After the conversation with the sheriff in the morning, Monday was a slow day for Nanci. There were things to do around the parsonage, and now that she had been there for over a week she was starting to feel settled into the place.

By the time it got to be the middle of the afternoon there were things she could have done elsewhere, but she wanted to be there when Amber came home from school, if nothing more than to reassure the girl that she was still welcome in the house. It seemed strange to be waiting for her to get home, something she had never quite thought about, and certainly different from the days when she had been Amber’s age. Back in those days Nanci’s mother was still working at that hour of the day, so Nanci had only rarely come home directly from school. She’d spent a lot of time after school hanging around with friends, especially boys, and getting into things with them they really shouldn’t have been doing.

But that was then, and Nanci could look back and see that some very bad habits had been planted in those days, habits that had led to much worse things that she was very glad to have far in her past. She didn’t speak about the worst of those days very often, and tried not to think about them, even though she couldn’t deny they were part of her past.

At least from what she’d been able to find out, Amber didn’t have those problems. Oh, she had problems, there was no doubt about that, but they were a much different kind, so things were as different as they could be. From the little that she knew her, Nanci was pleased at how responsible the girl was. She had been looking after herself long enough that Nanci didn’t have many worries about her getting home from school, but it would be good to know, anyway.

So it was with a degree of relief that Nanci heard the front door open and Amber come in. “So how was your day?” she said by way of greeting.

“No worse than ever,” the girl replied. “Not many kids have much use for me, so I get left alone a lot. I don’t like it, but it could be a lot worse.”

“Did you see Keith?”

“Oh, yeah. He said he was real surprised to see me in church yesterday. I told him I was sorry I got him into trouble, but he said it might be for the best. Is it OK if I have a Pepsi or something? I’m kind of thirsty.”

“Of course it’s all right. You shouldn’t think you have to ask me about that. Go get yourself one.”

“Thanks,” she replied, going to the refrigerator and pulling out a can. “You know, until this weekend it must have been more than a year since I had one.”

It wasn’t surprising in the slightest to Nanci, of course. “No big deal. I don’t suppose you heard anything about your mother?”

“Oh, I always hear stuff about my mother. None of it good. I get teased about it a lot, and I really hate it, not that there’s anything I can do about it. But if you mean anything about where she is, I haven’t heard anything new. I took a swing by the house on the way home, but nothing has changed. I can’t imagine what could have happened to her.”

“I had a talk with Sheriff Shoemaker about her this morning,” Nanci reported. “Apparently he didn’t know she was gone until I told him, but he said he’d ask around the Stationhouse and maybe a few other places.”

“The Stationhouse was the first place I thought of to look, but I didn’t find her there. I’m not supposed to go in there, but I figured it was all right to take a quick peek. In fact, I have several times, but I never saw her. I didn’t want to make a pest of myself by asking anyone around there very much.”

“That was probably a good idea. At least it’s different for the sheriff to ask about her, especially those kinds of places, and he probably has other things he can do to check on her that we can’t.” Nanci decided this was a good a time as any to bring up what she was really trying to say. “Look, have you done any thinking about what happens if she doesn’t show up?”

“Yeah,” Amber replied glumly. “I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. I figure I can go on the way I’ve been living for a while, but sooner or later I know I’ll run into trouble I can’t handle, too. In a way I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. I know there’s sort of an orphanage or home or something down in Carondelet, but I don’t know how I’d get there, much less get in. I’m not sure I’d want to anyway. It’s not supposed to be a very nice place, but it might be better than what I had.”

Nanci didn’t want to tell Amber that she’d already been looking into the group home – at least what little she’d gotten from the sheriff – but over the day she’d made up her mind that as an option it would be a last resort, at least in the short term. It might come to that in the long run, but not now. “Well, maybe it won’t be necessary,” she replied. “We can hope, anyway. But Amber, you’re welcome to stay with me for a while until we figure out what to do, whether your mother shows up or not.”

“Nanci, do you really mean that?” the girl replied brightly.

“Of course I meant it or I wouldn’t have said it. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if things clarify in the next few days. But I’m also thinking that if there’s anything else of yours you want from your place that we ought to go get it, just so it doesn’t disappear, and maybe things of your mother’s that seem important, too.”

“There’s not much there that I really want, but you’re right. Is it going to be too much trouble to put the stuff here?”

