Big Sky Mountain

chapter TWELVE



HUTCH WATCHED KENDRA watching her daughter ride, on her own now, and he was glad he’d “borrowed” Ruffles from a family up the road, even though he was sure to get a joshing from the ranch hands, among others. The plain truth of the matter was that he’d bought the pony outright—the Hendrix kids were grown and gone and the little mare had been “mighty lonely these last few years,” according to Paula Hendrix.

He moved to stand alongside Kendra, close enough but not too close.

Her eyes brimmed with happy tears, and she fairly glowed with motherly pride. “She’s loving this,” she murmured so softly that Hutch wasn’t sure if she was talking to him at all.

“Madison’s a natural, all right,” he agreed quietly. “A born rider.”

“You went to a lot of trouble,” Kendra went on, still not looking his way. “Borrowing a pony and everything, I mean.” She was pleased, he knew, but there was a tension in her, too—she was ready to spring into action if anything went wrong, rush in to save her baby. And there was something else, too—a kind of wariness that probably didn’t have much to do with either Madison or the horse.

Just then, Hutch felt a strange ache in a far corner of his heart. In a perfect world, Madison would have been their child, his and Kendra’s. Her last name would be Carmody, not Shepherd or Chamberlain or whatever it was, and riding a horse wouldn’t be a rare adventure, it would be part of her daily life, like it was of any ranch kid’s.

But then, this wasn’t a perfect world, now was it? It was the real deal, and that meant things would go wrong, and people could get sidetracked, screw up their whole lives because of things they should or shouldn’t have said or done.

“Ready to ride?” he asked, to get the conversation rolling again.

“I haven’t been on horseback in years,” Kendra confessed. “Not since—”

Her words fell away into an awkward silence, and she blushed.

She was obviously remembering what he was remembering—all those wild rides they’d taken, back in the day, in and out of the saddle.

“It’s like riding a bike,” he said mildly, throwing her a lifeline. “Once you learn how to sit a horse, you never forget.”

She turned her gaze back to Madison, who was riding in their direction now, beaming. The pup had fallen into step with Ruffles—Leviticus watched from the shade of the barn—and they sure made a picture, all of them, an image straight off the front of a Western greeting card.

When Kendra spoke, she jarred him a little. “How do we get past this, Hutch?” she asked very softly.

“This what?” Hutch asked just as quietly.

Her shoulders moved in a semblance of a shrug. “The awkwardness, I guess,” she said, and there was the smallest quaver in her voice. She paused, shook her head slightly, as if to clear her brain. “I can’t pretend that nothing happened between us,” she went on as Madison and Ruffles and the dogs drew nearer. “But I keep trying to do just that and it makes me crazy.”

Hutch chuckled. “Well, then,” he reasoned, “why don’t you stop trying and just let things be what they are? It’s not as if any of us have much of a choice in the matter, anyhow.”

She sighed and kept her eyes on Madison, but she seemed a little less edgy than before. “You’re right,” she said. “Much as we might want to change the past, we can’t.”

He wanted to ask what she would change, if she could, but Opal’s station wagon pulled through the gate just then and came barreling up the driveway.

“Look!” Madison called, as Opal got out of her car. “I’m riding a horse!”

“You sure enough are,” Opal agreed, her smile wide. Her gaze swept over Hutch and Kendra, and the two other horses waiting to be ridden. “You about done with riding now?” she asked the child. “Because I’ve got supper to start and I could sure use a hand with the job.”

Madison, Hutch suspected, could have stayed right there on Ruffles’ back for days on end, given the opportunity, but she turned out to be the helpful sort.

“I guess I’m done,” she said. “For right now, anyway.”

Hutch approached and lifted her down off Ruffles’s back. “You go on ahead with Opal,” he told the little girl when she looked up at him in concern. He could guess what she was thinking. “I’ll tend to Ruffles, and show you how to do that another time.”

Madison nodded solemnly and patted the pony’s nose. “I wish you were my very own,” she told Ruffles. Then she smiled up at Kendra, waiting for a nod.

Kendra did nod, a little reluctantly, Hutch thought.

Opal put out a hand to Madison, Madison took it without hesitation, and they headed toward the house, chatting amicably, the dogs ambling along behind them.

