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Sure enough, Beth found TJ jumping on his bed, one fist curled around one of his commanders and the other slapping the wall with every leap upward. “Teej,” she said, trying to be patient and kind. “We’re going to be late. You’ll have to eat your toast in the car as it is.”
She opened the top dresser drawer as she kept talking. “Stop jumping on the bed and come put on some pants.”
“Okay, Momma.” He jumped down, the resulting crash making Beth think he’d broken right through the floor. He hadn’t, of course, and in fact, he wasn’t hurt at all.
It took a few minutes to get him dressed as he barely worked with her. Sometimes he had to suddenly go to the bathroom right in the middle of getting dressed, and sometimes she couldn’t find both of his shoes. Today, thankfully, he stood there and let her pull his shirt over his head while he put his arms in.
He stepped into the jeans, and both of his shoes sat by the door. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get your backpack and your toast and go.” She detoured into the master bedroom to grab a jacket and a pair of shoes, and she met TJ in the kitchen.
The toasted bread wasn’t very warm, so she stuck it in the microwave for ten seconds, buttered it, and sprinkled a very little bit of the sugar mixture on it. “Here you go.”
The backpack was almost as big as TJ, but he hardly carried anything in it. They got in her SUV, and if she could hit all the right lights, she’d get her son to school on time.
He reached for the volume button on the radio and said, “Momma, can you put on that Chicken Little singalong?”
“Yep,” she said, tapping a couple of things on the screen to get the soundtrack to come up. It did, and TJ sang along merrily during the drive to school. She pulled into the circle drive out front and turned down the music. “Go on, baby. See you after school.”
He opened the door and spilled down to the ground as she called, “Love you.”
“Love you too!” He slammed the door and ran toward the building. Beth watched him go, her heart expanding with every moment that passed. She couldn’t sit in front of the elementary school all day, though, so she sighed and got back on the road back to Dixon Dreams.
“Dixon Dreams,” she said aloud. They needed to rename the place if Trey was going to think of it as his. He’d been right that they hadn’t named it.
Alone in the car, Beth couldn’t help that her mind lingered on all the things he’d said to her last night. “Of course he’s on my list,” she said, but even she wondered if that were true.
She’d been working for the farm and TJ for almost three years now. She’d been ignoring her family. Unintentionally, but the result was the same. Now that she’d started to focus on them, she’d started ignoring Trey.
Tears gathered in her eyes. “I don’t know how to do it all,” she said. Something had to give, didn’t it? There were only so many hours in the day. Only so much energy she could expend. Only so much she could manage before the load was too heavy for her to carry.
“Lord,” she whispered. “Have I been using Trey Chappell for his money and friendship?”
He did pay for the cowboys that now worked her ranch, and they did do absolutely amazing work. She turned into her driveway, the edges of the gravel crisp and perfect. The fences were straight and painted a bright white. The horses in the pasture seemed happy enough, and everywhere she looked, she found a well-functioning ranch.
She parked out front and got out, stalling in her sandals and pajamas right there in the driveway. Trey hadn’t come back to the house last night, which meant he’d slept at Bluegrass Ranch.
He’d never done that before, and Beth wondered if things between them were really that bad. “Probably,” she muttered. She’d just missed how bad it was, because she was trying so hard to be there for Sally, as Mick was in New Jersey this week, chasing down another new lead on a job. He’d interviewed for it over the phone, and they wanted him to come tour the facility and do another round of talking.
Beth enjoyed spending time with Sally and Kait, because then she didn’t feel so alone. Trey had helped with that too, of course, and as she went up the steps to the front porch, the guilt filled her from top to bottom.
Her Christmas pillows still sat on the swing on the front porch, and she detoured toward them. She picked them up and took them inside. The storage closet in the corner held most of her seasonal decorations, and she took out her winter and Valentine’s Day pillows and replaced them with the holiday ones she’d brought in.
She sealed the bag and went back outside. She fluffed everything and set out a blue and white pillow with a bright yellow scarf across the front of it. Above the scarf, in the same wavy, curved letters that indicated movement, it readlet it snow.
It had snowed a few inches last week, and because the temperatures didn’t get above freezing, most of it still lay on the ground. She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and sighed as she sat on the swing.
She pushed herself with her toe to get herself to start to sway back and forth, deciding to take another few minutes to figure out what to do. Before she could come to a course of action, Marc came around the corner of the house with Walter.
“…we find her, we’ll tell her. Simple as that.”
“It’s not going to be simple,” Walter said.
“Beth deserves the facts,” Marc said.
She stood up, the swing squeaking as she did. “Marc?” she called. How did she have the courage to face him and the potential problem he and Walter needed to tell her about?
“There you are,” Marc said, swinging his attention toward her. “I thought you were going to be in the fields to decide what to rotate this morning.” He went around the porch to get to her.
“I’m having a slow start this morning,” she said.
