the office. The other part yearned to share his project with someone. He’d told all of his siblings about it, as well as Bear, Preacher, and Mister, who obviously had to live with the mess constantly on the kitchen table.
They all thought it was a great thing he was doing, but they didn’t share his excitement over things old and past.
“My dad died young,” Ward said, clearing the emotion from his throat. “He’s been gone for seven or eight years now, and a couple of years ago, my cousins all got a letter from their dad. He’d written them to his kids before he died, but my daddy didn’t do that. At least not that we know of.”
Ward’s throat stuck to itself, but he thought it best to just get the story out. “I was kinda jealous of them, to be honest. I know Ace had a hard time with it too.”
“Makes sense to me,” Dot said, threading her fingers through Ward’s. “You miss your daddy.”
“I do,” Ward admitted. “We’ve had all these albums in the basement for years and years. This past summer, I pulled them all out, and I started reading them. I started putting the stories in Mother’s journals together with the pictures in the albums. I have good memories of growing up here, and I’m making a book for each of my siblings with the journal entries and photos. It won’t be something from our dad, but it’ll be something to remind us who we are.”
He thought of the angel tree, because he claimed a pair of running, wild mustangs for his father every year. Sometimes he hung a star too. Sometimes an apple pie, because his daddy had loved apple pie with cheddar cheese.
Ward smiled just thinking about it. “It’ll be a long process,” he said. “I don’t have much time to work on it.”
“It’s sweet,” Dot said, glancing up at him again. Ward froze, as did time itself. He gazed at her, her face only a few inches from his. He could easily bend down and kiss her, and yet, he didn’t.
He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but he finally broke out of the trance when the electric kettle behind him began to bubble and boil, sending a hissing, steamy sound into the air. He drew a breath and turned from the table. “What’s your poison, Dot? And please don’t say white hot chocolate.”
Chapter Eight
Dot had just finished brushing her teeth with a brand-new toothbrush Ward had produced from a linen closet in the hall when the lights flickered, flashed, and went out. “Great,” she muttered. As if today hadn’t already been disastrous enough.
Ward had commented earlier that he was surprised the power hadn’t gone out yet with as strong as the winds were. He said they often lost power during the wind storms, and since the ranch sat thirty minutes south of Three Rivers, up in the hills, the power company didn’t make Shiloh Ridge their first stop. But he and Dot had enjoyed heat and power all afternoon and into the evening. He’d put a frozen pizza in the oven and served it with a bag of her favorite salad—sunflower seed broccoli crunch.
She’d teased him about having salad in a cowboy bachelor pad, and he’d shaken his head and smiled while he mixed in the poppy seed dressing. He’d asked her what her favorite foods were, and she’d admitted to macaroni and cheese, pepperoni pizza with ranch dressing, and her peanut butter—extra-chunky only—sandwiches.
“So basically you’re a teen boy,” he’d teased.
“Basically,” she’d said. He hadn’t had a much more refined palette, but he did admit that he could put together a few meals that weren’t entirely composed of carbs. She’d said she’d like to see that, and he’d promised her spinach and mushroom quiche for breakfast.
That so wasn’t happening without power. Dot couldn’t even see to rinse her mouth, so she opened the bathroom door, hoping for a glimmer of light from the fireplace to penetrate the darkness in the hall.
This house—Bull House, Ward called it—was far too big for low firelight to travel as far as this bathroom down the hall. Ward lived in the master bedroom, and when Dot had peeked inside it when she’d first arrived, she’d been somewhat surprised to see his bed made, his cowboy hats hung on a long row of hooks next to the door, and not a stitch of anything out of place. He lined his boots up by the back door too,