Chapter 8
“ W e’re gonna do a walkthrough in a few minutes,” Brandon said, already pacing in front of the windows in his living room. The side ones faced some empty fields, and he wondered if Lenore had ever planted anything there. Could be fallow , he thought, but he really didn’t believe himself.
“It’s probably going to take us all day,” he said. “She’s got twenty-five acres. I don’t think there’s more than ten square feet that’s been properly cared for.”
On the other end of the line, Dawson sighed. “Take some videos if you can,” he said. “I’ll be able to know better what kind of crops she might be able to put in if I can see the dirt.”
“There’s no water here,” Brandon reminded him. “How are we going to water crops?”
“You’re going to get water there,” Dawson said sternly.
Brandon rolled his neck, the tension and tightness there already settled in for the day. “I’ll talk to her about it,” he said. “I don’t see how anyone lives off the land without a way to collect water.”
“And power,” Dawson said. “Those are your two greatest needs, brother. Not a chicken coop, not a new pen for phantom goats. Water and electricity.”
“I know,” Brandon said. “Then we can work on food.”
“Then you can work on food,” Dawson echoed. “There’s no rain collection? Nothing?”
“How often does it rain in the Panhandle?” Brandon shot back at him.
“And we just came out of the rainy season.” Dawson sounded miserable. “But you’re okay, right? You’ve got enough to drink?”
“Zona wouldn’t let me leave with less than ten cases of water,” Brandon said. “I swear she’s going to be the death of me.”
Dawson chuckled. “I think she’s just worried that you’re going to meet your death.”
“Yeah,” Brandon said.
“I’ve got to be real honest, brother—so am I.”
“Can we please not cycle through this again?” Brandon asked. “I’ll get as much information as I can. I’d love to call you again tonight. I know it’s stupid. I’m really sorry to add more to your plate—with Caroline and everything.”
“It’s fine,” Dawson said. “You call me anytime. I’d love to brainstorm ways to help you guys out there.”
“Thank you,” Brandon said with as much sincerity in his tone as he could manage. Somewhere behind him, Dumpling meowed. Brandon turned toward the cat. “Okay. I’ve got to feed Dumpling and find that clipboard Duke gave me. I’ll talk to you tonight.”
“Talk to you tonight,” Dawson said, and the call ended.
Brandon went through the motions of feeding his cat while his mind drifted from thought to thought.
He wasn’t sure what predators lived out here on the homestead, so he didn’t dare let Dumpling out without being with him.
So he’d set up a litter box in the corner, and all he could do now was pray that his feline would use it.
With the orange tabby chowing down on his breakfast, Brandon located the clipboard on the dashboard of his truck, where he’d left it after taking it from Duke last night and driving back to the homestead.
He could admit—it had taken him an extra hour to get behind the wheel and make the drive, knowing what waited for him here: a silent and empty cabin, unfamiliar woods, and the wailing of wolves.
Fine. They weren’t wolves—but coyotes.
Either way, Brandon hadn’t slept well on only his second night at the homestead, and he absolutely couldn’t stand to sit around all day doing nothing.
Alex and Nikki had invited him to a Halloween party that night, but Brandon also knew Finn and Edith would be there with their young children, as well as Link with his, as Misty was still in the hospital with their newborn baby girl.
Brandon had dropped by yesterday after church, and he’d only been able to stay for about fifteen minutes before his jealousy had consumed him.
He’d made up some excuse about needing to get back to Hidden Hills to help his mother with something, and he’d hugged Link hard and held his head as high as he could as he walked out.
They’d named the darling infant Meadow, and it somehow fit her perfectly.
Dawson and Caroline were planning to go to the party too, and Brandon pulled out his phone and set an alarm for five o’clock so he could call his brother while they drove from Hidden Hills to Coyote Pass, north of town.
That way, he wouldn’t interrupt their Halloween festivities with his homestead woes.
Sometimes he attended the parties that Finn, or Alex, or Henry, or Paul hosted—but usually only on couples’ nights. Family events were much harder for Brandon, only serving to remind him of the things he didn’t have that his friends had somehow managed to find.
He left the cabin with plenty of time to spare, his eyes automatically gravitating toward the cabin down the lane.
The breeze blew, as it often did in the Texas Panhandle—something Brandon had never been too upset about.
In the summer months, it kept him cool, and in the winter, it blew out the storms.
He didn’t see Lenore anywhere, nor her dogs. Something that had been left on the porch drifted lazily in the moving air.
Brandon moved to the bottom of his steps and simply took in the homestead from this point of view. He swiped on his phone and started a video.
“This is where we start,” he said. “There are fields over here that I’m sure we could grow something in—if we could figure out how much sunlight they get year-round. Maybe we could do some rotational things, the way they do at Shiloh Ridge.
“We need to figure out water,” he went on. In the Texas Panhandle, they only got about twenty inches of water per year, and ranches and farms definitely had to have an irrigation system in order to survive.
For a brief moment, an image flashed through his mind: him walking up and down the rows, uncapping bottles of water and pouring them out as he went. All ten cases emptied into the land, simply so they could grow something in the dirt.
Brandon wasn’t massively experienced in agriculture, though he definitely knew how to grow alfalfa and harvest and store it.
