She wished he hadn’t, that he would touch her again, hold on tight and never, ever let go. But he didn’t. And she pushed the blankets aside, swung her legs over the edge of the hay bales and stood up. Barefoot, she went and pulled the door open. Buster went out and she scolded, “Don’t run off, now.” And then she lingered in the open doorway, staring up at the sky. Blue as a newborn baby’s eyes. She glanced back over her shoulder at Collin.
He was sitting up, bare feet on the floor. He had a case of bed head every bit as bad as hers, and he was kind of hunched over, his elbows on his knees. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Put your boots on,” He raked his fingers back through all that thick, every-which-way hair. “We’ll see if the water’s gone down enough that we can get across the ravine to your folks’ house.”
They put on their damp socks and boots and pulled open the door that led into the main part of the barn.
“Needs a good mucking out in here,” Collin said. Did it ever. Most of the animals had wandered off, out into the morning sunshine, leaving a whole lot of fresh manure behind. “You supposed to be taking care of the place all by your lonesome while your folks and your brother are off at the rodeo?”
She shook her head and named off the neighbors who’d agreed to look after things and feed the stock until the family returned. “But I’m guessing they probably all have their own problems about now.” At least it was summer and grazing was good. The animals wouldn’t starve if left to their own devices for a few days.
Instead of slogging through the mess on the barn floor to one of the outer doors, they ducked back into the tack room and went out through the exterior door there. Buster was waiting for them, sitting right outside the door, acting as though he’d actually listened when she told him not to wander off.
Willa scratched his head and called him a good dog and tried to tell herself that the jittery feeling in her stomach was because she hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before— not rising dread at the prospect of how bad the damage was behind the barn on the next rise over, and along the roads that crisscrossed the valley. And in town …
“It’s a beautiful day,” she said, tipping her head up again to the clear sky. “You’d almost think yesterday never even happened.”
“Hey.”
She lowered her gaze to him. Even with his hair sticking up on one side and a smudge of dirt at his temple, he still looked like every well-behaved girl’s naughty, forbidden fantasy. “Hmm?”
His dark eyes searched hers. “You okay?”
And she nodded and forced her mouth to form a smile.
On the other side of the barn, the two pigs from the night before were rooting around near the water trough. A rooster stood on a section of busted-down fence and crowed as Willa stared across the ravine at her parents’ house.
The house was untouched by the flood, though the water had gotten halfway up the front walk that was lined with her mother’s prized roses. Her dad’s minitractor lay on its side at the base of that walk. And a couple of steers had somehow gotten through the fence and were snacking on the vegetable garden in the side yard.
Below, in the ravine, the water had receded, leaving debris strewn down the sides of the hill and up the one on which the house sat. There were tree trunks and lawn chairs down there, boulders and a bicycle, a shade umbrella and any number of other items that looked bizarre, scary and all wrong, soggy and busted up, trailing across the pasture. Willa turned her eyes away, toward the road.
And saw her red Subaru. It had drifted past the ditch and lay on its side in the pasture there. It was covered in mud.
“Guess I’ll be needing a new car.” She tried to sound philosophical about it, but knew that she didn’t exactly succeed.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go check out the house. Watch where you put your feet in that ravine.”
Buster and the two pigs followed them down there. They picked their way with care through all the soggy junk and knotted tree roots. It was going to be quite a job, cleaning up. And she knew that all the other ranches in the valley had to be in a similar state, if not worse. Her family still had a barn and the house, at least. And as far as she could see, there were no animals or—God forbid—people lying broken amid the wreckage down there.
When they reached the house, they skirted the downed tractor and went up the front steps. She’d lost her keys. They were probably still stuck in the ignition of her poor Subaru. But her mom had left a house key where she always did, in the mouth of the ceramic frog by the porch swing.
They went inside. The power and phone were both out, but still, it all looked just as it had the last time she’d been there, the white refrigerator covered with those silly smiling-flower magnets her mother liked, some of them holding reminders to pick up this or that at the store. There were also pictures of her and her brother and a few recipes her mom was meaning to try. In the living room, the remote sat on the magazine table by her dad’s recliner and her mother’s knitting bag waited in its usual place at the end of the fat blue sofa.
Her childhood home. Intact. It seemed a miracle to her right then. And she wanted to cry all over again—with a desperate, hot sort of joy.
Collin turned on the water in the kitchen. It ran clear, but they both knew that the flood could have caused contamination of any wells in its path.
She said, “We have wells for the stock. But for this house and Gage’s place, we have a water tank that taps an underground spring higher up on this hill. The floodwaters wouldn’t have reached that far. So the water here, in the house, is safe.”
“That’s good. A lot of valley wells are going to need disinfecting. Any source of clean water is great news.”
She nodded. “And in town, they get water from above the falls. So they should be all right, too, shouldn’t they, at least on the north side of the creek?” He shrugged. She knew what he was thinking. Who could say what they would find in town? And what about his family’s place? “I know you probably want to head over to the Triple T….”
“Yeah. But let’s check out your brother’s house first, and then see about getting something to eat.”
Gage’s house. She realized she didn’t want to go there.
But she did it anyway. And she was glad, again, for Collin’s presence at her side. The house was locked up. They looked in the windows. It was bad. The waterline went three feet up the walls, but the moisture had wicked higher still in ugly, muddy little spikes. Gage’s furniture was beyond saving, soggy and stained, the stuffing popping out.
“Can we get to the propane tank?” Collin asked. “Better to be safe than sorry when it comes to a possible gas leak.” She showed him the way. They were able to turn it off from outside. Then he said, “Come on. There’s nothing more we can do here right now.”
They went back to her parents’ house and found plenty to eat in the pantry. She filled Buster’s food bowl and the hungry dog quickly emptied it. After the meal, she took the perishables out of the fridge and put them in a bucket in the front yard. The two pigs went right to work on the treat.
By then it was still early, a little after seven. Collin suggested they make use of the safe water source and take showers before they left. There was just no way to guess the next time they’d have a chance to clean up a little. As at Gage’s place, the tank was heated by propane, so they even had hot water.
Willa chose from some of her own old clothes that her mom had stored for her in a box under the stairs. She got clean jeans, a fresh T-shirt and a pair of worn but sturdy lace-up work boots to wear. For Collin, she found an ancient purple Jimi Hendrix Experience shirt that belonged to her dad, a pair of her dad’s boots that were a pretty decent fit, and some trusty bib overalls. She also gave him a towel, a toothbrush, shave cream and a disposable razor. He took the guest bathroom. She used the master bath, and she made it quick.
Still, as she stood before the steamy