Cowboy Ever After: Big Sky Mountain

The ranch hands each sneaked a can of beer from the fridge—Opal turned a blind eye to those particular proceedings—and wandered outside to eat in the shade of the trees.

Opal sat at the table in the middle of Boone’s freshly scrubbed kitchen, and Boone and Hutch joined her.

“You’re a miracle worker,” Boone told her, looking around. The place was still scuffed and worn, just this side of being condemned by some government agency, but all the surfaces appeared to be clean.

“And you’ve been without a woman for way too long,” Opal retorted, with her trademark combination of gruffness and relentless affection.

Boone loaded up on potato salad—he probably hadn’t had the homemade version since before Corrie got sick—and helped himself to a couple of crunchy-coated chicken breasts. “I’m surprised at you, Opal,” he teased. “To hear you tell it, women are made to clean up after men. If that gets out, militant females will burn you in effigy.”

She expelled a huffy breath and waved off the remark for the foolishness it was. After a moment or two, her expression turned solemn and she studied Boone as though she’d never seen him before, peering at him through the lenses of her out-of-style eyeglasses.

“This isn’t what Corrie would want, Boone,” she said quietly. “Not for you and certainly not for those two little boys of yours.”

Boone put down his fork, still heaping with potato salad, and stared down into his plate in silence. He looked so stricken that Hutch felt a crazy need to come to his friend’s rescue somehow, but he quelled it. Intellectually, he knew Opal was right; maybe she could get through to Boone where he and Slade and a lot of other people had failed.

“We weren’t planning to live in this trailer for more than a year,” Boone said without looking up. “It was just a place to hang our hats while we built the new house.”

“I know,” Opal said gently. “But don’t you think it’s time you moved on—built that house, brought your boys home where they belong and maybe even found yourself a wife?”

At last, Boone looked up. The misery in his eyes made the backs of Hutch’s sting a little.

“I can’t marry a woman I don’t love,” he said hoarsely, “and I’m never going to love anybody but Corrie.”

A silence fell.

Boone took up his fork again, making a resolute effort to go on eating, but his appetite was clearly on the wane.

“It was a hard thing, what happened to you,” Opal allowed after some moments, her voice quiet and gentle to the point of tenderness, “but Corrie’s gone for good, Boone, and you’re still alive, and so are your sons. They need their daddy.”