Page 17 of The Cowboy Who Came Home

Surely Alex had been gone for five minutes by now, but Edith distracted herself from a full-blown panic attack by looking up the weather report. It came as no surprise to see the bright red banner across the top of the screen, urging people to get to higher ground and then stay indoors.

Scrolling messages went by for all the counties and affected areas, but Edith didn’t need to know that. She wanted to know when this would end. “Mid-morning,” she murmured to herself. “By ten-thirty, there’s only a ten percent chance of rain.”

She wasn’t sure she believed that, because weather seemed to do whatever it wanted, and meteorologists were simply paid estimators. But they could see storm systems from space now, and track how fast they moved, and as her eyes flicked up to the top of her screen to see the time, she told herself, “Okay, six more hours.”

Alex still wasn’t back, and Edith pressed the power button on her phone and left it on the bale of hay. “Alex!” she yelled. She wasn’t going to sit here for another second. Getting down the ladder was considerably harder than going up it, but she managed without falling. She did have a couple of splinters she’d have to deal with when she had a moment, and she figured she’d have plenty—once she found Alex and made sure he was here, in this dry barn with her.

She moved over to the door and opened it. “Alex!” she shouted into the storm. “Alex, where are you?”

He didn’t answer, and Edith hesitated as she took in the wall of rain. She told herself she’d done much harder things than walk in the rain, and that got her to take the first step. Water soaked her in the first moment, and she pressed on toward the corner of the barn so she could go around it.

About halfway to the stable, she heard Alex hollering. Edith broke into a run, and she burst into the stable, not caring that the door slammed into the wall behind it. She scanned the stalls in front of her, her pulse bouncing through her veins like a night club beat.

She found Alex almost at the end, the last horse in the place rearing up in front of him. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, rushing forward. “Frodo, down. Calm down. Down.” Without hesitation, she took the rope from Alex and added, “Go on. Back up.”

He knew to be gentler with Frodo, but the horse really only responded well to Edith when under stress. He huffed and nickered as he settled onto his front hooves. “Come on, now,” she said. “You don’t want to be trapped in here if this place starts to fill with water. It’s a few steps. Come on.”

None of the horses here loved to swim or anything, but they could handle rain. “It’s just like a little bath,” she told Frodo as she led him down the aisle to the open gate. “It’s not even that cold.”

Edith went out into the rain first, getting soaked all over again, and she reached up and unlooped the rope from around Frodo’s neck. “Go on. I’m sure everyone else is out there waiting for you.”

Frodo kept his big horsey head by hers, then lifted it and looked out toward the ranch.

“Go on,” she said again, starting to feel more like the fourteen-year-old version of herself. The one who’d deliberately leave the house in a massive thunderstorm, spread her arms wide, and laugh as she spun in a circle. She’d once looked up into the heavens during a rainstorm like this one, and she’d seen every individual drop as it fell to the earth.

That rain moment had cleansed her, and as Frodo trotted away from the stables, Edith found a smile on her face. She took a breath and looked up into the dark sky. The lights from the ranch could only reach so high, and she saw every drop as it emerged out of the darkness and got illuminated.

She laughed, feeling freer than she had in a while, and she wasn’t even sure why. It was springtime in Texas, her favorite season, and as they moved into summer, Edith should be riding a high.

But she knew what came at the end of the summer, and that made it hard to enjoy the long, sunshine-filled days, even if she got to ride horses and write about horses most days.

“What in the world are you doin’?” Alex reached out and gripped her arm, and Edith realized she’d lifted them up, the same way she had as a girl.

“Spinning,” she said.

“Let’s get back to the barn.” Alex kept a good grip on her hand on the way back, but Edith felt calmer than ever. All four dogs waited for them right at the top of the ladder, while Gumbo meowed from the highest hay bale.

“Back up, you hounds,” she told them, but they barely made any room for her. She managed to get up, and she pulled Bandit back so Alex had room to put his feet in the loft. With both of them finally at the goal, Edith paused.

“Can we say a prayer?” she whispered, the rain on the roof the perfect background music.

“I wish you would.” Alex sighed and gave her a weary smile. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat, something he almost always did. He bowed his head and closed his eyes, and Edith did the same.

As she dripped in the hay loft, with Alex’s hand in hers, she took several long moments to simply listen to the rain. The pitter-patter of it, along with the earthy scent of hay and wet dog, reminded her of the good place she had to live. Her family, who loved her and whom she loved.

And somehow, Finn Ackerman entered her mind.

“Lord,” she whispered. “We thank Thee for this amazing place to live. Both Alex and I love Texas, and we have worked real hard to try to take care of this ranch, these animals You’ve blessed us with, and each other. We know there are a lot of people who are probably going to be affected by the rain here in the Texas Panhandle, and we’re not asking for a miracle. We’re simply asking that whatever damage does happen, that it won’t be more than we can handle.”

“Amen,” Alex whispered, because they’d always done that in their family when one of them prayed for something the other agreed with mightily.

Edith found she didn’t have anything else to say—at least not out loud. She wanted to plead for Finn and his family ranch too, but she believed God heard the unuttered prayers inside a person’s heart, so she kept the words there, opened her eyes, and said, “Amen,” too.

Alex stepped away from her and wiped his hands down his face. “Could you hear me calling?”

“No,” she said. “But you didn’t come back in five minutes, and I just felt like…something was up.”

He nodded and sat down on the same hay bale she’d been on earlier. She joined him and leaned her head against his bicep. “Daddy used to pray for that,” he said quietly. “That we wouldn’t be given any challenges we couldn’t handle.”

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