The Letter

Folding the letter along the creases, I placed it in the envelope and slipped it into the back pocket of my jeans. Then, as if in a trance, I walked off the deck, across the grass, and climbed the wobbly barbed wire fence into Joel Hershel’s property. I paced back and forth over that windblown field--ruminating over Randy’s words just as thoroughly as those cows were down over the hill chewing their cud.

I didn’t know how to respond to such a letter and to the revelations it contained. For in no way did I desire to abandon Randy's friendship, but I also didn’t know how we could possibly maintain the semblance of a normal one, knowing all the while he wanted something more. I couldn’t ask him to wait on me because I wasn’t sure I actually wanted him to. What if he did wait, and I found someone at college? It just simply wasn’t fair: either stringing him along like a puppet in case I wanted to pick him up again and toy with his heart over winter and summer breaks or severing all ties between us. He’d surely get hurt in the process if I did the latter. And, if that percentage of intercollegiate marriages was correct, he’d get hurt in the process if I did the former.

Regardless of the different perspectives I took, the four years of college in front of a future relationship between Randy and me made the chances of it every coming to fruition not exactly improbable, but still quite uncertain. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope of Time: turning the cylinder filled with shifting patterns and starburst color while trying to predict what images the tenth turn would bring. There were too many variables swaying in the balance to know where I would be, or even who I would be, when 2008 rolled around.

It was odd, but I found relief in the fact no relief for the moment could be found. Thus reassured by futility, I wove through the grasses and went to climb the fence bordering our yard. But before I did, I looked through the French glass doors of our white rancher and saw my family moving inside like lead characters in a shadow box play. Father was seated at the kitchen table: his red suspenders hanging off his salt-stained shirt; his yellow accounting pad spread before him; his calculator (with the extra-large buttons for his 49-year-old eyes) to his right, and his carpenter pencil poised in his sandpapered hand. Standing between the coffee table and the couch, Mother looked like a teenager in tank top, shorts, and hair looped into a feathered ponytail. She was folding a pile of laundry, and the prim set of her mouth said she wasn’t enjoying it. Six-year-old Caleb was stretched across the rug before the empty fireplace, creating all sorts of politically incorrect mayhem with his anatomically correct action figures. Our older brother Joshua wasn’t home yet, but there was a covered plate in the fridge, a freshly made bed, and four anxious hearts awaiting his return.

I began to cry for the appearance of ease in their lives even though I, at the moment, was not counted among them. And the next morning when I left for college, this shadow box image wouldn’t be just an appearance but an actuality: my part shifting to that of an understudy from the place of a lead. Releasing the rusted wire of the fence, I sank down into the grasses and pulled my knees up to my chest. My hair hung over both sides of my face, and I wept behind the comfort of its curtain. I must’ve remained that way for quite a while, for the shadows behind me lengthened as the porch lights winked out one by one.

“Jolina,” Mother’s voice called from deck, “where are you?”

“Over here, Mom,” I said, but my voice was hoarse from crying, and I doubt she heard me.

A flashlight beam swept the yard. “Jolina?”

“Over here,” I repeated.

She drew closer and closer. “There you are,” she said, when the light ignited me in the darkness. My mother, also barefoot, clambered over the fence--her ponytail swishing like its namesake’s. She leapt over with a slight groan and asked, “You okay?”

Glad for the darkness, I stood and wiped my face on the shoulder of my shirt. “Yes.”

“It’s time for bed, you know.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Come in, now. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

She helped me climb the fence, and I helped her. Using the flashlight beam to guide us, we found our way to the deck. Her hand on the door handle, she suddenly stopped, turned, and held me to her. “I love you, my girl,” she whispered, and her cheek against mine was wet.

“Love you too, Mom.”

“Look,” she said, pointing above. The beam from the flashlight centered between our bodies sliced the night like a lighthouse beacon--letting me know that, whatever happened, I could always find my way back home.

Randy and I married four years later on September 27, 2008.

The Bull's-eye of Love

A few times every summer my family would travel down to visit the Petersheims who had a twenty-three-year-old son who I greatly admired, but who I wouldn't allow near my heart because of our six and a half age gap. Needless to say, it didn't work. This is the second snapshot of my husband, Randy, and my unusual beginning.

