Chapter 14 Ransom
RANSOM
Ransom pulled the truck up in front of the big farmhouse, feeling excited for Hailey and a little nervous.
“Now kids,” he said, looking in the rearview mirror. “Remember that we have to be on our best behavior today, okay?”
“Yes,” Mae said.
Travis nodded, a serious expression on his face.
“What does that mean?” Ransom asked.
“No yelling,” Mae said. “And no fighting.”
“Definitely not those things,” Ransom agreed. “What else?”
“No running?” Travis guessed.
“Great one,” Ransom said. “Mostly today is a day to be happy for Hailey and to be super polite and positive. So let’s say you try a food and you don’t like it, what would you do?”
“Don’t say anything,” Travis said.
“And eat it all up,” Mae added.
“You don’t have to eat it all up if you don’t like it,” Ransom told her. “But of course we won’t say anything bad about it. Okay?”
“Okay,” Mae said, sounding relieved.
“We’ll pay attention to what everyone else is doing,” Ransom went on. “And we’ll try to match them with our best manners and the volume of our voices.”
He had figured out pretty early on that it was easier to tell the kids to try and match the room than it was to constantly tell them to settle down. Just the act of paying attention to others seemed to naturally ease some of their pent-up energy.
They all scrambled out of the truck and headed up to the house.
He had seen Mal and Sage arrive and head in together just ahead of them while he was talking to Travis and Mae, so he knew that they wouldn’t be the very first guests.
Hopefully, the kids would get a nice idea of how to behave from the ladies’ party behavior.
“It looks so pretty,” Mae said as they entered the living room, squeezing Ransom’s hand in a way that told him she was trying not to leap all over the place and explore. “I like the pink pillows. I like the pretty curtains.”
“Hailey made those curtains herself on her sewing machine,” Ransom told her.
“Look,” Travis said, pointing to a small statue of a horse on the mantel.
“She found that at the church thrift shop,” Ransom said, smiling at how happy she had been. Now that he was seeing it on the mantel beside a small clock and a bouquet of dried hydrangea blossoms, it did look really nice.
“Oh, my heavens!” someone yelled from the back patio.
Ransom’s feet carried him quickly through the rest of the house and out back, where it took him a moment to put together what he was seeing.
The pretty lights on the trellises and the heat lamps were going and there were tables laid out on the big patio, but the food was strewn and all over the tablecloths and slate tiles.
“Our puppies,” Mae said softly.
All four of the three-month-old puppies were scampering around and yapping at the foot of the old oak tree. And he had to blink to make sure he was really seeing it, but Hailey was on a branch above them, frozen in terror, clinging to the trunk.
“What are you doing up there?” Mal asked, approaching the tree. “What happened?”
Sage was already moving quickly to clean up the mess.
Ransom’s heart sank.
“Kids, can you grab the puppies and put them in the truck?” he asked. “Carry them one at a time, okay? And when you get back, you can help Miss Sage clean up.”
The kids ran over to the tree and each grabbed a puppy.
Ransom took a deep breath and followed them, bending to grab the other two pups.
“Hailey, I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m getting them out of here, okay?”
He ventured a glance up and she nodded to him, gratitude in her eyes.
There would be time later to figure out how the puppies had gotten out of the paddock. For now, he had to get them out of here.
By the time he got out to the truck, the kids were heading back up to the house.
“There are garbage bags in the cupboard under the kitchen sink,” he told them. “Hurry and help out, okay?”
“Yes,” Mae said, looking delighted to be helpful.
But Travis was downcast as he nodded to his dad. Ransom figured he understood a little better than Mae did about what a big deal this day was supposed to be for Hailey.
Hopefully, they could get things reasonably cleaned up before too many more people arrived.
He drove as quickly as he dared with the puppies loose in the cab of the truck, closed the door to the paddock, and dropped them off in the barn. All the other dogs were accounted for, which was good.
He headed out to check the paddock gate and found it open, which explained everything. He latched it, checked it, and made a note to himself to get a lock. He was pretty sure the puppies couldn’t have opened it on their own, but maybe he hadn’t latched it as well as he thought when he left them.
By the time he got back to the party, the two ladies were thankfully still the only other guests there. The patio was mostly cleaned up, and Hailey was down from her perch, wadding up the tablecloths and heading into the house with them.
He wanted to tell her a thousand times how sorry he was for the mess, but he figured she’d rather have his help right now than his apologies, so he headed down to the basement and turned the water to the outdoor faucet back on before coming out to the side yard and dragging the hose around to clean the slate floor of the patio.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Sage said as he finished it up. “I couldn’t get the hose to work.”
“The hose bib was turned off for the winter,” he said. “We never did get the frost-proof kind.”
Sage disappeared into the house as Hailey reappeared with fresh tablecloths. Ransom was winding up the hose in the side yard when he heard another car pull up.
All told, it could have been worse. Hailey was down from the tree and changed into a fresh outfit, the patio was clean, and the tables were covered. It was almost as good as new, except he had no idea what she was going to do for appetizers since the puppies had destroyed everything.
At least there hadn’t been chocolate or raisins, or he would have been making a trip to the vet instead of helping with the cleanup. And based on the mess, it seemed like the pups had mostly just torn things apart and not really eaten much of anything.
He wiped his wet hands on his slacks and headed out to the patio to see what he could do. Maybe he could offer to run into town for some things.
But when he arrived, Mal and Sage were carrying trays and platters of appetizers out. The tables were already half covered, and Hailey was smiling in amazement.
