Redwood Bend

here—she wanted to do something for me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever gone along with.”
She turned around to face him. “Why have you been so stubborn?” Katie asked.
“I had a lot to prove,” he said. “I wanted to show Adele that I grew up, that I could be responsible. I didn’t want her fixing things for me.” He kissed her.
One of the boys made a gagging sound and Sue Ann laughed.
“They never stop doing that,” Mitch said.
Andy looked up at Sue Ann. “He’s gonna be like our dad. Not our real dad, who died and went to live in heaven, but like our dad.”
“You okay with that?” Sue Ann asked with a smile.
“Yeah,” the boys said in unison. “We like him,” Mitch said. “He’s fun when he’s not kissing all the time.”
Dylan looked at Sue Ann over Katie’s head. “It’s a tough audience.”
Katie had turned back to the view. “Dylan, do you have a lot of cars?”
“Just a truck and a Harley,” he said. “It looks like an invasion down there.”
Sue Ann cleared her throat. “Yeah, there was really no keeping people away, once they figured out you were going to be in town. I could apologize, but there was nothing I could do, so I asked Lang and Ham to just get out the grill.”
“Who are they?” Katie asked.
“Oh, you know,” Sue Ann said. “The town.”
When they finally arrived at Dylan’s house it was almost dinnertime and there seemed to be a huge community there to greet them—employees from the airport, neighbors, friends. Katie was introduced to a couple of teachers from the town elementary school, two pilots who worked for Dylan, their families, a rancher who used Dylan’s pasture for grazing along with his wife and kids, and many others. Ham, a grizzled old guy with fingers bent from arthritis, merely nodded and gave a grunt when introduced and Dylan said, “He does speak, but not overly.” But apparently he knew child-speak because her boys wandered off not ten minutes later and she found them in the corral, each on his own horse with Ham managing the lead. There were a lot of other kids sitting on the rail, cheering and shouting instructions.
Most of the welcoming party was gathered outside because the weather was beautiful—seventy-five degrees with a pleasant breeze. The grill was lit, burgers and hot dogs cooked away, lots of side dishes were put out and there was plenty of lemonade and tea to drink, brought in huge thermoses. There were a few women in the kitchen, making sure things were cleaned up and tidy, and Katie slipped past them to take a look at the rest of the house.
Dylan had been honest, it wasn’t fancy, but she was charmed by it just the same. He had collected the kind of rustic furniture that would be at home in a log cabin, including a plush leather sectional in the living room. He had a big TV—he must like either movies or sports. His bedroom held an ordinary double-size bed—nothing of the hit and run bachelor here—no king-size bed or mirrored ceiling. This house had what people called a mother-in-law plan—another master bedroom on the other side of the house. This was probably a requirement for the old days when Adele and her grandson shared the house and Katie bet that Adele took the master with the bath. There were two bathrooms—one small master bath with a shower, and a hallway bath with a tub. And although there was a large kitchen table and breakfast bar, the dining room was void of furniture. Apparently Dylan didn’t entertain much.
Still, she liked the house. She liked the big, clear, beautiful land it sat on and the mountains that rose to the west. When she went back outside, her boys came shrieking and shouting toward her, barking dogs following them. “We rode horses,” they were yelling.
She crouched. “Did Ham talk to you?” she asked.
They both nodded. “He told us everything we had to do,” Andy said.
“He made us brush them after,” Mitch added. “And stay away from their feet.”
She laughed. Bribery, she thought. Clever.
The two things most of the town wanted to see were the claw marks on Dylan’s back and Katie’s ring. Since they’d had time before they could travel, Dylan took her to Eureka to shop for a ring—he couldn’t get her locked in fast enough. It wasn’t a real big ring, but it was a ring she picked for herself and she thought it beautiful. And the claw marks on his back had healed into a mean-looking, slightly raised red welt and won the admiration of the men here just as it had