Chapter Thirteen
Hey, is anybody home?” someone yelled from the foyer.
“Gracie’s home!” Tina squealed and pushed back her chair.
She met her in the middle of the kitchen with outstretched arms. “I’m so glad you are home, but we weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
Gracie hugged her and then took a step back.
“I needed to come home and spend some time with my folks. They’ve decided to move to New Mexico to be near my oldest brother as soon as they get things settled here.
I’ll give you all the details later—it’s been a million phone calls. Do I smell . . .” She sniffed the air.
“Tacos and sopapillas,” Tina finished for her.
Cleo started to stand, but Gracie hurried over to hug each of them while they were sitting.
Then she bent and wrapped her arms around Walker.
“Dakota and I had a wonderful time, but it’s so good to be home.
I finished illustrating my next book and sent it to the publisher and my .
. .” She paused. “. . . friend painted a beautiful picture, and what is that chicken doing in Iris’s yard? ”
Mae giggled and pointed at Cleo.
“The tornado dropped it in the parking lot at the feedstore. The storm almost killed the poor critter, but it rose up from the nearly dead and flew over to Iris’s yard.
I guess its feet hurt from the fall, and the poor thing thought that a good soak in wet mud would help,” Cleo explained between bites.
“Are you kiddin’ me?” Gracie asked.
“Yep, she is, but it’s a good story that we’re going to put on the internet tomorrow,” Mae said.
“And I’ll get the blame for giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation so it could fly,” Tina said.
Gracie grinned. “Did you?”
Tina raised her right hand. “I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I did not resuscitate that rooster.”
Walker put his hand up in the air. “Neither did I.”
“Well, that mystery is solved. I thought maybe Iris bought it since she can’t have a goat in the city limits, and she thought y’all would hate the looks of it.
” Gracie plopped down in her chair, reached for a taco, unwrapped it, and nodded toward Iris’s house.
“I don’t care if it came alive and walked as long as it doesn’t crow in the morning and wake me up. ”
“We could get the sound of a crowing rooster off the—” Tina started.
Cleo shook a long, bony finger at her. “No, you will not!”
“Okay,” Tina agreed. “But you got to admit, it would be funny.”
“Be careful what you think,” Mae warned. “Someone else might get that idea and really do it just to pester Iris.”
“You never know what kind of energy a tornado can put into an object,” Tina said. “Good thing none of y’all touched that bird when it was dead in the parking lot, or you might have been shocked.”
“That chicken isn’t the big news,” Cleo said.
“Do you remember Yolanda?” Mae asked.
“Of course,” Gracie answered, then stood up and got a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “She came to the university when I was a junior. I still see her at teachers conferences every year or two.”
“Well . . .” Cleo took another drink of her soda. “Tina is about to let us in on the gossip that is about to start setting the phone lines on fire. I’m shocked that the whole town isn’t buzzing already.”
“I’m not,” Mae argued. “Far as I know, she hasn’t been back to Benson in years. Her folks moved a few years back and her grandparents went with them, so she had no reason to be here. Start the story all over, Tina.”
Tina had planned on drawing the story out to entertain the elderly ladies, only leaving out the expression of relief on Walker’s face. But she shortened it down to the bare facts.
“I can’t believe it!” Gracie’s voice left no doubt that she was shocked. “Brandon Massey and Yolanda? And triplets? I bet Sabrina is going to be on the warpath.”
“Yep,” Walker said.
“I knew she had a little crush on him, but—” Gracie’s eyes widened, and she began to tremble like she was freezing cold.
“Did you get a package of the really hot sauce?” Tina asked.
Gracie didn’t answer but kept shaking as she went from sitting in the chair to standing on it and looking like she might faint. Walker jumped to his feet in a blur. Tina’s chair hit the floor with a thud when she came up and rushed around the table to help Walker get Gracie down before she fell.
“Kill it, Walker,” she finally whispered. “It touched my foot. You know I’m terrified of mice.”
“First, let us get you down,” Tina said.
Gracie crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “Not until that thing is dead.”
Walker looked under the table and chuckled while he brought up the solid black kitten. “It wasn’t a mouse. Meet Cleo’s new baby.”
“A cat?” Gracie frowned. “Where did that come from? No one told me that y’all got a kitten.” She uncrossed her arms and let Tina help her off the chair.
“We think the storm left them for us,” Mae said.
“‘Them’?” Gracie asked as she sank into the chair.
“There’s three more,” Cleo told her. “Two for Mae and two for me. That one Walker is holding is one of mine. We haven’t named them yet. There’s the others coming out of the dining room. Ain’t they cute?”