“That was slick,” Kendra observed with wry amusement, watching as the four disappeared through the kitchen doorway.

Hutch took Ruffles’s reins and led the pony toward the barn door. “I didn’t put Opal up to anything, if that’s what you mean,” he said, grinning back at her. “Make sure those horses don’t take off. I’ll be right back.”

I’ll be right back.

Kendra sighed. Now she’d have to go riding—alone with Hutch Carmody, no less—and she had nobody to blame but herself. She’d put herself in this position, sealed her own fate.

She was crazy.

Gingerly, she gathered the reins of the two horses and waited for Hutch to unsaddle Ruffles and tuck her away in a stall. And she waited.

She recognized the big gelding as Remington, Hutch’s favorite mount, but the long-legged mare was a stranger.

“I have a child to raise and a business to run,” she told the mare in a hurried undertone. “I cannot afford to break any bones, so don’t try anything fancy.”

The mare nickered companionably, as if promising to behave herself.

Hutch came back before Kendra was ready for him to, taking Remington’s reins from her hands. “That’s Coco,” he said, nodding at the mare. “She’s a roper, so she’s lively and fast, but she’s fairly kindhearted, too.”

“Fairly?” Kendra echoed, waiting for muscle memory to kick in so she could mount up without making an even bigger fool of herself than she already had.

Hutch laughed, steadied the mare for her by taking a light hold on the bridle strap. “This isn’t a dude ranch,” he pointed out, clearly enjoying her trepidation. “Except for Ruffles, all these horses earn their keep, one way or another.”

Having nothing to say to that—nothing civil, that is—Kendra reached up, gripped the saddle horn with damp palms, shoved her left foot in the stirrup and hoisted.

Hutch gave her a startling boost by splaying one hand across her backside and pushing.

She gasped, surged skyward and landed in the saddle with a thump.

He laughed again, mounted Remington and reined in alongside Kendra. “Ready?” he asked.

Her face was on fire, and she refused to look at him on the ridiculous premise that if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her, either. “Ready,” she confirmed, stubborn to the end.

“Good,” he said, and he and Remington were off, leading the way, heading for the open range at a slow trot.

Kendra’s horse followed immediately, her rider bouncing hard in the saddle with every step. Kendra concentrated on syncing herself with Coco and, when they’d traveled a hundred yards or so, she found her stride.

Hutch’s gelding clearly wanted to run—please, God, no—but he held the horse in check with an ease that was both admirable and galling. Everything seemed to come easily to this man, and it wasn’t fair.

“Where to?” he asked, grinning over at her as Coco matched her pace to Remington’s.

“Anywhere but the high meadow,” Kendra answered and was immediately embarrassed all over again. Talk about your Freudian slip—Hutch hadn’t suggested riding to their secret, special place, now had he? She’d been the one to bring it up.

He chuckled at her miserable expression. “Tell me, Kendra,” he began easily, “who are you more afraid of—me or yourself?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sputtered. “It’s just that I haven’t ridden in a long time and the meadow is halfway up the mountain and—”

“Easy,” Hutch admonished good-naturedly. Was he addressing her or his horse?

It had damned well better be the horse.

Alas it turned out to be her, instead. “Kendra,” he went on, “I’m not fixing to jump your bones the second we’re alone. We’re two old friends out for a horseback ride, and that’s all there is to it.”

Maybe for you, Kendra thought peevishly. The answer to his earlier question was thrumming in her head by now, all too obvious. She was afraid of herself, not him. Afraid of her own desires and the way her intelligence seemed to take a dive whenever he turned on the charm.

Not that he’d been obvious about it.

Still the damage was done.

Whether he knew it or not—and it would be naive to think he didn’t—Hutch had been in the process of seducing her almost from the moment she and Madison had arrived at the ranch. All he’d had to do to melt her resolve was to act like what Madison wanted most right now—a daddy.

They rode in silence for a while, the horses choosing their direction, or so it seemed to Kendra, the animals pausing alongside a stream to lower their huge heads and drink.

Hutch’s expression had turned solemn; he seemed far away, somehow, even though he was right beside her. Sunlight danced on the surface of the creek as the water whispered by.

“Why did you come here, Kendra?” he finally asked, narrowing his eyes against the brightness of the late-afternoon sun as he studied her face.

“To the ranch?”

