Page 140 of Head Room

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

I heard therain start as I slid into bed.

The snow from the pass was now over us, but thankfully in less solid form.

Also thankfully, it waited for us to have a lovely dinner and evening, including watching Shadow and Tamantha play in the slow-to-go twilight of the back yard.

My parents and Tom left.Tamantha was staying here tonight.

That, Mom said, was so we could get an early start the next morning on a full day of final wedding preparations.

And when she said early, she meant on Central Time, not Mountain Time.

I am not, however, defenseless.

After her third comment about my kitchen lacking a supply she wanted, I innocently suggested she stop by the Sherman Supermarket in the morning, before coming here, to make sure she had everything she wanted...and to be sure she introduced herself to Penny, the head checker.

Shadow came upstairs, circled, and settled onto his bed.One of his beds.

He’d developed a habit when Tom wasn’t in the house of staying on his second bed, in Tamantha’s room, until she fell asleep, then coming to mine until I fell asleep.I know he split time during the night because I’d heard or seen him on the move.In the morning, he reversed, being with each of us when we woke.

When Tom was in the house and when we were at the ranch, Shadow stuck with Tamantha.

“Going to have the light on for a while, buddy.”

Shadow moaned, but didn’t get up.

I opened my device and started reading.

****

A sound woke Maggie.

Her first thought was that it was an alarm.Indians.Or a courier coming in with bad news of...Then she remembered they had returned.Ransom Fletcher had safely returned with it.

A second sound came clearer, of a heavy, muffled footstep.Then a scrape of wood against wood.

Ransom...

Maggie was out of the bed and through the door before the scrape became a crash.

“Ransom?”

In the moonlight, she made out her husband, one arm leaning heavily on the wooden table, while he bent over and reached for the fallen chair.He wore no boots — she saw their bulky outline as darker shadows near the door.

“Ah, Maggie.I didn’t mean to wake you.Took off my boots so I could creep in, silent as an Indian.”

He came upright with the chair, then listed rather precariously.She took an instinctive step toward him, then, almost as quickly, a step backwards.

He smelled somewhat like Dick Gregson had when he’d been drinking from that flat bottle.Though Ransom’s lean body carried none of that underlying sour reek of sweat.He smelled of smoke and soap and horse and leather and sage.And Ransom showed no sign of the bitter anger she had come to associate with that smell, which had taught her to keep out of its path.

“Are you all right?”she asked warily.

“All right?I’m more than all right, Mrs.Fletcher.I am alive.Alive!God!and doesn’t that sound grand?”He grinned at her, and she found herself smiling back, for his attempt at an Irish lilt was laughable.“Alive to ride under the blue sky, alive to drink good whiskey in small back rooms of ramshackle huts, alive to crack my shins against my own fine chair.”

He lifted the offending piece of furniture by the top rung of its back and spun it around to plant it square in the middle of the floor.

“Alive to awaken my own fine wife from her well-earned rest.Alive to sincerely beg her forgiveness.”He bent in a slightly unbalanced bow, cocking his head to the side to look at her.“Do I have your forgiveness, own fine wife?”