He scowled at his plate. “I should call Cy. I have a lot of work to do. The sooner he can pick me up, the easier for everyone.”
“Work? I thought you were visiting your relatives.”
He decided to ignore the comment. Pulling his phone from his pants pocket, he pressed a button. Nothing. He stood and walked over to the window above the sink. Then he turned an eye on Sera. “Don’t tell me. No cell towers around here.”
“Oh, we have cell towers.” She crossed her legs and smoothed the fabric of her sweatpants as if she were wearing linen trousers.
Holding the phone closer to the window, he tried again. Still nothing. He fixed her with a stare.
Holding the cup to her lips, she shrugged. “But we’re in a bit of a dip here. If you want a signal for your cell phone, you’ll have to walk up to the orchard on the hill.” She gulped her coffee and sighed, as if her job were done.
Clenching his fingers around the cell, he glanced down at the screen, which displayed a photo of the Brooklyn Bridge. Somewhere he wished he were at the moment. Anywhere, as a matter of fact. The Golden Gate Bridge would do, as well. Any bridge. “So no contact with the outside world.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sera walked over to the back door and held out both hands like a model on a game show. A phone hung between the door frame and the cupboard. She picked up the receiver. “You’ve heard of landlines, I presume.” She dialed a number.
Alex walked back down the hall, leaving Sera to make arrangements for someone to pick him up. If he stayed in the kitchen one minute longer with the monster-truck-driving madam, he feared he might rip the phone out of the wall in frustration. And then she would sic the dogs on him and he would be history. He stared out through the glass panels flanking the front door to the lane they had driven down the night before. For the first time, he noticed two horses in the front pasture. They would probably turn on him as well, stomping him into pieces in the dirt.
“Alex. Your cousin wants to talk to you.” Turning away from the grazing animals, he looked down the dark hall. Sera’s head peeked around the corner. She held out the handset, connected to the wall with a curly cord.
He walked back past the photos and took the receiver from her hand. “Hello?”
“Hey, cuz. How was your night?” Cyrus’s deep voice echoed through the phone. If Alex didn’t know better, he could swear his cousin sounded amused.
Turning his back to the kitchen, Alex stretched the cord into the hallway. “Listen, whatever this favor is, it better be quick. You’ve already used up most of your quota. She wrecked the truck last night. Among other things. I’m lucky to be alive.”
Cyrus laughed. “Where’s the truck?”
Alex held out the phone and looked at the receiver, unable to believe his cousin’s question. “Where’s the truck? How about, am I hurt?”
“Obviously you’re not hurt, or we wouldn’t be talking. Where’s the truck?”
“Not far from here. You’ll pass it when you come to pick me up.”
“Well, that’s the thing. See, the bridge is still flooded, and I can’t come get you unless I go way out of my way. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time.”
Alex smacked the wall with his fist and then winced at the pain. “I wanted to stay in a hotel in Shadow Falls in the first place, but you insisted I—”
“Whoa, fella. Settle down. By staying at Sera’s—I already asked Sera if you could stay another night and of course, being the nice person she is, she said yes—you can do me a favor while you’re there.”
Summoning what patience he had left, Alex was reminded that Cyrus was indeed Jean’s son. The two could talk your ear off. Funny how easily his cousin had slipped in the news he wasn’t coming to get him. “You’re the one who suggested I stay with you while I’m working on the theater mall project. You said we could get reacquainted.”
“I did. I do. And we will. But I want you to look over Sera’s farm and give me a fair market value. So this little twist of circumstances works to my advantage.”
Alex turned. Sera stood at the back door, hands behind her in the pockets of her jeans, her hair curling as it dried. He lowered his voice. “She’s selling you her farm?”
“She is. She just doesn’t know it yet. One way or the other, Last Chance Farm is going to be mine by the end of the year. And you, my favorite cousin from the big city, are going to help make that happen.”
SHE STOOD ON the back porch, breathing in the damp air and waiting while Aunt Hope found Alex a pair of Chance’s rubber boots and a poncho. She had absolutely no desire to show their visitor around the farm, but when he had asked, and Aunt Hope said, “Why, that’s a good idea, gives me some quiet time,” she didn’t have much choice.
Underneath the kitchen window, Aunt Hope’s herb garden sported bright green sprouts in the freshly turned earth despite the cool spring. She would package herb bouquets for the farmer’s market along with Sera’s larger produce. The onion sets she had planted two months earlier, just before the onion snow—hopefully the last snow of winter—had sprouted. A clump of chives in the corner grew green, and a double row of string for the sugar snap peas ran along the edge. On the trellis, new leaves jutted from the rose canes woven through the lattice. The door opened behind her.
The heavy air seemed to shift as he came to stand beside her. She moved an inch to the left. “Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. I got the feeling your great-aunt wanted us out of the house, so here I am. I don’t want to keep you from your work.”
She shrugged. “Actually, with the rain, there’s not much to do today. The soil’s too wet to work.” She finally turned to look at him. Light brown stubble, a shade lighter than his hair, covered his face.
“Where’s Cujo?” He scanned the enclosed yard and then the open space between the backyard and the barn.
Fighting back a smile, she cleared her throat and tried to sound serious. “Don’t worry. He has a morning routine. He won’t bother you.” She noticed Alex shivered, but whether from the damp chill or her words, she couldn’t say. “Let’s go.” She strode off in the direction of the barn.
The fog swirled around them as she led Alex past the shed and the big mock orange bush. Just beyond the garden, the white barn loomed out of the fog. Sera opened a door fitted into the gray stone foundation and entered the dim interior. When Alex didn’t follow, she stuck her head out the door.
Alex stared up at the huge structure.
“Committing the dimensions to memory?”
“No. Just looking.” With a last glance at the barn, he followed her inside.
Sera flicked a switch and a row of light bulbs illuminated a long hallway with stalls on one side and an open stairway on the other. “We’re on the lower floor of a bank barn. Built the year after the house.”
Alex peeked into the nearest stall. “Do you have any animals?”
“Two old horses. Mine and my mom’s. Sometimes I put them in during the winter, if the weather’s bad.”
“That’s right. I saw a bay and a palomino out front.”
“That’s them. And as of yesterday we have a litter of kittens.” She dropped to her knees on a pile of hay under a short flight of simple wooden stairs. She pulled aside the hay to show Alex five tiger-striped kittens and one black, mewing and crawling, their eyes still closed. “People drop animals off down by the mailbox. Sometimes dogs but mostly cats. I usually