ice cream. He recalled sharply when he was three years old, just a toddler, when a thunderstorm had broken over the ranch. It had been a long, hot, dry summer. Mary had shrieked with delight, grabbed him up under her arm, settling his legs across her hip, and she hurried outside. The first drops of rain started to fall—huge, fat drops that when they hit the earth, looked like small explosions, sending up blasts of dirt in their wake.
“Do you smell that?” she asked him, taking him out to the edge of the porch as lightning zipped across the sky, followed by rolling thunder. “Chase! Do you smell that wonderful perfume in the air? Oh! Smell it! Take a breath into your nose. What do you smell?”
Chase recalled the scent of the first drops hitting dry earth. Years later, when he was nine years old, Mary sat down with a dictionary to teach him about that wonderful, life-giving smell. She always was adamant about expanding his vocabulary. “It’s called petrichor, Chase.” She’d open the dictionary to that page, put his finger on the word. “And what does it say? Read it aloud to me.”
He took such teaching from his always enthusiastic, excited mother seriously. “It says, a pleasant smell.” He looked up at her. “It is, Mom. It smells like perfume.”
“Exactly!” Mary praised, giving him a proud look. “What else? You know that the words we use today come from ancient languages like Latin, Sanskrit, and Greek. What does it say about petrichor?”
“That Greeks said petra, meaning stone, and ichor, the fluid that flows from the veins of the gods, Mom.” He twisted to glance up at her, a very pleased look in her expression. She’d given him lessons in Latin and Greek since he was eight years old, because they were the roots from which most languages came. He had a keen memory and loved all those words.
“Well!” Mary said, patting his head, “you’re right. And this leads me into some Greek myths, stories that tell of the fluid that flowed through the veins of their gods.”
“Wasn’t that blood, Mom?”
“Excellent question, Chase. It was their form of blood, not exactly like a human’s blood, but it still gave them life.”
Trying to grasp the concepts, he asked, “So? The rain hitting the ground smells like their kind of blood?”
“You could say that. The fluid in their veins gave life to whatever it touched, and because rain is vital to everyone’s life, humans in Greece believed it to come from their gods and goddesses, who they worshipped.”
Chase smiled to himself, recalling those times, relishing them, grateful he had a mother much like Cari did, who was more childlike, excitable, always seeing the wonder of the world around her and sharing it passionately with others.
“I think I made up my mind!” Cari said, straightening and giving him her order. She only wanted three, but he persuaded her to get a dozen for the employees out at the raptor facility, which she was delighted to do. For the next fifteen minutes, Chase simply indulged his fantasy about Cari, the way she gracefully pointed to a donut, her quick smile, her eyes gleaming with joy, all made him ache in a new and unfamiliar way. It felt as though his heart was widening by the moment, whether it was her breathless laughter with the woman behind the counter, the huskiness of her tone, or the way she became one-hundred percent immersed in the moment. He realized that Cari was one of these rare, unique people who literally did live in the moment. That was tough to do, but as a sniper, he’d learned how to do it; to shut everything else out except for his narrow focus on his quarry. For her, it was a narrow focus on that group of rainbow frosted donuts. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he ordered four dozen donuts to go.
They carried the boxes of heavenly fragrant donuts, just made, out to the truck and set them between them, then climbed in, ready to take their surprise gifts back to the people who made the ranch what it was today. Chase cast a glance in her direction. “Tell me, where did you learn to live in the moment?”
Startled, she blinked. “What?”
“Several times now, when we’re together, I’ve noticed that you live in the moment.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that. Is that bad?”
“Hardly. I had to teach myself how to do it as a sniper. It