This was really it. This was the place. Home.
As Abigail’s feet crunched up the gravel driveway, she could hear a soft breeze making the drying oak leaves crackle. Other than the low roar of a distant plane overhead, there was no sound but the blood rushing in her ears and her heart beating quickly in her chest.
She willed herself to calm down as she climbed the four shallow steps up to the white wraparound porch. But it was no use, really. This was too good to be true.
Abigail knocked on the door, already slightly ajar.
No answer.
Was this the doorbell? She turned the wind-up key in the door, and it set off a jangling ring inside.
She waited, the breeze on the back of her neck giving her shivers. The good kind.
She knocked again.
Still nothing.
Abigail pushed the door open.
It felt deliciously like breaking and entering, but it wasn’t, not really. She had Eliza to thank for it.
She was in a tiny foyer, with large sunny rooms opening up to either side. Directly in front of her a set of steep stairs went up, the fabric runner deep red and worn with use. To her left was what looked like a small dining room, in it a heavy dark table decorated with a silver teapot and dark blue napkins dotted with yellow flowers. Paintings of the local landscape hung in wooden frames.
To her right appeared to be a parlor, a real, old-fashioned parlor. A huge bay window looked onto that next-door cottage. Abigail stepped into the room. An antique sofa, a somewhat worse-for-wear grand piano, a redbrick fireplace, a flat-screen TV. Old and new, it all went together, giving the room a feeling of home and continuity. Books were everywhere: on shelves that looked built in, stacked on end tables, piled on the rocking chair in the corner. A huge yellow cat slumbered in an overstuffed wingback chair in a ray of sunlight and barely opened his eyes to look at her.
Heaven.
A slam and footsteps from behind her. Abigail stifled a scream and turned.
The cowboy. Looking furious.
“What the
hell
are you doing in my house?”
Knitters don’t give away stash easily. If you are offered something, be it wool, angora or alpaca, take it. That knitter knows you’ll need it someday. (This, of course, doesn’t apply to acrylic. Run from acrylic.)
—
E.C
.
T
his is
your
house?”
“You mind telling me exactly who you are?”
“Abigail Durant. The new part owner. And you are…?”
Abigail hoped against hope that he would say he was her new ranch-hand or neighbor or something, anything, but she already knew by his attitude what he was going to say.
“I’m Cade MacArthur, the
only
owner. Seems like we have a few things to settle, and quick.”
Abigail turned her head at the sound of a car spitting rocks up the driveway. This was either going to be the lawyer who told her to meet him here for the reading of the will, or this was Cade’s backup. She hoped it was the former.
“For the love of…Who’s that?” he said, whipping his hat off his head and slapping it down on a sideboard. Something that sounded like china rattled inside.
“Didn’t you get the letter? About the reading of the will?”
“I know it wasn’t today.”
“It’s the sixteenth.”
“Damn.”
At the knock, Cade opened the door to a small, pale man in a suit who smiled at them both. “Afternoon, Cade. And you must be Ms. Durant, nice to meet you. John Thompson, at your service. Through here? Won’t take a minute. I’m not fussy about these things.”
He walked past them and into the next room, which turned out to be the kitchen. A blend, again, of new and old—a stove that had probably been installed back when the new-fangled gas ones first came out sat next to a gleaming black refrigerator. Well-loved-looking pots and pans shone from an overhead rack. A silver-and-red Formica table stood in one corner under a farming calendar advertising some sort of grain.
The smiling lawyer pulled up a chair at the table and gestured for them to join him. He took out a collection of paper and gave them each a stack. Abigail sat next to him.
“We can do this the old-fashioned way, with me reading it to you verbatim, or I can go over it broadly, and we’ll read the fine print later,” he said.
Cade, standing next to the stove, said, “Yeah, that. Do it fast.”
“Eliza Carpenter died two weeks ago today. She asked me to…” He stopped when Abigail held up her hand.