“To Parable,” Hutch said.

She bristled. “Because it’s home,” she said tightly. “Because I want to raise Madison in a place where people know and care about each other.”

Hutch dismounted, stood beside Remington, looking up at her. “And you were so happy here as a child that you figured Madison would be, too?” he asked. It wasn’t a gibe, exactly, but he knew all about Kendra’s life with her grandmother, so the remark hadn’t been entirely innocent, either.

“Not always,” she admitted, her tone a little distant. She was tempted to get down off the horse and stand facing him, but that would mean getting back on again and her legs felt too unsteady to manage it. “Nobody’s happy all the time, are they?”

He gave a raspy chuckle, gazing out over the rippling water that gave his ranch its name—Whisper Creek. “That’s for sure,” he said.

She shifted uncomfortably in the saddle. No way around it, she was going to be sore after this ride, unaccustomed as she was.

Oh, well. Better achy body parts she could soak in a hot bathtub with Epsom salts, she figured, than an achy heart.

“I lied about the pony,” Hutch said out of the blue. He bent as he spoke, picked up a pebble and skipped it across the busy water with an expert motion of one hand.

Kendra frowned, confused. Everything about this man confused her, in fact. “What?” she asked.

“I didn’t borrow Ruffles,” he replied, meeting her gaze again. “I bought her. The kids she used to belong to grew up and went away, and she’s been lonely.”

Something softened inside Kendra. Finally she began to relax a little. “Well, then,” she said. “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”

He cleared his throat. “Because I figured you’d think I was trying to get to you through Madison,” he told her.

Some reckless Kendra took over, pushed the day-to-day Kendra aside. “Were you?” she asked. “Trying to get to me through my daughter, that is?”

She saw his jaw tighten, release again.

“That would be wrong on so many levels,” he said. He was clearly angry, which was rich, considering he’d been the one to raise the topic in the first place. “Madison’s not a pawn. She’s a person in her own right.”

“I quite agree,” Kendra said, sounding prim even in her own ears.

That was when Hutch reached up, looped an arm around Kendra’s waist and lifted her down off Coco’s back. She came up against him, hard.

“If I want to ‘get to’ you, Kendra,” he informed her, “I can—and without using an innocent little kid or anybody else.”

She stared up at him, startled, breathless and without a thought in her head.

And that was when he kissed her, not gently, not tentatively, but with all the hunger a man can feel for a woman, all the need and the strength and the hardness and the heat.

Instantly she turned to a pillar of fire. Her arms slipped around Hutch’s neck and tightened there, and she stood on tiptoe, pouring herself into that kiss without reservation.

This was what she had feared, some vague part of her knew that.

This was what she had longed for.

It was Hutch who broke away first. His breath was ragged, and he thrust the fingers of his right hand through his hair in a gesture that might have been frustration. “Damn it,” he cursed.

Kendra, all molten passion just moments before, went ice-cold. “Don’t you dare blame me for that, Hutch,” she warned, in a furious whisper. “You started it.”

He didn’t answer, didn’t even look at her.

No, he turned away, gave her his back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, after a long time, his voice rough as dry gravel.

He was sorry? He’d rocked her to the core, thrown the planet off its axis, changed the direction of the tides with that kiss. And he was sorry?

“So much for two old friends just out for a simple horseback ride,” she heard herself say. Humiliation and anger combined gave her the impetus to get back on Coco with no help from Hutch Carmody, thank you very much.

Hutch turned then, glowering up at her. “Don’t,” he warned. “Don’t be flippant about this, Kendra. Something just happened here, something important.”

“Yes,” Kendra said lightly. He was standing and she was mounted and that gave her a completely false sense of power, which she permitted herself to enjoy for the briefest of moments. “You kissed me, remember?”

“I’m not talking about that,” Hutch told her.

“Then what are you talking about?”

“We’re not finished, you and I,” Hutch said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Kendra retorted, coming to a slow simmer. “We are so finished. So over. So done. So through. We have been for years, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“The way you just kissed me says different,” he replied, mounting up at last, reining the gelding around so that he and Kendra were facing each other.

“You kissed me,” she reiterated, almost frantic.

“You’re damn right, I did,” Hutch answered. “And you kissed me right back. If we’d been up at the meadow where it’s private, instead of down here on the open range, we’d be making love right now, hot and heavy. Just like in the old days.”