The land was as ruggedly beautiful as the mountainous terrain looming over it. With every breath of wind, the untamed grasses swept back and forth, in and out like the waves of the sea. The sun played peek-a-boo behind clouds that tumbled across a robin’s egg-blue sky. I found it impossible to do anything besides just stand there, completely mesmerized by the undulating beauty like a country girl cooped up in the city for far too long. I realized, then, how deeply I’d missed the all-encompassing acreage we’d carelessly lived on for eight of my seventeen years. Even though we still lived in the country, five acres bordered by Miss Odessa and Mr. Charmain’s dilapidated bungalow and Highway 67 couldn’t substitute for Springcreek’s 365 of rolling hills and freshwater rivers.

Soon, though, my reverie was broken as Randy and my older brother Joshua came to stand beside me with black paint smeared across their cheekbones; nine mm pistols jammed into the pockets of their baggy camo pants, and Ruger Mini-14 and .22 rifles crisscrossing their bare shoulders. They looked like extras from Oliver Stone’s Platoon or marauding militia members, but they were simply planning to use the property’s mildewed hay bales for target practice. Regardless of the weaponry tucked into every crevice of Randy and Joshua’s clothing, I was not entrusted with anything from a tomahawk to a toothpick. Joshua was solely to blame for this segregating behavior; for, like the evening preceding it, he didn’t seem to want me there at all.

Following the overgrown GI Joes as they wove through a tangle of grasses and trees, I heaved a sigh more to puff up my sweaty bangs than from frustration and swerved into place behind them. Randy must’ve heard my exhalation for he, much to my brother’s annoyance, ambled back. “You doing all right?” he asked, shifting the gun strap on his shoulder.

I wrenched my gaze away from his bare skin and replied, “Yep. But I didn’t know I’d sighed up for Sunday afternoon boot camp.”

“Oh, didn’t you? Sorry. Thought Josh would’ve told ya.”

“Told me what?”

He grinned, and the slash of paint on his cheekbones crinkled. “This is the world-renowned Petersheim Boot Camp--P.B.C. for short.”

“That’s funny, never heard of it.”

“’Cause it’s top secret. Only the very special get to take part.”

“Am I still counted among the ranks, then?”

He reached out and touched my arm so quickly I thought it was more to flick off a fly than to offer reassurance. “You betcha,” he said and winked.

We hiked for another fifteen minutes until the flap of gray road couldn’t be seen and we were flush with the back of the property. GI Petersheim then unrolled a sheaf of long white paper covered with a man-sized target. Joshua tacked two papers to two hay bales, and Randy tacked another paper to a third. “This one’s for you,” he called to me over his shoulder. Randy made me put in a pair of yellowed earplugs -- which I hoped was their natural color and not an accumulation of ear wax -- and the boys began blasting the targets while I sat in the grass, searching my legs for the red specks of chiggers. Finally, when my skin felt shrunken by sun, Randy said, “You ready?”

Unless you counted the time I decided to become Annie Oakley rather than Anne of Green Gables and “borrowed” Joshua’s BB-gun for the day, I’d never touched a weapon. I was a little nervous of its reactionary kick, for Father had horrified my childhood with stories of knocked out teeth and eyeballs to induce a fear of guns I innately felt. But Randy promised me those stories were just exaggeration. As the tangerine sun seeped upon us, he stepped closer and gently positioned the Ruger Mini-14 against my shoulder. I held the barrel in my hands and squinted one eye to see the bull’s eye better.

“Got it?” Randy asked. I glanced over at him: all tussled brown hair and bare-chested brawniness.

“Uh-huh,” I muttered nonsensically. I shook my head and focused on the position of my hands rather than on his proximity. I peered through the scope’s site, lined up the crosshairs, and pulled the trigger. The donkey kick I’d been expecting was more like something a bunny’s feet would do.

Randy ran up to the bale and searched the paper for the bullet’s puncture. “Wow, Miss Miller,” he yelled (due to my earplugs). “For a first-timer, you sure know how to hit a target.”

I smiled with pleasure as he trotted over and stood in front of me again. The sun’s swirling rays combined with the contrast of his cheekbone’s black paint transformed his hazel eyes into a vibrant, shimmering green.

“Thanks for the compliment,” I said, tugging out my earplugs.

“You’re very welcome.”

My brother, leaning against a hay bale with his arms folded, cleared his throat.