“No,” Nanci replied as she heard the phone ring. “There’s plenty of space here, so we might as well use it.” She walked over to the wall-mounted phone and answered, “Tyler Methodist Parsonage. This is Reverend Chladek.”

“Hello, Reverend,” she heard a man say. “This is Ed Burton at the Mound-Burton Funeral Home in Carondelet. I understand you replaced Reverend Anders.”

“Yes, I did. I’ve only been here for a few days, though. Is there anything I can help you with?”

“Yes, there is. We have a burial service and an interment coming up Thursday afternoon at the West Walke Cemetery for a Mr. Elmer Pepper. Our understanding was that he used to attend the church in Lexington, a long time ago, but when I asked Reverend Saunders if he would be willing to do the service, he turned me down.”

“Turned you down?” Nanci frowned.

“I’m afraid he did,” Burton sighed. “Apparently it’s been a long time since Mr. Pepper was a member of the church, so long that there was no record of any involvement by him. Besides, Reverend Saunders said he wouldn’t do a commitment service for anyone who committed suicide.”

“There are people who feel that way,” Nanci replied mildly, although her feelings were considerably deeper; at first report, this Saunders sounded like a narrow-minded idiot. “I personally don’t agree with them. A funeral service is supposed to be to comfort the living as much as it is to commit the dead.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, and that’s my business,” the man replied. “But Reverend Saunders was rather adamant about it. Look, I have a retired minister down here who occasionally does services for me, but Mr. Pepper’s grandson said that a neighbor told him you were new in the area. The Conestoga Methodist Church is more local, and this neighbor told him that most of the people who will attend the service go there anyway. So I thought I’d give you a call and ask if you’d be willing to do the service.”

“Of course I’ll do it,” she replied. “I never met this Mr. Pepper, but I’ve talked to a few people who knew him.”

“Thank you. I’m sure Mr. Pepper’s grandson will appreciate it.”

“When and where is the service? At your place here in Tyler?”

“No, it’s going to be a simple graveside service at West Walke Cemetery. That’s a few miles from the Conestoga church. It’ll be Thursday at two in the afternoon. As far as I know there are no other activities planned, like a funeral dinner.”

“All right, I’ll be there. I’ve never been there before, so I’ll leave a little early to be sure of finding it on time.”

“Thank you, Reverend,” Burton replied. “I really appreciate your willingness to help in this. Mr. Pepper’s grandson was certainly less than happy to get turned down by Reverend Saunders.”

“He ought to be, but I know there are people like Reverend Saunders out there. I’ll see you Thursday, Mr. Burton, and thank you for calling me.”

Nanci hung up the phone, thinking that she needed to call Art and find out a little more about Elmer Pepper. While she had never actually presided at a funeral service, she knew what was involved, and had attended several, so it wasn’t totally strange to her. There was a first time for everything, and Nanci was as sure as anything that this wouldn’t be the last funeral service she had to perform.

“What was that all about?” Amber asked.

“Oh, I have to do a funeral service Thursday,” Nanci explained. “It’s one of those things a minister has to do. I doubt if I’ll be back when you get here after school, so you’ll have to let yourself in. I think there’s a spare key around here somewhere, but if there isn’t I’ll have one made for you.”

“Wow,” Amber shook her head. “You’re really going to give me a key and let me be here alone?”

“Yes, I am,” Nanci smiled. “I wouldn’t do it for everyone, but I think you’re worthy of being trusted, and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.”

Once he was done at the funeral home, Gerald headed back north from Carondelet for the second time that day. It had been a long day, and Leah was getting tired and cranky. He didn’t blame her in the slightest, either. She’d been a good kid, staying quiet while he had to tend to business, but he knew her well enough to tell that it was wearing thin, along with spending so much time in the car seat. Maybe when they got back to his grandfather’s ranch they ought to spend some time playing to reward her for being a good kid today.

While most things had gone well, the business with Reverend Saunders had set him on edge. While Gerald hadn’t talked to him directly, he got the impression that he was a nasty piece of work at best, and while Burton hadn’t actually said it, he got the same impression from him.

Thank goodness that Art had told him about the new preacher out at Conestoga Methodist. While she hadn’t been there long, Art said he had a good impression of her, and it sounded like he might be right considering how quickly she’d agreed to do his grandfather’s funeral. He looked forward to meeting her, and her quick acceptance told him where he would be going to church on Sunday. Besides, as Art had said, it would be a good place to meet his new neighbors.

