The Last Chance Ranch Read Online Free Page B

turn-of-the-century room with wide windows overlooking the semiarid land. Sea-foam green wallpaper graced the angles made by the dormers, and a handmade quilt in green and white covered the bed. For a single moment, Tanya could not quite believe this would be her room.
    With a surprising lack of self-consciousness, Tonio pointed out the bathroom down the hall, the linen closet and various other amenities. She drank in the resonant tenor of his voice and found hints of the three-year-old she’d left behind.
    But she could not study him the way she wished to, not now. She couldn’t seem too curious or strange, so it would have to be done in bits. His voice, his easy movements—those were enough for now.
    “Thanks,” she said, finally, knowing she should let him go. “I’ll be fine.”
    “See you at dinner,” Tonio said amiably, and left, shutting the door behind him.
    Tanya sank down on the bed, alone in the quiet for the first time since she could remember. Even at the halfway house, there had been constant noise—the sound of a radio or a telephone or people talking, and the rooms had been only one step above the cells at the prison. Here, the quilt was soft with many washings and smelled faintly of dusting powder. With a sense of sybaritic freedom, Tanya closed her eyes and pulled the quilt around her, drowning in the deliciousness.
    This was what she had missed, more than anything. Pure solitude, and silence. For several long moments, she reveled in it, drowned in it, and then was startled by a knock at the door. “Just a minute!” she called.
    It was Antonio, back again, a stack of magazines in his hands. “Don’t tell my dad I forgot these,” he said, sheepishly. “I was supposed to put them in here before you got here and I forgot.”
    Tanya smiled and accepted the stack. “The
New Yorker?”
she said in a puzzled voice. “Interesting.”
    Tonio inclined his head, putting his hands on his hips. “Yeah, well, Dad’s got this thing about magazines. Everybody has magazines in their rooms—weird stuff, all of it, like that.”
    Tanya sensed he wasn’t in a hurry to go, and held the magazines loosely against her chest. As if she were only lazily making conversation, she flipped the top magazine against her and asked, “Where do they come from?”
    “In the mail. We get like twenty magazines and newspapers a week. The postman has to make a special trip.”
    Tanya lifted her head and smiled. “He has an unusual approach to things, doesn’t he?”
    “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Yeah, he’s a good guy once you get through all his weirdness.”
    “Weird?” Now she noticed the beautiful slant of her son’s eyes, the deep clear blue framed with extraordinarily long, sooty lashes. As a baby, those lashes had swept over half his cheeks when he slept. No old lady in the world could resist him. “He doesn’t seem weird to me.”
    Tonio gave her a tilted smile, and the expression was rakish, even in a fourteen-year-old. “You’ll see.” There was fondness in his tone. “He’s not like anybody else.”
    Tanya nodded. “Thanks. I won’t tell you forgot.”
    “Desmary said you can come on down whenever you want.”
    “Thanks,” she said again, and her hope that everything would be all right soared. Cheerfully, she changed her clothes and went down the stairs to the kitchen, humming softly under her breath.
    For the most part, it didn’t look as if much of the farmhouse had been altered. As she passed through the rooms of the ground floor—living room, library, what surely once would have been called a parlor, and dining room with a fireplace—she noticed the fine detail work that was the hallmark of turn-of-the-century craftsmen. All had been lovingly preserved.
    Even in the kitchen, attempts had been made to keep the original flavor of the old house. A broad bank of windows looked toward the barns, and a big butcher-block table dominated the center of the room.
    There the quaintness ended and the