She nodded. “Don’t be sorry. I told you to help the Pritchards. How are they?”
“They now realize they need a rural living one-oh-one class,” Mateo grumbled. “But I fixed their generator, and helped secure their barn. They have a flooded basement, so we got all the pumps working. Miriam’s over there now helping with their kids and giving advice, I’m sure,” he added with a grin.
“Thank you. They’re such a nice family; I hope they don’t move.”
“I think they’ll stay,” Mateo said. “They seem determined.”
Avery came in droopy eyed, poured herself coffee and added a lot of cream and sugar, then sat down and drank it while dishing up pancakes and sausage and biscuits. “I feel like I was hit by a bus,” she moaned. She sniffed the air. “Is that Grandma’s apple streusel pie?”
“She made it for me,” Bobby said with his mouth full.
“I made it for everyone,” Penny said, dishing Avery up a bowl.
“What happened yesterday?” Ellen asked her daughter. “You never told me about the accident.”
As Avery and Ryan recounted what happened, Ellen wished she hadn’t let Rena and Brock leave. Maybe she should have letTravis shoot them. Rena had intentionally run her daughter off the road and left her trapped in a truck that was filling with water.
She could have died.
“Damn them,” Travis muttered.
Ellen caught Ryan’s eye. She was too emotional to say anything, and he nodded. Maybe he was, too. “We’re sore, but we’re okay,” Avery said. “We walked to Greg Baldwin’s house and borrowed some clothes. Oh!” She put a hand to her mouth. “We broke one of the panes in his back door so we could get in.”
“He won’t mind,” Ellen said, her voice cracking. “I’m just glad you’re both here.” Glad that her family was alive and in one piece.
Lyla got up. “I need to milk the cows.” She kissed Penny. “Thanks for breakfast, Grandma.”
And she was gone, doing her chores as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“I’ll take breakfast up to Margery,” Avery said, making a tray.
“Getting out of cleaning?” Ryan teased.
She smiled flirtatiously and took the food upstairs.
“Let me help you, Ms. Penny,” Ryan said and took the pans from the stove to the sink.
Penny looked at Ellen and smiled. “Good boy Avery found,” she said, plating up leftovers.
Ellen had nothing to say to that. After hearing about what happened last night on the road, she had a lot of feelings—they had both grown up practically overnight. And Penny was right. Ryan was a good young man. But they were still young.
Travis picked up Brock’s phone. “Can I go through this?” he asked Ellen.
“Please do,” she said. “I hope you find something on it other than the contracts, but if that’s it, maybe we can find a way to use those against him. At a minimum, they should prove that he hired someone to steal them.”
Travis sat down with the phone and Ellen and Ryan helpedPenny finish cleaning up from breakfast. Bobby sat at the table, chattering about the kittens, and told Penny what he’d named them and how Uncle Travis had saved them from drowning.
Hearing the story even a second time brought joy into Ellen’s heart. She watched Travis as he continued to go through every photo and document and call on Brock’s phone. He looked almost like his old self, almost like he was before he returned from the Army missing half a leg.
Except older, wiser, smarter. For the first time in a long time, she thought maybe he had turned the corner on his drinking and self-pity. That maybe, he was ready to return fully into the family fold.
Ellen had just started another pot of coffee when she heard a vehicle in the driveway. Travis jumped up first and went out; Ellen followed. They both relaxed when they saw Rick Perez in his sheriff’s Bronco. Behind him was an ambulance.
Ryan ran down the stairs first and gave his dad a hug. Ellen and Travis followed.
“I was going to help Lyla in the barn, if that’s okay, Mrs. McKenna?”
“We never turn down free labor on the ranch,” she said.
