She’d bought five acres, as she hadn’t purchased something right in town, and she’d be able to bring sick animals here, as well as have her own pets, as the property was zoned for horses, goats, and even dairy cows. Bailey wasn’t about to become a milkmaid, but she liked that this property gave her distance between her family up the canyon and her veterinary clinic, which sat in an almost straight shot south, on the other side of town from where she would be living.
Her house sat about halfway across the northern highway, so she could go east or west to town and down to her clinic, and she planned to time both routes in the next couple of weeks beforethe clinic actually opened. She’d also be conducting interviews and hopefully hiring the support staff and vet techs she needed.
For now, she set all of that aside, turned off the truck, and went to open the big lift gate in the back. The sky swirled with gray clouds, as a storm had come in that was worse than predicted. If she could just get a few things inside and set up, she’d be ready to start her life here in Coral Canyon.
Unfortunately, her bigger furniture sat at the front of the truck, which meant she had to unpack everything to get to it. She started on the job, because she’d made great time and had done most of the driving on the first leg, only having to come from West Yellowstone to Coral Canyon today. She’d gotten lunch in Jackson Hole, and it had taken her an extra half-hour to drive the big truck from there to here, but she had plenty of daylight left.
Bailey was strong from her work with animals, and while she wasn’t fast, her endurance lasted. She could keep going and going and going, which was what she did as she continued to walk up the ramp and get the next box or the next couch pillow or the next side table. She could have left it all in the other half of the two-car garage attached to the house, but instead, she made the trek up the four steps to the garage entrance and into the house. And in fact, she put each item in the room where it would eventually stay.
So finally, all she had left was her big furniture, and she was actually surprised that her momma hadn’t called yet, as she’d been tracking Bailey on a map app since she’d left Butte yesterday. She’d promised to call when she got there, so she could have more people with bigger muscles than her to help her unpack.
For some reason, Bailey hadn’t done it, and she recognized the fiercely independent streak she possessed as it reared through her. She stood inside the twenty-foot moving truck andlooked down at the king-size mattress she’d treated herself to a couple of years ago.
Maybe I can move it myself, she thought, which was absolutely ridiculous. Of course she couldnotmove a king-size box spring and mattress by herself, and yet, she wanted to try. She also had a large dresser and a sectional couch that she might be able to move in by herself.
“Not the dresser,” she muttered to herself, but she could probably get the dining room chairs, and the legs too. They came off for ease in moving, but the tabletop had taken three of them to get in the truck, so Bailey wouldn’t be able to get it out of the truck by herself.
Sighing, she went to pick up the first piece of the couch. She managed to muscle it into the garage, huffing and puffing and her back aching. It had started to snow by the time she stepped back outside, and that only made Bailey more determined to carry on. Driven by the thought that she was too old to sleep on the floor, she continued moving pieces of the sectional into the garage, and once she had them all, she had to face her own weakness.
Sighing, she pulled out her phone and tapped to call her mother.
“Hey, there you are,” her momma said in a bright voice. “I was just starting to wonder when we’d hear from you.”
“I’m here,” Bailey said. “Can you and Daddy come help me with the big things?”
“Yeah, of course,” she said. “Uncle Eli is here, and we were just waiting to hear from you.”
“Stockton is coming to help too,” Uncle Eli called.
Momma said, “Did you hear that? Stockton is coming too.”
“Yeah. Great,” Bailey said, as she took in the furniture pieces she’d managed to move. “I’ll get started, and I’ll see you guys in a little bit.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do much,” Momma said. “Daddy will call Uncle Beau and Uncle Andrew on the way down, and we’ll all meet you there.”
“Okay,” Bailey said, not quite sure how to tell her mother that she already had everything unloaded, save for a few final things.
“See you soon.” Momma ended the call, and Bailey shivered in her garage as a whip of wind pushed snow into the space and splattered it across her face. She groaned as she wiped it away.
“What am I doing?” she asked, though she’d moved from a terribly cold state to another one. The reminder that she’d been living in Montana for the past fifteen years buoyed her up and got her back out into the storm to see what she could do next. The snow had started falling fast, piling on top of what had already been there compacted into ice in the driveway.
She went up the ramp again, noting that most of it was now covered with heavy, wet, sticky snow.
She picked up the remaining couch cushion and a huge black lawn-and-leaf bag that she knew held her comforter. She could take these items in, and then just wait for her uncles to come help with the rest.
“Maybe I could do the table chairs,” she said to herself, her voice echoing off the metal walls of the truck. She also had a coffee table she might be able to bear-hug into the living room.
Bailey had a whole house of furniture that needed to go in, including a nightstand, which she could also lift by herself, and a bookcase, which she’d been planning to put in the master bedroom instead of her living room, the way she’d had it in Butte.
The house here was much bigger than what she’d had before, and Bailey had extra bedrooms in addition to the home office she would establish. She’d left her desk in Butte in anticipation of buying a new one here. The enormity of tasks in front of heroverwhelmed her as she turned and started toward the end of the truck.
She didn’t have anything heavy in her arms, and she’d spent so much of her life in the snow that it didn’t even register to her that the ramp might be slippery. But she took one step down it, and her foot completely went out from underneath her. Her other leg had already been moving forward, and Bailey felt suspended in midair for one moment before she lost her balance completely.
She cried out and tried to maintain her grip on a stupid couch cushion and a bag that held a blanket instead of letting them drop to the ground.I don’t want them to get wet, ran through her mind just before her hip landed on the four-inch lip on the side of the ramp, and she toppled over it.
She landed hard on her back, her arms splayed wide and releasing the items they were carrying against her will. Finally, she came to a stop, the air knocked out of her, and her thoughts completely silent. She lay on her back with the beautiful snow drifting down on top of her as she blinked and tried to take stock of everything.
She felt so tired, and pain throbbed through her head, her hip, and her right ankle, which she realized was still elevated as it had caught on the lip of the ramp leading up to the truck.