Randy and I looked over and saw Joshua’s face, set in the scowling expression of a disapproving schoolmarm. I felt my own face flush. I knew Joshua, to punish me for monopolizing his friend’s time, would tell our parents I’d been throwing myself at a twenty-three-year-old man. And although part of the reason I’d come to Winchester was to investigate the enigma of Randy, I truly wasn’t flaunting myself before him like a sultrily dressed, undercover detective to accomplish this. For where I’d struck the bull’s eye literally, the person beside me was attempting it in the figurative form. Maybe it was my Nancy Drew skills simmering to the surface, or the first strands of my womanly intuition weaving into place, but somehow I knew GI Petersheim’s next target was the core of my commitment-skittish heart.

My Knight in Wet Armor

Today my husband and I traveled down to the town along the Alabama/Tennessee line where he and I first began. In honor of our love's ten-year journey, over the next three weeks I am going to post snapshots of how the two of us eventually became one. This snapshot took place the summer after Randy and I met: I was sixteen, and he was twenty-two. This is the story his sisters say proved to them that he was in love. 

Randy had just started telling us about the chilling, occult occurrences taking place in the forest surrounding Sherwood when a barefoot man in tattered jeans and a cut-off shirt came stumbling out of the woods and leapt in front of Randy’s truck. Randy, mid-sentence, slammed on his brakes, and my forehead bounced off the back of his seat. The man stood in front of us--his scarecrow arms waving, his gaping mouth nothing but a dark hole studded with gnarled teeth and his eyes completely white except for a marbling of veins. I’d never felt such demonic-induced fear and looking up into the rearview mirror, I could tell Randy felt the same. While the man continued waving his arms in a series of jerky movements, Randy shifted into reverse, then into drive, gunned the engine, and swooped past him. It didn’t take long for the Dodge to put distance between us and the emaciated lunatic, but his frightening appearance had impacted us, and no one said anything for ten minutes.

Randy was the first to speak. “Everyone all right?”

Our eyes met in the rearview mirror, and I nodded.

My brother, with shaking fingers, tapped his cigarette ash out the window and said, “What in the world was that?”

“Well, I’m not sure it was of this world,” Randy said.

Joanne whispered, “Really?”

“No,” Randy replied. “He’s probably just on meth or something. There are meth labs all over these mountains.”

Randy drove a little longer and pulled onto a square of grass with a small sign stating the length of the Buggytop Trail and those responsible for its creation. We slipped on our backpacks, weighted with a week’s supply of food, and followed one another like dominoes into the South Cumberland National Park. The trail was beautiful. To keep Mother Nature from being injured, the tree-hugging students from the nearby university had only used hand-held tools for the clearing, and the path that resulted was thin and supple like a chocolate-colored ribbon looping across the forest floor. The hardy trees, left to their own devices for so long, soared above our heads, and golden needles of light punctured through their thick branches and the netting of leaves strewn above.

But the day was hot, and no amount of forest beauty could change that fact. Sweat beaded our backs, and humidity crept down our throats. Randy and my brother casually shucked their t-shirts like they were stripping husks from a corncob; the girls and I remained modestly garbed but green with envy. It was hard to remain focused on my footing with Randy’s broad, sun-speckled shoulders in my line of vision. For the most part I kept my gaze carefully averted, but when I heard the sound of water tumbling over rocks, I took this as my cue and began running in the direction of the noise. Within a few seconds I arrived at the creek, which had been created by rainwater rushing down the mountain furrows and crashing together in a blast of white foam. Heedless of my socks and tennis shoes, I sloshed through the shin-deep, cool water and found the source from which the tumbling sound emanated. Black rock the size of Roman boulders had been broken away by the pounding water, creating a twenty foot precipice from which the gushing water fell.

Clenching a cedar branch, I stepped upon a tablet-sized portion of the smooth black stone. I peered over; the water at the base of the boulders churned like a witch’s pot. I was still watching when the branch I’d been clinging to snapped; my wet sneakers grasped for traction on the wet stone and found none, and I went tumbling over with all the kinetic control of the water cascading around me. I emitted a reactionary, blood-curdling scream and flung out my arms, searching for anything to break or alleviate my fall. My right hip collided and skidded down a chunk of rock; this provided enough time for me to seize the lip of rock above and keep from falling fifteen more feet onto the protruding rocks below. In the distance, I heard a deep voice calling my name. Something thundered through the underbrush toward me with all the erratic noise and maneuverings of a panicked elk.

