Bayou Christmas (Cypress Cove #2) - Suzanne Jenkins Page 0,8
was a nice encounter, seeing Amber like that. There didn’t seem to be any animosity. Maggie didn’t feel any toward her, although she had reason to be cautious. Amends had been made for the wrongs done. Now they’d see each other later that day. They wouldn’t be best friends, but cordial was good.
Stomping through a marshy area, she came upon a new band of horses on the state land side of the border, and that made her happy. Later, she’d drag a bale of alfalfa over so they’d be tempted to cross the invisible line that separated her land from the state’s.
Having wild horses on her property gave her a sense of peace and safety. At sunset, the horses crept around her house, and at any given time, a band of them would surround her place, some lying down. At night when she sat in her screened-in porch, having a glass of wine or, if it was really late, a cup of tea, she saw the nightly visitors’ eyes shining in the pitch black.
And if anyone would try to creep up on her in the dead of night, which had happened in the past, their whinny would alert Maggie.
They came around the property, and she knew that the cottage was a sharp right turn on a path through the woods. She could keep going and find the horse trail that Justin used to ride his horse Spooky to her cottage from the vet clinic, but that meant having to open her gate. Instead, where the fence began, she turned there and soon would come upon her backyard with the cottage.
The clearing the cottage had been built on was about two acres of level, dry ground. If she had an enclosed space, it would be ideal for an animal rescue. Examining the area, she imagined where a barn could be built. Was she nuts? She imagined the amount of work it would take to organize something like that.
“Come on, Brulee, let’s get moving.”
Back inside the cottage, she got the dog settled, and Brulee definitely had an attitude, knowing Maggie was going on an adventure without her. Grabbing an apple and the keys to the skiff, she kissed Brulee one last time and left the cottage, locking up. The chances that anyone would dare to come there and trespass were remote. But better safe.
Walking along the dock, the sense of unreality hit her of how much her life had changed in such a short period of time. Not long ago, she’d ended a marriage that should never have taken place, and moved to the Bayou Cottage at Cypress Cove. The first day there, she met, or re-met, a guy from her childhood, Justin Chastain. And except for a brief time, they’d been together ever since.
The brackish smell of the water made her happy; this was home. She jumped down into the skiff—the water was at low tide, so it was a long drop—and untied it from the mooring. The motor started up right away, and she steered around, avoiding the lily pads and grasses that grew at the edge of the water. She’d been advised that if she wanted to swim in the bay, she should have the area dredged to rid it of the sedges and water plants and visiting alligators, but she didn’t want that. She preferred the ducks and toads and all the fish that found sanctuary in her ungroomed beach. In the months she’d lived there, she’d never seen an alligator; the water was too brackish. The fishermen asked her if she minded them coming so close because she had the best fishing outside of the village dock.
The ride to town took less than five minutes normally, but on this fall day, since she had a little time to spare, she made a right instead of the left to town so she could motor past her neighbors’ homes and around Bonnet Island to see if anything had changed since the last time she’d made the trip. More trees had lost their leaves, the peak of autumn color past, but it was still fall out, and something stirred in her chest, melancholy maybe, or outright fear. Time was marching on so fast, and she knew it would increase the older she got.
A minute later, up ahead she saw the village dock, and Gus Hebert waited at the end of it; he’d heard her leave Bayou Cottage ten minutes before.
“I was gettin’ ready to come after ya,” he said, bending