Jackie Merritt - Wind River Ranch

“Then he wasn’t on any medication that you know of?” There were some drugs that could wreak havoc with the circulatory system, and if Simon was taking any kind of medication, she wanted to know what it was.

“If he was, he didn’t get it from me. Dena, try to take comfort from the swiftness of Simon’s death. He died too young, but the way he went was much better than a long, lingering illness.”

Dena hated remarks like that, even though she knew Dr. Worth was still attempting to ease her pain and there was even some truth in what he’d said.

But suddenly she couldn’t talk about her father’s death a second longer. “Thank you for your time, Doctor,” she repeated and hurried out.

In her car it occurred to her then that she might run into someone she knew while in Winston, a thought that nearly brought on a fit of hysteria. Holding her hand to her throat, she took several deep breaths and told herself to calm down. She might as well face the fact that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of avoiding people’s sympathy during her week in the area.

Or could she? Where was it written that she had to have a public service for her father? She could confine the sad event to—Groaning, she put her head in her hands. Nettie would be appalled. Dena could see herself and Nettie standing alone in the cemetery, listening to a prayer administered by...who? A minister? Someone from the funeral home? Oh, what a pitiful picture, she thought with a fresh gush of tears. And it would be an improper, insulting rite for a man of Simon Colby’s stature. She was being selfish again, thinking of herself and the discomfort of a public display of grief.

Wiping her eyes, she put on dark glasses and forced herself to start the car. She would go to the funeral home and then get out of Winston. And if she ran into a dozen acquaintances—unlikely but possible—with vulturelike words of sympathy and only partially concealed expressions of morbid curiosity, she would handle it.

She had no choice.

That night Dena was able to eat dinner and to talk to Nettie without choking on her own words, probably because she felt so head-to-foot numb. It was even possible to walk through the house, remember her father and not fall apart. When she went to bed she was able to sleep, and any troubling dreams she had during those hours vanished when she awoke.

Ry thought she seemed unnaturally calm, not at all like the tense, jumpy, crushed woman he had picked up at the airport.

In truth, he didn’t see all that much of her, as he took his meals with the men and slept in the bunkhouse. But once he spotted her walking outside, and when a load of barbed wire and posts were delivered the afternoon just before the day of the funeral, he took the invoice from the driver of the truck and went into the house. Nettie was in the kitchen with flour up to her elbows, kneading a large batch of bread dough. Nettie had always taken pride in the good meals she served Simon and his men, and her pragmatic attitude was that people had to eat whether she was grieving or not. She looked up as Ry walked in.

“I need to talk to Dena, Nettie.” Nettie was a little bit of a woman, spry as a spring robin and much stronger than she looked. Ry estimated her age around sixty, but she could be ten years older or younger. Age, either his or hers, was not something they had discussed.

“I think she’s in the living room,” Nettie told him.

“Thanks.” Ry left and headed for the living room. From the doorway he saw Dena seated in a chair and staring blankly into space. Her vacant expression bothered him, and he wondered what, exactly, was going through her mind to cause it. Of course it had everything to do with Simon’s death, he knew that, but weren’t tears and sobs better than such concentrated stillness? Was she deliberately holding her emotions in check? That didn’t seem very healthy to Ry.

But who was he to judge Dena’s method of dealing with grief? Everyone on the ranch was affected by Simon’s death, in one way or another. The men were unnaturally subdued, working without the wisecracks and tomfoolery they often engaged in. Nettie was carrying on in spite of her sorrow, and he had willingly taken over the operation of the ranch for the time being. Taken Simon’s place, actually, although he felt certain that Dena would resent that concept should anyone voice it.

Well, he sure as hell wasn’t going to say any such thing to Dena, but he did have to interrupt her present revene. The invoice in his hand demanded a decision he didn’t feel he should make.

“Dena?” he said.

Slowly her head came around. Her look of total disinterest struck him as one containing a question—who is this man walking into my father’s living room? In truth she’d been miles into the past, thinking of her mother and envisioning how much differently things would have turned out had Opal lived.

She blinked, as though coming awake, and said, “Yes?”

Ry entered the room and walked over to her. “Dena, do you have the authority to sign checks for the ranch?”

She blinked again. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

Ry frowned. She seemed a million miles away and was speaking very slowly. Actually she seemed so withdrawn from reality that he started worrying about her. For certain he didn’t like bothering her with business at a time like this, but he had no choice.

“I have an invoice here that’s marked C.O.D.,” he said, “and someone has to write a check for $1,254.33. My name’s not on the checking account. I was wondering if yours is.”

Lines appeared in Dena’s forehead. Why ever would he think such a thing? “Of course it’s not,” she said, becoming slightly more alert. She paused to think about the amount of the check he needed and ended up speaking a bit suspiciously. “What did you buy for twelve hundred dollars?”

That hint of suspicion in her voice didn’t sit right with Ry. Grief stricken or not, Dena had no right to intimate that he was anything but a hundred percent honest, which he was. His face hardened and so did his voice. “I didn’t buy anything. Simon ordered barbed wire and posts to cross-fence one of the big pastures. The material has just been delivered, and the driver is waiting for payment.”

His defensive tone startled Dena. Good Lord, couldn’t she say anything to him without having her head bitten off? He’d done the same thing during the drive from the airport. What had she said then to cause such a reaction? Her head was aching and she couldn’t remember the incident clearly.

But it didn’t matter. She couldn’t have mustered any genuine anger today if her life depended on it, especially not over something like this. “Ry, you’re the foreman. You handle it, please.”

“How?”

“I really don’t care,” she said listlessly.

Ry could hardly believe his ears. “You don’t care. Dena, do you have any idea how many decisions have to be made nearly every day about something on this ranch? Do you care about that? Let me go one step further. Do you care about the ranch at all?”

Did she? It wasn’t a question Dena had spent any time pondering. She’d grown up on this ranch, but did it mean anything to her? Should it mean something to her?

She didn’t like that Ry Hardin had just brought to light a brand-new aspect of this ordeal.

“Just so you know,” he said flatly, “this isn’t the only situation where someone’s going to have to write checks. I think you should do something about that.”

“Like what?” She was truly puzzled by his attitude.

“Get your name on the checking account.”

“And how do I accomplish that? Simply walk into the bank and tell someone I want access to my father’s money?” Dena shook her head. “They’d either laugh me out of the bank or call the sheriff.”