Lyla didn’t like cats. Ellen never understood why—they’d always had barn cats on the farm. Her daughter tolerated them. Bobby, on the other hand, adored all animals, especially strays. He’d named the black-and-white cat he’d found Cleo.
But Cleo had become a problem. She’d shown up a month ago and started sleeping in the barn loft. Fierce and territorial, she hissed at their two longtime barn cats, Lilo and Stitch—neutered orange tabbies who now kept their distance from the stray. Still, every morning, Bobby climbed to the loft with food and water. Ellen suspected Cleo might be pregnant, but the cat wouldn’t let her get close enough to find out. Bobby was the only human she tolerated.
Then, during the storm last weekend, Cleo had vanished. Bobby had searched for her every morning since. No matter how often Ellen told him Cleo could take care of herself, his worry only deepened.
Ellen picked up one of the radios that was charging in the small barn office. She was strict about the kids taking radios with themwhen they left the house. Their property was too large and there were too many potential hazards without a way to reach out, even if they were only going to visit Uncle Travis or a neighbor.
“Bobby, this is Mom. Where are you? Over.”
She waited. A second later Bobby came on. “Walking along Whisper Creek. Cleo needs food and water and there are a lot of baby rabbits out here. Over.”
She wanted to throttle her son. “Robert Matthew McKenna, you stay away from that creek. It’s going to flood, and it won’t take much more rain to send it over the top. Over.”
He waited a bit too long for Ellen to be comfortable, then came back, “Mom, I’m worried about her. I can’t let her get caught in the storm. Over.”
“And I can’t letyouget caught in the storm. One hour, and do not go within twenty feet of the creek, understood? Over.”
One. Two. Three. “Understood. Over.” Bobby’s voice sounded defeated.
Lyla shook her head. “That darn cat has been nothing but problems. And she’s going to have kittens, you know it, and I’ll bet you let Bobby keep them all.”
“Yes, she probably is, and no, he can’t keep them all.”
Lyla rolled her eyes again and went back to her chores.
Ellen went over to Sir Lancelot’s stall to prep him for the morning ride. She did have a soft spot for her youngest. After three relatively easy births, Bobby’s arrival had been traumatic. Though only three weeks early and technically full term, labor was difficult—they rushed Ellen in for an emergency C-section when they couldn’t detect a heartbeat. They got him out, but she was hemorrhaging so bad that they had to remove her uterus. After that harrowing experience, Bobby had been a complete joy in their lives.
Jake was so much like his father—responsible, steadfast, loyal. Avery, though Ellen hesitated to admit it, reminded her of herselfas a teenager: book smart, boy crazy, and constantly testing limits. Lyla, like Jake, was dependable and had more common sense than any kid Ellen knew, though she was often too blunt. As Penny said, Lyla “didn’t suffer fools.” Ellen disliked the phrase “old soul,” but if it fit anyone, it was her thirteen-year-old daughter.
And then there was Bobby. Kind, sweet, generous—he radiated love. He’d been their ray of sunshine after John’s sudden death. So it certainly didn’t surprise Ellen that he was out looking for a stray cat.
John would have done the same thing.
Ellen mounted Sir Lancelot, a beautiful gelding more than twenty years old, and headed across the field toward the Coulters’ property.
Sir Lancelot had been born to one of John’s horses the day John proposed to her—a memorable event made even more memorable when John had to rush home from their picnic and help his brother, Travis, with the delivery because the mare was struggling.
John had wanted to be a vet, and she’d studied to be a nurse. They shared one class their freshman year and it had been love at first sight.
Unfortunately, John dropped out halfway through his sophomore year because his dad died and John needed to take over the farm. Travis was only sixteen at the time, and John’s mother wasn’t well. Neither of John’s uncles wanted to take over the farm—they’d both moved out of the area—so that left John and his grandfather.
Ellen would have dropped out with him, but John told her she should finish school. She graduated a year early, and they married a month later at the small church four generations of McKennas had been married in.
Until Jake was born, she worked as a nurse, and then to keep her license current she worked part-time at the hospital in Gainesville. But after Bobby’s difficult birth and John’s plans to expand the farm, she realized that she had grown to love Whisper CreekRanch as much as the McKenna family. She obtained her Certified Nurse Midwife license and took on two or three clients a year. She didn’t charge much, but it was a needed service, especially in rural Texas. Her OB—a doctor she had both worked for and who had delivered all four of her children—asked her to check on some of his patients from time to time. Last week in the middle of the storm Jake had driven her up to the Sutton house in the hills above Rock Creek. Margery thought she was having contractions. She wasn’t, but she was thirty-two weeks pregnant with her first child and worried about every twitch and turn. Plus, her last appointment revealed slightly elevated blood pressure, so they were monitoring her closely. Margery was young, her husband was deployed overseas, and her sister who moved in to help was just nineteen. Anyone in the same situation would be a bit nervous.
Ellen had Sir Lancelot walking at a brisk pace, not quite a full trot. The ground was too wet, and gopher holes were near impossible to see in the mud. The air was thick with humidity, the warm wind pushing at her back.
The Coulters lived directly west. They had four hundred acres and had sold most of their two hundred head of cattle years ago, keeping two championship bulls they leased for breeding, which could be very lucrative. Before John’s death, he had been talking to the older couple about buying out their land, much as he’d done with the Mendoza property to the northeast, which they’d purchased the year before. But the Coulters hadn’t been ready, and they assured Ellen they wouldn’t sell to anyone else, which had given her hope.
Grow or die.
When John took over Whisper Creek Ranch, they had just shy of eight hundred acres. Now, with the Mendoza property, they were sitting on fourteen hundred acres. John’s plan had been to buy the bulk of the Coulter Ranch and the bulk of the Baldwin property, which would put them to just over three thousand acres.
But now? Baldwin had sold to Verdacorp, and if what Tom Garza said about the Coulters was true, she wouldn’t get that land, either.
There were some smaller farms north of their property that Ellen had approached who hadn’t yet sold to Verdacorp, but the Robinson venture had already bought most of the farms both south and east of her property line. Ellen suspected that now they would move north and attempt to surround her. Verdacorp was willing to pay over market value and allow the landowners to retain five acres for themselves. If they bought up those farms, Ellen would be an island in the middle with no option to expand.
It took Ellen ten minutes to cover the near mile to the Coulters’ house. She could have called, but felt it was better to talk to George and Millie face-to-face. They had been close to John’s parents, and their oldest daughter had graduated high school with John’s brother, Travis.
