Seven Sisters Read Free

in San Celina County.
    If they were ranchers, then they were possibly people I knew, if only casually. Our county’s ranch community was a tight, small group. “So, who is her family? Who is she?”
    He stopped playing with Scout’s hair and looked directly into my eyes. “Promise you won’t get weird or anything.”
    “Sam, I’m not getting weird, I’m getting annoyed. Just tell me.”
    He dropped his head and mumbled a name.
    I ducked my head lower to hear him. “What did you say?”
    “Bliss Girard.”
    “What! Please tell me you’re pulling my leg.” If I had another pillow within reach, I would have held it down over his face.
    The absolute fear in his eyes was real. As well it should be. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But we love each other. Really, we do. We want to get married.”
    “Sam, how in the world am I going to tell your father that you got one of his best rookie cops pregnant? You want to answer me that?”
    “Not really,” he said.

2
    SAM LEFT, WITH the promise that he’d be back about five p.m., so we could share the joyful task of telling his father that he was going to be a grandfather. I hoped Gabe would be in a congenial mood since this was the first time in weeks he’d managed to steal a day to work on his master’s thesis in philosophy. Sam was smart about one thing—Sun—day was definitely the best day to drop this bomb on his father. Hopefully some of the sermon Gabe and I heard at church this morning on forgiveness and tolerance was still resonating in his brain. But just to be safe, I started baking M & M cookies. Gabe adored M & M cookies, and I figured after his favorite dinner of chiles rellenos and smoky pinto beans topped off by a beloved dessert, he’d be in a mellow, cholesterol- and sugar-sated stupor before we broke Sam’s news. As I mixed the stiff cookie dough, I thought about Bliss Girard and her family.
    Though they were an important presence in San Celina’s agricultural society, I didn’t know them well since they had never been cattle ranchers. Their combination quarter horse breeding ranch and winery was called Seven Sisters because, I assumed, of its location. From their magnificent Julia Morgan-designed house, which I’d visited once years ago during a holiday homes tour, there was a breathtaking view of the ancient Seven Sisters volcanic peaks that stretched down to Morro Bay, the last peak being Morro Rock.
    It was only recently that I’d connected Gabe’s youngest and newest officer with the Seven Sisters clan. At a departmental picnic last June she and I had a short conversation about the best way to treat shin splints in horses. She had overheard me talking to Gabe’s assistant, Maggie, who owned a cattle ranch with her sister in North County, and offered an opinion about the overuse of anti-inflammatory drugs without regard to the serious consequences down the road. That worked into an interesting conversation about the burgeoning popularity and controversy of a more holistic approach to horse and cattle health. It was during our conversation she revealed her relation to the Seven Sisters dynasty, as it was known in San Celina County. In fact, her maternal grandmother was the renowned Capitola “Cappy” Brown, former rodeo star and respected quarter horse breeder.
    “You didn’t grow up around here, did you?” I’d asked. She was much younger than me, twenty-two to my thirty-six, but the agricultural community in San Celina isn’t that big, and I was sure I’d have heard her name or seen her somewhere through 4-H, the Cattlewomen’s Association, at a Farm Bureau function, or in connection with one of my gramma Dove’s eclectic groups of which Cappy Brown or one of her two sisters were often members.
    Bliss shook her head no. She was a small, muscular woman with thick blond hair pulled back in a neat French braid. Delicate features and large gray eyes gave her a fragile, sheltered look, and I wondered if that was a difficult