“I miss your teasing,” he chuckled.
“I miss you,” she said.
“Well, there is that too,” Cody admitted.
“Will you be home in time for supper? I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, but not on the phone,” she said.
“We should be home in the middle of the afternoon,” Cody answered. “I’m dreading the consultation tomorrow. I’m afraid the best news we can hope for is that the disease hasn’t worsened. I didn’t realize how much Mama does to help Dad until today.”
“At least you get to have more time with him. Treasure every moment,” Stevie said. “I went back to the house today, Cody. I made peace with tearing down the place as soon as things are packed and moved out.”
“That’s a good thing. Do you feel better now?” he asked.
“Much better,” she answered.
“Mama told Daddy that you had spent some time cleaning the tack room,” Cody said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It was either that or clean the bunkhouse, and the tack room needed it worse,” she told him. “I was working through some issues.”
“Get it all settled?” Cody asked.
“Not one bit,” she answered, “but I’ve got until Monday, and we’ll talk about it when you get home.”
“Oh…kay.” He hoped that this talk wasn’t to tell him that she’d found a house in town to rent. He didn’t want her to move out of the bunkhouse. “Will you save me a hug to go with the talk?”
“Of course,” she said. “I meant it when I said I missed you. Mia has arrived. I should go now.”
“Good night…love,” he said.
“Good night, Dr. Cowboy,” she fired back.
He could have talked with her until midnight about anything or nothing, teasing or serious, and he felt just a little cheated when they had to end the call after only a few minutes. He watched a couple of reruns on television and then went to bed. The next morning, he woke up five minutes before six to find his father already up and dressed.
“You going to sleep all day, son, or are we going down to the restaurant for some breakfast and then get on out of this place? I’m ready to go home,” Sonny said.
Cody sat up and rolled the kinks out of his neck. “Me too, but you’ve still got a couple more appointments today. The last one should be over by noon.”
“I’m glad these things are only once a year,” Sonny groaned. “I don’t like hotels and being away from my own bed and pillow.”
Cody thought of all the places where he had slept on a canvas cot without a pillow, maybe catching a couple of hours of sleep at a time. He would have been so glad for a spotlessly clean, warm or air-conditioned hotel some of those nights.
“Give me time to take a shower to wake me up, and then we’ll go get some breakfast,” Cody said with a yawn. “How hungry are you?”
“I could probably eat half a ham and two dozen eggs,” Sonny said with a wide grin. “I’ve been up for an hour and already had that last slice of pizza and talked to your mother. She’s making me an apple pie, and we’re going back to our regular way of doing things. I love all you kids, but I like my regular routine.”
Cody made his way to the bathroom. “Me too, Dad.”
“Think anything will ever come of whatever this is between you and Stevie?” Sonny asked.
Cody turned on the shower and adjusted the water, then stepped back to the door. “Who knows? She’s a complicated woman.”
Sonny’s chuckle came from down deep in his chest. “Aren’t they all? I’ve got a feeling this is more about you than it is about Stevie.”
Cody nodded. “Dad, am I too old to think about starting a family? I’m almost forty.”
“I thought that might be what was worrying you,” Sonny said. “I wondered the same thing when we adopted you and Lucas, and it was for nothing. I wasn’t a young whippersnapper when we got you boys. Sometimes a little age comes with a lot of wisdom when it comes to raisin’ kids.”
“Well, us three boys sure had a good role model, so I hope you are right,” Cody said and closed the door.
When he had showered, shaved, and gotten dressed in fresh jeans and a plaid shirt, he came out of the bathroom to find Sonny leaning on his cane.
“I thought maybe you’d drowned in there, son,” he said. “Now I see you were just primping for Stevie.”
“Maybe I was hoping for a beautiful nurse at the doctor’s office where we’re going,” Cody teased.
“Son, it don’t take a genius to see that since you and Stevie were stranded you’ve got blinders on when it comes to any other woman,” Sonny told him. “I’ve gathered up all my stuff. Get yours together, and we won’t have to come back up here when we finish breakfast.”
“Yes, sir,” Cody saluted.
Sonny shook a finger at him. “Don’t be a smart-ass, or I’ll whoop on you with this cane.”
“You haven’t lost your sense of humor,” Cody said as he put all his things in his duffel bag, and then picked up his father’s small suitcase.
“Who says I’m teasing?” Sonny’s old eyes sparkled.
* * *
Stevie awoke on Thursday morning after dreaming about kangaroos and emus all night. Her roommate in college had told her that dreams were an omen of things to come. As she put on a pot of coffee and unwrapped a miniature Mr. Goodbar that morning, she wondered if the omen was telling her that she should go, or if it was warning her to stay in Texas. She had binge-watched McLeod’s Daughters after her mother’s death, and remembered an episode about emus—or was it another bird something like them?—that invaded the countryside every so often. Were her dreams telling her to stay away from Australia?
When the coffee stopped dripping, she poured herself a mug and filled a bowl with fruity-flavored junk cereal. “It says fruit right there on the box, so it has to be good for me.” She remembered telling her mother that more than once, and every time, Ruth would just shake her head and laugh. While Steve ate, she opened her laptop and researched the small town where she would head up the vet clinic if she chose to go to the land down under. From what she could see, it didn’t look much different from the place on the television show. Leaving the actors out, she closed her eyes and thought about the countryside, the problems, and all the other factors that came from living so far away from a city.
“Am I ready for that kind of heat and living?” she asked herself. “But it would be the adventure of a lifetime, and if I didn’t like it, I could resign…”
She picked up her phone and called Rodney.
He answered with “Hey, did you already make up your mind? Which one are you taking? We’ve got a pot going in the office here, and I’ve got money on Australia.”
“I haven’t made up my mind, but tell me more about the position in Australia,” she said.
“Aha, so you are leaning that way. They’ll pay for your flight, and there’s a small apartment about forty yards behind the clinic that will be yours free of charge. You will have to sign a two-year contract. I had my lawyer look it over, and it can’t be broken. If you don’t stay two years, then you have to give all your salary back to them. That’s what made me decide on the job in Las Vegas. That and the fact that my wife took one look at that apartment and said there was no way she was raising our two daughters over there for two years. Other than that, it’s a good deal, especially for someone who is single and has no family,” Rodney said.