***
The drive seemed endless to Grace once they reached Montana. It was a beautiful state, but the land stretched out for miles, dotted with a farmhouse here and there and nothing but mountains and prairies in between. It was already dark by the time they got to the border, so the kids didn’t even get to enjoy the sights of all the horses and livestock they were inevitably passing. When they finally reached Belt, all of Grace’s babies had fallen asleep. Grace drove slowly through the tiny town. She looked at the storefronts as she drove. There was a small grocery store, a hardware store, an ag-supply, and then she saw it, her mother’s quilt shop. She stopped for a moment in front of it and admired the quilt in the window. Her mother was good, she had to give her that. The quilt was brown and tan, felt and suede, with images of wild horses sewn in by hand. It was beautiful. She made a mental note to tell her mother so, hopefully getting them off on the right foot once they were there.
Grace drove out of Belt and got on the highway that her mother had told her to take. She had tried to map it out on her smart phone but even Siri didn’t know anything about the outskirts of Belt, Montana. She drove about five miles before coming to a service road with a tiny white sign: NEW BEGINNINGS ROAD. Grace smiled. It was such an appropriate sign, but definitely not like her mother to put up something with such a hopeful sounding name. It had to have already been there, or was put up by someone else.
She drove slowly down the long pitch-black dirt road. It was uneven in places, wider in some and narrower in others. The truck bounced so hard in some places that it woke up Macy. The little girl looked out into the darkness and asked, “Are we lost?”
“No,” Grace reassured her. “We’re almost there.”
“Great,” said Macy, rolling her eyes and then closing them again.
Grace looked at her for just a few seconds, and when she looked back at the road there was a dog—or some animal—standing about six feet in front of her, directly on the road. She slammed on the brakes, causing them to skid sideways and almost go off the road. That woke all of the kids. The animal ran off into the darkness as Grace sat there trying to regain her bearings.
“What’s wrong, Mama? What happened?” Lucy and Brock were both asking in sleepy little voices. Macy just looked at her, wide-eyed.
Grace took in a deep breath and said, “Everything’s okay. There was a dog in the road, but we missed him.”
She put the truck back in drive, and as she started moving slowly forward, Brock and Lucy shouted, “Yay! Grandmother has a dog!”
Grace seriously doubted it. Her mother wasn’t a dog person, and besides, that thing in the road hadn’t looked like anyone’s pet.
They came to the end of the road and it branched off in two directions. One way had a large sign over the road that read: Harwell Ranch, with an engraving of a pair of bull’s horns against what looked like a setting sun. On the other side of the road was simply a wooded arrow with the name Payte burnt into it in a crooked fashion. Grace sighed and turned right. “Here we come, Mother,” she whispered to herself.
The second dirt road was almost as long as the first. It finally came to an end in front of a cute little redwood house. The porch light was on, but the rest of the house looked dark. Grace hoped her mother hadn’t given up on them and gone to bed and locked the doors. She turned off the truck and told Macy, “You wait here with your brother and sister, and I’ll be right back.”
Grace went up the three steps to the front door. She could see now that the main door was standing open, probably in a futile attempt to let some cool night air in through the screen. It was a humid, August night in Montana and it didn’t feel to Grace like any air was moving at all. She raised her hand to knock, just as she saw her mother come into the room.
“Hi, Mama,” Grace said through the screen.
Maggie Payte squinted toward the door and asked by way of greeting, “Where are the kids?”
“They’re in the truck. I wanted to make sure you were up before we all unloaded.”
“Well, I said I would be, didn’t I?” her mother asked, still not coming closer to the screen door.
“Um, yes, you did.” It amazed Grace how a few words with her mother could transport her back twenty years. She felt like she was twelve all over again. “I’ll go get them,” she said.
When she reached the truck, Macy was sitting against her door looking like she wanted to cry again, and Lucy and Brock were arguing over the last candy bar. Grace opened the back door and, taking the candy from Lucy’s hand, said, “No one gets it, it’s too late for candy. Now, get on out of there, Grandmother is waiting.” She grabbed the bag she had packed with what they would need for the night, leaving the rest of the unpacking for morning.
Lucy and Brock both unbuckled their seatbelts and scrambled toward her. Macy continued to slump against the front passenger door. Grace helped the little ones down and said, “Macy, let’s go, it’s late,” in a firm voice.
Macy unbuckled her belt and grabbed her small tote bag that she carried her journal and other personal items in. She lowered herself down out of the truck. Looking around as they approached the house she told her mother, “It looks deserted out here.”
“It’s a bit out of the way,” Grace agreed, drawing on her reserve of patience. “Town’s not too far though.”
She thought Macy rolled her eyes again, but couldn’t really see her in the dark. When they got back to the door, Grace’s mother was still rooted to the same spot. Grace stood on the top step for a second before Maggie said, “Well, are you coming in?”
Grace swallowed down a heavy lump in her throat as she pulled open the door and ushered the kids in. She closed and locked the door behind them. Brock attached himself to her leg like he always did when he was feeling shy or nervous. Macy stayed behind her, not wanting to hold on to her and look like a baby, but not eager to see her grandmother either. Lucy, always Grace’s little love bug, ran straight to her grandmother who she hadn’t seen since she was a toddler and threw her little arms around her waist. Maggie looked down at her and back at Grace like she was unsure what to do at first. Finally, she patted the child on the back of the head and then took a step back, detaching herself.
“Your rooms are to the right there. There are two of ‘em. There’s a bathroom in the middle. G’night.” She turned around then and headed back to what was apparently her room, leaving them standing there without even a hello. Grace was the one to roll her eyes this time. Lucy shrugged her little shoulders, making her smile.
“Come on guys, I’m beat. Let’s get some rest,” she told them. As they made their way to where her mother had told them to go, Grace turned back to where the older woman had retreated and said, “Thank you, Mother.” There was no response, but Grace was sure she had heard.