Page 8 of A Christmas Baby for the Cowboy
She just had to trust that this would happen. She had to trust that no matter how strange and otherworldly everything looked, and how much longer it all seemed to take, she was moving in the right direction and would get where she needed to go. Eventually.
In the meantime, she thought about how grateful she was for this truck. When she had decided to move out here, all the way into a middle of nowhere Montana town that none of her friends in Chicago could believe she would consider, she had tried to be as practical as possible. Because there was a lot of sentimentality in moving into her grandfather’s old house. There was nothing but emotion as far as that was concerned.
But if she wanted to really live in that house, and work there, it would require practicality.
Her grandfather had been a blustery, laconic, gruff old man who Ramona had loved to distraction. He had been her mother’s father and Ramona had spent her summers out here with him, riding horses in the mountains and listening to him complain endlessly about how built-up everything was getting, here in a place where they could go days without seeing another person unless they wanted to.
He had done ranch work his whole life and in his old age, with aching bones, he’d settled into part-time work at the feed store in Cowboy Point and a whole lot of storytelling with the other old-timers out in front of the diner that was connected to the General Store. He had never married again once he’d put his beloved Isabella into her grave down in the churchyard along the creek. He’d had his own name carved next to hers, so there could be no doubt about where he was headed.
Ramona’s mother found him impossible, too hardheaded, too set in his ways, too obstinate. She had tried to get him to move out east to be closer to her, but he’d always refused.
He had died when Ramona was in college, and she’d known by then what she’d wanted to do. She’d known it since she was a kid and her grandfather had told her stories about things like water rights in the West, the trouble rural communities had living so far away from everything, and how painful it was to have to make the choice between living the way they wanted to live—wild and free beneath the great big sky—or clustered in somewhere surrounded by other people because that was where things like hospitals were.
Didn’t rightly seem fair, to her grandpa’s way of thinking.
He’d left her his house, which her mother claimed he’d done simply to be spiteful. Because he’d known, Bettina Taylor claimed, that she would obviously have sold it off and freed the family from its Montana fever, and he was an ornery old man who’d written off his only daughter when she’d moved away.
Or, Mom, Ramona had said—more than once, he knew that I loved it there.
Don’t be silly, Bettina had always replied. It’s a wide spot in a forgotten road. Nobody loves it there.
Needless to say, Bettina had not been remotely supportive when Ramona had told her that she was moving back to Bettina’s hometown. Not for the summer, but for good.
But you’re a doctor, Bettina had said, staring at Ramona without comprehension. You could live anywhere. Why on earth would you go back there?
You do know that not everybody hates Montana as much as you do, right? Ramona had replied, with a lot less patience than when she had been a college student. Or maybe she just didn’t feel the need to be quite as careful any longer, as a grown-up doctor and all. It’s actually a famous and beloved tourist destination. And Cowboy Point isn’t the town you grew up in. You haven’t been back in what? Thirty years?
Either way, it’s a waste of your talent, her mother had said. With a certain stubbornness Ramona had reluctantly come to realize was a family trait.
That’s where you’re wrong, Ramona had told her. Calmly. It’s exactly what I’ve always wanted to focus my talent on. I’m opening a clinic. I’m going to take care of the community Grandpa loved. I think he’d be pleased.
Of course he would be pleased, her mother had shot back at her. He was always pleased when he got his own way. But then she had hugged Ramona, fiercely. I’m sure you’ll be the brightest light that town has ever seen.
Ramona didn’t know about that. But what she didn’t want was to become a cautionary tale about out-of-staters who came into Montana and had no idea what they were doing. So she had picked her mother’s brain and done significant research before she’d moved. After her years in Chicago, she felt pretty sure that she could handle the winters, but she hadn’t lived in a rural area in Chicago, obviously. That was the difference. She was used to the cold, and the snow, but she wasn’t responsible for clearing any of it or getting around in it when it wasn’t cleared.
The truck had been her first major Montana purchase. She needed it to be a kind of tank that could get her anywhere, through any kind of weather, and that she could sleep in if she had to. That was something she’d tested out when she’d driven out from Chicago.
She’d known that she would also need the truck to be a kind of clinic on wheels, especially when she did house calls, and it was. Even at the height of summer, she would still be contending with the Rocky Mountains in all their glory and it always was wise to have a healthy respect for what mountains might bring to any situation.
Ramona had more than enough respect. Especially with her truck. She had moved out one June and had set about renovating the house. She’d had it all planned out in advance, and had talked to all the necessary people and institutions to make it happen. She wanted to set herself up as a clinic, making it so folks didn’t have to go skidding down that terrifying road into Marietta when they were already hurt or sick. That was her first priority.
But she’d also wanted to find her own place in the community her grandfather had left behind. Ramona had figured that it wouldn’t be too hard to make friends because she’d always been good at that, and she hadn’t been wrong on that score. There were all kinds of interesting people in Cowboy Point. She’d found Cat Lisle—now Cat Carey—at the pizza place purely by chance. Now she couldn’t imagine running the clinic without her. She, Cat, and the Carey wife who had once been a Stark, Rosie, spent a lot of time together. She’d also started becoming friends with the latest Carey family addition by marriage, Sierra Tate.
Her goal for the new year coming in fast was to spend less time with members of the Carey family. Because as much as she liked her friends, it really wasn’t any good for her mental health. Proximity to Knox made her do stupid things.
Ramona was very tired of being stupid.
The conventional wisdom was that folks who moved to Montana in the summer suffered through one winter and slunk off back to where they came from because they couldn’t take it. It was true. Ramona had seen a significant uptick in friendliness when she’d made it through her first winter.
You must be done with this experiment by now, her mother had said when they’d talked, earlier today. Or yesterday, Ramona corrected herself, looking at the clock on her dashboard that read 1:56 in the morning. It’s been a smashing success, and who could be surprised? It’s you. You make all of these uphill battles look easy. But surely it’s time to come home.
Ramona hadn’t thought through her response. I am home, she had told her mother.
That had not gone over well.
Now, out here in this treacherous dark—inching along the road that was more of a suggestion she held in the back of her mind than any actual passageway—she had time to think that through.
And the truth was, it did feel like home. Finally, she’d found her way home.
