Chapter Twelve
Spending the afternoon and early evening hunkered down in the library was perhaps the weirdest date of his life.
Not that this was a date. Ayana was his wife, and that word still sounded foreign.
He’d been, as usual, hyper-focused, something that had sometimes irritated Cam.
Ayana had offered to help him research, but he demurred, not knowing what he was looking for.
Ayana hadn’t once checked in or seemed impatient to leave.
The light filtering through the skylights had gone from yellow-gold to gold-orange and now it was purply.
He liked that he could see her curled up in a chair, with a project in her lap, and her leather work tote at her feet along with a bag of new supplies she’d purchased at a local yarn store.
He was still looking through digitized back copies of the Marietta Courier.
He’d also viewed old survey maps, read saved planning commission meeting minutes, city council minutes, and then an old gentleman had recommended a hunters’ phone app that would tell him who owned the property and the property boundaries and what was county, state, or federal land.
Fascinating.
Ayana whispered notes into her phone app.
Took more than a few screenshots. And then curled up in a larger chair by a window and returned to the yarn gathered in her lap.
Should he show more interest? Learn the difference between knitting and crocheting?
He wasn’t sure about his role—not a lover pledging love ’til death.
But she was his to protect and care for now.
He’d couched their marriage in terms of a job, thinking that would ease the sting on her pride when he paid for meals, or clothes—or had he said costumes?
—like they would be touring frontier roadside attractions. Or a ghost town.
That word lit up something from his childhood.
Did Montana have ghost towns? Cam would have loved the idea of investigating a ghost town—although now that he was potentially a ghost, maybe not.
Soon Telford was lost in stories of ghost towns, haunted hotels, former brothels—there was one in town—a historic buildings with secret back staircases, dude ranches catering to history, haunts, battles—you name it, the treasure state had it.
His battery was low, and he hadn’t brought out his charging pack.
The lights came on in the library, and he blinked.
How long had he sat here studying the past and ruminating over what could have been and what he wanted to do now as the afternoon slipped away?
He’d planned on driving around the area and then taking longer day trips looking for a vista, a small town, something that would feel like Cam.
The ashes in the wooden box shamed him. Ayana had suggested visiting a gallery—find an urn or something, but he didn’t feel ready.
“Ready or not, here I come,” he murmured, remembering a childhood game.
He pushed to his feet.
He found Ayana sitting in a style he thought was a yoga pose on a colorful carpet with several young teens around her—three girls and two boys.
And they were all—he blinked as if the vision would change—but no, they were all doing the needle thing.
One of the boys had a plastic piece with pegs and he was doing something with his fingers and looping yarn around.
“I got it. I think I got it,” he whispered loudly and bounced on his knees.
“Rock star, Lucas,” Ayana said.
A girl with shiny, long hair touched her head to his shoulder and smiled. “Told you you could do it. Easy-peasy.”
“Oh. Hello.” Ayana looked up and smiled as if she was actually happy to see him. Her warm welcome gave him an odd feeling in the middle of his chest. “Wondering when you’d surface from treasure state property acquisition domination for the day.”
“Really!” A girl with a cropped head of vibrant purple hair looked up.
She had a mouthful of braces. “You’re looking to buy something here?
Town or rural? I live on the Wilder Dreams Ranch.
One of my uncles knows a lot about most of the ranches around here.
If you and your husband moved here, you could offer classes at Harry’s House. ”
“You could teach us how to make your duster vest, if you lived here. And cool beanies with fleece or faux fur,” the girl with long, sleek dark hair fist-bumped with the purple-haired girl. They both made an exploding sound. “Oh. No. I lost where I was.”
Ayana leaned in and quickly helped.
“You could work at the yarn store and teach classes,” Lucas, the boy with glasses, said.
“Thank you for helping me make a life plan,” Ayana said. “I would love to see Harry’s House.” She looked at her phone. “Aren’t you supposed to be heading there now for Tutoring and Teen Talk?”
“Yikes. I’m running circle today.” The girl with the purple hair jumped to her feet. “Walk over with us. It’s not far. You could meet Lucas’s mom, Ginny. We’re planning our kids’ booth for the harvest festival with her today. C’mon, Lucas.”
