Daisies in the Canyon(2)

The lawyer who’d called had said she had two younger sisters, and in fact, they’d all been seated in a way to let her be first to go. So she went, more to get it over with than to exert any authority or seniority. She didn’t want to look in the casket, and she damn sure didn’t want to press the daisy in the pages of a fat book or put it in a glass of water to remind her of the father who didn’t want her because she wasn’t a boy.

She wanted to walk right past the casket without a sideways glance, to throw the daisy on the ground and step on it, but her military training surfaced subconsciously. She snapped to attention, hands at her sides, head and back in alignment in front of the casket, proving to Ezra that she was every bit as strong as any son he might have had.

She glanced down and blinked several times. He was just an old man with wispy gray hair and wrinkles. He wore bibbed overalls, a red flannel shirt, and a day’s worth of gray stubble. Why had her beautiful mother fallen in love with this man? He should have spent his life kissing her feet, because he was lucky she’d even glanced his way.

Clamping her jaws tightly, Abby looked up at the guy with the glasses, who nodded as if he knew how she felt. He couldn’t begin to understand the mixture of emotions jumbled up inside her gut. She couldn’t even get them sorted out. In frustration she tossed the daisy in the casket and it landed on Ezra’s heart.

“I’m Rusty Dawson,” the man said softly. “The lawyer probably told you about me. That’s my black truck out there. I’ll lead the way back to the house.”

The preacher shook her hand and told her he was sorry for her loss. She nodded politely, but how could you lose something that you never had? She headed straight for her silver-colored truck. When she was a little girl, she’d pretended that her father was a superhero off fighting wars, who couldn’t come see her because he was saving the world. As a teenager she’d pressed her mother for answers, and her mother had told her the truth; from then on Abby had figured him for a son of a bitch. However, seeing the scrawny old man in the casket brought only disappointment. She reached inside her coat pocket and brought out the bite-size candy bar, unwrapped it as she walked, and popped it into her mouth. The paper went in the left-hand pocket and by the time she swallowed, she had another one ready to eat. She crawled inside the truck, out of the bitter north wind whipping down the canyon, and watched the sheriff interact with the people.

“Damn fine-lookin’ man,” she mumbled as she reached for another candy bar.

She waited until Rusty got into his truck and pulled out onto the gravel road. The sun was high in the sky and only four vehicles were headed that way, thank God! She didn’t want or need a bunch of neighbors and friends telling her what a fine man Ezra had been. Two miniature candy bars later, the black truck came to a stop, and she pulled in beside it.

Cows roamed around in the pasture outside the small yard, roped in with a white three-rail fence in need of paint. Bare rosebushes and naked crepe myrtles waited patiently for the warmth of spring to bloom. A trio of dogs bounded off the porch of a long, low-slung ranch-style house with a wide front porch. It would have never passed muster in the army, not with that peeling white paint. Rusty stopped long enough to pet each dog and said something that made their tails wag. What was it Abby’s mother said about kids and dogs and people? Oh, yes—a person might fool some folks, but never a kid or a dog. Evidently Rusty had a few good qualities, if the dogs liked him.

For a cowboy, he wasn’t showing off his manners too well. But then, why should he? If Abby or either of those two strangers who were her half sisters threw in the towel before a year was up, he’d get the whole thing. That was a pretty good incentive to make their lives miserable so he’d wind up with the ranch.

Once out of the truck, she circled around behind the vehicle, picked up a dark green duffel bag, and hoisted it up on her shoulder. There were no more candy bars in her pocket, but a separate small suitcase was filled with more, along with bags of chips, nuts, and trail mix and the little wooden box holding her mother’s ashes. Thank God she had a high metabolism or she’d weigh as much as a baby elephant. Food had always been her stress relief: from doughnuts when she was a little girl and things didn’t go her way to chocolate bars in high school to make it through a test to potato chips in the service when she was wound too tight to sleep. When she was nervous, she ate. When she was sad, she ate. When she was happy, she ate. Even at that very moment, she needed food.

The dark-haired prissy sister pulled two suitcases out of an older-model maroon minivan. Matched luggage with her initials engraved on them. Abby could see several boxes with writing on the side also stacked perfectly inside the van.

The blonde hippie sister drove a small truck that had been red at one time but now was faded and rusted in spots. The tires were so bald that it was a wonder they made it down the canyon incline without blowing apart. A crack in the back window ran from the bottom corner halfway across, but duct tape kept the wind and rain from seeping inside. Evidently she didn’t have suitcases, because she slid plastic grocery store bags along one arm and picked up two more with the other hand.

Rusty opened the door and stood to one side to let them enter the house. “I’ve asked the executor of the will to join us, since the lawyer had another appointment today. He and his wife will be along in a couple of minutes. They were talking to some folks when we left. If y’all want to have a seat in the living room, we’ll wait for them there.”