Page 86 of Grown-Up Second Chance

“I think so, too.” Liz got a cup of coffee, then settled in her arm chair.

As I read through the news of the local cattleman’s association meeting, questions about my sisters lingered in my mind. Were Kathleen’s problems with Michael only run-of-the-mill? Or was there something more? Occasionally, something she’d said had caught my attention, leading me to believe there had been more trouble than she let on.

And Liz? I didn’t know much about her life. I’d gone to college by the time she hit her junior and senior years in high school. She’d gone to art school near Portland, but her life had been busy. Email and texting didn’t exist back then, so communication was limited to when we all met at the ranch house for holidays and summers. I seemed to remember someone in her college years, but she’d been alone ever since.

At least that’s what she told us.

For a family I thought I knew, there were a lot of secrets.

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Mid-afternoon, I received a text from Joe.

“I know it’s short notice, but early dinner? Burger and beer?”

“Sure,” I typed back. He asked me to bring along some water shoes.

Water shoes? Why water shoes? We couldn’t go fishing at night. There were critters. Big ones. Un-cute ones.

But I’d bring the shoes anyway.

I went back to writing up notes about what I wanted in a camera. I did a little more research online to try to understand the terms that photographers used for what I wanted to do. Although I was focused on the details, my subconscious whirled with the question Kathleen had posited: If I asked him, would Joe be waiting for me when we got done with our road trip? Or was I right that some other woman, someone smarter than me, who knew a good thing when she saw it, would have snatched him up like a prize bull?

Wow. I hadn’t thought in ranch and Montana terms for a long time. My colleagues in the San Francisco accounting world didn’t know what a prize bull was.

They were better off. Bulls were ornery creatures.

I was distracting myself. I needed to concentrate.

“Joe’s leaving Monday, right?” Kathleen asked as she emerged from the bedroom where she’d been watching an old movie and knitting.

“Yes.”

“We need to throw a going-away party,” she said.

“Who will come besides us?”

“There are a number of people who’ve been here the same length of time we have. They all know Joe. They’d come. Your problem is that you’re so focused on Joe you haven’t seen anyone else.”

It was true. I didn’t know many of the park residents except to say hello. Vestiges of my Bay Area existence. I’d had a lot of surface friendships, but rarely took time to stop and pass the time of day like I had when I was growing up.

Like Kathleen still did.

“I think Joe would like that,” I said.

“Good. Then I’ll invite people. Pot luck. Bring your own meat and drinks. Easy peasy.”

“I take it you’ve done this before,” I said.

“With food prices the way they are, and beef prices cut to the minimum, it’s the only way to party these days. The only variation is if someone butchers one of their cows. Then they supply the meat, but everything else stays the same.”

“And you think it will fly here?”

“I’ll call it an authentic Western experience. They’ll love it.”

I laughed.

“Let me know what I can do.”

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