“I don’t think she’d be amenable.”
“Really.” The really came out as a statement of fact rather than a question.
“I get a certain vibe from her that’s … I don’t know what it is.” He shook his head.
“A vibe?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of, Oh, look how cute Ryan is, I’ll try to let him down easy. That kind of vibe.”
“Ah.”
He peered at her. “I take it I’m not wrong.”
She looked at him tentatively, probably trying to gauge whether her response would hurt his feelings. “No. You’re not wrong.”
He nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
Gen was silent for a few minutes, and Ryan wondered what unfathomable thoughts were going on in her head.
“I don’t want to talk about Lacy right now,” he said.
He gave her the full tour—all of the sights his family had recommended, and then a few he added in himself—and had her back to the main house by late morning. She was late to open the gallery—she’d wanted to be there by ten, and it was well after that already—but she didn’t seem concerned about it. In the spring and summer, when the tourist traffic started to pick up, Gen had an assistant working with her at the gallery. When the tour hadn’t wrapped up by nine thirty, she’d called him—a guy named Alex who Ryan knew a little bit—and asked him to open for her. Ryan had offered to cut off the ride and get her back, but she’d said that Alex would be fine and that she was enjoying herself too much to quit.
And she did seem to be enjoying herself. By the time they got back to the house, her face was pink with sun and exertion, and her hair was askew in a way that he found pleasantly distracting. She was smiling, looking healthy and vibrant and pleased with the events of her day.
The house was unusually quiet, with the boys off at school and Breanna running errands in town.
At first Ryan had thought he would be able to avoid putting Gen through a grilling from his mother, as it looked as though no one was home. But a few minutes after they came in the door, he heard Sandra scuffing down the stairs in the fuzzy slippers she always wore inside the house, calling to him.
“Ryan? That you?” She sounded less irritated than usual, a happy state of affairs.
“Yeah, Mom. I’ve got Gen Porter with me. Just finished showing her around.”
“Well, what did you think?” Sandra came to the foot of the stairs and planted her hands on her hips, addressing Gen as though in challenge.
“Your property is gorgeous,” Gen said, her face and her voice full of enthusiasm. “I wasn’t sure about the whole idea of riding a horse—I’d never done it, and they’re really big. But Ryan taught me a few things, and I think it went okay.” Gen looked exhilarated, actually, all pretty and pink-cheeked.
Sandra squinted at Gen in that way she had, as though she were using laser vision to X-ray someone and inspect for internal injuries. Then her face broke into a grin. “He take you on Bailey?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ryan confirmed.
“Good. That’s about as gentle a horse as you’re likely to find. If you can’t ride Bailey, you can’t ride, period.” She nodded. “You think your artist is going to like the place?” Sandra asked.
“I don’t see how he couldn’t. Or, wait. Yes I do. Because he’s kind of ... well. Kind of socially challenged.” She looked embarrassed to have said it. “But this place, it’s lovely. It’s inspiring. It’s the perfect place to bring an artist. Even him.”
“Is ‘socially challenged’ code for asshole?” Sandra inquired.
Gen hesitated. “In this case, yes, ma’am, it is.”
Sandra let out a belly laugh that made Ryan blink. Laughing was not something that came naturally to Sandra Delaney, nor was smiling, for that matter. And here he’d seen her smile and laugh, both, within the space of a few minutes. It was puzzling, but not entirely unwelcome.
Sandra waved Gen toward the kitchen. “Come on in here and we’ll have coffee.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Gen said. “I know Ryan must be busy. I’ve already taken up too much of his time.”
“Ryan’s busy, all right. That’s why I’m inviting you, and not him.” Sandra made a shooing motion toward Ryan.
Was that how a mother was supposed to treat her son? “Well, now, I’m not that busy ... and I like coffee,” he said.
“You better go check on your father, give him a hand in the barn,” Sandra told him. “You know he’s not as young as he used to be.”
Ryan left the house reluctantly, bothered by the nagging sense that something had been plotted without his knowledge, something clear and obvious to the women but inaccessible to him. He had the sense that his mother had taken something important out of his hands, something fragile, like a newly hatched bird stretching its tiny wings, its eyes closed tight against the sun.
“Can I help?” Gen asked as Sandra led her into the kitchen and started getting out coffee filters and beans.
“I think I know how to make coffee by myself,” Sandra groused at her. “Been doing it for a good forty years. It’s good that you offered, though.” She nodded. “Shows manners. I’ve got no patience for people who don’t have manners.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Gen said, feeling like a Catholic school girl who’d narrowly escaped getting her knuckles rapped by the Mother Superior. “Have you lived on the ranch long?”
Sandra chuckled—a low and rough heh-heh sound. “Well, let’s see. I married Orin Delaney thirty-five years ago, and I moved to the ranch the day of the ceremony. So, I guess you could say I’ve been here a while.”
Gen sat at the kitchen table—a long, rectangular, solid-wood affair that was exactly what you’d expect to see in a farmhouse—and leaned forward on her elbows as Sandra turned on the coffee pot and started gathering cups, spoons, sugar, and milk.
“You don’t see a lot of cattle ranches in Manhattan,” Gen said.
“I guess not,” Sandra said. “You miss it?”
Gen thought about it. “I do. Everything is just so … busy in New York. There’s a sense of energy, a sense of importance. This feeling that you’re at the center of the world. But when I go back, I think I’ll miss this, too.”
Sandra turned to Gen and raised her eyebrows in question. “You’re going back to New York, are you?”
“Not right away. I’m not sure when. I need to work out some things first.”
Sandra carried a mug of hot coffee to the table and put it in front of Gen with a plate of big, puffy muffins. She sat across from Gen. “Now, me, you couldn’t pay me to live in a city. Just not how I’m built. Stick me in a tiny apartment in a twenty-story building, people all stacked up like books on a shelf?” She shook her head. “I couldn’t do it.”
Gen sipped at her truly excellent coffee and considered that. “I can understand feeling that way, if you’re used to this.” She gestured to include the house, the ranch, the land beyond. “There’s a kind of magic to being around all this nature.”
Sandra nodded approvingly. “A lot of people don’t get that.”