Chapter 14 #3
He finished making the sandwich, added a handful of chips, grabbed a can of Pepsi, and went into the living room. He kept the volume on the TV low as he ate, and then once again, his mind wandered back to Nora, so he sent her a text.
Dropped off the SUV.
Love the warrior you are.
Stay safe for me.
Can’t wait to begin our life together.
Ash
* * *
After meeting with the realtor, Nora felt unsettled.
The for sale sign in the front yard made her decision so final. Even when she knew it was for the best, it was like going through one more death, and it hurt her heart. She needed food and perspective, and for that, she drove down to the Yellow Rose.
The dining room was nearly full, but she found a seat at a small table by the window, hung her coat on the back of her chair, and glanced up at the chalkboard to read the Daily Special before looking at the menu. When she saw chicken and dumplings, the thought of comfort food settled her choice.
Darla swung by to fill her coffee cup and take her order, then Nora settled in to wait.
* * *
Pearl had already heard through the Crossroads gossip train that the Borden property was for sale, and when she found out Nora was in the dining room, she peeked around the corner and saw her sitting alone, and made a quick call to her girl, Maggie, at the Sunset Ranch.
Maggie picked up on the second ring.
“Hello, my sweet Pearlie. What’s going on with you today?”
Pearl grinned. Her almost-daughter had recently given her a nickname, and she loved it.
“Quick question,” Pearl said. “About your foreman, Chris Jackson… Are he and his wife still looking to move out of my old place for a bigger place of their own?”
“They want to, but I think the bank turned them down for a loan, why?”
“Nora Borden’s family home has a For Sale sign in the front yard. I heard she’d be willing to sell the furnishings along with the house. Don’t know what she’s asking, but it’s a little jewel, and much bigger than my little two-bedroom, one-bath house.”
“Really? Sonny and I haven’t approached Chris about it yet, but we were thinking about buying a property, letting their rent go toward ownership, and not charging them interest. Sonny doesn’t want to lose him as foreman.
Is Nora still in Crossroads? Do you think we could see it?
Or would we have to go through the Realtor? ”
“She’s sitting in my dining room at this moment. If you want, I’ll give her your number and you two can go from there,” Pearl said.
“Yes! Please do,” Maggie said, and bolted outside to talk to Sonny.
Pearl hung up, smiling, and went into the dining room to talk to Nora.
“Nora, honey. Maggie and Sonny are interested in buying your house. If I give you Maggie’s number, would you be willing to call them about it?”
Nora’s heart skipped. Already? “Why, yes, that would be fine. Are they moving into town?”
“No, they thrive on that ranch, but their foreman recently married, and he and his new bride don’t have room where they are now. They’ve been looking for a property to buy for him on a rent-to-own basis.”
“How generous of them!” Nora said. “I would be happy to talk to them.”
Pearl nodded and pulled up Maggie’s number on her phone. “Here’s her number, and there comes Darla with your food. Good luck.”
For the first time in ages, Nora felt optimistic. She didn’t wait until after her lunch. She made the call where she was sitting.
It rang three times, and then Maggie Bluejacket answered.
“Hello. Nora? It’s so kind of you to call. I hope this isn’t interrupting your lunch.”
“Not at all. It’s still a bit hot and needs to cool. So, you’re interested in my family home as a residence for your foreman?”
“Yes. We would love to see it. Has a price been set?” Maggie asked.
“It’s been set with the house and land. But the furnishings are available to be left with the property if the buyer so wishes, otherwise, I plan to give them away. I have all of the information at the house, and as soon as I finish lunch, I’m going home.”
“Would you be there in about an hour and a half?” Maggie asked.
“For sure,” Nora said. “It’s the only house on Bluebell Street that has a For Sale sign in the front yard.”
“Wonderful. We’ll see you soon,” Maggie said.
Nora was smiling as she put the phone back in her pocket, then picked up her soup spoon and took her first bite. It was warm, and savory, with light-as-air dumplings, and tender bites of stewed chicken.
She ate all the way to the bottom of the bowl and took a piece of coconut cream pie home for dessert.