“Jolina!” the voice yelled again; I recognized it as Randy’s, and heat flooded my face.

My voice faltered, “Mmmh--I’m okay. I’m down here!” For the moment I knew I was safe, but my throbbing hip and adrenaline-steeped blood made it difficult to concentrate.

Randy’s face, white with worry, appeared above me. “Can you hold on a little longer?” he asked.

I sarcastically drawled, “Don’t have much choice, do I?”

My attempt to lighten the situation did not shift Randy’s face in expression or color. “Just a sec,” he said.

He reappeared with a thick, knotted branch and held it down to me. I bracketed my feet in a niche of the rock and held onto the branch with both hands. He tugged on the branch, and I slowly came up with it. When I was within reaching distance, he grasped my hands and pulled me the rest of the way. Once I was safely standing beside him, his chest began heaving, and his face regained some of its hue. His shirt was torn from running through the brambles, and the water from the creek had soaked his blue jeans black. He glanced down and realized our hands were still intertwined.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” he asked, releasing my hands to swipe a trembling one through his sweaty hair.

“Yeah. I bruised my hip pretty good, but I’ll survive.”

He nodded, then just looked at me. “You gave me quite a scare.”

“I can see that, Mr. Petersheim.”

The faintest smile christened his mouth and his eyes sparked, but the moment was lost as our group broke through the brush and barricaded us with questions and dramatic reenactments of Randy’s charge through the forest to come to my rescue. I could tell he was embarrassed by this, but I was enamored by the fact that he cared for me--at least a little.

Why I Am No Bear Grylls

When the dog started yipping the second we came in the door, my sister-in-law and I at first paid her no mind. We’d just returned from a day of 4th of July shopping in Nashville, and we were hoping for some down time before we got ready for fireworks that evening.

But as the Bichon Frise continued to bark, we realized "down time" was no longer part of the agenda.

Setting her shopping bags down on the island in the kitchen, my sister-in-law, Joanne, knelt and looked under the sidebar to see what all the ruckus was about.

"Oh, no!" she cried, hazel eyes wide with panic. "There’s a mouse caught on the sticky trap! And" --her squeal echoed that of the trapped mouse-- "and it’s still alive!"

I groaned. Joanne and I are both adamantly against sticky traps since the mice stuck to it will often tear themselves limb from limb in an attempt to get free like some horror version of Br'er Rabbit.

"What’re we going to do?" I asked, kneeling and looking at the writhing Ratatouille.

Joanne said, "We’ll hafta kill it, I guess. We don’t want it to keep suffering." Standing and stretching herself across the island, she groaned, "I hate this!"

Since there was just the two of us at my in-laws' house, we knew one of us had to soon play the part of the Grim Reaper. Drawing myself up to my full height (5'2''), I said in my most assertive voice, "Don't worry, I'll handle it."

"No!” Joanne screamed. “If I’m to live on a foreign land, I must get used to these kinda things!"

I just looked at sister-in-law and grinned. Beneath her summer tan, her face was as white as a sheet.

I said, "Do you think I should use a hammer?"

"Ugh! Its guts would get all over you!"

"You're right. Let's look in the garage for something else."

Trooping into the garage in our patriotic attire, Joanne and I searched through my father-in-law's tools and held up each before shaking our heads and deeming it too violent.

She suggested, "We could hit it on the head with a board."

Wielding a hammer like a character in the Hunger Games, I shuddered and said, "No, I don't want to look at it while I’m killing it."

My sister-in-law paused, then looked over at me, her face lit up with an Eureka! moment. Picking up a box without a lid, she set it on the ground and grabbed a Swiffer mop.

I said, "Huh?"

"See...you take the box and you set it on top of the mouse like this. Then you take the Swiffer mop and you do this." Grabbing the Swiffer mop with both hands, my sister-in-law smashed it down into the box, expertly "crushing" our invisible mouse and promptly ending its pain.

"Okay," I said. "I think I could handle that."

Exiting the garage, we entered the kitchen, and I rolled the sidebar out of the way. I picked up the sticky trap the mouse was on, and it flailed its little gray arms and made squeaky sounds.

"Ummmm, Joanne? This thing can't get off, can it?"

"No," she said, shaking her head sadly. "Once it's on there, it's on there for good."

