Crossing Nevada

“We won’t take Lizzie on the creek path. That’s for sure.”

“None of you will take the creek path.”

“Dad, it’s so much shorter...”

“And it’s so her property.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Stay away from that woman and off her land. Got it?”

Darcy let out a loud sigh—the kind he’d recently discovered only adolescents seemed to be able to make. “Fine. Got it.”

“Thank you.”

Zach walked down the hall to Emma’s room. The door was shut, but he cracked it open and looked inside. His middle daughter was sound asleep, despite the thunder and the Lizzie drama. He smiled, wishing he had that ability. Sleepless nights were more of the norm for him and because of the uncooperative hospital accounting department, he predicted more of the same.

He opened his bedroom door and flicked on the light. For a long while after her death, he’d kept Karen’s belongings out where he could see them, although Beth Ann had boxed her clothing and sent it to charity. But as time went on, he’d divided up Karen’s personal treasures between his daughters. The small collection of jewelry he’d stored for later. All that remained was a photo on the nightstand and a lot of good memories.

And a lot of bad ones. Not of Karen, but of the grim months following the diagnosis. The trauma of the treatments. Meeting the needs of three little girls who were about to lose their mother. Grieving for his wife long before he’d lost her.

Zach sat on the bed and eased his boots off. The first one fell with a heavy clunk. What would Karen have done tonight after discovering what was bothering her baby? He smiled wearily. Probably marched straight over to Tess O’Neil’s place and ripped into her. Karen had been sweet and peaceful, until something endangered those she loved. Beth Ann was the same way.

So was he. It was important to get along with the neighbors, but when a neighbor threatened your kids, things changed. Granted, they’d had no right to cross her land, but they were little girls, not hoodlums, following a path they’d taken for years. What the hell was she thinking trying to scare them?

Leave it. Just leave it.

Easier said than done when he was brought out of bed two hours later by a crying child. He shrugged into his flannel robe, his last gift from Karen, and he jogged upstairs to find Darcy hugging her little sister.

“It’s not the lady. Honest,” Lizzie said.

Like hell.

“It’s okay, Dad,” Darcy said. “Liz is coming to bed with me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. But only for one night.” Darcy emphasized the last words.

“One night,” Lizzie agreed, making a beeline into Darcy’s room.

Zach waited until the girls were in Darcy’s bed, then turned off the light. Across the field, Tess O’Neil’s place glowed like a beacon, every light on, even though it was almost three o’clock in the morning.

Darcy leaned out of bed and craned her neck to see what Zach was staring at out of her window. Then she shrugged.

“It’s like that every night, Dad. She never shuts off her lights.”

* * *

THE NIGHT BECAME still after the storm had passed, almost too still, and Tess couldn’t bring herself to go upstairs to sleep. She remained in the chair, dozing fitfully and waking the next morning stiff from having finally fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position. When she pushed the blanket off her lap and got up out of the chair, Blossom shot to her feet, but Mac was slower to rise. When he finally did get to his feet, he held his injured foot a good three or four inches off the floor.

“Let’s see that leg,” Tess said, crouching in front of the dog. She reached out to gently touch it and Mac yelped, drawing it back, but not before Tess felt how hot it was. This was a problem.

Ten minutes later, after a short internet search, Tess called a vet in Wesley, the larger town an hour’s drive to the south. As she’d feared, since Dr. Hyatt was the only vet within sixty miles, no appointments were available until the following week, but the vet tech promised to let her know if something opened up.

“His leg is hot,” Tess said after receiving the bad news. “I’m afraid of infection.”

“It’s probably just inflammation,” the tech said, “but to play it safe, I’ll phone Ann at the mercantile about some medications you can give him until the doctor can see him.”

“Really? The mercantile here?”

“Yeah. The merc is kind of our branch pharmacy.”

“I had no idea. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Tess had shopped at the mercantile three times so far, and each time she’d been the only person in the store except for the tough-looking elderly woman behind the counter who’d gruffly introduced herself as Ann. Tess had not made a friend when she’d refused to offer her name in return.

When Tess parked in front of the store a half hour after talking to the vet, she was in luck again. Not a single car in the small lot. List in hand, she crossed the old wooden porch and pulled the door open, only to stop abruptly on the threshold, facing five sets of curious eyes.

Tess automatically dropped her chin, hiding her face as she quickly walked past the women who stood in a tight group near the checkout counter, and grabbed a basket off the stack at the end of the first aisle.

“Well, hello,” one of the women called after her, “are you the new tenant of the Anderson place?”

“Hi,” Tess replied, not answering the question and not looking back as she escaped down the aisle closest to her.

She stopped at the end of the aisle, out of sight of the group, and faced the cooler as she gathered her composure, convinced herself that this was not a big deal...just unexpected.

The mercantile was roughly the size of a large convenience store, stacked to the ceiling with a wild variety of merchandise, much of which Tess didn’t recognize. Good cover until the ladies left. But the ladies started talking again and Tess soon realized that they had no intention of leaving.

Deciding she couldn’t hide forever, she opened the cooler door and pulled out butter, milk and eggs before moving on to the rather sad-looking produce. If she hadn’t felt cornered she might have worked at choosing the best fruit and vegetables, but as it was, she dumped carrots, oranges and apples into her basket, put three loaves of bread on top—one to eat, two to freeze. Then she peeked around the corner of a display.

The women were still there, clustered in the exact spot Tess wanted to be. Well, she couldn’t hide out here forever and when Ann, the proprietress, caught sight of her and frowned, Tess sucked up her courage and headed for the checkout counter.

She was instantly surrounded by women—or so it felt.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” one of the ladies said. Tess didn’t know which one because she didn’t look at them. “Do you quilt?”

“No.” Tess set the basket on the counter where Ann stood with a hand poised over the keys of the cash register, waiting for Tess to unload her basket. “Has Dr. Hyatt phoned in an order for me?” Tess asked her as she pulled the bread out of the basket.

“If you’re Tess O’Neil he has,” the woman said in a tone that told Tess she hadn’t forgotten her refusal to state her name on her first visit.

“I am,” Tess said in a low voice.

Ann pulled a stapled paper bag from under the counter and started ringing up the items in Tess’s basket. And then the women started closing in again from behind.

“We’re always looking for new members for our club,” another woman, who for some reason was not taking a very blatant hint, declared from close to Tess’s right shoulder. “And quilting is very easy to learn.”

“Thank you very much, but I’m not interested.” Tess sensed an exchange of glances as she pulled three twenties out of her very plain purse and handed them across the counter. The drawer of the old-fashioned cash register popped open as Tess quickly loaded her purchases into the recyclable tote she’d brought. A couple bucks’ worth of change and she was good to go.