Daisies in the Canyon

Daisies in the Canyon by Brown, Carolyn


Chapter One

Dry-eyed and silent, Abby Malloy focused on the wooden casket that held the remains of the father she’d never known. The north wind rattled the bare limbs of an old scrub oak tree in the corner of the small cemetery. The preacher read the twenty-third Psalm, but the words were whipped away with the fierce wind.

Dozens of people bunched up under the tent and sang “I’ll Fly Away.” She looked at the words on the back of the funeral program, but she didn’t sing along. On the last verse of the song, someone tapped her on the shoulder, and she looked up into the green eyes of a man with a daisy in his hand. He shoved it toward her and she took it, then he moved on down the row of three folding chairs and gave one to each of two other women. Abby wondered what in the hell she was supposed to do with it. Didn’t folks usually put a rose on the casket if they followed that tradition? Could the women next to her be Ezra’s other two daughters?

She glanced over at them, covertly studying each of them as they stared straight ahead at the casket. The will said that the sisters all had to live together in Ezra’s house, that if any one of them left, they could have a third of his money but not a bit of the ranch. The last one standing got the land, the cattle, the house, and the whole shebang. If more than one was left at the end of one year, then they would share the ranch. Neither of those two looked like they were interested in anything but the cash-out, especially the prissy one right next to her. And the wild-looking hippie on the end would probably get bored real early, no doubt about it.

Abby wasn’t totally sure if she wanted anything of Ezra’s—not his money or his damned land—but she’d stick around a few days to see what happened. Hell, without the army anymore, she didn’t have anything else to do, and she might like ranching once she learned how to do it.

Her stomach twisted into a pretzel, more from stress than hunger. Would it be a sin to eat one of the miniature candy bars she had tucked away in her jacket pocket? She was reminded of how she’d felt in Afghanistan—the same emptiness surrounded by nervous energy—especially that horrible day with the little girl. Today was not her fault, though. Today the burden fell on Ezra, even if he was dead.

The cold January wind didn’t feel like the scorching wind that pushed the desert sandstorms. The colors were different. Everything over there was shades of tan; here they were an array of orange, ocher, and mustard. But the lonesome aura surrounding her remained the same. Maybe it was because she had a war to fight here, too.

Her mother, Martha, had died in January twelve years ago, but that day Abby’d cried so hard that her eyes swelled shut and she broke out in hives. Not so today at her father’s funeral, but then, she’d never known Ezra Malloy. Never even laid eyes on him, according to her mother. Ezra had wanted a son and he’d had some screwball notion that once a woman had a girl, that’s all she’d ever have. So when Abby wasn’t a boy, Ezra gave her mother a healthy settlement and sent her back to Galveston, Texas.

She looked around at the small crowd: neighbors and friends bundled up in coats against the winter chill. When they’d sung, she’d heard a few off-key quivers, the hallmark of sucking cold air into your lungs.

A man in a uniform with a sheriff’s patch on his arm stood a few feet away from the right end of the casket. Dirty-blond hair, entirely too long for an officer of the law, tickled the collar of his shirt. Instead of regulation uniform pants, he wore jeans that hugged his butt and thighs like a glove and that stacked up just right over his shiny black cowboy boots. His brown eyes were pools that drew her in when she caught him studying her. It was winter and yet he had a deep tan that said he spent as much time outside as indoors. And those little crow’s-feet at the sides of his eyes told her that he had a sense of humor. His dark brows knit together as if something had suddenly worried him. Her fingers itched to touch those creases on his forehead and tell him everything would be all right. Then the creases disappeared, and the sexiest mouth she’d ever seen turned up in a slight smile.

She blinked and looked at the casket, but her eyes strayed back to the sheriff. His uniform shirt was starched and ironed and fit across his broad chest. Her eyes dropped lower to his belt buckle and she almost blushed.

Get a hold of yourself, Abby! Shit fire! You are at a funeral, not in a bar with a bunch of randy soldiers, she fussed at herself.

The man who’d given them the daisies stood beside the sheriff. He was younger and not nearly as sexy, but he sported the same longish hair, though his was brown. Was longer hair a prerequisite to living in the Palo Duro Canyon? The cowboy’s green eyes looked sad behind his wire-rimmed glasses and his square-cut jaw was set in a solemn expression. Creased jeans bunched up over his highly polished cowboy boots. This must be that Rusty the lawyer had mentioned when he’d called.

Two men in suits came forward and opened the casket. Abby had attended funerals with an open casket, but never seen it done at the cemetery. Curiosity made her want to look in the casket, to see Ezra, maybe to figure out what it was about him that had drawn her mother to him. But another part of her wanted to leave right then and never look back.

The people filed past, most of them shaking hands with the guy who’d handed out the daisies, the sheriff, and the preacher. None of them tarried long before they hurried off to their vehicles to get out of the cold wind. Now it was time for Ezra’s daughters to stand up, to go forward, to look at the father they never knew lying in his casket.