Janet Tronstad - A Baby for Dry Creek and A Dry Creek Christmas - A Baby for Dry Creek

Chrissy shook her head. She wasn’t used to feeling spooked, and the more miles she put between herself and Los Angeles, the better she’d feel.

“You’ll call Pete’s and explain?” Chrissy reminded her mother. Ordinarily, Chrissy wouldn’t leave a job without giving notice, but she knew Pete would be relieved to have one less employee to worry about in the sale of the diner.

Chrissy’s mother nodded. “And you call when you get to Dry Creek. I’ll be staying with Mrs. Velarde for a few days.”

It was past midnight before Chrissy strapped Justin into his infant seat and crawled into the back seat herself. “Let me know if you want me to drive.”

“Maybe you can get some sleep.” Reno came around the side of the car with a blanket and handed it to her.

“I’m happy to help drive.” Chrissy hugged the blanket to her. It smelled of peppermint, and she couldn’t wait to snuggle into its warmth. “You haven’t had any sleep either.”

“I had a nap this afternoon with Justin.” Reno slid into the driver’s seat and checked the mirrors. He frowned a minute and then opened the car door again. Standing outside, he twisted the red ball off the antenna. “This car is odd enough, but with that red thing sticking up like that, a blind man could follow us to Dry Creek.”

Chrissy fell asleep before Reno got on Interstate 15. He noticed her stir at the first sound of Justin’s crying at dawn. There was desert on both sides of the car and a string of cars behind them on the single-lane highway.

“Do you want to stop in Vegas? We’re coming up on the city.” Reno looked back at Chrissy and held his breath. It had occurred to him somewhere around Barstow that Chrissy might want to stop in Vegas and stay there with Jared or at least visit him and show him their baby. Reno knew she’d said she wasn’t returning to Jared, but sometimes people didn’t know what they wanted until it was in front of them.

“If you don’t mind,” Chrissy said sleepily. “Any gas station will do. I should nurse Justin.”

Reno started to breathe again. “No problem.”

The casinos of Vegas stood straight ahead on the road like giant cartoon buildings. In the gathering dawn they looked almost eerie with their flashing lights. Reno pulled into the next gas station that he saw also had a pay phone.

He’d decided to call Mrs. Hargrove so she could post a sign in the café asking for someone to work as her housekeeper. As proud as Chrissy was, she wouldn’t accept a job that she thought was created just for her. A sign on the bulletin board in the café when she got there should convince her that Mrs. Hargrove’s job was legitimate. Chrissy wouldn’t need to know Reno was the one paying her salary.

Chrissy sat in the back seat of the car while Reno made his phone call. She was glad he’d decided he had some things to do so that she could nurse Justin in private. She loved these moments with Justin, even though being this close to Las Vegas made her nervous. When Justin was satisfied, she rearranged her blouse and looked around.

Chrissy rolled down the car window and glanced at the other cars in the gas station. Was it her imagination, or could she hear the same songs that she’d heard when she packed up earlier to leave with Reno? Yes, there it was—the faint sound of the Mrs. Robinson song.

She looked around more closely. None of the cars at the pumps looked familiar. Besides, the music was probably from a CD, and there could be millions of copies of the song. She looked over the cars at the pump again. She didn’t see a black sedan, and that’s what had been in her neighborhood.

Chrissy was glad when she saw Reno walking toward the car. He’d gone into the minimart and was carrying a white bag and two cartons.

“I got us some milk and donuts.” Reno slid the items through the open window and into Chrissy’s waiting hands.

“Thanks. What do I owe you?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I can pay.” Chrissy had about thirty dollars in her purse. Her mother was going to send the check from Pete that would cover the hours Chrissy had worked this week. “I might need to owe for the gas, but I can pay for the food as we go.”

“You don’t need to pay for the gas. I was coming this way anyway.”

Chrissy couldn’t think of any reason Reno would drive to Los Angeles. When she’d visited him on his ranch, he’d made a point of telling her that he never traveled.

“I don’t take charity,” Chrissy reminded him, reaching into her purse and pulling out two dollar bills. “Here.”

“I’m not that poor.” Reno frowned at her in the rearview mirror as he started the car. “I can pay for everything.”

If Chrissy had been looking around instead of arguing with Reno, she would have noticed that the music she’d heard had gotten a little louder, and that a black sedan pulled out from the other side of the minimart before backing up so it was no longer in view.

“We’ll split the cost of the gas,” Chrissy finally said. “I’ll pay you back when I get my check.”

Reno grunted in response as he drove the car out of the gas station area.

“You never did say what brought you to Los Angeles,” Chrissy said a few minutes later. Surely he hadn’t driven that far just to give her a ride back to Dry Creek. Of course not. He hadn’t even known she would want to move back there.

“I went to see the ocean.”

“Oh, and did you like it?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You mean you didn’t stop and see it?”

Reno shrugged. “I’m young. I’ve got lots of years to go see the ocean.”

“I wish I’d known that’s why you came. I could have stayed in Los Angeles another day if you wanted to go to the beach.”

“It’s all right.”

Chrissy shifted in the back seat. “It would have been fun to show you the ocean. We could have gone to the pier and ridden the old carousel.”

“I bet Justin will like that in a few years.”

Chrissy tried to ignore the picture forming in her mind of her and Reno and Justin going on a beach vacation. That was something that would never happen. He hadn’t even said that. She knew Reno was being kind. But by the time Justin was old enough to ride a carousel, Reno would have grown tired of befriending a single mother. That was another lesson she had learned from her mother’s past. The occasional man who had wanted to date her mother was usually not interested in being an instant father, and so he hadn’t lasted long as a friend to her mother, either.

Chrissy could tell the difference in the air as soon as they drove into Montana. Justin was sleeping, and the inside of the car was peaceful. They came into the state on Interstate 15 and turned off on Interstate 90 at Butte to head east.

The farming area smelled fertile with rain and wild grass. Clouds gathered ahead of them when they passed the downtown area of Miles City and began the last miles leading to Dry Creek.

Chrissy felt her whole body relax as she watched the space around her. Now, why had she never noticed how little space there was in Los Angeles? Everywhere you looked in L.A. something stopped you from seeing very far. But here in Montana nothing stopped a person’s gaze except for the Rocky Mountains to the northwest and the gentle slopes of the mountains to the east that she knew were called the Big Sheep Mountains.

“Are there any sheep?” Chrissy asked. “In the mountains.”

“Not for years since the cattle took over,” Reno replied as he made the turn off the interstate to go into Dry Creek.

Chrissy took a deep breath. She was really going back. She hoped Reno hadn’t exaggerated the welcome she would receive. She kept pushing her nervousness to the back of her mind, since it was too late to turn back anyway. “Are there a lot of cattle in Dry Creek?”