Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(47)

Callie picked up a lightweight box and handed it to Verdie, who’d come far enough up the ladder that Callie only had to stoop to put it in Verdie’s hands.

“And the other son?”

“He went to college and became an engineer. Met a girl at the college who was from Florida and raised his kids down there. Never got to know any of my grandkids too well.”

“I’m sorry. They’ve missed a lot,” Callie said.

“So have I, but this Christmas I’ve got y’all, and I’m going to make the best of it,” Verdie said. “Oh, there’s the phone. Maybe it’s Polly or Gladys with some news on the feud. Speakin’ of which, us old-timers around here remember things pretty often by what was going on with the feud during that time of our lives. It’s like our history clock in Burnt Boot. Be right back.”

Callie sat down in the rocker again and let the peace settle around her like a worn, old, favorite coat in cold weather. She heard someone coming up the ladder and figured Verdie was bringing news about the children, but it was Finn’s beautiful smile that popped up in the opening the next time.

“Hey, Verdie is on the phone and she just pointed in this direction. I got the feeling she’s talking to Gladys, because they were talking about the store shelves getting scarce. Holy shit! What is all this stuff?” Finn stopped with just his head showing.

“History. I’d love to know more about it,” she answered. “Come on up here and take a look. I bet some of it’s been up here since before that rotten feud even started.”

“Was it spiders that spook you? I can’t remember if it was that or mice or snakes,” he said.

“Snakes belong to Martin and spiders to Verdie. I killed a spider awhile ago. Don’t know if it was a good one or a bad one, but now it’s a dead one.”

“I want you to get up slowly and come down the steps,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because there’s a rat the size of a possum over there beside that box marked Christmas,” he said.

“That’s not funny,” she told him.

“I’m not kiddin’, Callie. Just get up real easy and come down the steps. It’s not moving right now, so it might run and hide when you start this way.”

She followed his eyes to the biggest, ugliest rat she’d ever seen. He was right about the size, and it was glaring at her, teeth bared, not moving a muscle.

She froze. Plain and simple, she couldn’t move a muscle. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t speak.

“Callie, I’m coming up to get you. Don’t move. I think the thing is deaf,” Finn whispered.

Move, hell! Her vocal cords had tightened up to the point that she couldn’t even squeak. Which was a crappy word to enter her mind right then. Any minute that critter was going to run right at her, and she’d have a heart attack. Twenty-seven years old and dead because of a damned rat. And she hadn’t even told Finn exactly how she felt about him.

He had just cleared the top of the steps and taken a step toward her when Verdie scrambled up the ladder. “Well, I’ll be damned,” she said with a giggle. “There’s one of them rotten old rats that Patrick worked on when he started taxidermy classes. Ugly son of a bitch, ain’t it? I bet you raked him out of the corner when you was fiddlin’ with them boxes. Y’all come on down here for dinner. Me and Martin are already washed up and ready to eat.”

“It’s dead,” Finn told Callie. “Did you hear Verdie? The thing is dead.”

Verdie was gone, and Callie could hear Martin talking about the chores they’d done, but she still could not move.

“I’d carry you out of here, but I don’t think we’d fit down the stairs, so you’re going to have to move,” Finn said. “You didn’t act like this over there when we saw a rat, and there were lots of them.”

“I had a gun on my leg and one in my boot and a knife in my belt,” she whispered.

He chuckled. “It is pretty fierce-looking. Don’t come back up here without a gun and a knife, and I think you’ll be all right.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and shivered from head to toe. “Hold me, Finn. I’m more scared right now than I was over there with bombs all around us. I’m not coming up here again. The past can stay in the past if it includes rats.”





Chapter 14


“This place looks like we’re either moving in or moving out,” Finn said when all the boxes were out of the attic and in the living room.

“We’re” moving…not “I’m” moving… Callie’s heart did one of those crazy twists that left her breathless.

“About ten of them are full of outside lights. The hooks stay up on the roof all year so it’s not as tough a job as it could be and the sun is shining. But the lights ain’t been up in years, so some of them might have gotten busted up. Last time I put them up, I remember Polly callin’ to tell me the feud had fired up hotter’n a two-dollar pistol. There was talk that Naomi’s son was seen at a movie theater with one of the Brennan girls, and all holy hell broke loose that year,” Verdie said.

“And it’s not snowing,” Martin chimed in. “This box says it’s for the tree. Can I open it, Granny Verdie?”