Page 22 of Grounded (May Hollow Trilogy #1)

Lindy chose a booth along the front window and they scooted in, Annie feeling a rip in the blue vinyl upholstery rub against her leg.

Looking around, she saw new red-and-white-checked curtains in the windows at each booth. Hissing sounds came from the grill where Bill dropped the bacon on it. Smoke rose as an exhaust fan sucked it out while Bill clattered around, pulling the other ingredients out for the sandwich.

The sounds and smells carried Annie back to her waitressing days in high school and college.

Bill hired her to work the breakfast and lunch shift, but occasionally he’d need help in the evenings.

Whenever she worked, she’d come home smelling like a bucket of lard.

She took a bath as soon as she got off work, trying to rid her body, especially her hair, of the diner’s scent.

But she loved serving people, and Bill and his wife, Viola, were the perfect bosses for a first job.

“Does Viola still make those delicious cream pies?” Annie asked Lindy.

“Viola has Alzheimer’s. When she has a good day, Bill lets her come down and pretend to help out in the kitchen, but he’s had to hire an extra cook.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Annie said. “I guess I expected to come back and have everything be the same as it was ten years ago.”

“It doesn’t change much, not like the young folks would like. I’m one of a handful of single people my age here in town. Believe me, that gets old.”

“I don’t know—after what I’ve been through, that sounds pretty attractive right now.”

“Bad luck in love, huh?” Lindy asked.

“Or bad choices.”

A young waitress brought their food with two glasses of tea. “Bill said he thought you would want tea. Is that okay?”

“Great, thanks!” Lindy said to the waitress, then turned back to Annie. “I hope you stick around. It would be nice to hang out with someone who isn’t already married with two kids.”

Annie smiled. “At least a couple of months until Grandma recovers from knee surgery.”

Bill walked over as he wiped his hands on a rag. “Did that lady rent the stone house from Beulah?”

Annie nodded, her mouth full of sandwich.

“She was turned a little odd, but you know how Northerners can be. I figured with it being a woman, and offering cash up front, it couldn’t be too bad.” Bill was summoned back to the grill by an employee in a grease-spattered white apron.

“Unless it’s counterfeit,” Lindy said.

Annie felt like her bite of sandwich turned into gravel as she half-choked it down.

“It’s not impossible,” Lindy said. “Believe me. I see everything in the court system.”

Inside the bank foyer, Annie would like to have admired the marble floors, decorative iron support columns, and walnut teller windows even more, had she not felt a growing sense of anxiety.

Lindy stood with Annie as she handed the teller the twenty one-hundred-dollar bills.

“Into Mrs. Campbell’s account?” said the teller. She typed away at a keyboard hidden below the granite and peered into a screen inset behind a hole cut in the stone.

“Yes, please.”

“How is Beulah? We heard she had a fall in the garden on Saturday,” the teller asked while her fingers clicked on the keyboard.

“She’s better, thanks,” Annie said, holding her breath and sensing Lindy doing the same thing while the teller counted out the bills and slashed them each with a yellow marker.

The teller put the money in the drawer and printed out a deposit receipt before handing it to Annie.

“So it’s real?” Lindy asked.

She laughed. “Where you afraid it wasn’t?”

“Actually, we were a little concerned,” Annie said.

“You’ve seen the marker test before, I’m sure,” the teller said. “We’re also trained to check for microprint on both sides and some tiny lines around Independence Hall. They’re nearly impossible for counterfeiters to reproduce. This is good money.”

After Annie parted with Lindy, she made a stop at the grocery store, then picked out a tray of petunias from Duncan’s Hardware.

Might as well do what she could to spruce up the place.

This knee operation may be the very thing to persuade her grandmother to sell.

If so, she would at least have the place looking good.

“Woody called. He wants to bring a horse over for you to ride,” Beulah said, holding the back door open for her.

“A horse? Today?”

“That’s what he said.” Her grandmother closed the back door behind them.

“Did I say I wanted a horse?”

“I think he’s hoping to court you on trail rides.”

Her grandmother gave her a knowing grin and turned to go back in the house.

