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“Oh, my stars!” Grace gasped, pointing to the paper. “Look, Cindy! It’s Rena Burke. She was a cousin to my great-grandpa, Theo Marshall.”
“What?” Cindy read the note and shook her head. “How could this be? How could this pistol go from what appears to be Texas to Holiday to all these other places, then end up in a store in Salem where your dad just happened to find it? What are the odds of that happening?”
“Maybe it’s not odds. Maybe a little divine intervention nudged Dad to go to that store and buy this.” Grace knew it sounded far-fetched, perhaps even whimsical and fantastical, but the thought that one of her long-ago relatives had held this pistol in her hand, not to mention the legendary Annie Oakley, made her take the note more seriously.
She read it again. The last entry was from 1955.
Rexanna Brennan married Roan Bertoletti on September 29, 1955. I’ve shot exotic game worthy of the finest of trophies, but my cowboy’s love has been my biggest prize of all.
Brennan. She wondered if Rexanna Brennan was related to the actress her father adored. If so, it made sense how the woman would have been in possession of the gun.
But what about all the other women who’d owned it in the past? Could the words penned all those years ago hold truth? According to the instructions, all Grace needed to do was hold it in her hand and open her heart to love.
That sounded easy enough. She certainly wasn’t opposed to love, even if she hadn’t found it yet.
While it might seem trivial to believe in such nonsense, a little voice in the back of her mind reminded her she didn’t have anything to lose by trying.
She certainly couldn’t get more alone than she already was unless Cindy suddenly decided to leave her, which she knew wasn’t about to happen. Not when the two of them were closer than sisters.
Grace folded the letter and returned it to the pocket in the case’s lining, lifted the pistol in her hand, and closed her eyes. She remained silent, letting the thoughts roll through her mind.“I open my heart to the possibility of love, to the hope that somewhere out there is a man who’ll love me truly, fiercely, faithfully, and tenderly for the rest of my life, and when he comes along, I’ll be wise enough to realize it’s him.”
Cindy hopped off the couch and made a great show of racing across the room and pressing her ear to the door while Grace returned the pistol to the case, tucking the key inside before she closed the lid.
“What are you doing?” Grace asked as Cindy pretended to be listening for footsteps.
“Eagerly awaiting the approach of true love.” Cindy giggled. “Do you think Mr. Crocker will let your prince ride his white charger up the stairs?”
Grace rolled her eyes and lobbed a pillow at Cindy. “Come away from the door, you loon, and help me pack this box for Jared.”
As the two of them worked to fill a tin with the cookies and pack treats and essentials Jared would appreciate into the box, Grace’s thoughts swirled around the pink pistol and the legend of love it had so unexpectedly brought into her life.
Later, when she settled into bed, she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep, contemplating what it might be like to finally fall in love.
“No,Ma,Idon’tneed you to go with me.”
“But honey, are you sure you should be driving the pickup … like that?”
Levi Gibson tried not to glower as his mother’s gaze drifted from his eyes to his hand, or what was left of it.
As a soldier in Vietnam, one minute he’d been walking through waist-high grass with the rest of the men in his unit; the next, he’d heard a loud whistle followed by a blast that blew him off his feet. He hadn’t paid any mind to his injuries as he’d grabbed a soldier whose leg had been blown off, tossed the man over his shoulder, and run for cover.
He’d left the soldier with other wounded men out of harm’s way, prepared to run back and see if anyone else needed help, when someone tackled him from behind and rolled him on the ground. It wasn’t until the flames had been extinguished that Levi understood his sleeve was on fire, searing the cloth into his skin.
The next thing he remembered was waking up in a medical tent with his left hand and arm bandaged. The worst part of it all was that he’d always been left-handed. Now, with just his thumb and forefinger and a small part of his palm remaining, he was forced to learn to do everything right-handed, and he hated it.
His handwriting looked like he’d failed first-grade penmanship. Grabbing onto things or opening jars proved to be a challenge. He found it nearly impossible to button anything. Thankfully, he mostly wore T-shirts at home and western shirts with snaps when he went into town.
As a fourth-generation farmer, he’d never wanted to leave the rich ground his family farmed in Star, Idaho, a short drive from the state capital of Boise. After raising potatoes for decades, about ten years ago, they’d diversified by putting a third of their ground into sugar beets. That was when his uncle had decided to branch out on his own and moved his family to Pasco, Washington, where he’d started his own potato farm.
Levi had missed his cousins, but he’d worked hard to earn his father’s respect. He’d been just twenty-one when his father had changed the name of their business to Gibson & Son Farms. It had been one of the proudest days of Levi’s life.
Then he’d felt the call of duty and enlisted to help fight in Vietnam. His first tour of duty had been tolerable, but the second had been nothing but one disaster after another. One of his fellow soldiers had carried a Zippo lighter inscribed, “We the unwilling, led by the unqualified to kill the unfortunate, die for the ungrateful.”
He’d come to think every word of it was true. Honestly, Levi was surprised he’d made it home alive, even if he carried scars, both the visible and those unseen, that had lacerated his soul.
War was not for the faint-hearted, that much was certain. The things he’d seen and experienced over there would haunt him for the rest of his life. Of that, he had no doubt.
He’d found it difficult to return home, wounded and broken, and try to fit back into the mold his parents had created for him as their only child and heir to a large farm that turned a good profit most years.
