Christine nodded. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”
She’d miss this family when she moved out, she realized as she roused Mercy and maneuvered her into her little fleece hooded getup. Abilene’s own family had looked picture-perfect growing up, but fractured and broken behind closed doors. The Churches came off as harried and a touch short sometimes, thanks to how hard they worked, but on the inside they were the nicest people you’d want to meet.
She found Christine in the kitchen, dropping sandwiches into a canvas lunch bag. “Couldn’t remember if you like mayo or mustard,” she said, grabbing a thermos, “so I made one of each.”
“More of a mayo girl. Texan, after all. We smother everything.”
Christine laughed. “Suits me fine. I can go either way.”
And as they locked up and strolled from the farmhouse out toward the bunks and stables and barns, they chatted about the various merits of condiments—such a simple, mundane topic that it felt quenching, comforting, on the heels of the recent drama.
“Where are all the ranch hands?” she asked. “Miah said they were throwing a picnic.”
“In the western eight,” Christine said, though Abilene didn’t know what this meant. The westernmost eight acres, maybe? Not far, she imagined, as Three C’s range stretched miles and miles and miles out to the east.
“We’ll find them, no doubt,” Christine added. “By the rabble, if nothing else.”
And they did. It looked as though just about everyone had taken their lunch break in accordance with nature—everyone except Don, that was—and at least two dozen workers and half as many horses were scattered around a greenish brown expanse just past the outbuildings, its scrub grass mowed short. Miah’s dog came trotting up to them as they neared, pausing for ear scratches and sniffing opportunities. She was slender, with pointed ears like a German shepherd, but far smaller, with a grayish, mottled coat, and a black patch over one eye.
“I’ve never seen her so friendly before,” Abilene said. “Usually she’s more robot than dog.”
“When she’s on duty, yeah,” came a voice behind them—Miah. He was lugging a huge plastic jug with a spigot at the bottom, like sports teams kept their Gatorade in. “But she gets an hour off today, like everybody else.”
“I’ve never met a dog so well-behaved. The ones I grew up with jumped on people and barked at the littlest things.” Her mom had had two yappy little terriers, and she’d never been real fond of either of them. She’d resented them, in fact. They were annoying and poorly behaved, yet somehow they’d been exempt from all of her father’s militaristic rules regarding manners. Her mom had shielded them from his perfectionism, somehow, in a way she’d never shielded her daughter.
“Takes a lot of work,” Christine said, patting the dog’s side. “And a good set of genes—heelers are bred to herd sheep and cattle. Miah trained this one, and his dad trained her father and grandfather. It’s in her blood.”
“Must be in yours, too,” she said to the both of them, and Miah nodded.
“I was always more of a horse girl,” Christine said. “But you fall in love with a rancher, you’d better fall in love with the ranch.”