It was midafternoon when she heard a horse whinny outside. Annie was finishing the petunia bed, which now lent a smattering of purple and pinks against the gray stone foundation below the front porch. With a porch swing and a paint job, the house might make a spread in Country Living.

She stretched as she stood and gathered up the hand trowel and the plastic trays.

Around back, Annie saw Woody in the barn lot, bent over a metal tank with a hose.

She set down the trowel and trays on the back porch and walked out to meet him.

A brown horse watched Woody’s every movement with large brown eyes.

“Woody?” she called.

“Howdy. I knew you were anxious to ride, so I brought over Nutmeg here. I thought I’d go ahead and clean this out for you so you’ll be all fixed up.”

“I’m sorry you went to all this trouble. I’m really not good on a horse.”

“No trouble. We’ll turn you into a horsewoman before you can say scat.”

Annie felt annoyed at his presumption, but didn’t feel like arguing. If he wanted to leave the horse here, she would look after it. She certainly had time on her hands.

“Be done in a jiffy,” he said. “Beulah invited me in for pie soon as I finished up here.”

Great, Annie thought. Did everybody that came to her grandmother’s house have to eat something? Was it possible for people to come and go without food being involved?

She had absently been petting Nutmeg and now the horse wanted more. She nudged her and Annie gave in and rubbed the animal’s forehead, feeling her own body relax with the movement. “You have a spot on your lip,” she said to the horse.

“That’s called a snip. She’s a chestnut horse with a snip and two socks,” Woody said.

Annie looked down at the horse’s feet and sure enough, her two back legs looked like she was wearing socks.

“Gotcha a pair of boots?”

“What for?”

“Better to have ’em in case the horse steps on your toes. It don’t feel too good even with boots on, but it’s worse’in sneakers.”

“But Woody, I don’t—”

“I’ll learn you this first time,” he said, his green eyes serious.

Annie wondered how she had gotten herself into this mess.

She went upstairs to find a pair of boots while Woody devoured her grandmother’s coconut cream pie.

She was terrified of horses, always had been, and her grandmother knew it.

Annie knew without a doubt it was her grandmother behind this whole horse thing.

It was just like her to keep pushing her to get over some deep-seated fear.

Her grandfather kept horses, but they were high-spirited and too dangerous for her, so rarely had she ever even ridden in childhood.

There were ponies at the fairgrounds, and once Jake had a horse that he took her for rides on, but that was with him driving, or leading, or whatever you did with a horse.

When she passed through the kitchen, Annie didn’t say a word. She glared at her grandmother, feeling all of fifteen again. Her grandmother had the beginnings of a grin pushing at one side of her mouth, but turned to the kitchen sink before Annie could tell for sure.

In the barn lot, Nutmeg stood looking at them with half-shut eyes. She looked sleepy and relaxed—a good sign. The high-strung breeds her grandfather had were jumpy and ready to bolt, the reason Annie had kept her distance with the breed.

Woody eased the saddle onto Nutmeg and pulled straps around the horse’s stomach, tugging against the leather.

“She swells up when I put her saddle on to keep me from pulling it too tight. We’ll talk a minute while she lets out the air.”

“Does it hurt her?” Annie asked.

“Naw, but it’ll hurt you when that saddles slips off because it’s not tight enough. It happened to me on a trail ride once. I was going down a hill and before I knew it, I was on the ground. That saddle slipped plumb to her underside.”

Woody cleared his throat as if he were about to lecture a college class.

“Okay now, pull back on the reins to stop. Pull on the left rein to go left. Pull on the right one to go right. Let her have her head free to walk. Cluck to pick up the pace and give a light kick in the side to go faster. Always get on and off on the left side and never get too close to the back end in case a horse will kick. Nutmeg doesn’t seem to be a kicker, but that goes for any horse. Never trust a horse. Got it?”

She nodded her agreement, but felt a gnawing in the pit of her stomach.

Woody turned back to Nutmeg and pulled hard on the leather straps, then tied them in something that looked like a man’s tie knot.