Gracie eyed the balls of fur for several seconds and took a deep breath. “I really thought it was a mouse. Where’s the mama cat?”
“The tornado probably got her,” Cleo replied with a sigh. “But me and Mae rescued the babies, and we’re keeping all four, so don’t be asking to adopt one. Someday y’all are going to leave us—”
“But not anytime soon,” Mae butted in like always. “When you do, please don’t go so far that you can’t come home for holidays. I know that we can’t keep all of you in the nest forever, but we’ve been so happy with all three of you back with us.”
“We won’t be going anywhere anytime soon,” Tina assured them, and unloaded several sopapillas from the second bag. She expected Walker and Gracie to reassure the ladies also, but neither of them said a word.
Walker put the kitten back on the floor. “Look at that. That little stinker is washing his whole body.”
“He doesn’t want your cooties on him,” Gracie giggled. “I wasn’t even gone a full two weeks and come home to find a big rooster in Iris’s yard and four kittens in the house. What else has happened?”
“Well, there was the mud-wrestling,” Tina laughed with her.
“The greenhouse blew away,” Cleo said with a long sigh.
“The tornado probably scattered all those herbs from the greenhouse all over town. I bet that rooster sucked in some of that stuff and that’s what gave him the ability to fly to Iris’s house,” Gracie said.
“Can a chicken get high on rosemary and basil?” Walker asked.
“I don’t know about all that,” Cleo answered. “But I think Walker should sue her for stealing his bird. The tornado blew it into his parking lot. The storm gave it to him, not to Iris. She stole it, so he could sue her for . . .” She paused to take a sip of tea.
“Is there a law against chicken-napping? Would it be a felony like kidnapping?” Tina mused.
“I bet there is,” Mae declared. “If a person steals a live bird, he’s in trouble. I bet that big old rooster is worth enough to make it grand larceny, especially if it’s artwork that got blown away from a museum.”
“No matter what,” Cleo added, “Walker should have his rooster back, and if it is art, then he should be the one who gets the reward for saving it. If it ain’t, it would make a great promotional thingamajig for chicken feed.”
“And she’ll go to jail for stealing it,” Mae added.
“Welcome home,” Walker mouthed across the table.
“I’ve missed it, and y’all,” Gracie whispered.
“Thanks for helping me get all this stuff inside and upstairs. Can we meet in the sitting room in a few minutes?” Gracie asked. “I’ve got more news that I couldn’t talk about in front of the ladies.”
“Sure thing. Want a beer?” Walker asked.
“I brought a bottle of peach wine,” Gracie answered.
“I’d rather have a beer,” Walker said with a shudder.
Tina dropped two suitcases inside Gracie’s bedroom door. “Suit yourself—I’ll have wine with Gracie to celebrate her being home.”
Gracie handed her a small cooler and dug through a tote bag until she found a couple of red plastic cups. “If you’ll take these across the hallway, I’ll make a run through the bathroom and be there in a minute.”
“Don’t take too long, or Walker might change his mind and drink all the wine,” Tina teased.
Walker was sitting on the love seat and had an open bottle of beer in his hand when she entered the room. He had his phone to his ear and a smile on his face. “Yep, but the store is fine, Mama. The tree in the park got hit, and the tornado took the greenhouse. Yes . . .” He paused.
Tina set the cooler down and stepped outside the room to give him some privacy, but she couldn’t block out his voice—not that she wanted to, but his conversations with his mother were his business.
“No, Mama, I haven’t told her yet. It’s too early, and she needs more time.” He went on to tell her about the chicken and Yolanda. “That was an awkward moment that had me scared for a minute or two.”
Was she herself the “she” he had been talking about before he changed the subject and told his mother all about what had happened earlier in the week?
“Bye. Love you. We’ll talk next week,” he said.
Tina went back into the room and bowed her head for a couple of seconds.
“What do you figure Gracie wants to tell us?” she asked when she opened her eyes.
“Were you praying?”
“No,” Tina replied. “I was only hoping real hard.”
“For?” Walker asked.
“That Gracie’s news is that she and Dakota are engaged. I don’t want her to move away from us, and I’ll be sad if she does, but what’s important is that she is happy.”
“You’ve come a long way,” he said.
“Thank you. Besides, if that’s the news, it will take the gossip away from Yolanda, the tornado, and even the rooster next door.”
“What about that rooster?” Gracie asked. “Why haven’t you poured us some wine? Walker is going to have his beer all finished, and we need to toast my announcement.”