“Your ego,” she snapped, “is exceeded only by your ego. I’m not one of—one of those women, the kind you can have whenever you want!”

He laughed, but it was a tight sound, a challenge, a promise. “Prove it,” he said.

Kendra was practically beside herself by then. She wanted to get back to the barn, get off this damnable horse, collect her daughter and her dog, and race for home, where she could reasonably pretend none of this had ever happened. “What do you mean, ‘prove it’?” she practically spat.

“Opal is looking after Madison,” he said. “Let’s ride up the mountain, Kendra—just you and me. Right now.”

“Absolutely not,” Kendra shot back loftily, amazed at how badly she wanted to take him up on what would surely be, for her, a losing bet.

“Scared?” he asked, leaning in, almost breathing the word. His mouth rested lightly, briefly, against hers, setting her ablaze all over again.

“Yes,” she said in a burst of honesty.

“Of me?”

Kendra swallowed hard, shook her head from side to side. He’d been right before—she was afraid of herself, not him—but she wasn’t going to admit that out loud.

“It’s probably inevitable,” Hutch said, sounding gleefully resigned. “Our making love, I mean.”

“Think what you like,” Kendra bluffed, her tone deliberately tart. “But I’ve been down that road before, Hutch, and I’m not going back. I’m not a gullible young girl anymore. I’m a responsible woman with a daughter.”

“And that means you can’t have a sex life?”

“I will not discuss this with you,” she bit out, turning Coco around and heading back toward the house and the barn and Madison. Back toward sanity and good sense.

Of course Hutch had no difficulty catching up. He looked cocky, riding beside her, all cowboy, all man.

She was in big trouble here.

Big, big trouble.

* * *

SHE AND MADISON had to stay for supper—Opal wouldn’t hear of anything else, and besides, Kendra knew that leaving in a huff would reveal too much.

So she stayed.

She left Hutch to put the horses away by himself, except for his devoted shadow, Leviticus, then went into the house and washed her hands at the kitchen sink while Madison, swaddled in an oversize apron and elbow-deep in floury dough, regaled her with her new knowledge of cooking.

“She’s ready for her own show on the Food Channel,” Opal put in proudly, standing next to Madison at the center island and supervising every move.

“I don’t doubt that for a moment,” Kendra agreed, hoping her coloring had returned to normal by now.

“I’m making biscuits,” Madison said.

“Impressive,” Kendra replied. “Will you teach me how to make them, too?”

Madison giggled at that. “Silly Mommy,” she said. “You just need to look in a cookbook and you’ll know how.”

Kendra kissed her daughter’s flour-smudged cheek. “You’ve got me there,” she said, with a little sigh.

“Coffee’s fresh,” Opal said with a nod in the direction of the machine. “Mugs are in the cupboard above it.”

“Thanks.” Kendra needed something to do with her hands, so she got out a cup, poured herself some coffee and took a slow sip, hoping it wouldn’t keep her awake half the night, thinking about the most recent go-round with Hutch. She was jangly enough as it was.

“How was the ride?” Opal asked, and her attempt to put the question casually was a total flop.

“Fine,” Kendra replied noncommittally.

“Where’s Mr. Hutch?” Madison wanted to know.

So, Kendra thought. He’d graduated from cowboy man to Mr. Hutch. What was next—Daddy?

“He’s looking after the horses,” Kendra answered, leaning against the counter and taking another sip of coffee. Oddly the caffeine seemed to be settling her down rather than riling her already frayed nerves, and she was grateful for this small, counterintuitive blessing.

“When can we get my boots?” Madison chimed in.

Kendra laughed. “Does that mean you want to go riding again?” she hedged.

Madison nodded eagerly, still working away at the dough she’d been kneading in the big crockery bowl in front of her. “I want to ride far,” she said. “Not just around and around in the yard, like a little kid.”

“You are a little kid,” Kendra teased.

“I reckon that biscuit dough is about ready to be rolled out and cut,” Opal put in. Without missing a beat, she gently removed Madison’s hands from the bowl, wiped them clean with a damp dish towel and lifted the child down off the chair she’d been standing on.

“I can help,” Madison offered.

“Sure you can,” Opal agreed.

