Page 9 of His Eighth Ride

Gerty didn’t say those words, but Opal heard them nonetheless. She’d offered to pay rent for the room she lived in here at the farmhouse, but Mike and Gerty didn’t need the money. She helped with the small, simple farm chores, like feeding the barn cats and the chickens. She could muck out a stall—well, she could before the accident where she’d been kicked by a horse.

She’d mowed the lawn during the summer and tended to Gerty’s neglected flowerbed. This year, she had plans to try her black thumb at a vegetable garden, because Gerty had a great location for it and had never used it.

“Can I ask for help?” Opal asked.

“I’m sure Carrie or Molly would love to help you plan the Christmas party.” Gerty lifted her mug to her mouth and drained the last of her coffee.

“It’s just for our branch of Hammonds, though, right?” Opal asked. “Easton and Allison are coming. My parents. Yours and your grandparents. Molly and Hunter aren’t coming. Are they?”

“No,” Gerty said. “You’re right. Just us.”

Opal started the guest list in her head. “And Tag?”

“Yes,” Gerty said.

“So I could ask him to be on the Christmas party planning committee.”

Gerty gave her a wary look, filled with so many words without her actually saying anything. “If I get the horses I want today, I’ll probably have to hire someone else. Fill another of those cabins out there.”

Opal’s eyebrows went up this time. “And you’re okay with that?”

Gerty grinned and lifted one bony shoulder. “Mike broke the ice with Tag. I think I could hire someone myself this time, yeah.”

“How many horses are you going to get?”

“There’s this horse rescue ranch up in Wyoming,” she said. “One of the Youngs owns it; I found out about it through Jane, because she knows the guys from Country Quad, and I guess it’s one of their sons who owns it. Bryce? Anyway, I’m talking to him today. He’s got ‘some horses’ that he’d like to relocate.” She made air quotes around “some horses,” indicating she didn’t even know how many.

“I can house five more here with my current arrangements,” Gerty said. “But even one or two would be more than Tag and I can handle. We’re full-up as it is.”

“Right,” Opal said. She knew Gerty and Tag both worked full-time on the farm, and there always seemed to be more to do. “Who are you thinking of hiring?”

“I don’t know,” Gerty said thoughtfully. “I’m going to talk to my uncle Matt. He always knows of good men who need jobs.”

“True,” Opal said, and she realized that she used to be connected like that too. That people used to look to her for answers. That she used to be respected and revered and capable of more than sitting on the couch and watching a baby play or planning family Christmas parties.

She wallowed there for a moment, and then she let God wash those debilitating thoughts away. I led you here, Opal. You belong here.

Drawing in a deep breath, Opal smiled at Gerty, then looked over to where West sat in the middle of a pile of colored blocks, trying to get them to stick together. “Go get your horse work done. We’re fine here. I’ve already started the guest list in my head, and I can get a meal put together pretty easily. Then it’s just activities, and we’ve always loved caroling.”

She smiled again, starting to feel like perhaps she did have a use here. Gerty got up and put her coat on, then her gloves, hat and scarf. She put a cowgirl hat over that and turned back at the kitchen exit. “Thank you, Opal. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Oh, you’d just take him with you,” Opal said with a wave of her hand. “I saw you do that when he was a tiny baby.”

“Yeah, but he’d break my back now.” Gerty grinned at the two of them, then swept over to West and showered him in kisses as he giggled.

“Mama, Mama, Mama,” he said as she put him down.

“Mama loves you,” she said. “I’ll be back real soon.” Then she left the farmhouse, left Opal there with West, left her praying that God would illuminate the next step she needed to take in her life.

four

Tag ran his church belt through the loops and buckled it, pulling it right to the middle of his body. He owned slacks, but he wasn’t sure a Friday night at The Golden Coop, even if he’d somehow dipped deep in the well of his memory and remembered Opal’s love of chicken fingers, warranted church clothes.

So he wore blue jeans and this fancy brown belt with the shiniest buckle he owned. He’d never ridden in the rodeo or anything, so it wasn’t the size of a dinner plate, but his granddaddy had given this family crest buckle to his father, who’d given it to him.

He turned away from the bed and looked into his closet. The cabin didn’t have anything he could walk into, but he had plenty of room for the things he had to hang. As someone who went to work everyday, he didn’t need a ton of button-up shirts or polos. He usually wore T-shirts and jeans, boots and hats, and sunscreen. Around the house, he wore more of the same, with a pair of basketball shorts or a baggy pair of sweatpants thrown in.

He did have a couple of white shirts he kept bleached for the Sabbath, and he had several nicer shirts in plaid, plain colors, and stripes he could choose from for purposes such as this. “What to pick, what to pick,” he muttered.

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