“Complete and total.”
She snorted. “I admire that. But I can’t even keep a list. I barely write down my week in a planner. I shudder to think of any longer than that. Never could I plan so far ahead.”
Flaky. Procrastinating. The adjectives he often heard over the years thrown around about Daisy. Yeah, they were proving true. But not in an unpleasant way. Daisy liked to have something to explore, try, cherish, and considered so many things as an adventure. The path of new excitement and unmanifested dreams. He was glad she had that desire. It made her blush and her eyes sparkle. It made her seem younger, fresher and more alive. So much life was bursting out of her. Sunshine and joy. Did her parents know she’d be like that when they named her? A daisy flower was her face. Too lovely. Too pretty. Too vivacious. Too innocent. Too impish. Too fun. Too bright. Too naive. Too worldly. Daisy was a package of all the contradictions and ambitions a person could have. Unjaded. Unlived. But not stupid or clueless about life and its hardships.
How did he miss all that a week ago? It was right there. She was interested in everything around her. Whether it was an old farm or a treasure trove of former lives. Who but her would tromp around the grounds smiling, inspecting, entering and chatting about the objects she found?
Asher followed her around the abandoned ranch, glad she was learning all about it. There was a second barn that was more like a shed. Another one was used for garden tools. She sorted through the remains, frowning at the thick cobwebs and the dark gloom. Dust and piles of rodent feces were everywhere. He agreed how gross it was. Once, she ran away squealing and he followed her. A beehive startled her in the door of an old car under a dilapidated carport. Some of the buildings had no obvious reason for why they were built. Some were as old as the depression era. Others looked like the late nineteenth century. An old trough must have been spring fed, judging from the pipe that popped up from the ground. Even now, the old, metal, round trough contained water. It was about twelve feet in circumference and probably supplied their cattle or horses with daily hydration. Algae grew inside the tub, but it was not half as bad as it could have been.
“Definitely a water source,” he noted. “Probably worth fixing at some point.”
“Do you know how to do that?”
“Not a clue.”
“Then how do you plan to start?”
“I’ll take it apart. See how it’s made and figure out where to go.” He leaned over the back to see if he could find the source of fresh water. But it looked dry everywhere. He glanced at her with a smile. “And then I’ll look on YouTube for a how-to video. Or call my dad for help. He can probably do whatever it needs.”
“Oh, so you’re not some gifted savant? Or a jack-of-all-trades, who can fix anything? My dad is good at fixing motors, and bikes, and all things mechanical. So is Iris. Rose is crazy book smart and Violet has a gift with horses. I’ve never had a magical, smart gift or special talent. Just manage to get by most of the time.”
“I can fix the stuff, but not like your dad or Iris. And AJ has plenty of years of experience. He had to learn how to do everything or not eat in his early work years. Before the Rydells, of course. Glad I didn’t have it that tough.”
“Still… Wow, this place. The work it needs. Where would you start?”
“I’m considering that still.”
They wandered to the house and she followed him inside. It seemed right out of the early nineteenth century. Wallpaper with psychedelic stripes and diamond shapes was peeling and falling off the walls, stained with age and who knows what? More telltale signs of rat infestation and droppings everywhere. He held a sleeve to his face, and Daisy followed suit. The entry was once rather grand, but now the stairs were rotting, broken lights hung overhead, and there was no furniture. The stair landing was four steps up before it turned diagonally and ascended, making for a high entryway.
A small room on the right was most likely a formal parlor back in the day. An old piano still stood there, but it was gnawed on and decrepit. Luckily, no fabrics survived to infuse a rancid smell to the deteriorating conditions. The combination of dust, mold, rodent droppings, and mostly stagnant air was rather unpleasant. Daisy entered the small room with an unused fireplace and commented on the room’s squareness. Two large, narrow windows overlooked the porch and driveway along with the prairie and mountains and valley from where they drove.
“I can imagine at one time this was probably an unusual showplace and atypical of the era. Maybe an heir and heiress to a vast estate liked to host tea services right over there and the lady of the house would play the latest lovely tune on the piano—”
“I highly doubt they entertained heirs and heiresses. Who would come all the way out here? They would have been all alone, I bet, having the acreage entirely to themselves. I doubt they enjoyed the winters.”
“Or maybe they earned their money by robbing stagecoaches and needed a place to hide and start over, which this would fill to a tee. Maybe they decided to rejoin society as decent folk and had a bunch of children who never knew their father was a stagecoach robber although their mother knew, but she didn’t care.”
“There’s no getting away from the idea of having an extreme family hiding up here? Maybe they just hated other people. Maybe they inherited the land and had no other place to go. Maybe—”
Her expression started to melt towards crestfallen. He sighed and finished with, “Maybe a woman was murdered here by her husband and now her ghost haunts the upstairs and all those weird creaks and groans we hear are really her…” He went along with her fantasy past of the house.
Her expression immediately brightened. “Yes! You get it. Have some fun with what could have been.”
She beamed as if he just passed some sort of test.
Walking farther inside, she touched the walls and solid doors, along with the moldings as she glanced out the filthy windows.
“What do you think I should do with this place? Burn it down? Level it?” he asked when she didn’t comment for a long while.
She left the room, and he followed her back to the entry before going down the hallway under the stairway. In the back they found the kitchen. “Never. It’s so exquisite. Old, yes, and in need of a lot, but the history inside here is priceless; you can’t buy something like this. You can’t build it. You can only be grateful when you find it and do your best to save it. Nurture it. Bring it back to life. The house is really cut up into tiny rooms. Taking down some walls would open it up and allow you to use the space more constructively.”
“Yeah, the outside reveals its grandeur, but the inside is all cut up with too many rooms on each floor. It does seem small. I agree, the walls have to go.”
“Show me the rest.”
Daisy took avid interest in the old kitchen. The appliances intrigued her: a wood-burning stove, an ice box and a huge, traditional farm-style sink. She ran her hand along the chipped, dirty, dusty countertop. “It’s kind of fascinating to wonder who the Rieslings were. Here for a while and then gone. Poof. Empty house and ranch. It makes me wonder what their lives were like. Who were they when they got here? What did they do? Were they decent and law-abiding? Did they get along well? Did the mother cook huge Sunday dinners right here? Or was she miserable and limited and alone? Maybe a neglected or abused housewife with no means to support herself? Was she stuck here against her will? I wonder what they ate for the very last meal they served in this kitchen. How did it end up like this? People like us being allowed to wander through it?”