As soon as she was home, she put her pie in the fridge, and for ambiance, turned on the gas log fireplace at the end of the living room, and all the lights in the house.
It was her gift to the old girl, making her look as pretty as possible for the prospective buyers.
Without anything to do but wait, she googled the address of Asher’s home in Austin. Even though it wasn’t for sale, the exterior and interior pictures were still on Zillow.
What she hadn’t expected was the size of it, or the Spanish architecture. It was big and it was gorgeous. With a four-bedroom home, she was fairly certain that she could claim one of them for an office. That was her future, and she was sitting in her past. It was time to let it go.
* * *
Maggie and Sonny were changing clothes, getting ready to go into town when Sonny stopped, and turned around.
“Maggie, honey, I think we need to talk to Chris and Ellen about this. They are the ones who need to okay the house. I wouldn’t want them to feel obligated to agree to living there, if they didn’t like it,” Sonny said.
Maggie sighed. “As usual, you’re right. You know me, always wanting to fix the world. Definitely talk to Chris. See if he and Ellen will go with us.”
“He’s unloading feed. I’ll go talk to him now,” Sonny said, and then stopped and kissed her. “Don’t ever stop caring for the world. I’ll be happy with whatever you have left,” then he put on his last boot and went to find Chris.
* * *
Chris Jackson wasn’t as skinny as he’d been when he came to work for the Sunset Ranch.
Good food and a place to call home had turned the tide.
His hair was always about a month past needing a haircut.
He’d broken his nose twice in his life, and the last time, it healed just the tiniest bit crooked.
His skin was perennially bronzed for all his years in the sun, but when he smiled, his whole face lit up, and that’s what had attracted Ellen Hardy to the man she’d married.
Chris had been thanking his lucky stars ever since that day at the Crossroads gas station when he stood at the pumps counting his money to see if he had enough to pay for fuel.
He was wondering where he was next going to lay his head, when Maggie Bluejacket walked up to him, said her husband wanted to hire him, and then handed him her phone.
The years since felt nothing short of a miracle, and meeting his Ellen and then marrying her felt like he’d won the lottery. He was unloading the last few bags of cubes for the horses when he heard Sonny calling.
“In here, boss!” Chris said, and stepped out of the breezeway to wave Sonny down, then took the last two bags into a granary and fastened the door on the way out as Sonny walked in. “What’s up?”
“You know I don’t meddle in your business, don’t you?” Sonny said.
Chris frowned. “Of course, I know that. Why?”
Sonny sighed. “Unfortunately, I do not speak for my wife, nor am I ever able to change her mind when she’s got a plan, and a grand plan it is, this time.
We think the world of you and Ellen. And we knew you were trying to get a bank loan to buy a house, but didn’t qualify.
And we also know that two people living in Pearl’s little house has to be hard. ”
Chris shrugged. “It’s okay. We’re managing.”
“What if Maggie and I could manage something a little better for you?”
He frowned. “Like what?”
“A really nice house just came up for sale in Crossroads. And Maggie had this idea that if we bought it, then you and Ellen could move in there and start a home of your own. Your rent would be interest free and would go toward ownership of the property. Technically, we’re just doing what the bank wouldn’t do, without all the fuss. ”
Chris was stunned. “Oh my God! I don’t know what to say.”
“We’re getting ready to go view the property, and we think you and Ellen should go with us. If you don’t like the house, then we won’t buy it. But if you do, it will become your new home. Oh…and it comes fully furnished… If you are okay with the furnishings in it.”
Chris took off his hat and looked away.
Sonny knew he’d just made a grown man cry. “You go home and put on a pair of boots without horse poop on them, and load up your pretty little wife. The house is on Bluebell Street. It will be the only one with a For Sale sign in the yard. We’ll go in together, okay?”
Chris turned. His chin was up. His eyes were shining from unshed tears.
“Yes sir, boss. On the way,” he said, and headed for his truck. He was out of the driveway and already on the blacktop before Sonny got back in the house.
Maggie was holding her breath. “Did he just quit from being insulted by the offer, or is he going to get his wife?”
Sonny laughed. “He’s going to get Ellen. We need to hustle, or he’ll beat us there.”
