Page 43 of Home Hearts Hooves

“I’m pretty sure Connor will never leave this place, actually I’m surprised you got him out of the mini barn with a bunch of new calves on the way.”

“Sally-May’s making his favorite cherry pie,” I say, and Lilly’s breathing gets louder, with more of a rumble sound in her throat. It’s weird to think how quiet a calf birth can be when it’s easy on them. It’s not like what you see in the movies for human births with screaming and panting. Lilly’s been breathing through her labor in huffs, a few moos here and there, but if you were walking past the mini barn, you wouldn’t even know there was a cow birthing in here. She snorts and then moos long, and I can hear the pain in her voice and when I look her way, she’s got the head and front legs of her calf out and then stands to start working on the last part.

Preston and I stay back, we’re here just in case she needs us, but for most of the herd, they birth fine on their own. It only takes another thirty seconds and a few good pushes and Lilly’s new little one is hanging almost all the way out, front hooves almost touching the ground, and I can hear it taking its first breaths.

“Come on, girl, you got this,” I say just as it slips free onto the soft bedded stall and Lilly spins around immediately licking her new baby’s neck. This isn’t her first time at the big show, so she knows what to do. We leave her to it, and Preston heads to the back to wash off.

“That app was spot on with these three,” he says, lathering his hands with soap at the basin.

“It’s nice not having to do the math, that’s for sure.”

“I’m sure you’re old hat at it by now,” he says with a slight blush rising to his cheeks. “Not that you’re old. You’re older than me, but that doesn’t mean you’re old. I just mean because you’ve had to do it a lot you should… I’m going to shut up now,” he says, washing the rest of the soap off his hands and turning away to dry them on the towel.

“I usually left that part for Nial. He was the math genius.”

“Really?”

“Yep, a bona fide human calculator that kid. Not that he would want ya to know it. Stumped the teachers all through school, they would swear he was cheating, but he just knew how to figure it out. Me, I’m better with my hands,” I say, and he smirks.

“I remember.”

Chapter fourteen

PRESTON

COOKIES ARE ALWAYS THE ANSWER

“Hi,Mom,”Icall,walking through the back door like I always do when I visit. I don’t use the front door. No one does. Not because it’s bright green, though it is. Mom got it into her head that colored doors were the in thing at some point years ago and she made Dad paint it. The back door is actually more like a side door, and everyone just seems to gravitate to it, I guess. The second I pull open the door, I’m met with the most delicious familiar scent. Sweet and nutty with a hint of cinnamon. Mom’s baking.

“In here, hon,” Mom calls back, and I follow the sound of her voice up the hallway.

The hallway is decorated with countless photos of me in my youth, from newborn baby all the way up to pimple-faced teen. There’s an animal in almost every one of them, too. That was life growing up in a vet’s house. Dad always brought his work home, but Mom didn’t mind. Once she carried a litter of raccoon kits in her sweater for weeks. Their mom had fallen from the rafters of the O’Malley’s barn. I pause at a photo of me sitting on top of a giant white Chianina. It remains the largest cattle I’ve ever seen in my life and the most beautiful. Most of the dairy cows on the Beaker ranch are Holstein heifers and cows, but they also have a few Jersey bulls they use for crossbreeding and a stunning American White Park that Dean bought when he was still in school. It’s not as big as the Chianina but it’s just as pretty. They have the mini highlands, too, but those aren’t bred for milking, they’re just for cuddling, which is where the new calves will get to spend some time, too, until they’re too big and get moved out to the playground. That’s what they call the small pasture, where they have direct access to the blue barn for extra feedings and a safe space to play with others about the same size. My mind throws up the delicious memory of Dean shirtless as I’m enveloped by his scent. Best idea I’ve had in years. Watching him work shirtless for twenty minutes was the highlight of my week.

I find Mom pulling a tray of freshly baked cookies from the oven.

I shouldn’t be surprised to find her in the kitchen. It’s where I always found her growing up. She loves to bake, and feeding people is how she shows love. It’s also the reason I joined the track team in high school. I needed to burn off all her school snacks somehow.

“Good, you’re just in time to try one of these,” she says, handing over a cookie from a cooling tray to her left.

I know better than to say no. I take a bite, the still-warm cookie melting in my mouth and flooding my brain with the dopamine hit that only comes from the happiest of childhood memories. Cut knee, freshly baked cookie. A good report card, freshly baked cupcakes, every event, and every non-event was celebrated with food.

“It’s amazing,” I tell her, popping the rest of the cookie into my mouth and pulling her into a hug. She’s a large woman, my mother, and I’m enveloped in the warmest best hug in the world in her arms.

I reach over and grab another, and she pulls away and smacks the top of my hand with a spatula. “Leave some for Poppy,” she cautions.

“Is she here?” I ask before remembering it’s like seven at night. She’d surely be in bed by now. I mean, what time do ten-year-olds go to bed? I seem to remember Mom putting me to bed as soon as the sun hit the top of the north mountains. That was at like six-thirty, I think.

“No, my beautiful grandbaby isn’t here.” She sighs. Ever since Mom found out about Poppy, it’s all she can talk about. It’s nice seeing her this happy again. After Dad, it was rough for her. For both of us, but for her more so. They’d been together most of her life and now she was here, in the home they built together, living without him.

“Then she won’t know if I have another one,” I say quickly, grabbing another cookie and ducking around to the other side of the table before I get another smack.

She waves the spatula at me.

“These are for her birthday.”

“Her birthday isn’t for a few weeks,” I say, quickly thinking to be sure I was remembering the date correctly.

“I know, but I want to bake the perfect cookies for her party, and I don’t know which ones she’d like best, so tomorrow when she comes over, we’ll have a taste test, and she can pick her favorites.”

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