I looked down at the squirming varmint and thought otherwise. I knew if it leapt down off of that sticky trap, I would probably scream bloody-murder and stomp it to death out of sheer panic.

Not exactly the most humane way to go.

After I deposited the sticky trap on the front porch beside the luscious hydrangea planters, Joanne passed me the box with the solemnity of a nurse assisting in experimental brain surgery.

I set the box down on top of the mouse as gently as possible. It squeaked, and I shuddered. Grabbing the Swiffer mop, I lifted the handle up beside my head and stared down at the box, trying to think like Bear Grylls stabbing a fish with his handmade spear.

I quickly learned: I am no Bear Grylls. My arms began getting stiff from holding the Swiffer mop at such an awkward angle, and my stomach heaved with the idea of what I was about to do. In disgust, I threw the mop on the porch and muttered, "I can't do this. I thought I could, but--"

Joanne interrupted with, "--it's okay. Let's run over the mouse with the truck."

I looked over to gauge her seriousness. Her face was as serious as a heart attack.

Lifting the box off of the mouse, I picked up the sticky trap and set it down into the box. We then picked across the graveled driveway in our barefeet, and I moved to get the sticky trap/mouse out of the box.

"No. Leave it," Joanne said, climbing into the truck's cab. "That way we won't have to clean the mouse up; we can just throw the whole box away when we’re done."

I nodded and put the box directly behind the truck's left front tire. Shaking my head at the absurdity of using a two-ton truck to kill a .75555 ounce mouse, I asked my sister-in-law, "Shouldn't we just use my Jeep instead?"

"No," she said. "This'll work."

I thought, No doubt about that.

I was standing there, waiting for Joanne to shift into Reserve, when she stuck her head out the window and asked, "Aren't you going to get in here with me?"

I laughed, then -- seeing her face -- quickly obeyed. I went and sat in the passenger's seat, and Joanne turned the key and looked over at me with tears in her eyes.

"Just do it," I said, wiping away tears of my own even while trying not to laugh.

Nodding, she tightened her jaw and shifted into Reverse. Her eyes locked with mine the whole time we were backing up, and when that box went under the tires, it sounded like a thousand mice spines being crushed to powder.

She screamed; I screamed and laughed about the fact that I was screaming. But we kept moving backward, down the lane. After a few feet, Joanne looked over at me and whispered, "Do you think I should run over him again?"

"No," I said, "I think that did the trick."

We sat there for another thirty seconds. Finally, I flung open the door and got out. Walking around to the driver's side, I looked inside the crushed box, but there was not a thing in it. Panicked, I searched all across the gravel, but there was not a hint of mouse remains. Then I looked at the tire--at the huge, knobby tire belonging to the two-ton truck.

Sure enough. The sticky trap was stuck to the tire as stubbornly as a piece of gum. Bloody innards were squishing around the trap, and I saw the mouse's gray tail peeping out from under the bottom of it.

Swallowing, I said, "Joanne, I think--I think we got him."

"Is it bad?" she asked.

"No, the sticky trap's stuck to the tire. I can barely see anything."

Clambering down out of the cab, she took a look, then looked at me and said, "We'll let the men handle it from here."

I couldn't agree more.

One hour later, when I returned home to shower and get ready for the firework show, I came in the door and called out to my husband, "Have I got a story for you!"

Padding out of our bedroom, he said, "What?"

"A mouse got caught on a sticky trap at Mom and Dad's, and Joanne and I ran over it with Dad's truck."

Tilting his head, my husband looked at me. "You know, if it's not too messed up, you can usually get a mouse off a sticky trap with a little warm water."

I groaned and slapped my forehead.

RIP, little Ratatouille, I’ll know better next time.

Giving "Cat Fight" a Whole New Meaning

The biggest fight my husband and I ever got into was over a cat. We were taking a leisurely stroll after supper when the sound of pitiful mewing met my ears. Although my right forearm bears 17-year-old bite marks from the time, as a child, I tried to domesticate a wild feline and failed, I was not deterred.

Kneeling on the side of the road, I called out to the cat in all the ridiculous ways an animal lover can. Ten seconds hadn't passed when a little fluff-ball came bouncing out of the tall grass into my arms. It was a long-haired tiger that looked up at me with trusting green eyes illuminated by the streetlight's glow. It hadn't even licked my hand with its pink sandpaper tongue when I knew my heart was smitten.

