Chapter 12
twelve
M olly Hammond watched as Poppy Thatcher braided the seven strands of cinnamon raisin bread together. She looked over to Opal, who wore a wide-eyed, semi-horrified look on her face. Honestly, Molly felt the same, and seeing Opal’s reaction so blatantly made her start to laugh.
Poppy looked up, but her hands didn’t stop braiding. Seriously, the woman was a genius in the kitchen, and Molly had no idea how she would ever make this cinnamon twist braid at all.
“What?” Opal asked, the hand that had been holding her small notebook dropping to her side.
Molly never took notes at the neighborhood cooking demonstrations, but Opal always did. “Your face,” she said, giggling around the words. “It was just funny. It was showing exactly how I feel inside.”
She looked over to Poppy, who hadn’t quite gotten the joke. “There’s just no way I can do this.”
“Yes, you can,” Poppy said. “You just always take the outside braid into the middle.” She stretched over a piece of dough. “See, now this one’s on the outside. We’ll do that one after we do this side.”
Poppy looked up at Opal and Molly. Jane stood in the kitchen as well, and she scratched something into her miniature notebook. Thankfully, Britt never made any notes either, and nothing seemed to ruffle her—even braiding bread.
A couple of other counselors from Pony Power came to these midday demonstrations, and Molly looked over to them. Gemma, Hope, and Judy didn’t seem overwhelmed at all.
“I’ve seen someone do this on TikTok,” Judy said.
“Oh, my word,” Molly groaned. “Now I know I’m never going to be able to do it. I’m too old for TikTok.”
“You are not,” Poppy said. “I’m older than you.” She scoffed and went back to braiding. “Now, when you get to the bottom, we’re just going to sort of squish it all together so that it makes a rectangle.”
She kept moving and demonstrating. “I know you can braid, Molly. I’ve seen Charlotte’s hair.”
“I really hope I have a boy,” Opal said. “Then I won’t have to do hair.”
Molly snorted as she looked over to her cousin-in-law. “Are you kidding? Ryder spends more time in the bathroom than any of my kids.”
Opal blinked at her, that semi-horrified look back on her face. “Really? What’s he doing in there?”
Molly rolled her eyes toward the heavens. “Lord only knows.”
That caused everyone to giggle. Then Jane asked, “How are the driving lessons going?”
“Good,” Molly said. “I mean, he’s been driving around the farm for a while now, so it’s really just a matter of trying to get him to pay attention when there’s a lot more happening on the road.”
“Sure,” Jane said.
She’d brought her little boy, Clint, who was about ten months old now.
He babbled happily in the living room behind them, and Jane would only go check on him if he started to cry or shriek.
He had a stubborn personality already, but Molly supposed that both of his parents did too, and being headstrong wasn’t the worst thing a person could be.
Molly had grown up with her daddy as the pastor. She’d learned to cook from a young age, and she actually loved making bread. She’d made it for Hunter early in their relationship, in fact.
As the owner of Pony Power and the matron at Hunter’s family farm, Molly had coordinated and hosted plenty of meals, parties, and luncheons, but Poppy existed in a different league.
Molly could make bread and rolls, but she’d never braided it.
She’d never studded it with golden raisins and cinnamon or currants and rosemary.
But Poppy did all of those things and more.
Now that Molly’s kids were fairly grown up and would start leaving the house soon, she wanted to start learning some new things too.
Ryder had one more year of high school left, and then he would graduate and be gone.
Pinning him down to what he wanted to do after he earned his diploma was like pulling teeth, and Molly had stopped asking.
Her oldest talked more about those kinds of things with his father anyway, and Molly had been letting Hunter handle such things for years.
Her girls talked with her. Lisa was only a year behind Ryder in school.
She spent almost every afternoon at either Molly’s mother’s house or her sister’s, helping with something.
She was definitely more of an indoor person than an outdoor person, despite Hunter and Molly’s attempts to get their kids away from screens and out of the house as much as possible.
Charlotte, their third child, and Clay, their youngest son, had taken to Pony Power—probably because they’d grown up the most at the farm.
They both worked in the stables before and after school and had been helping with horseback lessons in the summer for a couple of years now, though Clay was only twelve.
Molly loved her family and her farm life and Pony Power with her whole heart and soul.
As Poppy continued with instructions about how to bake the bread and when to put tin foil over it if the cinnamon and butter started to sizzle too soon, Molly zoned out a little bit.
