Page 20 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

“That will be home base,” Rosie was saying. “But if this goes well, I can use the Airstream to have a pop up shop wherever books are needed. And this is rural Montana, so that could be a lot of places.”

Sierra nodded, but then remembered. “I thought you all were living in this Airstream.”

“We were absolutely living in it,” Rosie said with a laugh. “That’s why I wasn’t here last week. But we just moved into the house. I’m not sure I would really call it a house, mind you, but the walls are up, there’s a toilet, and we can figure out everything else.”

Sierra shook her head in awe. “I never thought of myself as particularly high maintenance, but camping out in half-built house with two little boys seems like… a lot.”

Rosie shrugged. “It is a lot,” she agreed. “It definitely wouldn’t work in winter. But this is our first summer together.” She smiled when she said it, in such a way that it made Sierra’s own heart seem to jump in her chest. “I don’t care if it’s chaos. I just want to spend every possible moment together.”

Sierra was still thinking about that she walked on through the market with a couple of books in her arms, smiling at the vendors she knew and those she knew by sight.

It was a whole different world up here. She had been visiting Cowboy Point forever, but it was only over these past few weeks that she’d realized there was more to it than met the eye. Even her eye, which she would have said was fairly observant. In winter folks hunkered down and news traveled—but a lot slower, and in places like the diner, or on slow and cozy nights at. Mountain Mama. Now at the beginning of summer it was here in the market where everyone talked about the things going on in the community.

It was here that Sierra learned that all the rental cabins that people had been building and outfitting were full pretty much all the way through the high season. Cat’s brother Dallas had been renovating the big lighthouse that sat on the top of Lisle Hill—on the west side of the Cowboy Point valley, equidistant between Copper Mountain and the old Lodge—and was expected to open next summer. Rumor was that Jack Stark was thinking of opening up the Lodge’s many outbuildings and cabins, though the manor house itself was going to take a few more years.

The tourists had found Cowboy Point. There were more of them every summer, and some had lingered on through the winter, too.

Locals were of two minds on this. They were already an eclectic group of people, and the community was a lot larger than it seemed if all a person did was drive through the center of town. There were all the New Age and artistic communities out in the hills. Some of those were ranches, some were bespoke hotels, and still others were owned by the kinds of celebrities who liked to keep a low profile and only rarely ventured in to mingle with the local people. Tourists flooded up from Marietta and from all over the Paradise Valley. They came down from Bozeman and Livingston, up from Jackson Hole, and were making Marietta and Cowboy Point must-stop locations if coming or going to Yellowstone. As the summer wore on, everyone in the market confidently expected that they’d see more and more people.

There was a rumor that one of the old, abandoned houses along the main street had been bought and permits had been filed for a new restaurant, but no one could confirm or deny who might have done that. The Bennett sisters all seemed delighted at the notion that they wouldn’t have to feed everyone in town.

Even grumpy Tennessee Lisle was rumored to have said that he was considering expanding the hours in the diner next to the General Store, which he’d kept from roughly dawn until midafternoon—on weekdays—as long as anyone could remember.

Meanwhile, Helena Patrick seemed to have kicked of some kind of food truck revolution. There were always food trucks at the market, but now there were new ones every week in the parking area with the coffee cart, and they stayed as long as it was light on those endless Montana summer evenings.

Sierra didn’t expect that Cowboy Point would offer all the same things that a much bigger place like Bozeman did. Or even what Marietta did. But she did find, as June tipped over into July, that she didn’t miss the things she couldn’t get. She was too busy enjoying the things she could.

Like her Sunday night group meetings with the Carey sisters-in-law, always over drinks and the pizza special on offer that week at Mountain Mama, whatever it was.

“You have a funny look on your face,” Rosie said one of those Sundays. The 4thof July had been bright and happy up here in the mountains that Friday and the festive atmosphere was still continuing. There was live music out on the patio and everything seemed to be gleaming and glittering in the sparkling lights strung everywhere. “Almost wistful.”

Sierra considered. “You know… I think I’m happy?”

Rosie laughed. “You don’t sound sure.”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever felt happy before,” Sierra confessed. But before Rosie could respond to that, she waved her hand in the air between them. “Does that sound tragic? That’s not true, not really. I mean, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt happy for an extended period of time. The last time was college, but that was different. I didn’t feel as if my decisions were mine to make, if that makes sense. Now they’re all mine.”

Across the table, Kendall and Cat leaned in closer.

“Happiness is a good thing,” Kendall said. “Particularly if it’s hard won. That just makes you hold onto it that much tighter.”

Sierra didn’t have to ask what Kendall meant by that. Not only had she said that she was raised by wolves, Sierra knew that the wolves in question had showed up not long after she’d married Harlan. But Cowboy Point took care of its own. The community had come together to encourage her family to go away. And stay away.

So far, so good.

“This is what I was telling my brothers the other night.” Cat smiled at Sierra. “I’m sure you know who they are, but what you probably don’t know is that they’ve basically been in a competition to see who’s the grumpiest for their entire lives. But they claim they support my happiness, so I like to drench them in it whenever possible.”

“I can’t decide if that makes a wish I had siblings or makes me glad that I don’t,” Sierra said.

“Be glad that you don’t,” all three of her companion said, more or less at exactly the same time.

But then they all laughed.

They all talked about the market the day before, which had been spectacularly busy, thanks to their communal decision to open on holiday weekend. When Flannery Bennett came over, they talked about it with her, too, as she was the organizer.

“We’re really becoming a destination,” Flannery said, her thick red braids seeming to share in her excitement, since she never really stood still. “How cool is that?”

The middle Bennett sister had a kind of humming energy that made it seem to make sense that she was always on her feet like this, moving around between the crowded tables while her sister Kitty dreamed up new recipes and cooked them in the back and their younger sister Indy was the one who focused on the business side of things.A perfect team, Sierra thought. And another point in favor of siblings.

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