Chapter 10 - Golden Horizons
Three weeks later, the Oklahoma wind was blowing hard out of the southwest, carrying the smell of dry grass and coming snow.
I stood on the front porch of a small, wood-frame house three miles west of Perkins, ten miles outside Stillwater’s city limits. It had two bedrooms, an acre of fenced yard shaded by blackjack oaks, and an old red barn that had been converted into an equipment shed.
Owen Briggs had helped me move the furniture out of the apartment above the feed store while Vivian sat in the county jail awaiting her preliminary hearing on three felony counts. Caroline had moved to Tulsa to live with our second cousin, working at a nursery and attending court-mandated counseling twice a week. The feed store was in receivership, its doors padlocked by the bank, the grain elevators quiet under the winter sky.
Inside the kitchen, Mae Briggs was showing Ellie how to make yeast rolls from scratch, flour dusted across both their aprons like snow.
I had quit the multiday charter routes. Two days after the court hearing, the tour company offered me the Stillwater-to-Oklahoma-City commuter route—two runs in the morning, two runs in the evening, home every afternoon by four-thirty, with full benefits and weekends off. It was less money than the long-haul tours, but every night I slept under the same roof as my daughter.
The kitchen door opened, and Ellie walked out onto the porch holding two mugs of hot cider.
Her hair had started to grow back. It was barely half an inch long, a thick, rich brown fuzz that stood up straight and caught the late afternoon sun like copper wire. She wasn't wearing the beanie anymore. She hadn't worn it since the day Judge Harlan slammed his hand down on that walnut bench.
She leaned against the porch railing, looking out over the pasture toward the tree line where the Cimarron River curved through the valley.
“Dr. Kerr called today,” I told her, taking a sip of the cider. “He said the DA wants us to come in next Tuesday to give final victim impact statements before Vivian’s plea deal is signed.”
Ellie looked down at her mug for a moment, then back at the horizon. “Is she going to prison?”
“Tessa says she’ll probably get eighteen months at Mabel Bassett, followed by ten years of probation. She’ll never own that store again, Ellie. And she’ll never come near you.”
Ellie nodded slowly. She didn't look happy, but she didn't look frightened either. She looked settled, like a fence post driven deep into the red dirt after a storm.
“Do you miss your long hair?” she asked, looking up at my head.
My hair was the same length as hers—a short, dark crop that felt light and cool against my neck.
“Not one bit,” I said, bumping my shoulder against hers. “Saves twenty minutes in the morning. And it reminds me of who we are.”
“Who are we?”
“People who don’t get herded,” I said.
The sun was dropping below the rim of the prairie, throwing long, golden shafts of light across the porch, setting the dry grass on fire with the color of wheat. Down by the gate, Owen’s truck rumbled as he pulled into the drive to pick up Mae, the headlights cutting through the growing dusk like steady beacons.
May you like
Ellie smiled, a real, wide smile that reached all the way to her hazel eyes, and leaned her head lightly against my shoulder.
The buzzing of the clippers was gone. The silence that took its place was large, clean, and entirely ours.