More important than that, the church might also be a good place to find a small job or two and possibly make a contact to lease out some of the grazing land on a short-term basis. While there was the money in his grandfather’s wallet that he still hadn’t gotten around to counting, he knew it wouldn’t last forever. Finding more of the old man’s cash, or some of the other prospects he’d been told about for getting money still seemed a little tenuous. He was a man who was used to earning his money, after all; while there were other things that needed to be done, actually earning money was also something he needed to do.

From what he’d learned so far, neighbors seemed to be important out in this lonely, empty country. Back in Kansas City, Gerald had rarely known any of his neighbors in any of the places he had lived over the last few years. Oh, once in a while he’d say hello or something, but he rarely knew their names and there had been some of them he hadn’t wanted to know any better than that, anyway.

Gerald hadn’t spent a lot of time in church the last few years; having to take care of Leah and working had usually claimed most his time. Kasie, when she’d still been around, hadn’t been a church-going person at all. Still, he felt it was something important, and he needed to get back to being more serious about it.

In spite of being tired, he felt like he’d gotten quite a bit done this day. There were still plenty of things that needed to be worked out of course, but the wheels had been set in motion on a lot of them. While he still didn’t think he wanted to stay out in this lonely country any longer than necessary, he was now pretty sure he could handle it until things got worked out with his grandfather’s property. Maybe he could sell the place or put it on a long-term lease; he wasn’t sure which he wanted to do, but he now had time to make up his mind.

He was sure that he needed to continue to fix up the house; remembering what the sheriff had said, he’d gotten a new lock set for the back door and thought he’d be able to get it installed tonight. He knew the house would have to be seriously cleaned up and some repairs made before he tried to sell it; he probably would have trouble giving it away in the condition it was in now. It was not going to be an overnight job, nor even one that only took him a few days given the need to go through everything carefully, as McGill had pointed out.

One of the things he hadn’t gotten to yet was to see about getting Leah in school, and it was too late today. Maybe he could do it tomorrow, but at best that would mean she would only have two days in school before he had to keep her out of school for his grandfather’s funeral, which he felt she ought to attend. It might not be easy for her, and she might not understand it very well, but she deserved to be there.

Still, even having her in school for a few days would give her some kids to interact and play with and get to know. It would give him some time away from her so he could do a few things where it would be best if she weren’t around, things like going out to that junkyard so he could go through his grandfather’s truck. It wouldn’t surprise him to find some cash stashed in it.

As he drove north, he spent some time thinking of where his grandfather could have hidden cash. Anything hidden recently would be easy to get to, if not necessarily easy to find, simply because, from what he’d heard, his grandfather had been too feeble to do anything like burying a box in the yard. But that might not hold true for something he’d hidden ten years before, either. Maybe sometime he’d have to buy a metal detector and go through the yard thoroughly, but that wasn’t a high priority for the moment.

There was a lot to do today and in the next few months. While he knew he could expect a little help on the house from Leah, he knew she wouldn’t be much help, so he’d have to do most of it himself. Still, going to the effort looked like it was going to pay rewards – the biggest reward being that they would be out of their dreary, miserable existence in Kansas City. But once they had this settled, maybe they could find some solid, comfortable place to live – and maybe he could even go looking for a wife, a woman who could share his life and be a better mother to Leah than Kasie had been.

It was a while before Keith got home. He had ridden the school bus to and from school for years, and he was used to the fact that it was slow and didn’t go directly home, so he spent a lot of time sitting on bus seats. He would rather have driven the old pickup to school, but the people at the school weren’t quite as easy-going about under-aged drivers as the sheriff was. He knew he’d have his driver’s license in another few months, and maybe he could drive to school next year and waste less than half the time he did now sitting on the rough-riding, uncomfortable bus.

Not that his time spent on the bus was totally a waste. He’d learned long ago that he could get a lot of his homework done riding back and forth, which was good, since as soon as he got home there was always work to do around the ranch.

Like most kids brought up on farms and ranches, Keith had been part of the work force from an early age. Some of it was routine chores done every day, like feeding, watering, and gathering eggs in the hen house, but there were always other things to be done and he wasn’t sure what any of those extra tasks would be on a given day. Some of the chores were more fun than others; he always enjoyed it when he got to saddle up Vidalia, the bay quarter horse he more or less considered to be his own, and help move buffalo from one pasture to another. The beasts were dangerous, and didn’t herd like cattle, so that kept life interesting and adventurous though a bit risky at times. In any case, there always seemed to be a couple hours of work to do before supper, and sometimes more.