“It’s like you knew,” she said quietly to Mal.
“I always bring extra,” Mal said, shrugging. “Sometimes people are hungrier than you expect. But we can just serve dinner sooner if that happens now.”
“Oh, look at this,” Betty Ann Eustace said as she stepped onto the patio. “It’s beautiful, dear.”
“Thank you so much for coming,” Hailey said, floating over to greet her newest guest.
She was so poised and confident that Ransom didn’t think there was any way that Betty Ann would sense that anything had gone wrong at all.
She’s an actress, he reminded himself. Looking cool under pressure is what she’s best at.
Mae came out of the house a few minutes later, looking a little worried.
“Hey,” Ransom said softly, moving to greet her and feeling grateful to have something to do besides stare at Hailey and wonder how mad she was at him. “Would you like to get some food?”
She looked around for a moment.
“It looks like no one else is eating,” she said softly.
“Good job paying attention,” he told her. “Do you think Hailey might like it if we showed everyone that it’s okay to have some food?”
Mae smiled and nodded.
“Where’s your brother?” he asked her.
She shrugged and headed to one of the tables and he followed, helping her find a plate and napkin, and using the tongs to grab her a few items.
Everything looked delicious, but Ransom didn’t really feel like eating. He wished he knew what was going through Hailey’s mind right now.
He fixed himself a plate anyway, and got Mae settled at one of the little café tables.
“I’m just going to find your brother,” he told her, setting his plate beside hers.
More people were arriving, and it seemed like he and Mae had broken the ice at the buffet. Lots of people were there now, piling their plates.
At least I did something right, he told himself, but it wasn’t much comfort.
Mal was in the kitchen as he came through, organizing more trays of food.
“This is incredible,” he told her. “Great job.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I think we got everything put back together just in time.”
He nearly winced at the reference to his pups destroying the first buffet.
“I’m happy to reimburse you for what we ruined,” he told her right away.
“No worries,” she said. “Besides, Hailey already paid for everything.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll bring it up with her afterward. Have you seen Travis?”
“He’s such a love,” she replied. “Not sure where he got off to, but he seemed pretty stressed out.”
“I’m just going to see if he’s in here somewhere,” Ransom said, gesturing toward the rest of the house.
“Be my guest,” she said, turning back to the food.
Ransom headed into the living room, but Travis was no place to be found.
He was just about to go out to the front porch when he heard snuffling sounds coming from the library.
“Travis?” he said as he ducked his head inside.
At first he didn’t see the boy, but he followed the sound to his mother’s old writing desk. The chair was pulled out, and Travis was tucked underneath, his arms on his knees and his face down, sobbing.
“Hey,” Ransom said, getting down there with him and placing a hand on one of his arms. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
At first there was only silence.
“It was m-my fault,” Travis said after a moment.
“Of course it wasn’t,” Ransom told him. “The dogs popped the gate open on the paddock. I’ve been meaning to get a better latch with a good lock.”
“N-no they d-didn’t,” Travis said. “I went back to play with them after lunch, and I m-must have l-left the g-gate open.”
That actually made more sense to Ransom than the dogs figuring out how to open the latch. In a way it was a relief. He’d been afraid he would have to leave them in the barn until he resolved it.
“You did?” Ransom asked him. “You love those puppies, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Travis said, finally peeking up at his dad. “We don’t get to keep them.”
“And you wanted to take advantage of the time you had with them?” Ransom asked.
Travis nodded, his eyes filling with tears again.
“I know it’s a sad idea that they’ll leave us,” Ransom said carefully. “But they’re going to make so many lives so much better. And all the time you spend with them helps them learn to care about people. It’s a really important job you’re doing, loving them even though we have to let them go.”
Travis nodded, a tear sliding down his cheek.
“Well, I’m not mad at you,” Ransom told him. “Everyone makes mistakes. And now we know what happens if we leave the gate open, so we won’t forget again.”
“B-but Hailey,” Travis sobbed.
“She won’t be mad at you either,” Ransom said firmly, hoping it was true.
“All the food was messed up,” Travis said sadly.
“Did you know that there’s more food?” Ransom asked him.
He shook his head.
“Miss Mal brought so much food over that the tables are completely covered again,” Ransom told him. “And we got everything all cleaned up and perfect before the other guests started arriving.”
“That’s good,” Travis whispered.
“It sure is,” Ransom told him, offering a gentle smile.
“But it’s still not nice,” Travis whispered.
Ransom nodded. He wasn’t going to lie to the boy.
“Now Hailey will decide she doesn’t like it here,” Travis said. “She’ll leave again and it will be my fault.”
Ransom’s heart ached at the idea that the boy might feel that way for even one second.
“If she leaves again, it will not be your fault, Travis,” he said firmly. “Grownups make their own decisions about things, for important reasons. One little mistake won’t make her feel any different about Trinity Falls.”
“But she was so scared,” Travis murmured, his eyes cast down again, like he was too ashamed to meet his father’s eyes.
The statement squeezed Ransom’s heart even more, and suddenly in his mind he was looking up in the tree at the terrified eyes of the woman he had been starting to think he couldn’t live without.
If she was that terrified of a couple of adorable puppies, maybe she really wouldn’t ever stop being scared of dogs.
Ransom had gone all in with the business. He’d sunk all his savings and his time into training and breeding. He couldn’t even imagine what he would do to keep a roof over their heads if he didn’t have the dogs.
How can I even dream about being with her when I have no other way to provide for my family?