“Hello! Are you in there?” Gracie’s thin voice floated across the living room. “Oh. My. Goodness!” She had a hand to her chest when Stevie limped across the room, carefully avoiding the hole in the floor. “This is so sad. How can you bear it?”
“Mama would want me to take the good memories and not think about this,” Stevie answered, and tried to change the subject. “Did you get done a little early?”
“Yes, and I worried about Fifi the whole time.” Gracie wiped away the one lonely tear that was making its way down her face. “Ruth was such a good neighbor and a wonderful person. I’m glad she can’t see what has happened to her beloved home. You are going to have it remodeled, aren’t you?”
“No, ma’am,” Stevie answered. “I’m calling Bobby Blalock to tear it down as soon as I get what can be saved out of it. If you’re ready to go, I can check on Fifi now.”
Gracie took one more look at the damage, sighed again, and took a step back, allowing Stevie room to force the swollen door shut and lock it. “Just think, if you’d been home instead of holed up in a barn with Cody Ryan, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“How do you figure that?” Stevie asked.
“Ruth taught you to let all the faucets in the house drip when it was freezing weather, didn’t she?” Gracie asked.
“Never knew of her to do that,” Stevie answered.
Gracie sighed again. “Well, I would have told you if you’d been home. But getting back to packing, I’ll be glad to help you.”
“Thank you, but we’ve got it covered,” Stevie said. “I’ll just follow you across the street and leave my van where it is.”
“But what if you need to give the puppies shots?” Gracie asked.
“They won’t need those for several weeks,” Stevie said. “Are you sure you’re going to keep both of them?”
“I’ve thought about it, and decided that I can handle three dogs, but I will need for you to take care of them if they’re females. I sure can’t handle more than three,” Gracie answered.
“And if they’re males?” Stevie stood on the porch as Gracie opened the door.
“I don’t like boys,” Gracie said. “That’s why I never married. Men are demanding and want their way all the time, and they mess up a house and expect meals on the table every night. I remember how my daddy and brothers were, and I made up my mind that I was not going fall in love, and I didn’t. My poor mama worked her fingers to the bone doing for my father and brothers. If those puppies are boys, Fifi can just be angry with me. I’ll give them away.”
Stevie didn’t even realize she was holding her breath until she had let it out in a whoosh when she had crossed the room to the laundry basket in the middle of the floor and checked the puppies. “Two girls. What are you going to name them?”
“Well!” Gracie huffed. “They can’t have a nice French name like Fifi. Maybe that one with the brown spot on her head can be Minnie, and the other one can be Mable. Oh, Fifi, how could you have done this to me? Now you’ll have to share all the attention with these little girls of yours.”
“They look healthy, and Fifi seems to be doing very well,” Stevie said. “Just call me when they’re about six months old and make an appointment to get them spayed. But as soon as they are weaned, you’ll need to get Fifi fixed or else you’ll be having more puppies.”
“I’ll put it on my calendar right now. What kind of house are you going to build?” Gracie asked. “That lot isn’t very big. I guess you could put up a two-story place.”
“I’m not going to rebuild in that spot,” Stevie said. “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do just yet. I don’t know where, or even if, I’ll build right in town.”
“Oh, really?” Gracie raised a gray eyebrow. “Surely you aren’t thinking of building out there on Sunflower Ranch.”
“I’ve got a while to think about it,” Stevie said. “I’ll just add today’s visit onto the bill when I spay Fifi here in a few weeks. You have fun with the puppies. They can be quite entertaining.” She escaped from the house with all its crocheted doilies and pink rose wallpaper, caught a breath of fresh air when she hit the porch, and would have jogged to her van if her leg hadn’t been aching.
Gracie didn’t even ask about my leg, she thought as she got in behind the wheel and started up the engine. She could just see the woman racing to get her phone out of her purse and start making calls. The cell phone towers were probably already heating up with the hot gossip.
She had barely made it back to the bunkhouse when her phone rang again. “This is Dr. O’Dell,” she answered as she turned off the engine and answered the call, hoping the whole time that it was Cody and not Gracie.
“Well, hello, Dr. O’Dell,” a familiar voice said.
“Rodney?” she asked.
“In the flesh, and a little less than four hours north of you,” he chuckled.
“Is everything all right?” she asked her old boss. “How’s the crew up there in Oklahoma City? Have y’all thawed out from the snowstorm?”
“Crew is fine and send their love,” Rodney said.
When she heard that word, she immediately thought of Cody.
“We had to close things down for two days because we lost power, but we’re up and running now,” he answered. “And everything is great. I just got a huge promotion. I had two offers—my choice of going to Australia to run a clinic over there or moving to Las Vegas to open up a brand-new one.”
“Congratulations,” Stevie said. “Which one are you taking?”
“Las Vegas!” he said. “I don’t want to live in Australia. Which brings me to why I called. I don’t know how things are going in Texas, but the clinic here in Oklahoma City needs a supervisor if you want to come back to this area. Or since I didn’t want the position in Australia, that one is open also. Would you be interested in either one?”
“Oh, my!” A vision of her house came to mind. Other than the promise of a few dates and a hamburger with Cody, there was nothing for her in Honey Grove anymore. “That’s a lot to think about.”
“I’m leaving in a week, and the folks in Australia said they’ll need an answer in a week,” Rodney said.
“They’d hire me without an interview or…” she started.
“When I turned them down,” he butted in before she could finish, “they asked if I could recommend someone else, and I immediately thought of you. With your mother gone and no other family to keep you anchored, that would be a perfect job for you. I remember you saying that you wanted to travel, so I told them all about you, and they are very, very interested. They said they’d hold off posting the job until you talk to them.”
“But…” Stevie stammered.
“But you can also step into my position here at the clinic. As you know it’s more paperwork, more responsibility, and headaches, but a lot more money. Will you at least think about both jobs?”
“Yes, I will definitely think about them and give you an answer by Monday,” she agreed.