“What do you think I should do about my car?” she asked.
“I can call Link’s momma in the morning,” Ty said. “She used toown the mechanic shop only about a half-mile from here, and maybe she’ll know some small towing companies that won’t be inundated with work.”
“So will there be lots of cars like mine?” she said. “There were all those ones on the side of the road. Is it because they stopped running in the storm?”
“Sometimes the debris can do that,” he said. “Get all up in the engine and clog it, especially if the cars were running at the time. Yours wasn’t, so I can’t imagine that that will be a problem for you. We’ve just got to get it to a body shop and get it fixed.”
Winnie nodded. “And you can take me to work in the morning? I have to be there at eight.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t work tomorrow, except for the dog training, and I can show up to that whenever I want. It’s usually not until nine anyway.”
Ty used his fork and slid a piece of halibut across the tray to Winnie’s plate. “This is just Parmesan risotto, sweetheart. It doesn’t have mushrooms or peas or anything gross in it.” He smiled at her, and she reached for the spoon and served herself some risotto.
“It smells amazing,” she said. “And how did you make this sauce?”
“Just a little sour cream and milk, lemon and dill,” he said. “It’s perfect with fish.”
He took the remaining fish fillet and a couple of healthy spoonfuls of risotto, then doused his halibut in the dill sauce before he took his first bite. “So tell me how you grew up in Oklahoma without ever having a dust storm.”
Winnie took a bite of her fish too, her eyes glittering as she looked at him. She swallowed and said, “I don’t know. We’ve just never had one. How many have you been in?”
“I think that was my third one,” Ty said. “The first was when I was a little boy—eight or nine—and then we had another one, I think when I was a junior in high school? Maybe a sophomore. We were at school when it came through, and they herded us all into the gym,and we had to sit in there for a couple of hours, and our parents had to come check us out. They didn’t run the bus.”
“Wow,” Winnie said.
“We had our own bus out to Three Rivers anyway,” he said. “Squire bought it—Libby’s father?”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “Yeah, my daddy drove it sometimes. There were a lot of kids that lived out on the ranch, and since my parents worked out there, that was the easiest place for us to go after school. Heck, we all worked the ranch.”
“Did you, Ty?”
He nodded. “Every day. I worked at either Three Rivers, my momma’s boarding facility, or Courage Reins.”
“No wonder you like horses so much.” Winnie smiled at him, and Ty returned it.
“Sometimes I think humans don’t deserve horses,” he said. “They’ll do anything we ask of them, and they never quit, and they’re always happy to see us.”
“Cats are like that,” Winnie said.
Ty chuckled and shook his head, though he suspected she was teasing him. “No, they are not. Howdareyou try to compare cats to horses?” He kicked a full grin at her and flaked off another bite of fish.
Winnie laughed too, and Ty sure loved the sound of it. As they ate dinner and Winnie turned the conversation to lighter topics, he barely recognized his life. It continued to morph around him every few months, and the addition of Winnie as his girlfriend was definitely the best change of all.
A couple of hours later,Ty finally arrived home. He’d showered, and he currently only wore boxer shorts as he lay in bed, a single lamp giving light to the room from the nightstand beside him.He needed to go through his texts, so he’d know where to be in the morning to do the most good.
He had several messages from Angel and Henry at Lone Star, four from Colt—just between him and Colt, not whole orchard texts or whole ranching group texts—but over a hundred from his friends.
He started to read through them, and sure enough, it looked like his help would be needed at Conrad’s, JJ’s,Signs for Success, Shiloh Ridge, and the Rhinehart Ranch.
At one point, Rock had mentioned Golden Hour, which Ty knew as Britt Bellamore’s place. One of Rock’s uncles had married a Bellamore, and he said he would try to get more details about what they needed, and then he’d never come back on the text.
Send me a list of what you need off this thread,Finn said.I’ll make a list and organize us. Anyone who can come help—great. We understand if you can’t. We all have our own family and farm obligations.
Ty smiled at the way Finn took charge. He loved it, because the man loved him, and he genuinely wanted everyone to be taken care of. Mitch had asked about him first, and Ty’s heart expanded with love for the man.
Henry and Angel had both chimed in that he’d been at Lone Star, and safe, and then left right away, and Libby had reported that his mother was trying to get in touch with him too and hadn’t been able to. The texts went on as others related their experiences with the dust storm and the aftermath of it.
