Daisies in the Canyon(60)

“How long until we eat? I didn’t have a double dinner like you two,” Bonnie said.

“About half an hour. I’ll start cookin’ if y’all put away the groceries,” Abby said.

While Bonnie and Shiloh emptied bags and filled the pantry shelves, Abby got out the biggest cast-iron skillet she could find. She set it on the stove and turned on the oven to make peach cobbler. It was a quickie recipe that called for crescent rolls out of a can, peach pie filling, and spices. Separate the crescent rolls, put a peach slice on the top, add a pat of butter, half a teaspoon of brown sugar, and a shake of cinnamon, and roll it up. Lay it in a cake pan and repeat until two cans of rolls were done. Then pour the juice from the pie filling over the top and bake until the bread was done.

While that cooked, she put a pot of rice on the back of the stove and poured olive oil into the cast-iron skillet. She diced two chicken breasts and an onion, which sizzled when they hit the grease.

She handed a wooden spoon to Shiloh. “Keep that stirred while I get the rest ready, please.”

“I love stir-fry,” Shiloh said.

The sizzling onions sent a wonderful aroma all through the house. By the time the rice was done and fluffy, the cobbler had finished. She added bell peppers and broccoli to the skillet, waited a couple of minutes until the broccoli was bright green, and tossed in chopped cabbage.

“Let the cabbage wilt just a touch and then we’ll need a few dashes of soy sauce and a lid for three minutes and we’re ready to eat,” Abby said.

“And to think I believed you when you said you couldn’t make anything but chili pies.” Bonnie stuck a finger in the edge of the cobbler and licked it. “You should have made two. I could eat every bit of this one all by myself. Shopping and being pampered is hard work.”

Cooper poked his head around the corner into the kitchen. “Hey, just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving. Got a desk full of work to do tomorrow, so I won’t be here for dinner. Is that peach cobbler over there?”

The sound of his voice sent Abby’s senses reeling and his eyes boring into hers melted her insides. Sparks flew around the room. The temperature shot up at least ten degrees. Her hands itched to touch him, even if it was just for a brief hug.

“It is, and Abby is making stir-fry. Too bad y’all are too full to even taste it,” Bonnie said.

“I’ll miss it. And I’ve got a deputy with the flu, so I’ll be in the office all day tomorrow,” Cooper said.

Now he wasn’t coming the next day for dinner, so that would be four days since they’d sat beside each other. She wanted to stomp her foot and throw a hissy like a two-year-old who didn’t get her way.

“I’m off to the bunkhouse,” Rusty yelled.

“See you tomorrow morning, unless you want to sleep in and let us take care of the feeding,” Bonnie hollered back at him.

They helped their plates right off the stove and had barely sat down at the table when Abby felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out and smiled.

“Which one is it?” Bonnie asked.

“Did we make them suffer with this food?” Shiloh asked.

“Cooper. He says I’m wicked, evil, and downright mean. That Chinese food is his favorite and he has to go all the way to Amarillo to get anything decent and that it wouldn’t be as good as what he smelled in the kitchen.”

“Success!” Bonnie threw up both hands to high-five with her sisters.




Abby studied a huge formation that looked vaguely like a chimney from the porch. It changed colors as the sun settled behind it and dusk came to the canyon. She’d tried calling Haley, but it had gone to voice mail and she’d just spent the whole day with Shiloh and Bonnie. They wouldn’t want to hear about her restlessness that night or to take a walk with her, either, but she had to do something. She couldn’t sit still and yet there was no place to go.

When she was in the army, she ran when she felt like this. And after that enormous dinner and then an equally big supper, she should either go for a run or take a long walk, but she wasn’t doing it in a skirt. She went back inside and changed into her comfortable pants and a black turtleneck, put on her heavy jacket, a stocking hat, and gloves. Before she left, she made sure her phone was tucked into the cargo pocket on the side of her leg. She eased out the front door and Martha followed her off the porch and out of the yard.

Her intentions were to walk all the way to the road, but the moonlight reflected off the granite tombstones and reached out to her, so she opened the creaky little gate and went inside. Starting at the front side were names like Hiram Malloy and his wife, Rachel, both of whom had died in 1865. She touched the stones and wondered if Hiram had been young enough to fight in the Civil War and which side he’d defended.

These were her ancestors, whether she liked it or not. Their lives had molded and made the next generation right down through time until Ezra’s day. His decision to push her and her mother away had made Abby who she was as well. Her therapist in the army had said she’d probably enlisted to prove she was as good as a son would have been. She touched the tombstone at the head of the mound of wet red dirt. “I was trying to make you understand I was as good as a son. I could and can do anything a boy can do.”

She perched on Ezra’s tombstone and tucked her hands into her pockets. Somewhere over in the vicinity of Cooper’s ranch, she could hear a lonesome old coyote howling at the sky, telling Mother Nature he was tired of winter and wanted spring to push the cold weather into the history books. The wind rattled the bare limbs of the misshapen scrub oak trees outside the cemetery fence. In a few weeks the trees would be decked out with green leaves and the ranch would take on a whole new look. She was deep in thought about Bonnie’s garden and Shiloh’s roses when she heard the rustling of dead leaves behind her.