“I’m going to breakfast with Auntie April.” He moved over to give Caroline a hug and a kiss.
Sure enough, April called, “I’m here,” from the front door, and Dawson twisted toward her.
“I’m coming, bug.”
At the table, Caroline tipped her head back for Dawson to kiss her, and he looked over to his oldest. “Colt, you help your mother clean up.”
“All right, daddy,” he said.
“We might not be here when you get back,” Caroline said. “I’m taking the kids to the pool with Misty, Savannah, and Rory, and she’s going to bring them back, so I can go check on Lenore and Brandon.”
“All right,” Dawson said. “I can check with her when I get back and go get them.”
“She said she’d be happy to keep them. They’re going to go horseback riding, and then Savannah is going to let them into the pasture with the llamas.”
Dawson would have three bawling children if he tried to pick them up before those activities were finished, and he couldn’t imagine that his breakfast with his niece, though they sometimes ran long, would go longer than a trip to the pool and then farm activities.
School started next week, at least for Colt, but the pool wouldn’t close until at least November, but once school started again, it didn’t truly feel like summer.
“Hey guys.” April reached for a piece of bacon.
“We’re going to breakfast,” Dawson said.
“Yeah, I know.” She grinned at him.
Dawson tried to read her mood and her expression in a single moment. He’d gotten really good at it over the years, as he and April seemed to be cut from the same cloth. She was the daughter of his half-brother, and both Duke and Arizona had told him many times over the years that the only reason they didn’t worry about April more was because of her relationship with Dawson.
He didn’t break her confidence if he didn’t have to, and he always told her if he would have to tell her parents about what they’d talked through. Today, she seemed bright and bubbly, and she leaned over and gave Joy a kiss, which made the little girl laugh.
“We go swimming,” Joy said. “You come, April?”
“I can’t go swimming today,” April said, glancing over to Caroline. “I’m going to breakfast with your daddy, and then I’m helping my momma clean out our food storage.”
With the record heat of the past few weeks, everyone had been moving their chores indoors as much as possible. Duke and his boys, Dwayne and Dallas, along with Dawson, had been taking care of everything outside, while Arizona, who normally did quite a bit of work with their livestock, both here on the Rhinehart Ranch and at her family’s ranch of Shiloh Ridge, had retreated indoors and had been cleaning out closets, bedrooms, the garage, and apparently now their food storage.
Arizona loved to garden and grow her own fruit and vegetables, which she then processed into sauces, soups, pickles, or canned in jars. She taught all four of her kids everything she knew, and out of them all, Shiloh loved it the most. April was the wild card in her family, the black sheep, the one who bucked against all the family rules and expectations, and yet, Dawson knew she was also very traditional and conservative. She simply wanted to make her own way in the world, and have her voice heard.
“Let’s go,” he said, and he only stopped in the kitchen to grab his wallet and keys from the junk drawer. April led the way out to the driveway where Dawson parked, as his wife had their minivan in the garage, as well as all of their summer toys: bikes, helmets, tubes for the pond, and her double stroller, which he fully expected her to take to the pool that day.
In fact, Dawson quickly typed in the code for the garage door, gave April the keys, and said, “How about you drive us?”
As usual, she’d ridden her bike over, and it leaned up against the side of the garage next to the garbage bins.
“All right,” she said.
Dawson opened the back of the van and quickly loaded in Caroline’s beach bag and the double stroller, then got in thepassenger seat of his own car and texted her to let her know that he’d done so.
Thank you so much, baby, she said.
Dawson used the app on his phone to close the garage as April backed out of the driveway and set them down the dirt road that would lead them off the ranch.
“Did you pick a place?” Dawson asked.
April glanced over to him. “I just figured we’d go to our usual—the diner.”
“There’s so many new places in town,” he said.
April laughed and shook her head. “No, there’s not, Uncle Daws. You keep saying that, but it’s not true.”
