And she heard, drifting across the property line on the still morning air, the unmistakable sound of Arlo Pickett laughing. She looked up to see him sitting on his covered porch in his rocking chair, head thrown back, guffawing nearly as loud as Loretta.
Fern always said Tuesdays were the day to check the north fence line.
The old coot could’ve warned her the fence needed repair?—
Oh, wait. He had. She just hadn’t understood his oblique reference when he’d blathered about Fern thinking Tuesdays were good days to check fence lines.
Chagrined, she stood there in one boot and her muddy sock, stinging hands planted on her hips, and declared to her animal escorts, "I'm going to start writing down everything that man says."
Dillon showed up Thursday morning to check Chairman Meow’s glucose. “You hold the beast. I’ll draw.”
She must’ve winced because he said, “Cats can’t scratch you if you properly scruff them.” He demonstrated on the air, grasping an invisible cat by the nape. “Like you’re holding an expensive handbag.”
She blinked. “Did you just compare a veterinary technique to handbags?”
“I’m trying to speak your language.”
“How much does this hypothetical expensive handbag cost?”
“Does that make a difference on how you hold it?” he responded.
“Absolutely. I’m hanging onto a Birkin bag a lot more tightly than a Luis Vuitton.”
“Oh.” He paused, thinking. “The expensive purse I’m hypothetically scruffing costs, I don’t know. A hundred bucks?”
A laugh burst out of her and Chairman Meow shot off the hay bale, disappearing into the rafters. Which only made her laugh harder. She didn’t stop until she was gasping for breath.
Dillon stared at her. “What?”
“A hundred dollars buys the dust bag the expensive handbag comes in.”
“The bag has its own bag?”
She wiped the tears from her eyes. “Oh, you naive man, a respectable designer handbag starts at five thousand. An expensive one is thirty-thousand.”
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. “Thirty-thousand dollars? For a purse?”
“For a handbag. There’s a difference.”
“What’s the difference?”
“About twenty-five thousand dollars.” She smirked, grandly amused at his slack-jawed bewilderment.
“That’s obscene,” he said blankly.
“That’s high fashion, baby.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “I paid less than that for my truck.”
“Yes, but your truck doesn’t go with a cocktail dress.”
“It goes perfectly with cat hair and barn mud. Both of which you’re liberally accessorized with.”
She looked down ruefully at her smudged blue T-shirt, jeans with a greenish stain she sincerely hoped was grass, red-brown antiseptic on her wrists, and a new scratch on the back of her hand from this morning’s insulin wrestling match.
She sighed. “You’d be surprised how much effort goes into looking like you haven’t worked at looking great. It costs a fortune to appear effortless.”
“And yet here you are,” he retorted. “It didn’t cost you a dime to look like you lost a fight with a barn, and you still outclass every woman in Montana.”
