At the mere mention of the magic word “eat,” Tigger left the water dish and began his frantic “feed me” dance. Shaking her head and half convinced the dogs were lying to her, Joanna collected the two individual food dishes and filled them as well. While the dogs wagged their tails and enthusiastically crunched dry dog food, Joanna went out onto the back porch to check the outside water dish. That one, too, was empty.
“Poor babies,” Joanna murmured as she filled that dish as well. “He must have forgotten about you completely.”
For Clayton Rhodes, forgetting to feed or water animals was totally out of character. Joanna wondered if something had happened that afternoon to distract him. Briefly she considered calling and checking, but a glance at her watch convinced her otherwise. It was almost nine o’clock. She knew that as soon as Clayton finished his hired-hand duties on High Lonesome Ranch, he returned home, ate his solitary dinner, and went to bed almost as soon as the sun went down.
“Early to bed, early to rise,” he had told Joanna once. “That’s the secret to living a long healthy life.” And it must have worked. Only three months earlier, at age eighty-five, Clayton Rhodes had finally sold off his last horse and given up horseback riding for good.
A few minutes later Joanna was back in the living room with the sated dogs lying contentedly at her feet when Jenny emerged from the bathroom wearing a robe and toweling dry her mop of platinum-blond hair. “Can I stay up and watch TV?” she asked. “It’s Friday. I don’t have school tomorrow.”
“You may not have school,” Joanna conceded, “but tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. We’d both better get some rest.”
Jenny made a face. “More stupid wedding stuff, I suppose,” she huffed.
Joanna’s scheduled wedding to Frederick “Butch” Dixon was a week and a day away. It wasn’t that Jenny was opposed to the match. As far as Joanna could tell, her daughter exhibited every sign of adoring Butch Dixon and of looking forward to having a stepfather. Nonetheless, within days of dealing with pre-wedding logistics—something Joanna’s mother, Eleanor Lathrop Winfield, seemed to adore—Jenny had been bored to tears with the whole tedious process. In fact, as wedding plans continued to expand exponentially, Joanna was beginning to feel the same way herself. Even now, at this late date, she was tempted to back out and settle for a nice, uncomplicated elopement, just as she had years earlier when she married Jenny’s father, Andrew Roy Brady.
Her penalty for running off to marry Andy in a hastily arranged, shotgun-style wedding had been years of unremitting recrimination from her mother. Right now, though, with Eleanor Lathrop Winfield functioning in fearsome, full-scale mother-of-the-bride mode, the idea of eloping a second time was becoming more and more appealing.
“Let your mother have her fun,” Butch had said early on. “What can it hurt?”
Famous last words. Little had Butch known that once Eleanor Lathrop Winfield took the bit in her teeth, nothing would stop her or even slow her down. Since she had missed her daughter’s first wedding, Eleanor was determined to make this second one a resounding social success. Butch had said those fateful words before the guest list had burgeoned to over a hundred and fifty—a crowd that would fill the sanctuary of Canyon United Methodist Church to overflowing. It would also test the considerable patience and capabilities of Myron Thomas, the man who ran the catering concession at the Rob Roy Links in Palominas, the county’s newest and most prestigious golf course and the only place in Cochise County where what Eleanor termed a “four-star reception” could be held.
By now even Butch’s easygoing good nature had been stretched to the limit. He was the one who had pointed out that Jenny’s twelfth birthday on the fifth of April would fall right in the middle of their upcoming honeymoon. He had suggested that the three of them—bride, groom, and Jenny—abandon the wedding roller coaster for a day or two in order to spend that weekend focused on Jenny and her birthday.
“Not wedding,” Joanna said in answer to her daughter’s question. “Birthday. How would you like to go up to Tucson tomorrow and do some shopping?”
Jenny brightened immediately. “Really?” she said. “Can Butch go too?”
“Since it was his idea in the first place,” Joanna replied, “I don’t think wild horses would keep him away.”
“Where are we going, Tucson Mall?”
“Maybe,” Joanna said evasively. “But maybe not.”
“Where?” Jenny asked. “Tell me.”
Joanna shook her head. “It’s a secret,” she said.
Actually, she and Butch and Jenny’s two sets of existing grandparents had already agreed on a joint gift. For some time, Jenny had made do with secondhand tack for her horse, a sorrel gelding named Kiddo. Now that she was getting ready to go barrel racing on the junior rodeo circuit, her ragtag collection of used equipment no longer quite fit the bill. As a result, the adults in Jenny’s life had agreed on a birthday purchase of a new saddle in addition to all the accompanying bells and whistles.
“Well, then,” Jenny said, “I guess I’d better go to bed.” She turned and started from the room.