Daisies in the Canyon(22)

Rusty picked up the bread and sent it around. “He’s bitten off a chunk, trying to run that ranch by himself until spring when he can bring in a couple of hired hands. He needs a good woman to help him run the place.”

“What about you, Cooper? Do you need a good woman?” Bonnie asked.

Cooper picked up his fork and knife, cut off a piece of steak, and held it in the air while he answered, “Jackson beat my time. I’ve always loved redheads since the first time I laid eyes on Loretta. If I can’t have her, I might just be an old bachelor.”

“Isn’t she older than you?” Bonnie asked.

Cooper popped the bite of steak into his mouth and opened up his foil-wrapped potato and shoved butter and sour cream inside while he chewed. “By about ten years, but I didn’t care. I was eight and she and Jackson were both eighteen. That was the year she got pregnant with Nona and they got married.”

Abby quickly did the math in her head. “More than twenty years between their two kids and not any between?”

Rusty shook his head. “She and Jackson got crossways when Nona was about three or four. I don’t remember much about it since I was just a little kid then, too, but my mama talked about it. Loretta took Nona to Oklahoma and divorced Jackson. Then, last summer, Nona got it in her head she wasn’t going to finish college—that she was going to learn ranching from her daddy.” He paused to take a bite of steak, then went on with the story. “So here came Loretta, like a class-five tornado. If y’all had been here a couple of weeks ago, you could have gone to their wedding. It was Ezra’s last time to get out in public.”

“When is she due?” Shiloh asked. “She looked like she could drop that baby in church this morning.”

“It’s twin girls due sometime in the early spring,” Cooper said.

“Ezra said it’s in the water down here in the canyon. If a man drinks it, all he’s going to throw is girl babies,” Rusty chuckled.

“What about when you add tea and sugar? Does that make a difference?” Abby asked.

“Wouldn’t know, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for us to keep that in mind, Coop.” Rusty’s light green eyes twinkled behind the thick lenses of his glasses.

“Wonder if a little bit of Jack Daniel’s would make a girl baby all sassy and hard to get along with?” Cooper bumped his elbow against Abby’s arm.

“Probably that’s how you get twins.” Immediately she wondered if her mother had shared a shot with Ezra the night that she was conceived. A glance at Shiloh and then one at Bonnie convinced her that most likely all three of Ezra’s wives had done a little sipping with him. Hell, that might be what it took for the women to crawl into bed with that man.

Stop it! You read your mama’s letter the day she died, so admit that she loved Ezra and stop making excuses.

“Loretta told Ezra that it was his white lightning that caused the twins, and with her temper in the mix already, poor old Jackson sure doesn’t need twin daughters with extra sass thrown in,” Rusty said.

“Oh? So where did Ezra get white lightning and what’s that got to do with Loretta and her twins?” Shiloh put two heaping spoonfuls of corn casserole on her plate.

“She came here one time to talk to him for advice and he gave her a glass full of his moonshine. He said he cured her of her problems and she agreed with him, but at Nona’s wedding she told him it was the white lightning that caused her to get pregnant. He made it up next to the canyon walls every year—mostly just enough for himself and to share with someone he liked, but that wasn’t often.”

“I kinda doubt that was the whole cause Loretta got pregnant.” Abby laughed and it felt good. The only time she’d sat around a family dinner table in the past twelve years had been when she came home for short visits to take care of business. Her favorite part of the visits had been sitting around the table either at Haley’s house or at her parents’ place with old folks and kids all talking at once.

“Ezra made ’shine? Was it any good?” Bonnie asked.

“The best,” Cooper said.

“You might change your mind if you had some of mine.” She smiled.

“You do a little sideline business, do you?” Rusty asked.

“Have in the past. Mama’s granddad taught me the particulars before he passed on. At sixteen, I was making a fine apple pie. Good ’shine should have a little flavor, or else it’s nothing more than white lightnin’. A woman is known in the holler by her secret ’shine. Mine was apple pie. My granny’s had a little taste of peach.”

“I’ve got a jar down in the bunkhouse. Ezra’s instructions were to open it up and share it with whoever is still here one year from his death. If no one is, then me and Coop will share it to celebrate my ranch bein’ right next to his,” Rusty said.

“Darlin’ you’d best get out more than two red plastic cups when you open that jar, because I’ll be here and it could be these other two won’t give up and run away,” Bonnie said. “Maybe we’ll put in a couple of rows of corn in our garden. I like to work with my own homegrown corn. You didn’t tear down the still, did you?”

Rusty shook his head. “It’s still back there in an old huntin’ cabin built right into the canyon wall.”