“All right, put your left foot in the stirrup and swing up when you’re ready,” he said.

Annie tentatively placed her left foot in the stirrup, grabbed the saddle horn with sweaty palms, and pulled herself up. Two hands placed square on her bottom pushed up.

“Good. Now, what you’ve got there is a Western saddle.

I like it better for trail riding, but some prefer an English saddle.

It’s up to your own likings,” Woody said.

“ ‘Round here, we tend towards Tennessee Walkers and most folks ride Western saddles with English reins.” He chuckled. “Guess we’re mixed up. All right now, cluck when you’re ready to take off. ”

Annie swallowed the fear in her throat and clucked. Nutmeg began to walk, and Annie practiced making her go to the left or right. She followed directions beautifully.

After a few more rounds, Annie felt her confidence grow. “This is actually not bad,” she said, more to herself than Woody.

“I’ll open the gate, and you can walk her around the pasture,” Woody called.

He slowly opened the barn lot gate as Annie guided Nutmeg through the entrance to the pasture.

But as she cleared the opening, a clang of metal against wood behind them caused Nutmeg’s muscles to lurch forward.

Annie was unprepared for the sudden movement and as Nutmeg’s front legs pulled hard into a full gallop, Annie felt her body jerk back in the saddle.

What did Woody say? Give Nutmeg her head?

No, pull back. The horse jerked as she jumped; a small limb and the right rein fell loose from Annie’s hand.

Oh, dear God, she prayed, please get me out of this.

She grabbed the horn with both hands and leaned forward.

But she felt her balance slipping away as her body tensed.

Nutmeg slowed as she reached the fence, but Annie had lost her balance and tumbled off the side.

Her right shoulder took the worst of it before she rolled onto her back. When Annie opened her eyes, she was aware of Nutmeg hovering over her like an anxious mother, her nose within inches of Annie’s eyes.

Soon Woody’s face crowded Nutmeg’s, his eyes wide and his mouth open.

“Annie, you all right?” he asked. Woody’s breath smelled of wintergreen tobacco.

Slush. The word floated through her mind, and she knew it wasn’t right.

Not slush. Snush. No, what was it? She searched for the word in the nostril of the horse.

Snuff. That was it, his breath felt of snuff.

No, smelt of snuff. Wintergreen tobacco crumbled up in a round can that made a faded circle in the back pocket of the high school boys’ blue jeans.

“Snuff!” Annie said aloud, proud for finding the word.

“You want some snuff?” Woody asked. “I got some right ’chere!”

Annie shook her head from side-to-side gently. It hurt along with her left shoulder.

“Can you help me get up?” she asked.

“Take it slow now.”

She held onto Woody’s arm as she rose slowly from the ground. She waited for a few seconds before attempting to stand with Woody holding onto her arm.

“What in heaven’s name?” It was her grandmother, limping across the field toward them with her cane.

“That old gate slipped its hinge and spooked Nutmeg. When she saw Annie wasn’t in control, she just took her for a ride.”

“Are you all right? I looked out the back porch window and saw you on the ground.” Beulah’s eyes went to Annie’s shoulder where her hand massaged the muscles.

“I don’t think anything is broken,” Annie said. Annie fixed her eyes on Woody, sorting out what he said. “She was trying to see how much she could take off of me. You mean she did that on purpose?”

“Did you hit your head?” her grandmother asked.

Annie stood and waited for Woody to respond.

“Well, yeah, I’m afraid so. Nutmeg is kind of bad about that. She sensed you weren’t in control and took over.”

“I can’t believe it. Now I’m betrayed by a horse?”

“ She might be a little addled,” Woody said to her grandmother as if she weren’t there.

“Does your head hurt?” Her grandmother looked worried.

“Annie, I sure am sorry about all this. I guess you won’t feel like riding for a while. I’ll bring the trailer over tomorrow and take Nutmeg back home.”

“We’ll get some Bengay on you, and I’ll put the kettle on for tea.” Beulah turned to the house.

“Oh, no, I’m keeping her. We have some things to work out.”

Annie was done being a victim.