Various Happenings
The morning after the rodeo, Maria was exhausted. After hardly managing to keep her eyes open during breakfast, she yielded to Jessie’s recommendation to take a nap during her midmorning break.
Her alarm woke her, shrilly, with plenty of time to get back to work.
Well, now that she was awake, she might as well scroll through social media before heading back to the kitchen.
She’d gotten woefully behind on most of the news from Michigan, and the last few days she’d barely had time to communicate with Dad and Grandma.
She hadn’t even told them about Tim yet.
Or about Grandma Austin’s offer, which she still wasn’t sure how to bring up.
Social media didn’t have much going on. Why did her home feed have to be two-thirds ads, anyway?
Those social media companies had a lot of nerve.
Between ads there were pictures of the rodeo from Elijah.
Another one of the ranch hands must have taken them.
None from Annabelle came up, which was to be expected, since she’d had a bad time.
Probably Tim didn’t have social media. He didn’t seem like the kind of person who was glued to his phone.
There was a picture from a party her old friends—her and Seth’s old friends—had attended. Wait, that guy on the left was definitely Seth. Was that girl hanging onto him the girl he’d started dating after he broke up with Maria?
“Congrats to my good friends Seth and Crystal on their engagement!” the caption read.
Seth was engaged? How long had he been dating, a few months? It felt like Seth had just broken up with Maria a few weeks ago. Who got engaged that fast?
Maria put the phone down. She didn’t need to think about Seth. She needed to try harder to forgive him and then put him out of her mind. He was in her past, and hopefully she wouldn’t have to see him again except for an occasional accidental run-in.
And now she had Tim. Well, it appeared so, anyway. Tim seemed interested in her, and she had grown to like him a lot more than she would have expected. And he’d seemed disgusted when Maria told him about Seth’s behavior. Surely he wouldn’t do the same thing to Maria that Seth had.
But what if he decided that he wasn’t interested anymore?
After all, Maria was going back to Michigan.
That must make her geographically unattractive to Tim, who loved this ranch and thought his work as a foreman was really important.
Plus, he hadn’t even trusted Maria enough to tell her about seeing the guy with the skull tattoo at the rodeo.
This was probably just a summer flirtation to him, and he didn’t think of Maria seriously.
Or maybe he wasn’t that kind of guy. The Montana Rider did seem to think Tim had Maria’s best interest at heart, and it wasn’t that he didn’t trust her.
Maria needed to give him a chance. But it was only fair to realize that the location really was a problem.
If only Grandma Austin had gotten along with Dad, this would have been easy.
But it wasn’t. She and Tim would just have to figure things out somehow.
In the meantime, she could take him up on those riding lessons. Maybe this evening after work, unless he was too tired after the rodeo. There was no immediate rush.
§
It was a good thing there was no immediate rush. In the lunch line, when Maria asked Tim about a riding lesson that evening, Tim was apologetic.
“I would have loved to do that,” he said, “but I’ve got too much ranch stuff to do tonight. Can I take a rain check and show you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Maria told him. “Good luck with your work!”
Instead of sitting around the house all evening, she decided to go around the ranch and see if anything interesting was going on.
Supposedly some of the ranch hands were going to do an impromptu music concert on the bunkhouse porch.
Some of them had invited friends from other places.
Maria had never heard the ranch hands play, although Savannah had spoken highly of their skill.
She’d been embarrassed to listen to them alone, but since a bunch of other people were going too, she didn’t feel so conspicuous.
She went down and found lively guitar music and singing happening, with people sitting around in front of the bunkhouse on lawn chairs and blankets. Blaise was playing drums. Danny was playing bass.
“Hey, Maria!” a voice said. It was Elijah, sitting on a drink cooler near the edge of the group of people. “You want a root beer?”
“I’d love one,” Maria said. “Are you doing any singing?”
“Nope, I can’t sing.” Elijah rummaged in the cooler and tossed Maria a root beer.
She cracked it open, and it foamed. “Whoops.” She held it away from her, avoiding her shoes.
“Sorry,” Elijah said. “Didn’t mean to shake it. You wanna sit on the cooler? I’ve gotta get ready to play the drums for the next piece.”
“Sure, thanks,” Maria said, and sat down on the cooler as Elijah raced off.
A number of the ranch hands were musically talented. So far Maria had heard one country song and some classic rock-and-roll. Some people sitting around looked like they were getting ready to play Irish music with fiddle and flute and bodhran.
“Hey,” Savannah said, appearing at Maria’s elbow. “I didn’t know you were down here. Can I sit?”
“Sure.” Maria moved over on the cooler. “You were right. These guys are pretty musical.”
“You haven’t heard anything until you’ve heard Zach sing,” Savannah said, gesturing to a tall curly-haired ranch hand. “He sings like an angel. He used to do musical theatre back East.”
“Wow,” Maria said. “Do these guys do music a lot?”
“On and off,” Savannah said. “Tim’s pretty good too. Too bad he’s not around.”
“Yeah, he told me he had ranch stuff to do tonight.”
“That’s funny,” Savannah said. “Elijah said he took off right after dinner.”
“Maybe he’s doing something with the cattle up in the hills,” Maria said.
“Maybe,” Savannah said. “Oh well. We’ll get to hear him play some other time.”
The Irish music was good. Maria knew a few of the songs, and she sang along in the audience, possibly the only soprano voice there. There were a few girls and moms from town, but Maria didn’t know them, and they weren’t really singing.
After the Irish group, the music drifted back toward country and more modern music, and Savannah found a friend from town in the audience and went to hang out with her. Maria had had enough music for one evening.
Today had been hot, but it was cooler now.
It might be nice to take a book and go for an evening ride up on the northwest of the ranch where she could look out over the valley.
It would be beautiful to watch the sunset from the hills.
Maria went to the house to grab her most recent favorite book, The Paradise Project, and took her ATV up the slopes.
That was, in fact, the perfect spot to read. Maria immersed herself in the story, looking up every few minutes to appreciate being outside and not cooped up in the house or the ranch kitchen. The view was gorgeous.
She had just finished the part where Elizabeth, the story’s heroine, officially meets the elusive Dr. Collins she’s determined not to let her family set her up with, when she noticed someone riding down below, near the edge of the Rocker A’s property.
From the black horse and black outfit, it looked like the Montana Rider.
What was the Montana Rider doing going around in broad daylight? What did he think he would find in that remote corner of the ranch? That was the edge that adjoined the Baldwin ranch. Maybe the Rider was checking fences on that side.
Should she go down and say hi to him? He might have more information about the guy with the skull tattoo.
At the same time, after her previous embarrassment, being friend-zoned by the Rider, she didn’t want to look like she was chasing him. She wasn’t interested in him anymore. Somehow, all her interest had been transferred over to Tim.
It was too bad Tim was busy. It would have been fun to hang out with him tonight and maybe hear him sing. But at least he and Maria were going to have their riding lesson tomorrow after Mass. Maria was looking forward to it. She hadn’t seen Tim at all since the rodeo.