Brandon went through the motions of feeding his cat while his mind drifted from thought to thought. He wasn’t sure what predators lived out here on the homestead, so he didn’t dare let Dumpling out without being with him. So he’d set up a litter boxin the corner, and all he could do now was pray that his feline would use it.
With the orange tabby chowing down on his breakfast, Brandon located the clipboard on the dashboard of his truck, where he’d left it after taking it from Duke last night and driving back to the homestead.
He could admit—it had taken him an extra hour to get behind the wheel and make the drive, knowing what waited for him here: a silent and empty cabin, unfamiliar woods, and the wailing of wolves.
Fine. They weren’t wolves—but coyotes.
Either way, Brandon hadn’t slept well on only his second night at the homestead, and he absolutely couldn’t stand to sit around all day doing nothing.
Alex and Nikki had invited him to a Halloween party that night, but Brandon also knew Finn and Edith would be there with their young children, as well as Link with his, as Misty was still in the hospital with their newborn baby girl.
Brandon had dropped by yesterday after church, and he’d only been able to stay for about fifteen minutes before his jealousy had consumed him. He’d made up some excuse about needing to get back to Hidden Hills to help his mother with something, and he’d hugged Link hard and held his head as high as he could as he walked out.
They’d named the darling infant Meadow, and it somehow fit her perfectly. Dawson and Caroline were planning to go to the party too, and Brandon pulled out his phone and set an alarm for five o’clock so he could call his brother while they drove from Hidden Hills to Coyote Pass, north of town. That way, he wouldn’t interrupt their Halloween festivities with his homestead woes.
Sometimes he attended the parties that Finn, or Alex, or Henry, or Paul hosted—but usually only on couples’ nights.Family events were much harder for Brandon, only serving to remind him of the things he didn’t have that his friends had somehow managed to find.
He left the cabin with plenty of time to spare, his eyes automatically gravitating toward the cabin down the lane. The breeze blew, as it often did in the Texas Panhandle—something Brandon had never been too upset about. In the summer months, it kept him cool, and in the winter, it blew out the storms.
He didn’t see Lenore anywhere, nor her dogs. Something that had been left on the porch drifted lazily in the moving air.
Brandon moved to the bottom of his steps and simply took in the homestead from this point of view. He swiped on his phone and started a video.
“This is where we start,” he said. “There are fields over here that I’m sure we could grow something in—if we could figure out how much sunlight they get year-round. Maybe we could do some rotational things, the way they do at Shiloh Ridge.
“We need to figure out water,” he went on. In the Texas Panhandle, they only got about twenty inches of water per year, and ranches and farms definitely had to have an irrigation system in order to survive.
For a brief moment, an image flashed through his mind: him walking up and down the rows, uncapping bottles of water and pouring them out as he went. All ten cases emptied into the land, simply so they could grow something in the dirt.
Brandon wasn’t massively experienced in agriculture, though he definitely knew how to grow alfalfa and harvest and store it. Lenore could definitely do that with her acreage, as there was always a need for hay in town. It was far cheaper to grow your own and use it, but if someone didn’t have enough, they bought from someone else.
He thought of the Walkers and the honeybees they kept. Simone Walker sold jars and jars of their honey at the local fairs and boutiques that she went to with her artisan furniture. Something similar could be a possible source of income for Lenore.
Brandon suspected he was thinking too far down the road, as Lenore needed to be able to support herself before she could sell off any excess produce or goods.
“But she’s got the land,” he said out loud. “We need to clean up the road and get everything mowed down.” He panned his camera just north of the chicken coop. “There’s a bunch of tires over there.”
He zoomed in on the corner of the barn. “And the barn needs to be weatherproofed. Reinforced. The door’s broken—that needs to be fixed. There’s a chicken coop. I know that she wants more pens and enclosures surrounding the barn for other livestock.”
He took a breath, watching the screen on his phone record all the chaos of this place. “I know you’ll have more ideas, but I think we should focus the first month on clean-up. Seeing what’s here and what we can use—maybe for a bigger greenhouse, a storm shelter, or solar power.”
Brandon paused, moving toward the barn again and zooming in.
“Over there—there’s big wheels like the kind we used to use on our sprinkling system. And solar panels over there. I’d love to figure out how to get those to charge batteries or bring power into both of the cabins and maybe even the barn.”
If Brandon could do that, he was pretty sure he would have accomplished more than Lenore even thought possible. He could charge his phone with a wall outlet, and maybe watch TV at night to keep himself company.
He tapped the stop button on his video and lowered his phone just as Lenore came down the front steps of her cabin. Her black Lab, Admiral, preceded her, while Susie Q came behind her.
Even from this distance, Brandon’s breath caught at the beauty of her. She wore a long pair of jeans, black boots, and a simple T-shirt in butter yellow withGod’s Timing is Perfectwritten on the front. She wore a big sunhat, her golden hair streaming down her back in a low ponytail.
When she looked toward his cabin, he raised his hand to acknowledge he’d seen her. He wasn’tstaring. He waswatching. And he really needed there to be a difference.
Since she’d come out early too, Brandon headed toward the chicken coop, arriving only about five minutes later. “Morning,” he said, reaching up to adjust his cowboy hat.
“How’s the bed in that cabin?” she asked.
It wasn’t exactly what Brandon was used to, but he said, “It’s great.” He lifted the clipboard. “I’m going to take a bunch of notes, so I can brainstorm with Dawson tonight. He’s the controller on our ranch. He’s really good at prioritizing tasks and getting them done.”