“Hang on a sec, if you don’t mind. The funeral? Where were you?” Abigail asked Cade. He hadn’t been there, she was sure of it. She would have remembered him. Even through that pain, she would have noticed him, would have remembered his eyes or noticed the breadth of his shoulders.
“I couldn’t go. I had to run this place.”
“You couldn’t take a day off to go to your great-aunt’s funeral?”
“Nope.”
“Wow. I bet she would have liked it if you’d been there.”
“She was dead. I don’t think she noticed.”
“I’m sure other people did.”
“I don’t care about other people. I care about this place. And I don’t owe a stranger any explanation, that’s for damn sure.”
“Got it,” said Abigail. Okay, he was going to keep on being awful. She turned her back to Cade. “Mr. Thompson, I’m sorry. Please go on.”
“Yes, of course.” The lawyer seemed to be fiddling with something on the table that didn’t exist, his fingers twitching. Under any other circumstances, Abigail would have offered him something, a soda, some coffee. But Cade wasn’t offering, and she could only watch.
And wait.
The only thing the lawyer had told her on the phone last week was that she had a place to live. She came here knowing nothing else. Now she wasn’t even sure of that.
The suspense was killing her. She ground her nails into her palm.
“Well, all right. So, going over it in the broadest of terms…” The lawyer flipped some papers, frowned, found the one he was looking for. “Eliza wanted you to have the cottage, Abigail, and the land it stands on, as well as everything stored inside it. Cade receives the house and the land it stands on with all belongings found inside, as well as all land, excluding the land upon which the cottage stands.”
“Wow,” Abigail breathed.
Cade’s mouth opened, then closed. It looked like he couldn’t even talk—he turned to face the stove, and the sound of his breath hissing through his teeth made Abigail’s palms sweat.
Great. Now she had to deal with him.
“Look, Mr. MacArthur, let’s talk about it.”
“The cottage,” he said through gritted teeth, back still turned, “is completely uninhabitable.”
“What?”
“Crazy old broad filled it with crap. And I mean
crammed.
Ceilings to floors, out to all walls. It was her dumping ground for years.”
“Well, you see,” started the lawyer, but Cade cut him off again.
“No one could live there. And aren’t we forgetting the most important thing?” He turned around, quickly, the muscles under his denim shirt straining as he pushed against the stove.
“I live here. On this land.” His eyes sparked at Abigail, and if looks could kill, she’d need paramedics in another minute.
He repeated, “I live here. This is my home. I can’t believe she did this. God
damn
her. She always thought she knew what was right for me. Only I don’t get this. I take care of her ranch, I save it, so she can leave and move south, where she meets scammers and con artists.” He shot a look at Abigail and went on, “I don’t even buy her out, so she can feel like she still has a home even though she never
comes
home, and this is what I get?”
Abigail opened her mouth, but he held up a hand.
“Don’t. I turned this ranch around. It was going downhill, bleeding money. She would have lost it all. Now it’s one of the most respected in the valley. This is my place, my home. And you’re just…”
“I don’t want your house, Mr. MacArthur.”
“Like hell. You want it all. I’ll fight this.”
“Look, you don’t know me, but I’m not the kind of person who takes pleasure in making someone else miserable. This morning when I woke up, I owned no property. I’ll be more than happy with the cottage.”
Cade pulled up a chair and sat, suddenly too close to Abigail. She smelled hay and sunshine and something rougher. He placed his hand, weather worn and huge, on the table next to hers.
Through his teeth he said, “It’s not your cottage.” He turned to the lawyer and stabbed a finger at the papers. “John, how real is this?”
“It is all in writing, Cade. Legally witnessed, notarized. I don’t think you can fight it. That’s my friendly opinion, but we can go over it in detail anytime.”
“This is the stupidest crap that crazy old lady ever did.”
Abigail’s heartbeat quickened. “Don’t you
dare
! She was the closest friend I ever had. Say what you like about me, but don’t ever talk like that about her. I
loved
her.”
“And I didn’t? Is that what you’re implying?”
“This is how you talk about someone you love?”
