Free The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard Page A

“Swear.”
    “I do, I will!” He bent way down to kiss his daughter’s tiny nose. “’Bye, baby girl.”
    She took the opportunity of her father being down at her own level to throw her arms around his neck. “Don’t leave, Daddy.”
    He put his hands on her waist and stood up with her clinging to him. Her breath smelled of tuna fish, and her hair, dark like her mother’s, flew into his face, and both sensations made him smile as he hugged her to his chest and picked long strands of her hair out of his mouth. “Got to, baby girl.” After a moment he gently unwound her from around him and set her down and pushed her arms back down to her sides, as if she were a tiny bellows. “But I’ll bring you back a surprise.”
    “A horse ?”
    “Not this time.” She desperately wanted her own pony, and yet she still adored to ride in front of him while he kept one arm around her and one hand on the reins. “You still need to grow some.”
    The excitement on her face fell away in disappointment.
    “But it’ll be a good surprise anyway,” he promised her, which earned him a brave little smile accompanied by eyes still moist at the loss of the horse and his impending absence.
    “Hugh-Jay, you spoil her.”
    “I like to spoil my girls.”
    “No,” his wife said in a hard voice. “You don’t.”
    Without looking into her eyes, he grabbed his overnight bag and started down the porch stairs, a big man moving with athletic grace. The dogs labored up and joined him. Laurie expected to see him get into his truck with Billy, but he didn’t do that; instead, he set down the suitcase, walked toward one side of their detached garage and disappeared around to the back of it.
    “Where’d Daddy go?”
    “There’s no telling.”
    In a few moments he appeared again, and this time he did get into his pickup.
    “’Bye, Daddy!” Jody hollered in her loudest three-year-old voice. “I love you!”
    Her next-to-last sight of him, which would fade from her memory, was of his face framed in his truck window with his left elbow propped on the edge. He had changed into a cowboy hat, and underneath it he was smiling at her out of his plain, pale, wide face, his gaze returning all the love she’d yelled at him.
    A T THE RANCH HOUSE , Bobby ambled in past noon, looking for a meal his mother might provide. Instead, he found his parents talking together in the kitchen, where the overhead fan was turning and nothing was cooking. Hungry, hot, and disappointed, he said, “Don’t you two ever leave this house?” If Chase had said it, it would have come across as a good-natured joke, but Bobby had little talent for humor, and so it came out sounding aggressive.
    His father gave him a sour look. “Sit down. I have something to tell you.”
    “Yes, sir.” It sounded more as if he were glad to sit than to obey his father. Bobby collapsed into a kitchen chair, stuck his long legs out and slouched there, his big hands loosely grasping the top rungs. “You’re not sending me to some junior college, Dad.”
    “I’ll send you where you deserve to be sent!”
    “Hugh,” Annabelle said, in a tone that reminded him he had other problems to discuss with their youngest. Without giving him another chance to argue, she told her son, “Bobby, we have some fences down. Somebody cut them and mixed up the weaned calves back with their mothers.”
    “You’re kidding.” Bobby’s jaw dropped and he sat up. “Cut them?”
    “That’s not all,” his father said, “they killed a cow, one of the pregnant mamas—slit her throat.”
    He didn’t say which cow.
    “Holy shit!” Bobby exclaimed.
    “And nearly set fire to the pasture,” his mother chimed in, shaking her head at both the event and his choice of words.
    Bobby shot to his feet. “Goddamn him!”
    “It wasn’t Billy,” Hugh Senior said, understanding immediately whom Bobby meant. “And watch your mouth in this house.”
    “Of course it was Billy, Dad! What are you talking