The woman was the soul of patience. Kendra smiled at her, mouthing the words “Thank you.”

“But first I need to say good-night to Ruffles,” Madison said.

“After supper,” Kendra answered.

Hutch came in then, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt as he stepped over the threshold in stocking feet, having left his dirty boots outside on the step. His hair was rumpled, and there were bits of hay on his clothes. Kendra was struck by how impossibly good he looked, even coming straight from the barn.

He nodded a greeting to Opal and Kendra in turn, then spared a wink for Madison as he used an elbow to turn on the hot water in the sink. He lathered his hands and forearms with a bar of pungently scented orange soap, rinsed and lathered up again.

To look at him, nobody would have guessed that less than an hour before he’d kissed Kendra as she’d never been kissed before—even by him—and thrown her entire being into sweet turmoil in the space of a few heartbeats. He’d plundered her mouth with his tongue and she’d not only allowed it, she’d responded, no question about it.

He’d said it was inevitable that they’d make love. Dared her to ride up the mountain with him, to that cursed, enchanted meadow where heaven and earth seemed to converge as their bodies converged.

Stop it, she told herself sternly.

“I made the biscuits,” Madison was saying to Hutch as he turned away from the sink, drying his hands on a towel. “Well, I helped, anyway.”

Opal chuckled. She’d gotten out a rolling pin and a biscuit cutter. “Get back up on this chair, young lady, and I’ll show you what to do next.”

Madison scrambled to obey.

Opal gave the child’s hands another going over with a damp cloth.

Together they rolled the dough out flat, used the cutter to make circles, placed these on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Hutch crossed to the oven and reached for the handle on the door.

“Don’t you open that oven,” Opal immediately commanded. “You’ll let out all that good steam.”

For a moment Hutch looked more like a curious little boy than a man. “Whatever it is, it sure smells good,” he said.

“It’s my special tamale pie, like I said I’d make,” Opal replied briskly, “and I’ll thank you not to go messing with it before we’ve even sat down to say grace.”

Hutch grinned, spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Far be it from me to mess with supper.”

“And don’t you forget it,” Opal said, evidently determined to have the last word.

It was a mundane exchange, but Kendra enjoyed the hominess of good-natured banter between people who cared for each other as if they were family. When she was growing up, meals had been catch-as-catch-can affairs, and if her grandmother did bother to cook, she slammed the pots and pans around in the process, letting Kendra know it was an imposition. That she was an imposition.

Those days were long gone, she reminded herself. She’d come through okay, hadn’t she? And she was a good mother to Madison, at least partly because she wanted things to be different for her.

“I’d sure like to know what’s going on in that head of yours right about now,” Hutch said, surprising her. When had he crossed the room, come to stand next to her, close enough to touch? And why did he have to be so darned observant?

“I was just thinking how lucky I am,” she said.

He grinned, watching as Madison “helped” slide the biscuits into the extra oven built into the wall beside the stove. “You definitely are,” he said, and there was something in his voice that took a lot of the sting out of things he’d said earlier.

That was the thing she had to watch when it came to Hutch.

He could be kind one moment and issuing a challenge the next.

Most of the time, he was impossible to read.

Soon enough, they all sat down to supper, Opal and Madison, Kendra and Hutch, and it felt a little too right for comfort. After struggling so hard to regain her emotional equilibrium, Kendra was back on shaky ground.

She was hungry, though, despite her jumpy nerves, and she put away two biscuits as well as an ample portion of Opal’s delectable tamale pie.

Madison had had a big day, and by the time supper was over, she was fighting to stay awake. “Mommy said I could say good-night to Ruffles,” she insisted, yawning, when the table had been cleared and the plates and silverware loaded into the dishwasher.

Hutch lifted the child into his arms, though he was looking at Kendra when he spoke. “And your mommy,” he said, “is a woman of her word. Let’s go.”

What was that supposed to mean? Was there a barb hidden somewhere in that statement?

Kendra decided not to invest any more of her rapidly waning energy wondering. She thanked Opal for supper and for letting Madison help with the preparations, and followed Hutch, Madison and the ever-alert Daisy out the back door. They crossed the yard, headed for the barn, and Madison, half-asleep by then, rested her head on Hutch’s shoulder.

Hutch flipped on the light as they entered, and carried Madison to Ruffles’s stall.

