Page 8 of Colorado Christmas Carol

Essa lay awake a long time, wondering what Duke knew about Dean. He was obviously not happy with the idea of Mellie going anywhere with him. There must be a reason.

He was a private detective. He’d been an FBI agent. They had ways of ferreting out information that nobody else could get. What had he found out that he couldn’t share?

She scoffed at that idea. Dean was such a smart, kind person. He couldn’t have a mean bone in his body. He’d obviously been put down most of his life, but it hadn’t turned him bad. He was polite and patient even when he shouldn’t have been. He was kind to everyone he met.

So why didn’t Duke want not only Mellie but Essa, too, not to go anywhere with him? And why did he want Essa to help him make sure of it?

She worried the idea until she saw the time. She had to get up early to start the breakfast menu with her helpers. She turned off the light and went to sleep.

Only to have dark and scary dreams. There was a house where a small boy was beaten with a small shovel, beaten bloody, while a woman yelled at him over and over again. There was a little boy who was wrapped in a white sheet and put into a hole in the ground.

She rolled over restlessly as the nightmare continued. Now there was a young woman with a man. She stripped the clothes off the little boy and held him down in a tub of cold water with ice in it. She laughed while she did it.

She wore a blue bow in her dark hair, and she had on a pin of some sort, a colorful pin with a fist.

The boy was dressed now and shivering. The woman had on some sort of silky black pajamas. She was teasing the boy with her feet, with kicks and feints, and laughing wildly.

Then she was wearing a dress again. She looked funny, like a little girl dressing up, with a blue bow in her hair and a short skirt.

But when Essa looked closer, it wasn’t the woman in the skirt, it was the little boy.

He had the blue bow in his own hair now.

There was a man, slight and older than the woman, who cowered as the woman struck him. He was crying.

He turned and his face was a skeleton. And then, suddenly, the face was her own!

Essa awoke with a stark cry of alarm. She was sweating. What a horrible dream. She’d never had any like it. She sat up in bed, holding her head. If that was what she could expect tonight, she’d sit up and watch old movies, she thought.

* * *

The relief cook showed up on time, thank goodness, so she was free to go with Duke and Mellie to ride horses Sunday.

“Have you ever been on a horse?” Duke asked as they drove toward the ranch outside Benton.

“Once or twice,” she lied.

“Good. Maybe you won’t fall off going down the trail,” he added in what she thought of as his mocking tone.

“Oh, I’ll do my best,” she promised from the comfort of the back seat. “Not to fall off, I mean,” she added.

“I can ride really well,” Mellie told her. “Daddy taught me. We used to live on a ranch.”

Nobody said anything. It was obvious that it was a painful subject, because talking ceased for a few poignant seconds.

“Where did you go riding?” Mellie asked her friend.

“Around here,” Essa said. “I grew up in Benton. Well, near Benton.”

“It’s pretty rural,” Duke replied.

“Yes, and small towns are like big families,” she said, smiling. “I’ve always loved living here.”

“No inclination to go to Denver and find some great fancy restaurant with a name nobody can pronounce?”

“None at all. I don’t want to live in a city. Not ever.”

“Why?” he wondered aloud.

She sighed. “I watch television occasionally. Detective shows, CSI, stuff like that. It seems to me that the best of the cities these days is the worst of humanity.”

Duke’s pale eyebrows lifted.

“I’m just one opinion,” she pointed out. “Everybody’s entitled to one.”

“Why aren’t you married?” he shot back.

She drew in a breath. “I’m not the sort of woman who attracts men,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t move with the times. I don’t watch much television, the subjects I’m interested in aren’t exactly party talk, and there’s a real limit to single men around here,” she finished.

“The streets are full of men,” he retorted.

“Sure. But most of them are married. The divorced ones run if you even look in their direction. The single ones mostly have two or three obliging friends, and the rest are gay.” She smiled. “I adore gay men.”

“They won’t marry you.”

She shrugged. “Big deal. They’re good company, and I don’t have to fight them off at my front door. Figuratively speaking. And should we be discussing this in front of you know who?” she added, jerking her head toward a fascinated Mellie.

“Are you kidding me?” Mellie burst out. “You should come to school with me. We got into a vivid discussion of sex right in my classroom until the teacher came back in and called the police! Daddy came and got me, and I got transferred to another school!”

Essa’s mouth was open. “You have got to be kidding me!”

“I wish she was,” Duke muttered. “Before that happened, one teacher corrected a student and wound up in the hospital fighting for her life.”