My husband's, on the other hand, was not.

As I beseeched him with my biggest eyes and asked, "Can we keep it?" he replied with the answer I already knew was to come:

“Honey, you know we can’t have a cat in our apartment. Plus, it probably belongs to someone anyway.”

I decided I would at least find out if the kitten belonged to the neighbor before I took any drastic actions like stuffed it under my shirt and hightailed it for the woods.

As I tiptoed across the neighbor’s lawn with a mysterious bundle pressed against my chest, the little old lady who lived inside was probably so shocked to be receiving visitors at such a late hour, she didn’t dare answer the door.

I didn’t know what to do after that. I knew I couldn't take the kitten home with me, but neither did I want to leave it as an appetizer for wild animals.

Then my husband said, “Just leave it. It probably belongs to that neighbor over there, and it just got separated from its mom.”

In reply, I more or less said how could he even think to suggest such a callous thing, but I still set the kitten down in the grasses from which it had leapt into my arms. Giving the fur-ball one more weepy look, I took a few steps away from it, and it started hopping and mewing after me.

My heart couldn't stand such suffering! Turning around, I started to run back toward the cat when my husband put his hand around my upper arm and stopped me. Jerking that arm out of his grasp, I looked up at him with venom in my eyes and spat, "Don't you ever manhandle me again!"

My poor husband was as befuddled as the cat I was in the midst of abandoning. He wasn't manhandling me; he was just trying to keep me from complicating a situation that seemed so incredibly simple to a pragmatist like him.

One week later, as we were driving back over to my in-law's, my husband said, "Look there, Honey. You see that cat? I told you he lived there."

I looked out the window and couldn't believe my eyes. Right there was my little tiger, merrily hopping around with his littermates in the neighbor's yard. And here I would've catnapped him without a second thought.

Two years have passed since that kitten debacle, but I still haven't lost my penchant for rescuing critters that might already have homes. Today, during my walk, I came across four puppies with fox-like markings and the prettiest golden eyes. They kept yipping as I approached them, so I crouched low and called them toward me. They came scampering down the embankment and licked my palm.

I didn’t want them to get hit on the road, so I whistled and clapped for them to follow me back down toward our property. All but one trotted behind me. I tried and tried to get him to follow, too, but he kept growling whenever I drew near.

The puppies were too tired to make it the whole way down our lane, so I tucked them in the shade and went back to talk to my husband.

I said, “I did a bad thing.” 

“What?”

“I found four more strays.”

Sighing, he said, “Honey, we can never get a dog of your own if you keep taking care of everyone else’s.”

“I know that,” I said. “I don’t even want to keep these. I just don’t want them to starve.”

Randy nodded, and soon afterward we headed out the lane in our separate Jeeps.

I drove in front because I didn’t want him to accidentally run over the puppies. Sure enough, they were still there--panting and wagging their plumed tails. I got out and called them to me. They were scared of the vehicle at first, but then they came up and licked my ankles.

Randy got out and grinned.

Seeing this, I said, “Aren’t they cute?"

He nodded. “I can bring food out for them tomorrow if we can just leave them here tonight.”

I agreed to this, then searched both of our Jeeps for water. We had drank all of ours, but we did have some cookies that I crumbled up and set before the pups.

Petting their heads, I clambered back in the Jeep and pulled out of the lane. I knew Randy would have to close the gate, so I thought I might have just enough time to grab the other puppy and take him down to his siblings.

When Randy pulled out of our lane, he saw his wife's Jeep haphazardly parked on an incline (I used my emergency brake, people) while I climbed up the embankment in a purple sundress, trying to get a growling puppy to come closer.

My husband shifted into Park and stuck his head out the window. “Your car’s going to get hit right there!”

I looked back at my Jeep. He was right; plus, the puppy and I weren’t exactly bonding.

Comforting myself with the fact that Randy would be back with food tomorrow, I slid down the embankment, got in the Jeep and drove out the road with my husband following.

Before we pulled onto the highway, my husband honked his horn. I put on the brake and waited for him to jog around to my driver's side.

“Did you forget your cell phone out at the land?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, I left it at the apartment.”

He nodded, then said, “The puppies were already going up the lane to meet with that other one, and I dropped some cookies out the window for it, too.”

I grinned at my mountain man with a heart of hidden gold, and the whole drive back I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: What in the world are we going to name them?