Cade turned and looked at her, so close that she felt his breath on her cheek.
Her own breath stopped for a moment.
She stood. “This has all been a lot for right now. Hasn’t it?” She filled her lungs to prove to herself she still could. “Mr. Thompson, is there anything more? Anything else we should know?”
“There are inheritance taxes and some forms I need, but they can wait…”
“Besides those.”
“No.”
“I see.”
Abigail felt like running to her truck and sitting in it for a minute to find some of the excitement and daring that had gotten her here today, but she couldn’t. She’d stick this out. Even if this man made her hands shake.
“So.” She turned to face the cowboy. “May I get the keys to the cottage? I’ll need to fix myself a place to sleep tonight.” She didn’t feel half as brave as she hoped she sounded.
The lawyer, helpful again, for which Abigail was grateful, offered, “There are two bedrooms upstairs. You could have your pick and start work on the cottage tomorrow.”
“She could
what?
This is my house! Would you mind very much staying the hell out of my business, Thompson? In fact, you can leave right now.”
The lawyer’s face fell, and he gathered his paperwork. “Thought I was helping. I guess I’ll get out of your way.”
Abigail walked the lawyer to the door. As she did, Cade opened a drawer that sounded like it had cutlery in it and slammed it so hard the pans rattled on their hooks. Abigail jumped.
She kept her voice low as she spoke to the lawyer. “You’ve been very helpful. I didn’t expect it to be like this, and I’m not quite sure what to do now, but I’ll keep you posted.”
“You do that,” Thompson said, and he smiled at her, a small man with a big, sweet grin. “If you have any questions, or if you need someone to show you around town, well, you know, I’m usually not busy in the evenings, and there are a couple of really good restaurants in town that I’d be happy to show you.”
“Thanks,” Abigail said, shaking his hand. “I’ll keep that in mind, but I really think I’ll be staying close to home for a while so I can get settled.”
From behind her in the kitchen, she heard a roar.
“This is not your home!” Cade yelled, and she heard another door slam farther away.
Abigail closed the front door behind her and leaned against it. She shuddered, thinking about going back in that kitchen. She took a deep breath. This was safe. That awful cowboy was just mad. Angry. That was natural, right? This was so much more than she had bargained for. But she had needed to escape San Diego, and she needed a home.
Somehow this was going to work out, wasn’t it? Didn’t it have to? Eliza meant her to be here. When Abigail fled San Diego (it felt like so much longer ago than just this morning), she only packed what she could fit in the truck. She took her computer, a hard-copy draft of her latest book scribbled with red marks, her clothes, and her best fiber: the alpaca and cashmere, of course. She’d given away the rest, offloading some of her stash of yarn, most of her books, and all her furniture. A new start. She had a little money in the bank and a truck that apparently wasn’t worth anything to a rancher. It was all she had, really.
It wasn’t much. And she didn’t know how it would fit here. But she deserved a new start.
When you cast on, don’t count your stitches more than twice. If the numbers don’t match, hope for the one you want, and knit across. If you still have to add or take away a few stitches, do it then. Don’t fuss so much.
—
E.C.
C
ade had heard of people being too mad to see straight, but he had always thought, up until now, that it was just a saying. It didn’t really happen.
But walking out the back door, he actually couldn’t see for a moment.
Blind with rage. It wasn’t just a cliché.
He stumbled over his own boot on the way to the barn, didn’t see the dirt clod in his way. Couldn’t see it.
How could Aunt Eliza have done this to him?
The woman, who he would have sworn didn’t have an ounce of guile in her anywhere, had cried over her knitting needles and asked him to leave it all in her name.
Don’t buy the house, Cade,
she’d pleaded with him, tears pooling in her huge, blue eyes.
Let the house and the cottage and the land stay in my name, so even when I’m five hundred miles south of here, I’ll know my home is still my home. When I die, it’ll all come right.
It’s all coming right, he thought. Right out the window.
Give the cottage away? To a stranger? Who did that? Who broke up a piece of land like that?
Who did that to their family?