Kristine Rolofson - The Husband School

There was no use reminding her mother that the “Dirty Shame” was now the much more respectable “Willing Café.” Loralee didn’t listen. “Hi, Mom. Believe it or not, I was just thinking about you.”

“You’ll never believe what Joan and I did this morning! We played golf! Can you believe it? Golf,” her mother chirped over the phone. “I’ve hit the mother lode.”

“The mother lode of what?”

Loralee, too busy talking to answer questions, had continued, “I’ve taken up golf myself. There are men everywhere, Megs. Lovely men who enjoy talking to a woman once in a while.”

Her mother wasn’t a gold digger or an opportunist. She’d married men she’d felt sorry for, or thought she was in love with and could help with their drinking problem or their gambling issues, or, in one drastic case in 1988, a shy trucker who’d decided it was time to go straight. Men took advantage of Loralee, not the other way around.

“Be careful,” Meg warned, feeling much too old to deal with another stepfather. “Don’t even think about getting married.”

“Honey, I’m done being young and silly,” Loralee said. “But I’m not about to sit around this condo and watch Joan knit charity afghans.”

“No,” Meg said, “of course not. But maybe you could borrow some yarn and learn to—”

“And I don’t like the casinos that much,” she mused. “Joan does, though, so I go along to keep her company. We like the buffets.”

Unlike her youngest sister, plump Aunt Joan had married a man who needed no fixing. She’d waited forty-one years to find the love of her life, which Meg thought was admirable. They’d been married thirty years when he died, leaving Aunt Joan with no financial worries and a spacious two-bedroom condo overlooking a golf course. She’d begged her sister to move to Arizona. Loralee had flown down for a visit last year and showed no sign of returning.

“We’re going to join a league, so we’ll play almost every morning before it gets too hot. What do you think?”

“That sounds fun.” In no universe could Meg picture her mother playing golf or, for that matter, being content to live with her much older, conservative sister. However, both women seemed pleased with the arrangement so far. Meg suspected that soon enough Loralee would find life with Aunt Joan a little tame and move back to Willing.

“We might drive up in the spring, make a road trip out of it. See a bit of the country. And you, of course, sweetie. Are you going to come down for Christmas? I’m on the internet right now, looking at flights. I can book it right now for you, what do you think?”

“I don’t know about Christmas, Mom. Maybe I’ll come down in January, like last year.”

“You can’t tell me that place is busy over the holidays. I know better.”

“I can’t travel if there’s a storm—”

“There’s always a storm.”

“Yes.” And it was difficult to drive to the airport in three feet of snow. “And I’d rather not get stuck in an airport when I could be home.”

“You should move down here. Get out of the cold weather,” her mother said, as she did near the end of every phone call to her daughter. “We sit by the pool every afternoon, you know. A little sun would do you good, brighten you up a bit.”

“It sounds wonderful,” Meg fibbed.

“You’re at a nice age to find an older man, sweetie. You could get highlights, a bright red bathing suit—men love red. And a spray tan! I’ve been saving coupons—”

Meg punched the on switch on the empty food processor and raised her voice, “Static, Mom! I can’t hear you!”

And feeling relieved and guilty, she hung up.

Loralee meant well, but she refused to accept her daughter’s single lifestyle. I want you to be happy. I want you to find a man and have babies. I don’t want you to be alone every night.

Fair enough. That all sounded good, but Meg had had a shot at all those things once, a very long time ago. Even then she’d known that dreams didn’t always come true. In the years that followed, when she’d finished school and worked at her dream job, she’d assumed she’d meet someone special, someone who would charge into her world and fill her empty heart with massive amounts of love. Who would make everything good and right and perfect simply by taking her into his arms.

Just the way Owen MacGregor had.

But fifteen minutes ago she’d watched that particular man leave the restaurant and stride across the gravel parking lot. And she knew she’d given up on fairy-tale endings a long time ago.

Her one and only Prince Charming had left the building.

* * *

“IT’S THE CRAZIEST idea I’ve ever heard.” Owen pointed the truck west, out of town and toward home. Boo, busy chomping on bacon, didn’t argue. He didn’t even bother to lick the rancher’s ear, which was the way he usually participated in conversations.

“Good thing I got out of there when I did,” Owen muttered as he adjusted the heating vent. Amazing that by changing his Monday routine in the slightest way, he’d risked getting involved in the wackiest town project since the stealing of the grizzly from Dahl’s.

That memory made him smile. The old man, with typical good grace, had thrown a welcome-home party for the bear once Owen and his teammates had confessed and hauled the mangy thing back to the bar. Sean MacGregor had then grounded his son for two weeks, and the Willing Destroyers had spent a long weekend cleaning out cattle sheds.

Until the day he died, which had been just a few short years later, Sean had sponsored an annual “Grizzly Reunion” beer fest at the Dahl. And to his shame, Owen had no idea if that was still going on. The truth was, Willing was no longer his home and hadn’t been since his father died. Ed, a recluse all his life, had moved in and taken over the cattle operation. Owen’s mother refused to live in the big house alone and had moved to Helena, and then followed him to DC. Owen had switched his major from grassland management to environmental law and, until now, had never looked back.

He’d been proud of his family’s contributions to the town—heck, his great-great-great-grandfather had named the stupid place—but he’d had no interest in Willing for many years. Cattle ranching, what he’d grown up expecting to do for the rest of his life, had lost its appeal after his father’s burial in the family plot.

While his mother’s relatives littered half of the state, there were no other MacGregors left. Ed was gone. Owen, temporary cattleman, had a pile of decisions to make.

And none of them involved television shows, dating, the mayor’s Hollywood girlfriend or Margaret Ripley’s boyfriends. But Owen thought about his father, the man he’d respected more than anyone else in his life, and looked for a place to turn around.

* * *

SHELLY COULDN’T WAIT to get off the bus. She had to pee. And she’d been feeling queasy for about a hundred miles. Or maybe longer, like five months. Since she’d found out she was going to have a baby. If any news was guaranteed to make you want to stick your head into a toilet bowl, it was learning you were pregnant. Especially if you were eighteen and the baby’s father was nowhere to be found.

Not yet, anyway.

Shelly resisted the urge to pat her swollen belly and instead reached into her bag for M&M’s. If she sucked on them one at a time, until the coating evaporated in her mouth, she could make the rest of the bag last until the next stop. According to the driver, they were about fifteen minutes away from a quick breakfast stop at a café. He recommended the cinnamon rolls, if there were any left, and explained that the passengers were welcome to bring their hot drinks back on the bus with them, as long as the cups had lids. He didn’t want to be cleaning up coffee spills when his shift was over.