Lenore could definitely do that with her acreage, as there was always a need for hay in town.
It was far cheaper to grow your own and use it, but if someone didn’t have enough, they bought from someone else.
He thought of the Walkers and the honeybees they kept. Simone Walker sold jars and jars of their honey at the local fairs and boutiques that she went to with her artisan furniture. Something similar could be a possible source of income for Lenore.
Brandon suspected he was thinking too far down the road, as Lenore needed to be able to support herself before she could sell off any excess produce or goods.
“But she’s got the land,” he said out loud. “We need to clean up the road and get everything mowed down.” He panned his camera just north of the chicken coop. “There’s a bunch of tires over there.”
He zoomed in on the corner of the barn. “And the barn needs to be weatherproofed. Reinforced. The door’s broken—that needs to be fixed. There’s a chicken coop. I know that she wants more pens and enclosures surrounding the barn for other livestock.”
He took a breath, watching the screen on his phone record all the chaos of this place. “I know you’ll have more ideas, but I think we should focus the first month on clean-up. Seeing what’s here and what we can use—maybe for a bigger greenhouse, a storm shelter, or solar power.”
Brandon paused, moving toward the barn again and zooming in.
“Over there—there’s big wheels like the kind we used to use on our sprinkling system. And solar panels over there. I’d love to figure out how to get those to charge batteries or bring power into both of the cabins and maybe even the barn.”
If Brandon could do that, he was pretty sure he would have accomplished more than Lenore even thought possible. He could charge his phone with a wall outlet, and maybe watch TV at night to keep himself company.
He tapped the stop button on his video and lowered his phone just as Lenore came down the front steps of her cabin. Her black Lab, Admiral, preceded her, while Susie Q came behind her.
Even from this distance, Brandon’s breath caught at the beauty of her. She wore a long pair of jeans, black boots, and a simple T-shirt in butter yellow with God’s Timing is Perfect written on the front. She wore a big sunhat, her golden hair streaming down her back in a low ponytail.
When she looked toward his cabin, he raised his hand to acknowledge he’d seen her. He wasn’t staring . He was watching . And he really needed there to be a difference.
Since she’d come out early too, Brandon headed toward the chicken coop, arriving only about five minutes later. “Morning,” he said, reaching up to adjust his cowboy hat.
“How’s the bed in that cabin?” she asked.
It wasn’t exactly what Brandon was used to, but he said, “It’s great.” He lifted the clipboard. “I’m going to take a bunch of notes, so I can brainstorm with Dawson tonight. He’s the controller on our ranch. He’s really good at prioritizing tasks and getting them done.”
Lenore nodded, her mouth thinning into a tight line. “That’s fine.”
Brandon prayed she would be comfortable with him and not worry too much about the state of the homestead.
“I’d also like you to be really open with me,” he said, immediately clearing his throat.
“I want to know what’s a priority for you.
Because like I said when I first came—I don’t think we’ll be able to get everything done in three months.
We’ll have to choose the things that are the most important. ”
She nodded. When her gaze came back to his, she wore a measure of vulnerability that hadn’t been there before.
“I’d say this chicken coop,” she said, reaching out to touch the post of it.
“I want it to be strong and sure and protect my birds. I can raise them for meat and eggs. They’re one of the most vital pieces of livestock a homestead can have, and I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t keep chickens. ”
Brandon scratched out a note about the chicken coop. “I’d say the barn,” he said, turning toward it. “It’s where you store everything—chicken feed, hay, supplies. We can put horses in there during storms.”
He turned back to her. “Do you have a root cellar?”
“No,” she said.
“I think we could probably make one, maybe on the north side of your house. I’d want to go look over there. I’m not sure what you’ve got in the back.”
“I’ve got a deck.”
“Like mine.” He grinned at her like twinning was winning. “If we could dig under there and make root cellars, you’d have a way to store food year-round.”
Lenore nodded. He wondered what she was thinking, as he knew he was thinking long-term though he’d only be here for a few months.
“I know you want enclosures for more livestock,” he said. “But I think we should focus on solar power and water. If you had power and water, you could grow anything here. You could do anything here. You could stay on this land forever.”
Lenore reached up and swiped her eyes. “Power and water sound good.” Her voice broke on the last word, and Brandon watched as she lost the battle against her tears. Her whole face crumpled, crushing Brandon’s heart with it.
“Sorry,” she said in a tiny voice, madly wiping at the tears, but they just kept coming.
Brandon had quite a bit of experience with women—some who cried. But even if he hadn’t, he knew exactly what to do. He tucked the pencil into the top of the clipboard and opened his arms.
Lenore walked straight into his chest. She fit against him easily, and her arms went around his back and held him tightly as she wept.
A sigh moved through his body. He controlled it as it came out of his mouth, so she wouldn’t hear. Zona’s last words to him before she’d left yesterday ran through his mind: Be good out there.
He’d scoffed—because he was going to be amazing out here at the homestead. But he knew what she really meant.
It was that he better be good to Lenore .
And he’d better not start something with her that he couldn’t finish.
Brandon immediately thought of the projects he might start and not be able to finish, but they quickly disappeared. Because what he really needed to figure out was whether he was on a female fast…or not.