She would probably never make this bread, and even if she did, it would absolutely come out burnt on the bottom—just as Poppy was warning them against.
She enjoyed last month’s lesson, where Jane had taught them how to make her grandmother’s hamburger stew. Molly had had it before, of course, at family functions, but she hadn’t seen the recipe until then.
Jane said she’d found it in an old journal of her grandmother’s, and that she’d share anything else that she found.
Molly came from a core family steeped in tradition as well, and such things made her feel like she stood on solid ground and always had somewhere to go should she have a question or need help.
“And that’s it,” Poppy said, dusting her hands on her apron as she turned from the oven, where she’d just slid the braided bread. “Any questions?”
Everyone gathered in her kitchen simply stood there, and then they all started to laugh at the same time, Molly included.
A few days later, Molly rode atop her beautiful pinto horse named Lady. She’d had Lady, with all her soft browns and whites, for several years now, and she loved riding the gentle creature.
She’d gone out with the youngest horseback riding students this morning—the eight-year-olds. Some of them looked like they were still five or six, and though it was only the third week of summer riding lessons, they faced their equines with courage and determination.
Pony Power did a weekly riding lesson, as well as twice a week for beginners, so they could get a handle on the skills faster. She employed over twenty cowboys and cowgirls to help with the riding lessons, and she’d instructed them to always have two people up front and two in the back.
She never wanted anyone to feel alone or afraid if something happened and they got left behind. At Pony Power, it was impossible to be left behind. That could be a scary thing when riding a horse for one of the first times.
Carver and Samantha, a couple of young adults in their twenties, led this group, and Molly rode with Mission in the back.
As the foreman of the family farm, Mission really didn’t have time to assist with horseback riding lessons anymore—and yet he’d thrown a pretty royal fit when Molly had tried to take him off the schedule.
“I can do it,” he’d insisted. “It’s one of my favorite things about being on this farm. Please, at least let me have one lesson a week.”
She’d agreed, as long as he didn’t have to teach it.
“Fine,” he’d said. “I can be a back rider.”
And a back rider he had become.
She glanced over to him, though he rode about fifty yards away, over on the other corner of the group, where a couple of girls were slowly plodding along. Molly suspected they were doing a lot more chatting than riding, but on this slow summer day, no one seemed to care.
Molly had spread further south to keep her eye on a trio of boys who certainly didn’t have the skills to command the huge horses they rode. But Molly’s horses were calm and used to children, and for the most part, they would obey the commands they were given, no matter who gave them.
Something rustled in the long grass to her right, and Molly looked that way, suddenly on high alert. After all, they had snakes on the farm, and horses didn’t seem to care if they were harmless or not.
Lady lifted her head and tossed it, then she started to prance sideways.
“Whoa, whoa,” Molly said.
Then she heard the rattling.
Lady heard it too, and while she was normally calm and submissive, now she reared up, a whinny coming from her mouth.
The rattling got louder somehow, which made no sense, and then her horse screamed.
And bolted.
Molly had tightened her grip on the reins when she’d first heard the rustling in the grass, and though she was an experienced rider, she could not stay on a spooked, terrified, bolting horse.
She slipped from the saddle, panic and fear striking at her as if they were the rattlesnakes sinking their venomous fangs into her heart.
She hit the ground hard , a sound she’d never heard before echoing through her head and reverberating through all non-hearing parts of her body. As pain roared through her back and legs, she couldn’t get a breath. Her head felt like it had just been split in half.
She heard commotion around her, but she couldn’t separate the individual noises enough to make sense of them.
She heard a man call—and she vaguely recognized the voice—but couldn’t put a name to it.
More rattling. Louder than before.
Molly groaned, the sound full of desperation mixed with pain, but she still couldn’t move. Everything had gone dark, but she wasn’t sure she’d closed her eyes.
Help me , sounded inside her head, but she was pretty sure she didn’t say it out loud.
“Molly!” Mission yelled, and then he touched her shoulder. “Molly, wake up.”
She hadn’t realized that she’d gone to sleep, but Mission sounded pretty adamant that she had.
The rattling continued, and she wanted to shout a warning to Mission. There’s a rattlesnake. Don’t come too close.
“Molly, look at me,” he demanded again, but the last thing she heard was, “She’s not waking up, Boone. Call Nine-One-One.”