Rodeo Family. Mary Sullivan
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Название: Rodeo Family
Автор: Mary Sullivan
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Вестерны
isbn: 9781474084741
isbn:
She’d only worn her dress for half the day. The next time she wore it, she would rinse it by hand. Like her car, she couldn’t afford to replace her clothing. She didn’t know what she would do once they wore out.
She could shop in thrift stores, or the consignment shop in the next town, but her beautiful clothes were the shield that blocked out the critical voice in her head that belonged to her aunt.
Consigning that worry to a far corner of her mind, she sat down to transcribe the recorded interview, only to realize how truly little she had wrung out of Zach. She tossed down her pen, glared around her spotless, well-ordered apartment and despaired.
For a whole year, she had avoided feeling. She’d lived a parched existence because it was the only life she could handle. Lee had forced her feelings, all of her high emotions, back to the forefront. She was being drawn back into life.
She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to feel.
She didn’t want to remember.
The silence in the apartment resounded as though it had life and breath. She needed to get out of here.
Her phone rang. She grabbed it and checked the number. Violet. Thank God. When she answered, Nadine swallowed and forced herself to sound normal.
“What are you doing for supper?” Vy asked.
“Salad and tuna. Do you want to join me?”
“Thought you’d never ask. I’ll be there at six.”
Nadine spent the rest of the afternoon working on a couple of her regular columns, about events in the community, along with news about the townspeople that did not constitute gossip. She phoned around to get all of her facts straight. She sifted through her emails for announcements from people about the births, marriages and job promotions that filled her with pleasure, while deaths were few, thank goodness.
Vy arrived at six on the dot. Nadine rushed to her and gave her a big hug, holding on longer than she should have.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Vy pulled away, a searching look on her face.
“Lee’s being an ass.”
“He’s been strange lately. What’s going on with him?”
“I have no idea. He has these moods swings. At the moment, he’s being strange and demanding.”
“You said you were going out to Zach’s farm today to interview him,” Vy said. “How did that go?”
“Like pulling teeth.”
“What did you expect? The guy’s sociable, but private.”
Private with a capital P.
Nadine prepared two servings of a salad and canned tuna with a sprinkling of lemon pepper. Vy nibbled on sliced radishes while Nadine worked.
“Hey.” She swatted her friend’s hand away. “There won’t be any left for the salad.”
“I’m starving.”
“How can that be? You work in a diner.”
“I’m pregnant, remember? I eat all the time these days.”
“You’re looking really good. You’re glowing. I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true.”
Vy grinned. The pregnancy might have been unplanned but all had worked out in the end, with the new stranger in town, Sam Carmichael, falling like a log for Vy and deciding to stay and marry her. How could he not? Vy was a great person.
Nadine returned the lemon pepper to the spice rack between the ground ginger and the mustard seed.
Vy set the table and they sat down to eat, discussing the upcoming revival of the renovated rodeo and fair. It had run for over a hundred years in Rodeo every summer without fail, until the owner retired fifteen years ago. He’d inherited it from his father, who had inherited it from his father.
His son had not been willing to carry on and the tradition had been broken.
Too many of the town’s young were leaving. Nadine and her friends had decided it was time to do something about that, and they hoped the revival of the fair would be a viable solution for bringing in money and creating jobs.
Since no one else had managed to come up with solutions to help out their town, they’d taken it on.
This year, the fair would run for ten days spanning two weekends.
If it was a success, they could consider making it permanent and maybe even run it for longer in the coming years. Vy carried their dishes to the sink. “Sam’s going to donate a couple of thousand dollars for you to use for more promotion.”
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