and went to the grain bin at the far end where, last week, she had hauled in and stacked some sacks of oats. A little treat to warm bellies when nighttime temperatures still dropped below freezing. She scooped a coffee can full twice for each horse and dumped the oats into a gallon bucket on the barn floor. Then she lugged the bucket to the best of the falling-apart stalls and poured two one-third rations into wooden troughs on the ground.

That done, she pulled several thick slabs from a hay bale, stuffed them into mangers mounted on the sides of the stalls and opened the barn door to allow the mares to enter. They clomped in, snuffling and blowing. After being outside in the storm, they were drenched. Poor babies. She should curry them dry, but she was exhausted, so she shut them inside the stalls and moved on.

The tears held in check since morning puddled in the corners of her eyes and burned her nose. Through watery vision, she piled more slabs of hay into the wheelbarrow and set the bucket holding the remaining oats on top. She had used her only tarp to bury Jack, so she threw a plastic trash bag over the hay and oats in the wheelbarrow and rolled it over to the smaller barn a few hundred feet away.

Her stallion, Dancer, stood under the shed roof waiting for her. She wheeled his supper to a low feeding trough and dumped in the hay and oats. He nuzzled her hair and gave her kisses.

"You're spoiled," she said, sniffling and stroking his wet face, "but you're better than all the other men I know."

He yanked his head free and snorted, then turned his attention to the feeding trough.

Without warning, a sob burst from deep in her chest. Losing Jack in such a tragic way had been enough to bring tears, but now the thought of selling the animals she had sacrificed to own and protect was too much.

Dancer raised his head in her direction and snorted. She pulled a currycomb from a wooden box hanging on the side of the barn and began to brush him dry. "I don't know what made-me think coming back here was an answer to anything," she mumbled.

Now that she had made the move, now that she had done something almost impossible to undo, the facts were obvious and disappointment assailed her. "This place hasn't changed since I left here eighteen years ago," she said, moving to Dancer's opposite side. The horse's muscles rippled under her currycomb.

Indeed, Callister seemed to exist in a time warp. The same small businesses still struggled along the main street. She hadn't been in contact with many of the natives since her return, but she sensed that a siege mentality still thrived among them.

Even the same bars still operated. When she was a kid, double-digit percentages of alcoholism and unemployment ran neck and neck. She suspected that was true today.

"I just haven't been thinking straight since Billy left," she muttered. "I've made one bad decision after another. You know I'm a mess, don't you?"

The horse's head sawed up and down. Even he knew her failures. She sank to a wooden bench against the wall, leaned back and gave in to a new spate of tears.

Dancer lowered his head, gave her a gentle head bump.

She rubbed his cheek, his velvety muzzle. "How can I sell you?" She looked into his beautiful dark eyes with their spidery lashes. "What would I do without you? Who would I talk to?"

Chapter 4