“Good. Yours?” Gardner was a hairdresser by trade but was currently making her motel rent by working at an ice cream shop in New Weaver.
The other woman hadn’t explained more than that when they’d met on Sunday. And Nell hadn’t explained any more about her own situation.
“Not bad,” Gardner said as she pushed open the door to her room. “This heat has a lot of people in the mood for ice cream, so that’s the good thing. I’ll be out in a second. Want a cold drink?”
Nell lifted her juice. “I’m fine. Thanks.”
The other woman disappeared and emerged a few minutes later. She’d exchanged her “Udder Huddle” T-shirt and jeans for a plain blue one-piece swimsuit. She had a striped towel draped around her neck, but instead of following her boys to the pool, she threw herself down into her own salmon-colored chair and popped the top on a can of soda.
From the pool area, they could hear the whoops and splashes from the boys.
Gardner exhaled and stretched out her legs far enough that she could prop the toe of her sandal on the bumper of the car, right next to the worn-looking Ohio license plate. “Good thing they were wearing their swimsuits under their jeans today.” She sent Nell a humorous look. “I hope they remembered to leave them on when they were tearing off their clothes before jumping in. At one place we stayed earlier this summer, they didn’t.” Her lips twitched. “Needless to say, we were quickly asked to move along.”
Nell chuckled. Aside from being noisy, she thought the boys seemed pretty well-behaved.
“You should put on a suit and head over there with us,” Gardner encouraged. “I bought hot dogs. Thought I’d toss them on that grill that’s next to the pool. The boys’ll be starving despite the food they get at their summer camp.”
Nell’s stomach rumbled right on cue. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
Gardner looked vaguely scandalized. “That doesn’t matter,” she said quickly. “I saw Mrs. Goldberg—over there from number eleven?” She pointed with her soda can toward the other wing of the motel. “She was in the pool last week wearing a pair of bright green leggings and a matching long-sleeved T-shirt.” She grinned. “She looked like an amphibian with white hair, but what the heck.”
Nell laughed. It was hard to resist Gardner’s contagious smile. “Maybe.”
An outraged yell sounded from the pool area, followed by a squeal and a whole lot of splashing. Gardner stood. “Sounds like refereeing is required.” She adjusted her towel over her shoulder and jogged off, her sandals flapping noisily. A few moments later, her raised voice joined those of her sons. “George, how many times have I told you not to pick on Vince?”
Nell let the noise wash over her.
She was thirty-six now. She had no prospects for a relationship, much less one with daddy potential.
But if she didn’t start thinking about these things now, when would she?
When it was too late altogether?
Nell and Ros had both gotten birth control implants in their arms several years ago. But even Ros—who was more committed to her career than anyone—was evidently thinking about having a baby. Was she hearing the tick-tock of a biological clock that before neither she nor Nell had believed actually existed?
Was Nell hearing her own clock?
The yelling over at the pool increased in volume and intensity. Nell heard Gardner shout, “Out. Right this minute. All of you!”
Two minutes later, the sopping-wet lot of them were trooping back across the parking lot. Gardner’s beach towel was soaking, too. “Rain check on the hot dogs,” she said before she ordered her boys to march their rear ends into the room. The door slammed shut after them, not entirely cutting off their noisy arguments.
Nell looked out over the lights of Weaver again.
Maybe her clock wasn’t ticking as loudly as she feared.
The lights lining Main Street had almost all come on now. She followed the glimmering line from New Weaver to old. Then she continued down the line as it dimmed again and disappeared with only an occasional headlight to mark the road’s whereabouts. Farther still was where Vivian’s mansion was located. And beyond that, the shadowy peaks of Rambling Mountain, where a man named Otis Lambert had lived in a ramshackle cabin on a barely functioning ranch for a considerably long life.
Nell had never met Otis. Everything she knew about the apparently miserly old man she’d learned after his death.
Regardless of what had happened with her career, she was glad that the old man’s will had surfaced. Glad that his wishes to donate most of his mountain—either to the state of Wyoming if they’d have it or the town of Weaver if not—would have a chance to be honored. The part of the mountain not being donated, the cattle ranch called the Rambling Rad, had been sold to a Colorado developer—Gage Stanton, with whom Archer had worked for years now. The money from the sale of the Rambling Rad went to the man who’d run the ranch and cared for Otis in his last few years of life. Jed Dalloway had continued taking care of the Rad after Otis died and while the probate had been in Martin’s hands, she’d had a few occasions to meet the man. She’d been impressed with his integrity.
Unlike the “long-lost” relative of Otis’s who’d surfaced after his death.
If it had been left to Martin’s manipulations, the smarmy Louis Snead would have inherited the entire mountain including the ranch, and he would have sold it all off by now to a mining company for his own quick, huge profit.
Even though that hadn’t come to pass, Nell still