Maggie blew him a kiss and ran to get her purse and coat.
Sonny picked up the keys to his truck, and as soon as Maggie returned, they were out the door and gone.
* * *
When Chris came running into the house, Ellen thought something was wrong.
“Chris, honey! What happened? Are you alright?”
Chris picked her up and swung her around in the middle of the living room floor, kissed her soundly, then began pulling off his dirty boots.
“We’re going to look at a house that’s for sale. Sonny and Maggie said they’ll buy it for us if we like it, then we can pay them back on a rent-to-own basis, interest free. The house comes furnished. They want us to go with them. If we don’t like it, they don’t buy it.”
Ellen gasped. “You’re kidding. Nobody does stuff like that.”
“Sonny and Magnolia Bluejacket aren’t nobodies. They’re somebodies.”
“I can’t go looking like this,” she said.
“Then change your clothes, and make it quick. We’re meeting them at the property, and they were right behind me.”
* * *
The Kingstons had been alerted to Bill Eldrege’s message and immediately formed two plans of action.
If the Brandts came back, they would either come in from the bar, or in from the back.
But since the bar was closed, any vehicle parked in the lot now would be suspect.
And since no one was home, hiding their car in the back, and coming in through that door seemed the most logical, although attributing logic to Everett and Freddie Brandt seemed a bit of a stretch.
The trash truck had emptied the dumpster at the bar. The only light in the bar was one nightlight. And, once it got dark, there would be no lights turned on in the house. Asher had even turned off the back porch light to give the thieves an illusion of security.
The Kingstons were in the living room with the TV on mute, using the closed-captioning to read what was going on. They were as ready as they could be without knowing when or if the thieves would even show.
“Gunner, what did Dad say when you called?” Dylan asked.
Gunner shrugged. “Very little about what was happening here. He just said that we knew what we were doing, and not to get ourselves killed.”
Asher was kicked back in the recliner, watching his brothers’ banter and thinking how alike they looked and how different they were.
They all had their dad’s black hair and blue eyes.
They all had varying degrees of his facial features.
They were all angles and planes, along with the stubborn jut of Jacob’s jaw.
Brenda had left no visible evidence of her DNA with any of them.
And after her exit from their lives, the only thing she’d left behind was a reputation they had to live down.
For Asher, it was Nora’s entrance into his world that turned everything around when he was young, and their reunion had turned him upside down.
Instead of being able to celebrate the fact, he was after killers, and she was still going through all the sad, bad days on her own.
He knew she understood. He knew she was okay with the status quo at this moment, but he wasn’t.
He just wanted this mess to be over.
* * *
Nora was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, which gave her a direct sight line to the street in front of her house.
Between the warmth from the fire, and the silence of the house, she was fighting the urge to sleep when she saw two trucks pulling up in front of her house, and then two couples getting out.
She recognized Sonny and Maggie and was wondering who the second couple might be when it dawned on her.
The foreman and his wife. The two people who would be living here if they bought the house.
That made it all the more important for Nora that they liked what they saw.
She waited for them to knock before going to the door, then took a deep breath and opened it wide.
“Welcome! Come inside where it’s warm,” she said.
“It’s really kind of you to do this for us,” Sonny said.
“Chris and Ellen, this is Nora Borden. I am told this house has been in her family for years. Nora, this is my foreman, Chris Jackson, and his wife Ellen. Maggie and I didn’t feel like it was fair to make the decision for them, so we asked them to accompany us. Hope you don’t mind.”
Nora smiled directly at Chris and Ellen.
“Of course I don’t mind. I could take you on a tour, but if it was me, I’d want to do the first look on my own, so all of you feel free to look the place over.
Open closets. Bang cabinets. Flush toilets for water pressure.
If you want to start with the living room, I’ll step into the kitchen out of your way, and when you’re finished in here, I’ll move myself back here and leave the rest of the house to you.
Okay? Also, know that I’m willing to leave all of the furnishings, even the grandfather clock, if you wish.
When I was little, I always thought of it as the guard up the hall from my room, rather than a timepiece.
Hearing it strike the hour was like an all’s-well signal.
Oh, for the innocence of the imagination of a child, right? ”