Page 3 of Second Start: Family
“Your momma’s dead.”
The silence expanded, slid in between them, swirled around them like the Wyoming wind.
Then into the silence came the voice of his oldest from behind him. Hot and dry and sharp.
“Why couldn’t it have been you? Why the hell couldn’t it have been you?”
CHAPTER ONE
“I had no idea Hall Quick would be so difficult,” Bexley Farber said in apology. “This makes three possibilities we’ve arranged for him to meet by happenstance and three times he’s not been where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be there for happenstance to happen.”
“Life of a rancher,” said Rebecca, who was married to one. “Needs of the ranch come before anything like a schedule, much less a social life, and for a one-man operation like Hall’s trying to keep going, there are always needs.”
“Then how are we ever going to get him to meet someone?” Bexley asked the whole group. “Send them to the ranch?”
“Worked for me.” Rebecca smiled. “If I hadn’t been on the ranch, Luke and I wouldn’t have been thrown together and the magic wouldn’t have happened.”
Bexley chewed her lip. “Okay, but how do we get someone on the Quicks’ ranch? If Hall could afford help, he wouldn’t be so busy that he never takes time to talk to other people or go to community events and he might not need the Wyoming Marriage Association in the first place.”
“He’s got to get out some time,” objected Ellyn. She’d started this informal group they’d dubbed the Wyoming Marriage Association, but they were all equal members. “Feed store, bank, grocery store — any possibilities at his regular stops?”
“It’s got to be somebody strong. Dax has said a couple times how much Hall’s carrying on his shoulders. He needs somebody strong enough to share that, not to add on by being somebody else he has to take care of,” Hannah said. Her husband Dax Randall was another rancher and knew Hall Quick.
“At the same time, he needs somebody who’ll remind him he has a sense of humor — I remember how great his laugh was when we were kids,” Kendra said.
After a moment of mental inventory of the people at the places Hall Quick regularly frequented, they all shook their heads.
“Also, remember, any candidate has to love kids — from a teenager to a toddler with the twins in between.”
Rebecca grinned. “We won’t forget, Bexley. We’re half convinced you’re actually trying to make a match for those four kids and Hall’s tacked onto the deal.”
She grinned back. “Well, Kiernan and I did get to know the kids during our time together at Christmas, while Hall was delivering cattle in that blizzard.”
“What? You two had time for anybody other than each other?” Hannah teased.
Bexley didn’t have to answer because Kendra said abruptly, “There is a new teacher in Mason.” Writing and editing for the local paper, she picked up a lot of news. “Vicky Otter, the senior teacher, told me about her. She sounds … interesting. And that’s somebody he’d have to see regularly, since she’s teaching his kids.”
“What doesinterestingmean?”
“Vicky seemed to really like her, but I also got the impression Vicky thinks the new teacher might have ghosts in her past.”
“Who doesn’t?” Ellyn asked.
“Especially who doesn’t when they come to teach at a two-room schoolhouse in Mason Wyoming,” added Rebecca.
“Barely two rooms. They’re still using that plywood divider. But the first question is if this new teacher’s single,” Ellyn said.
Kendra nodded. “Vicky said she is. What’s the second question?”
“What’s her name?”
“Kenzie Smith.”
*
“Kenzie? How much longer are you going to wait?” asked Vicky Otter.
Kenzie turned from the open back door she’d been looking out to her fellow teacher at the front of the tiny school room.