He got off the bus out at the road and slowly walked up the driveway to the house, carrying his books under his arm. When he got in the house, he found his mother in the kitchen. “So how was school today?” she asked, as she always did.

“Pretty much the same thing,” he shrugged. Really it was, except for the news about Amber, which he didn’t think his mother would appreciate hearing. “What’s Dad going to have me doing?”

“There’s some fence work that needs to be done,” she told him. “Since it’s barbed wire, you’d probably better get on some old clothes, then go out and find your dad. I think he was doing something out in the horse barn.”

Keith had some idea of what the job all about. There was a section of fence out on the east property line that had been looking pretty saggy the last time he had been out there. It hadn’t been a big deal since they hadn’t been pasturing any buffalo on it recently, although it was clear that at least part of the herd needed to be moved there soon. That meant the fence would have to be fixed first.

It didn’t take long to change clothes and get out to the horse barn. “Hi, Dad,” he said when he saw him. “Mom said we’ve got fence to fix today.”

“Yeah,” his father replied, explaining about the fence line that looked pretty weak, and telling Keith to go load some fence posts, tools, and barbed wire into the old pickup. “It ain’t that bad,” he explained. “We ought to get it wrapped up by supper.”

A few minutes later the two of them were riding out to the fence. There were several gates that had to be opened and closed along the way, and that chore fell to Keith, of course. When they got out to the weak fence, it was as Keith had remembered – a few wires hanging a little looser than they should, and a couple of bent posts that would have to be replaced. It was nothing out of the ordinary, and a job they had done often enough before.

Replacing the steel fence posts was the hardest chore and it wasn’t all that bad, because the ground was still soft and the manual post driver worked well. Later in the summer the soil could be hard as a rock, and it could take a long time to drive a single post. Once the new posts were in, it was just a matter of tightening and refastening the wires.

A little surprisingly, his father hadn’t said much since they left the horse barn. Keith had been expecting to hear something about Amber, but by now he’d started to think that maybe he would be able to avoid the lecture he was sure was coming.

But it wasn’t to be. “So,” his father said as Keith was working on the wire, “Did you see that Amber girl today?”

“Yeah, I did,” he replied, being honest. “She’s in school with me, in some of my classes, so it would be hard to not see her. She asked me to be sure to tell you thanks for letting her stay Saturday.”

“I hadn’t realized things were that bad for her,” his father admitted. “But Keith, it would be best if you didn’t have anything more to do with her than you have to. That girl’s mother is nothing but pure trouble, and in this world the apple usually doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Amber isn’t like that, Dad.”

“Maybe not now,” his father shook his head. “But a girl like that is going to be more trouble than you want to deal with sooner or later, so it’s best if you didn’t have anything more to do with her than you have to, and I don’t want you doing it. I think it’d probably be best if you didn’t figure on driving into town anytime soon. There’s enough for you to do out here anyway.”

“OK, Dad, if you say so.”

“I say so.”

That was about that, and Keith knew it – it didn’t pay to argue with his father, and it was something he’d learned a long time before. Besides, getting more or less restricted to the ranch outside of school wasn’t anything new; it was pretty much the normal state of things. There weren’t other guys to hang around with out here, anyway; most of his male friends were in Tyler and he only rarely got a chance to go there outside of school without his parents along.

He was just about dead sure his father was wrong about Amber, but there was no point in bringing it up since he had made it pretty clear that he had no interest in listening. Amber just wasn’t the kind of girl who got into trouble in school, and he knew it because he’d known her for years, even though he may not have known her very well for many of them. He would have liked to be more help to her, but at least the mess-up this weekend had gotten her some help from the new preacher. Like he’d told Amber at lunch, she was likely to be more help than he could have been, so it was worth the trouble.

Besides, as Amber had said, if he played it cool and didn’t make an issue out of it, it might blow over after a while. It wasn’t like he was going to be seeing Amber much for a while with school getting out for the summer soon, but he knew he’d miss her since he’d come to like her in a way.

“All right, Dad,” he said in resignation. “Hand me those wire cutters.”

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