“This is not how things happen in Benton,” Essa said on a harsh breath.

“Not when I went to school, either.” He laughed.

“My teacher kissed her boyfriend outside the classroom and my dad called a conference with the teacher and the principal. She was disciplined. That’s how school worked when I was in grammar school.

These days, it’s unreal what kids go through to get an education. ”

“He tried to put me in a private school, but I wouldn’t go,” Mellie said with a grin. “I need to be street smart to live in the modern world!”

“Not that street smart,” he muttered, glaring at her.

“I don’t blame you,” Essa told him. She shook her head. “I still can hardly believe what’s going on in the world today.”

“My grandfather said that people born at the turn of the last century would run for their lives in any modern city. I guess he was right. It’s not the world that generation grew up in.”

“Times are just a lot harder,” Essa ventured. “It’s because we’re so connected. I mean, look at the tables next time you’re in our restaurant. Half the people there are staring transfixed into their cell phones. They come in with other people and never speak to them.”

“I have to agree,” Duke said. “The internet and social media have been both a blessing and a curse.”

“Mostly curse,” she replied.

“Now, now, could we really live without our video games?” Mellie interrupted. “Daddy?” she added with a pointed glare.

“It’s just a couple of video games, and I have to relax somehow.” He glanced at her. “We both remember when I tried dating.”

Mellie rolled her eyes. “We should forget that.”

“Hell, yes, we should,” he agreed at once.

Essa was all ears, her eyebrows almost meeting her hairline. Waiting.

Mellie glanced at her and laughed. “He brought home this lady who worked for the agency.”

“Yes, and she took one look at my daughter, muttered something about excess baggage, and ran for her life,” he said, his tone dripping sarcasm. “My baby! Excess baggage!”

Essa chuckled. “I think she’s amazing excess baggage,” she said, with a big grin at Mellie. “She’s precocious, but she’s smart, and she has manners. You’ve done a good job,” she told Duke.

“The lady said she wasn’t raising somebody else’s brat.” Mellie sighed.

“You’re both well rid of her, then, aren’t you?

” Essa replied. “She showed her true colors before any real damage was done. I mean, imagine if your dad had just dated her at work and didn’t bring her home until .

. .” She swallowed hard at Duke’s glare.

“Sorry. Not my business. Shutting up now.” She sat back in her seat.

They both burst out laughing.

“Yes, just imagine,” Duke said, shaking his head. “To be fair, most people don’t want anything to do with single parents.” He glanced at his daughter with obvious pride. “And my baby will never be excess baggage to me.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Mellie said, smiling at him.

“Somebody who doesn’t want a child in their lives isn’t somebody I’d want to be around,” Essa added.

“Benton is full of families. They come in here on Sunday after church.” Her eyes were dreamy.

“The kids spill stuff and have fights, and get called down, and drop stuff—and our manager just laughs and calls one of the maids to help clean it up. He helps, too. This place is tailor-made for kids. Nobody fusses.” She grinned.

“Try that in some fancy restaurant in Denver.”

“I don’t have the insurance.” Duke chuckled.

“And I don’t have the inclination. I’ll take Benton anytime.”

“So would I.” Mellie sighed. “Isn’t it just beautiful here?” she asked, looking around at the lodgepole pines and aspens, at the long wide pastures and the sharp-peaked, snow-capped mountains in the distance. “It’s heaven.”

“I’ve always thought so,” Essa agreed.

Duke pulled off onto a dirt road with shale stones. The car slid like mad until he got the handle on driving on it. “Damn,” he muttered. “We could go skating!”

“Shale is awful, isn’t it? I used to live on a road like this when I was a little girl. I learned a lot of new words when Daddy drove on it in the rain,” Essa told them.

He grinned. “I don’t doubt it. And we’re here.” He pulled into a long dirt driveway with, thank goodness, no shale, and stopped in front of a huge log cabin. Out back were lodgepole pines, outbuildings and fences.

Over the driveway, coming in, was “Circle Bar E Rally Ranch.”

An elderly man came out to meet them, shaking hands with Duke. “I’m glad you could make it. I don’t do a lot of business here. Place is going to rack and ruin,” he added on a sigh.

“It’s hard to make ranching pay,” Duke agreed.

“Come along. I’ll take you back to the stable. Only have about six saddle horses now. With the fuel situation what it is, I’ve had to sell off a lot of livestock. It’s like they’re trying to kill agriculture these days.”

“It’s hard everywhere,” Duke said. “All over the world.”