“Down, p’ease. Down.”
Kendra lifted Matthew’s sturdy body and swung him down to the floor. He made a beeline for his friend.
Emily eyed him askance. “You dirty?”
“No dirty,” Matthew denied. He raised his small hands palms up in a gesture of reassurance. A memory blindsided Kendra. His father had made that exact gesture to her.
“Kendra?”
She blinked back to the present to find Marti and Ellyn staring, clearly waiting a response to something she hadn’t heard.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“Not much,” Marti said, “The truck battery is truly dead, so I hooked a ride with Luke when he came to start fixing that fence so you won’t have cattle in your yard anymore.”
Luke Chandler was foreman of the Far Hills Ranch, but all three women’s households relied on his skill and generosity as general fix-it man.
“Do you need a ride to the babysitting co-op meeting tonight?”
“No, that’s okay, Luke’s going to run me in to town later this afternoon to get a new battery. He said he could get it in in time for me to meet Fran for supper before the meeting. So, Kendra, do you want to set the kids up in the den? I brought a couple of Emily’s favorite movies.”
“Sure. That’s fine.”
She joined Marti in arranging their children in the small den off the kitchen with Matthew still thrilled enough at seeing Emily to accede to her demand to watch “The Little Mermaid.”
“This is quiet time, Matthew and Emily,” Marti instructed as the adults returned to the kitchen. “If you can’t be quiet together, it will be nap time. Understand? Emily? Matthew?”
Already lured into the movie, they responded with absent nods.
“Go sit down, Marti, and I’ll get your coffee,” Kendra offered.
“Thanks. I finally got those prints you each asked for from Matthew’s birthday party. I figured I better do it fast or his next birthday would be on top of us.” She placed two packets of pictures on the table. “So, how far have you gotten?”
“We haven’t even started.”
“Except to talk about the curse.” A glint of mischief lit Ellyn’s eyes as she tucked curling strands of rich brown hair back into a loose knot at her nape. Kendra was glad to see Ellyn’s humor returning after Dale Sinclair’s death, she just wished Ellyn had found a different topic.
“It’s not a curse, it’s a legend. And I wish you’d never badgered me into telling you about it,” Kendra grumbled as she wiped remnants of Matthew’s lunch from the table and high chair.
“I just wanted a few details filled in. You forget–I heard it all long ago during our summers together. But it wasn’t until you moved back that I started thinking part of the Susland curse fell on you.”
Kendra snorted as she placed coffee in front of Marti.
“Why do you think Kendra is cursed?” Marti asked with a seriousness that caused Kendra to try to catch Ellyn’s eye to warn her off.
Ellyn missed the signal. “Being cursed would explain things about her that are hard to figure out otherwise.”
“Like what?”
“Like why a woman with Kendra’s talent is reporting for the Far Hills Banner instead of the network like she used to and–”
“A lifestyle choice makes–”
“And,” Ellyn overrode her, “like why a woman like Kendra is alone and–”
“I’m not alone. I have Matthew and all my friends here, including you two. Unless,” she added darkly, “you keep talking about this ridiculous legend, and then I’ll have one less friend.”
Kendra’s protest didn’t stop Ellyn from adding, “And it explains why you look like hell.”
Kendra pushed her hair back from her forehead with both hands, then propped her elbows on the table. “Thanks a lot, Ellyn. Compliments are not going to get you out of your share of work on this supplement.”
“I mean it–you look like hell. Or at least as much like hell as you ever look. You have that annoying habit of looking pulled together and cool even when you’re not.”
“You do look washed out, Kendra,” Marti contributed.
“I’m tired, I suppose. Now, about the section–”
“Ah-hah!’ said Ellyn. “You had the dream again, didn’t you?”
“What dream?” Marti asked.
The dream. The dream that whispered into Kendra’s not-quite asleep mind like the softest breeze fluttering silk against her skin.
The first year she’d fought both the dream and the memories. Now she knew fighting did no good, especially not against the dream.
It lifted her out of herself, carried her against her will from her orderly, practical life in Far Hills, Wyoming, taking her back . . . back to Santa Estella . . . back to those fear-drenched hours . . . back to him.
She opened the packet of pictures in front of her with a show of examining them.
“I didn’t sleep very well.”
Ellyn shook her head, dismissing that excuse. “I remember that look from when the kids and I stayed with you.”
“What dream?” Marti repeated.
Ellyn turned to her. “The one that made her cry out during the night and look like this in the morning. It happened a couple times in the week we stayed here during the work on Ridge House.”
With troubled eyes, Marti stared at Kendra. “A nightmare?”
Kendra put her hand over the older woman’s. “Not really.”
During her childhood visits to Far Hills, Kendra had seen Marti as a distant figure, as remote from her as her mother. Kendra had known Marti through Amy’s eyes then–how Marti had taken over the ranch and raised Amy when their father and Amy’s mother had died. Amy had later been Kendra’s college roommate and closest friend. When a car accident killed Amy, grief brought Marti and Kendra together in a bond that endured even as the grief eased.
When Kendra’s life shifted irrevocably three years ago, it had seemed right to turn to Marti.
Their new relationship was cemented when Kendra helped Marti adopt Emily from an orphanage on Santa Estella, a small island off the coast of South America, shortly before Matthew’s birth.
Since she’d returned to Far Hills, Kendra had come to an even
