Dove in the Window Read Free Page A

him pawing all over me at the barbecue.” She pointed at the scones. “I’ve got things to do. Wrap mine up to go.”
    “Yes, ma‘am,” I said, pulling a plastic bag from the drawer. “I promise to keep him occupied. You might be surprised, though. He’s quite a personable man now.” I held out the wrapped scones, giving her a wide smile.
    “He’s from Arkansas,” she said with a disdainful sniff. She grabbed the bag and stuck it in her briefcase. “Tell Dove happy Thanksgiving for me. See you Friday. Mama’s bringing tamales.”
    “Bless her,” Gabe said with a sigh.
    She scowled at him. “You know, I actually thought you might be able to control her.”
    “Better people than me have tried and failed,” he said, unperturbed.
    “Boy,” I said, pouring myself another cup of coffee after she left. “That was close. I thought she was going to leave me flapping in the breeze.”
    “She should have,” he said, reaching into the Stern’s Bakery bag and pulling out a cranberry scone. “It really was presumptuous of you.”
    “So you’ve told me a few hundred times. But it worked. A female general I saw interviewed on television one time said it’s easier sometimes to ask forgiveness than permission ... or something like that.”
    “That could be your motto,” he said, his voice not a little ironic.
    “Ah, take your scones and go to work, Chief Ortiz,” I said, kissing him good-bye. “Before crime overtakes the fair streets of San Celina.”
    After he left, I pulled on my boots and grabbed my worn sheepskin jacket. San Celina had been going through an early cold snap, unusual for the Central Coast, and the days had not gotten much above sixty degrees. When I called and informed my Aunt Kate of that fact, she just laughed. She and my Uncle Rex live in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where sixty degrees in winter is short-sleeve, get-out-your-barbecue kind of weather. They, as well as the rest of my gramma Dove’s kids, were due at the ranch tonight. But I had a million things to do before then and only about eight hours to get them done.
    I climbed into my old red Harper’s Herefords Chevy pickup that I’d finally reclaimed from Gabe’s son, Sam, since he had, with the help of his father, bought a 1965 Chevy Malibu. Now that Sam was living at my dad’s ranch rather than with us and had a new job at Elvia’s bookstore, he and Gabe managed to go for as long as two or three days without sniping at each other. With Sam’s plans to attend Cal Poly in the spring, it appeared my stepson was going to be a permanent fixture in my life, for a while anyway. As is not uncommon with nineteen-year-olds, he got along fine with everyone except his parents, and he and I had become friends in the way that two people who share a common passion do. We were both intensely committed to figuring out that person who was his father and my husband, and we loved Gabe deeply, though it was often easier for me to admit it.
    This was going to be a busy week and a half for Gabe and me. As curator of our local folk art museum, the Josiah Sinclair Folk Art Museum and Artists Co-op, I was smack-dab in the middle of the San Celina Heritage Days celebration. The co-op had aligned with the women in the Fine Arts Guild to run concurrently a women’s western art show. We’d been given a grant from the city as well as from our local NOW chapter and were committed to educating the public about the contributions that women had made and were continuing to make in the western art field. The official start of Heritage Days and the art show was the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend and culminated with a parade, fiesta, and western dance a week from Saturday.
    The museum was presenting a special exhibit on loan from a sister folk art museum in Eugene, Oregon, of nineteenth-century pioneer quilts, most women’s only means of artistic expression during the long trek across the West. Our smaller, upstairs gallery spotlighted some of our co-op’s