When she caught movement in her peripheral vision, she lifted her eyes and looked out the window. Brandon had just backed out of his driveway, and he drove toward her cabin. Hewas probably going to get the planer, and Lenore needed to get some logs cut for him.
She still had three weeks before he would leave—twenty days, to be exact. While it had taken Lenore longer than that to make some decisions, she was determined to know what to do about Brandon before he left the homestead for good.
“Please,” she begged as she dried her face and left the cabin. “Please clear my mind and help me know what to do…andwhento do it.”
38
Brandon only needed to test the firebox on the smokehouse before that project could be deemed completed. He’d spent the week building it, after three days of cutting logs and planing lumber.
He attended church by himself on Sunday for the third week in a row, though the most recent Sabbath Day had been far worse than the others. Everything in the past nine days had been a nightmare. He’d never wanted to go back in time more than he did right now.
The well house had come together quickly, as it consisted of four walls and a door. He’d repurposed some tin roofing for the top. When he’d returned the planer to Cal, along with his load of lumber, he’d stopped by the hardware store to get insulation. The walls inside remained unfinished, but the instructions for how to prime the pump, reset the pressure tank, and everything else Lenore needed to care for the well had been laminated and attached to a stud.
After consulting with Kenneth and Dale, they’d decided to put the pressure tank on the corner of the house near the front. It now provided a wind block for the dogs who slept under the front porch.
Brandon had completed a sketch for the project, which was really a two-for-one idea. He’d added hooks to the side railing of the porch where Lenore could hang a tarp and stake it into the ground during the wild, wintry, windy months. That would protect the pressure tank further from freezingandoffer the dogs a more comfortable place to live.
He loved projects that solved two problems at once. He’d wanted nothing more than to tell Lenore all about his idea as he held her in his arms, breathed in the scent of her skin, and kissed her good night.
But he hadn’t been able to do any of that.
He’d had plenty of girlfriends in the past. He’d even missed some of them and gone through a short period of mourning after being alone again.
But this separation caused an ache in his chest that could not be relieved. He didn’t even feel like himself, and he wished someone would stake him to the ground so he could remember who he was and what his life meant.
When the alarm went off on his phone—his reminder to go get washed up for the ranch owners’ meeting—Brandon silenced it and thought seriously about skipping it. He stretched his arms above his head, then rolled his neck, trying to work the kinks out. He’d been pushing himself hard here at the homestead. He’d always done a good job on his own family’s ranch, but nothing compared to how he’d thrown himself into the projects around Lenore’s homestead these last nine days.
If he stayed busy, he didn’t have to think that hard. And stupidly, part of him thought if Lenore could just see how much he cared about her land and her homestead and her, something would change between them.
“It’s not gonna happen by magic,” he muttered—something his father had often grumbled at him. “The dogs don’t feedthemselves by magic,” Daddy used to say. “The harvest doesn’t get brought in with magic. You have toworkfor it, Brandon.”
He glanced at Lenore’s cabin down the lane and across the road. She’d attended the ranch owners’ meetings for the past couple of months. He really didn’t want to make the drive and face his friends without her. What would he tell everyone? He didn’t want to lie to them, but he certainly didn’t want to tell them the truth either.
That only solidified his idea to skip the meeting.
Then he remembered he needed to get the wood chips for the firebox, so he could test the smokehouse and make sure the ventilation system he’d installed worked properly.
He’d selected a location between the livestock enclosures and the barn for the smokehouse. As the barn sat on a slight rise, he could build the smokehouse into the side of the hill and have the firebox be about three feet up. Then Lenore wouldn’t have to kneel down to light the wood chips. The smoke would still be near the bottom of the structure, able to rise through the chamber inside and smoke the meat.
In the past several days, Lenore had helped with chainsawing down the logs. This week, she’d rented a mower and a baler to make hay grass. She’d made small forty-pound bales, and because she didn’t know what kind of grass she had growing on the homestead, she’d listed it for fifteen dollars per bale. With the acres she’d mowed in the last few days, she’d put together twenty-four bales, and a few people had been on and off the homestead today to pick up what they’d ordered.
Brandon wanted more than anything to know if she’d sold them all or not, and how much she’d made. He wanted to celebrate with her. Congratulate her for a great idea. Kiss her and smile at her and tell her this homestead was going to be able to support her well.
But he’d kept his head down and his hands moving to finish the smokehouse before today’s meeting.
He still wanted the best for Lenore, of course, and he couldn’t stop himself from doing all he could to help her, even after he’d tucked his tail and gone on home to the ranch.
So he’d done research on the best types of grasses to seed around the homestead. If she planted and cultivated the lower ten acres, she could continue to sell hay grass throughout the year.
Klein grass was popular for the dryland areas of Texas, like Three Rivers. But he also thought she could plant Bluestem, as it would help with her soil. He’d also put Sudan grass on the list for her, thinking she could plant it in her enclosures and pastures so that she could feed chickens and turkeys and goats in the cooler season.
He’d listed winter wheat and ryegrass too, though she wouldn’t be able to try those for almost another year, as they grew in the cooler months.
She’d need water to grow all of it, especially if drought hit in the spring or fall. They seemed to get plenty of rain in the summer months, and if she could use her water catchment system to collect the fifteen hundred gallons that could come off her roof, she’d be able to keep her crops—everything from the pumpkins she wanted to plant to the alfalfa and grasses—alive.
He’d put potatoes on her list too, because it didn’t take that many to make up ten pounds, and she could make ten dollars with that. They grew in the area well and required little maintenance.
Brandon turned away from the smokehouse, and his thoughts, and headed back to his own cabin. He’d dug a trench from the well to the back of the garden area and put a spigot next to her gardening shed that would allow her to put a sprinkler there to water her huge gardening area once she got it planted. Itwasn’t running water in his house, but at least he didn’t have to go in hers to rinse his hands and splash some cold water on his face.