“Shouldn’t I make an appointment to see the center and meet the director of the teen program?”
“No.” Lucas didn’t seem inclined to move.
Instead, he continued to knit or whatever with his fingers, faster now, but his tongue poked out of his mouth a little, making him look much younger than the other kids.
Maybe he was younger brother to one of the girls.
Telford had always wished for a sibling.
Someone to hang out with. Talk to. Help him navigate all the social stuff of school that had been so hard.
He’d wanted to stay home on the ranch and help his mom with the horses.
Home-school, but no. She’d needed him away while she worked, and he’d hated that.
Ayana helped the kids stop their projects. Reminded them how to restart with a demonstration, and then she tucked everything in a small shopping bag and handed it to the girl with the long sleek dark hair that fell in one long braid down her back.
“Petal, you seem organized, and you’ve finger-knitted and knitted before with your mom when she had the shop at the Graff, so you can be my assistant and help everyone start their projects again, if they decide to finish them.”
Petal nodded. A smile chased across her narrow face. She was quite thin, and her features were starkly drawn. She moved quick and gracefully like a filly.
“If you and your husband are still here in a couple of weeks, you could come to the harvest festival and our booth. You could give a finger-knitting demonstration,” Petal urged. “Help the little kids.”
Ayana blinked a little, but she recovered quickly, her smile warm. “I see how it is,” she said. “You want to put me to work.”
“Of course. You’re cool. And new in town. And nice. And interesting. And you know how to do a lot of things.”
Ayana laughed. “And I must look like an easy mark,” she said. “That’s quite a list of accomplishments you’ve made for me, Petal.”
“My mom says you lure more bees with honey than vinegar.”
“So I’m a bee now.” Ayana laughed then walked closer to him and slid her arm through his. “Bzzzzzzz.” She grinned, looping him into her teasing, and he forgot how to swallow.
“Are you up for a short stroll to shake off the library and help see these do-gooder hooligans to Harry’s House?”
Feeling like he’d been caught up in an alternative world, he and Ayana followed the kids out into the late afternoon.
*
Ayana tipped her head back to look at the purpling sky with the orange streaks through the puffy gray of a few clouds whispering over what she’d learned was called Copper Mountain due to the very brief copper boon in the nineteenth century.
The air was fresh and clean and chilly, and she felt as if her cells sucked up all the fresh air, plumping out with the chill breeze skating down the Absaroka Range.
It was beautiful here. There was an unstudied, practical, rugged beauty to the town. A sweetness to the people. They were welcoming.
Don’t get attached.
“Why are we following teenagers to Harry’s House? This would be an interesting plot twist in a horror movie.”
“Did you just make a joke?” Ayana asked as a feeling of wellbeing bubbled over.
Once she’d run her way to freedom, she always enjoyed life—dug up or found moments of joy because she knew they were hard-earned, but the innocence and trust of the teenagers was intoxicating.
She felt like that was how life should be—innocence and friends.
Spending an unexpected hour with them today had felt healing.
“Did I?”
He was serious and more warmth infused her. Telford was unexpectedly sweet. Calm, deliberate, smart, and analytical, but the arrogance she’d expected was absent. He didn’t act like any man she’d ever met. But maybe this was a show. It had only been a couple of days over a week.
I can always run.
“I don’t know you as well as I will.” She feigned seriousness. “But I suspect there is humor lurking under your polished exterior.”
“Polished,” he repeated. “I bought clothes locally so I wouldn’t look corporate.”
His polish came from more than his clothes, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings and wasn’t that a weird way to think about a man who could snap his fingers and buy just about anything he wanted.
Even a wife.
“I think it’s you, and you should lean into it,” she said briskly.
“You never answered my question. Why are we following kids to Harry’s House, and who is Harry? Surely, they won’t be attacked walking a few blocks down Main Street, Montana, USA.”
“Harry’s House is a nonprofit. It’s an after-school program for kids—littles through teens.
It was founded in memory of Harry Monroe—a first responder who was killed in an accident along the highway while helping some out-of-town seniors change a tire.
He was Joanie at the western wear shop’s younger brother. The family also owns a grocery store.”
He stopped walking. “How do you know all this?”