Page 38 of Married With Lies

10

SADIE

This is one of those days when I don’t notice my own exhaustion until I nearly face plant into a bowl of Peggy’s borscht.

“It’s not shampoo,” scolds Peggy as she rescues my hair from dropping into the soup. One of her six cats tiptoes across the small kitchen table and pauses to sniff the edge of my bowl. Peggy pulls the cat into her arms and settles into the rustic wooden chair opposite me. “You won’t be moving until you’ve finished that soup, missy. I know darn well you skipped lunch.”

I tuck more errant strands of hair behind my ears in case they’re tempted to take a borscht bath. “In my defense, the time was well spent. Wait until the puppies see their new fenced in playground.”

Peggy holds her purring cat with one hand and passes a small ceramic bowl with the other. “Add some dill. And keep that spoon moving. I mean it when I say you won’t be leaving this table until you’ve swallowed every bite.”

I know better than to argue with Peggy. She may be more than triple my age but her sharp eyes miss nothing and her even sharper tongue is a force to be reckoned with. I wouldn’t have it any other way. My debt to Peggy can never be repaid. She’s a caretaker to everyone at the ranch, including me. Especially me.

When I bought this property using the bulk of the inheritance left by my mother, I was high on idealism and short on experience. I’d spent my life in the cloistered confines of the wealthy Wingate universe. I knew all about salad forks and designer labels but my practical skills, to put it mildly, were lacking.

As if sent by an angel, along came a tiny white-haired woman in a colorful crocheted granny square cardigan to set me straight. The locals in Sleepy Rock considered Peggy as something of a lovable eccentric with a mysterious background. No one knew how many years she’d lived in the tiny log cabin at the end of a lonely dirty road but everyone agreed it was a long time.

Peggy’s energy seemed to have no limits. She was offended when asked if she should be doing hard labor such as digging a garden or carrying around a sixty pound German Shepherd suffering from a mangled paw.

“The first lesson you need to learn is that I’m unbreakable,” she’d said and then kept pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt and rocks.

I was tickled when Peggy accepted my offer to move into the cozy three room apartment attached to the main ranch house. It’s my earnest hope that she never ever leaves.

Peggy lived here for a year before finally sharing her personal history. She was born and raised in a tiny Massachusetts coastal town. She thought she’d spend her life in that seaside haven until a severe storm overturned her father’s fishing boat. She lost him that day and she lost her fiancé too. After that she didn’t want to look at the ocean anymore. Out here in the southwestern heart of Colorado, she doesn’t need to.

Peggy murmurs soft words to her cat while I obediently decorate my borscht with sprigs of fresh dill. Beneath the table, another of Peggy’s cats rubs against my ankles and purrs. A burning candle adds the scent of vanilla. The scene couldn’t be cozier. As I swallow a mouthful of the fragrant soup made from beets, cabbage and potatoes, a deep sense of satisfaction joins the spreading warmth in my belly.

The day had been a busy one. First thing this morning I picked up three dogs who were on the euthanasia list at the county animal shelter. After getting the newcomers accustomed to their new individual kennels in The Doghouse, I conducted the first of my daily rounds to check the status of every animal on the ranch. Then came hours of dirty work with the help of Peggy and some volunteers as we thoroughly cleaned out all the kennels and the stable. After that a group of local teens showed up to help install the fence for the new puppy playground.

Now that the sun has gone down, all that fresh air and hard labor has officially caught up to me. My muscles are aching and my eyes are threatening to squeeze shut. Yet another one of Peggy’s cats lands on the table and sniffs at my bowl. Her twitching nose seems to complain that if I’m not going to devour my soup faster then she’ll be happy to pick up the slack.

Peggy hands me a slice of freshly baked crusty bread. I grab for it like a five-year-old snatching a cookie.

“If heaven had a taste,” I say with my mouth full, “this would be it.”

Peggy’s hawk eyes watch every mouthful I take until my bowl is officially empty. “Now you go and take yourself to bed. I have to feed the sourdough and prepare biscuit dough for tomorrow. There will be breakfast waiting here. Be sure to eat it because I don’t always have time to chase you down.”

I plant a kiss on her weathered cheek and wrap my arms around her slim body whether she wants me to or not. “Thank you for feeding me.”

She sniffs but the corners of her mouth twitch. “Get out of my kitchen and get some sleep before you collapse.”

“I won’t collapse.”

“You’d better not. What good would that do anyone? And no staying up to read all hours of the night.”

Technically, I can read in my bed until dawn breaks if I want to. Yet Peggy’s brand of stern semi-mothering never fails to delight me. I wonder if I’d feel differently had I not lost my own mother so young.

“On my honor,” I say and snatch another slice of bread, which I devour in two bites.

The interior door that connects Peggy’s apartment to the rest of the house is often open. The house is far larger than what I need. Two of the bedrooms are permanently set up for guests. Sometimes a volunteer or two will work late and I’ll urge them to spend the night, especially if the weather is bad. But it’s Gus who crashes here most often. She has her own house key and the largest guest bedroom is decorated with a Halloween theme because my BFF is a year round pumpkin spice spooky season kind of girl.

While I have every intention of retiring to my own bedroom rather than incur Peggy’s wrath, first I take a final peek at the hospital wing of the house where we house the animals who are too temporarily fragile to live in the other buildings. Newborn litters or medical cases or new guests who are simply too fearful to be mixed with the others just yet. Naturally, not every animal can be accommodated in the hospital wing. A horse, for example, wouldn’t fit very well in a den-sized space.

Tonight the only inhabitants are two newly spayed cats and a four-week-old litter of heeler pups with their mama, who was picked up as a stray by the county shelter the day before she gave birth. They’ve all been tended to and tucked in already. When I slide the switch up to bathe the room in a dim light, the mama heeler raises a tired head and blinks at me. Her puppies are all nestled cheek by jowl in a sleeping pile beside her.

Jasper, one of our most dedicated high school volunteers, won the informal drawing for naming rights when they were born. The fact that Jasper was trying to memorize the periodic tables at the time is the reason we now have Copper, Zinc, Gold and Silver with mama Nickel. Nickel’s tail thumps once when I reach into the pen to scratch behind her ears.

“Good night, sweet lady,” I whisper. Nickel breathes out a contented sigh, laying her head down once more. I leave the room with my heart full.

---