Page 22 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
“Yeah, I’ll take it.”
“You, uh…” Mason stood up and brushed dust off the seat of his trousers. “You spent any time with him this week? Outside of meals and such?”
Heat crept along the back of Grace’s neck.
“He’s busy.”
“He’salwaysbusy. Ain’t the same as bein’ unavailable.”
“I’m not about to go bother the man while he’s working, Mason. He’s got enough on his plate without me trailing around after him like a lost calf.”
Mason pulled his hat down and tugged the brim with both hands, adjusting it the way a man adjusted a hat when his mouth wanted to say something his brain told him to sit on. Over by the post, Thomas had stopped chewing his toothpick and glanced sideways at the two of them.
“Gracie.” Mason dropped his voice. “He ain’t gonna come to you. Ain’t how he’s built. Man could be on fire, and he’d just stand there organizin’ the flames by height before askin’ for a bucket of water. If you want to know him, you gotta go where he is.”
“And where’s that?”
“This mornin’? The north pasture. Fence work.” He started down the steps. “Bring him some water. He forgets to drink when he gets into a job.”
Thomas pushed off the post. “We headin’ out or we gonna stand around playin’ matchmaker all day?”
Grace chuckled. “You, hush.”
“Just askin’. Pa’s already got the wagon hitched, and he’s givin’ me that look.”
Sure enough, Rafe sat on the wagon bench with the reins in one hand and the kind of stare that could’ve hurried a glacier. Mason trotted down the steps and swung up beside Thomas on the tailgate, and, within a minute, the wagon rattled down the dirt track toward the main road.
Grace bounced the baby on her shoulder and surveyed the yard.
“All right, little bird. Laundry first.”
Getting water for the wash took four trips to the pump with the heavy copper kettle, and, by the second trip, her arms burned from the wrists to the shoulders.
Back in New York, she’d hauled water up three flights of stairs in a building where the pipes froze every winter, so the pump and the short walk to the stove should’ve counted as an improvement. And it did, strictly speaking. But the altitude uphere stole air right out of a body’s lungs, adding a breathless edge to every chore that made even simple tasks run longer.
She heated the water on the stove and scraped soap shavings into the washtub while the baby watched from the dresser drawer, gnawing on a knotted rag with the single-minded focus of someone who’d discovered the only important thing in the world.
Logan’s laundry told on the man the way a diary might have.
He’d folded every shirt before placing it in the hamper with the collar facing up. Stacked every pair of trousers in order. Even paired off his socks and tucked them together at the tops. Mason’s laundry, by contrast, arrived in a ball. Thomas’s came inside-out with a penny and two buttons loose in the pocket.
After wringing the whole lot, she rigged the sling Rafe had shown her, a length of soft cotton that wrapped around her torso and tied across the back, cradling the baby snug against her chest. The baby settled in with a grunt and grabbed a fistful of Grace’s collar. Standard arrangement. The baby went where Grace went, and Grace’s collar bore the wrinkles to prove it.
Outside, she strung the first of the shirts along the clothesline and worked her way through the pile, pinning each piece with the wooden clips from the basket by the door.
She pinned Logan’s trousers by the waistband. Then Mason’s. Then Thomas’s undershirts, which needed replacingbadly enough that she made a mental note to mention it at supper before thinking better of it, because suggesting a grown man buy new undershirts after ten days of acquaintance seemed like the kind of thing that’d send Thomas into a dramatic spiral for which she lacked the energy.
With the last of the wash hung, she stepped back and let herself breathe.
Laundry on a line had always given her a particular satisfaction. Even in New York, stringing the wash between the fire escape and the neighbor’s window, watching the sheets catch wind and billow out like sails. Something about clean cloth in the open air. Proof that a person had taken hold of something dirty and put it right.
The baby cooed against her chest.
“You agree? Good. Glad we see eye to eye on the important things.”
She turned to gather the wash basket, and that’s when she spotted it.
Along the south side of the porch, running the full length of the railing, a strip of earth about two feet wide hugged the foundation. Rocks edged it on both sides, river stones, forming a border that curved out at the corners in a pattern too deliberate for nature. In between those stones, a jungle of weeds had swallowed everything.