Kendra watched, stricken with a tangle of bittersweet emotions, as Madison leaned over the stall door to pat the pony’s head.

“Good night, Ruffles,” she said, keeping her other arm firmly around Hutch’s neck. Solemnly, she instructed the little horse to sleep well and have sweet dreams.

Kendra’s heart turned over in her chest and her throat tightened.

Too late, she realized that Hutch was watching her and, as usual, seeing more than she wanted him to see.

“We’d better go now,” she said, forcing the words out.

Hutch nodded. Still carrying Madison, he led the way back outside, setting the child in her car seat as deftly as if he’d done it a thousand times before, chuckling when the dog joined them in a single bound.

Kendra resisted the urge to double-check the fastenings on the car seat, just to make sure he’d gotten it right.

Of course he’d gotten it right. He was Hutch Carmody, and he got just about everything right—when he chose to, that is.

“Thanks,” Kendra said, standing beside the car, hugging herself even though the night was warm. Since she didn’t want him jumping to the conclusion that her thank-you included that soul-sundering kiss beside Whisper Creek, she added, too quickly, “For letting Madison ride Ruffles, I mean.”

A slow grin spread across Hutch’s face as he watched her. Overhead, a million gazillion silvery stars splashed across the black velvet sky and the moon glowed translucent, nearly full.

“Anytime,” he said easily, Leviticus waiting quietly at his side.

“Right,” Kendra said, at a loss.

Hutch opened the driver’s door for her, waited politely for her to slip behind the wheel, fumble in her bag for the keys, fasten her seat belt and start the engine.

Madison was already asleep—if she hadn’t been, Kendra knew, she would have been asking when she could come back and ride Ruffles again.

When Hutch remained where he was, Kendra rolled down her window. She had her issues with the man, but she didn’t want to run over his feet backing out. “Was there something else?” she asked, hoping she sounded casual.

He leaned over to look in at her. “Yeah,” he said. “You planning on coming to the rodeo? You and Madison?”

She nodded, smiled. “There’s no way I could get out of it even if I wanted to,” she said. “Madison’s never been and she’s looking forward to the whole weekend, rodeo, fireworks and all.”

Speaking of fireworks, she thought, as the memory of that kiss coursed through her, hot and fierce, causing her heart to kick into overdrive.

“I’m entered in the bull-riding on Saturday afternoon,” Hutch said, “but I’d sure like to buy the two of you supper and maybe take Madison on a few of the carnival rides before taking in the fireworks.”

All she had to do was say no, take time to step back and regain her perspective.

Instead she said, “Okay.” Immediately.

Hutch grinned. “Great,” he said. “I’ll be in touch, and we’ll work out the details.”

She nodded, as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day.

Maybe for him nothing had.

Dismal thought.

Kendra murmured good-night, Hutch stepped away from the car and she put the Volvo in motion.

At home, she unbuckled Madison, awake but sleepy, and carried her into the house. She helped the child into her pajamas, oversaw the brushing of teeth and the saying of prayers, tucked her daughter in and kissed her forehead.

“Good night, Annie Oakley,” she said.

Daisy, probably needing to go outside, fidgeted in the doorway.

“Who’s that?” Madison asked, yawning big again, but she was asleep before Kendra had a chance to answer.

Leaving Madison’s bedroom, she followed Daisy back to the kitchen and stood on the porch while the dog did what had to be done.

As soon as she was back inside the house, Daisy headed straight for Madison’s room.

Kendra, a little too wired to sleep, tidied up the already tidy house, watered a few plants and finally retreated to her home office and logged on to the computer. She’d check her email, both business and personal, she decided, and then soak in a nice hot bath, a sort of preemptive strike against the saddle soreness she was bound to be feeling by morning.

She weeded out the junk mail—somehow some of it always got past the filter—and that left her with two messages, one from Tara and one from Joslyn. Both had attachments—forwards, no doubt.

She clicked on Joslyn’s, expecting a cute picture of the new baby.

Instead she was confronted with a page from a major social-media site, a photo someone had snapped of her and Hutch running the three-legged race at the cemetery picnic the previous weekend. Both of them were laughing, pitching forward into the fall that sent them tumbling into the grass.

The caption was short and to the point. “Up to his old tricks,” it read. “Already.”