When Tomorrow Comes, page 2
Baye released her cousin from their hug. “I promise I will.”
When she glanced back at the playful kittens, Libby grabbed her hand. “I’ll walk you back to the house so you can start on them now.”
“Okay.” The kittens would have to wait.
Chapter Two
Those laser eyes don’t intimidate me.” Aunt Margaret lowered her voice as the graveside service began a scant fifty yards below them. “Haven’t you ever wondered about your birth parents?”
“Why should I?” Teague had found her parents adequate and even loved them in her own way, so she didn’t want or need more.
“Because you’re abnormally curious about everything, damn it.” Margaret scowled up at her. “Why in God’s name aren’t you curious about your birth parents?”
“Because they are of no consequence. My adopted parents gave me food, shelter, security, adequate wealth, and enough room to be myself.”
“Don’t you worry about things like their medical history?”
“No. I have screened my own DNA, and it carries no markers for dementia, Alzheimer’s, cancer, or other inherited diseases.”
“DNA screening can’t detect some things.”
Realization began to dawn. “What do you know that I do not? What secret has been kept from me?”
“It’s not my place to tell you, dear.”
“Then who? You know Mom and Dad are gone, and I am an only child. Who does that leave?” Her voice was rising and her aggravation building. She took a deep breath and began rhythmically touching each fingertip to her thumbs, a diversion she’d learned to calm herself.
The funeral forgotten, Margaret hooked her arm in Teague’s. “Walk me to your car and take me home before you have one of your famous meltdowns in the middle of Melvin’s funeral. I’ll tell you when we get to my house.”
She balked. “Tell me now.”
Margaret narrowed her eyes in a scowl. “Don’t you sass me, young lady. Help me to your car.”
Teague sighed. She would have a better chance at robbing Fort Knox than prying information from Margaret before she was ready. “Okay.” She walked Margaret to her Jeep Cherokee, helped her inside, and then drove her home.
Once they arrived, Teague’s finger-thumb touching escalated to rhythmic tapping of her fingers against her thigh while she waited for her great-aunt to remove her hat and ask her housekeeper to bring refreshments to them on the patio.
Margaret pulled a cashmere shawl around her shoulders. “Will you drag that table and our chairs into the sunlight, please, Teague?”
“We can sit inside if you are chilled.” She seated Margaret, then took her own chair.
“No, no. I’m sure I’ll shed the shawl as soon as the sun warms up my old bones.” She surveyed her large, perfectly manicured gardens. “I do believe the roses are already growing buds. I can’t wait for them to bloom.”
Teague’s impatience turned to anxiety, and she moved her hands to tap, tap, pause, tap, tap, tap her fingers on the arms of her chair. “What secret, Aunt Margaret? What is this big family skeleton everybody knows but me?” She was already mentally churning through any inherited diseases she hadn’t been tested for. ALS? Nope. Tested negative for that, too.
“You’re so curious about everything. I thought you would’ve figured out who birthed you by the time you were six years old.”
“It was a closed adoption.”
“There are other ways to find a parent, a brother, or a sister. Can’t you track down lost family through DNA?”
“Yes, in some cases but—” Honestly, Teague hadn’t sought out her birth parents because she didn’t like people all that much, and she already had more family than she could deal with. Why look for more?
The conversation paused while Beverly, her aunt’s longtime housekeeper, arranged a tea service and small trays of cookies and raw vegetables between them.
“Thank you, Beverly,” Margaret said. “Would you like to join us?”
The housekeeper shook her head. “Nope. I know what you’re talking about, and you’re not going to mix me up in your family’s mess.” Beverly gave them a dismissive wave and returned to the house.
“Family mess?” Teague blinked at the figurative red flag waving before her eyes.
“There’s no mess,” Margaret said, calmly pouring tea for them. “Simply a lack of sharing.”
“Then share with me now,” she said, ignoring the teacup Margaret pushed toward her.
Margaret spooned sugar into her tea and stirred. And stirred.
“Aunt Margaret. Just spill it.”
“Your birth father was your father’s older half brother.”
“What? Dad did not have an older brother.”
“He did.” Margaret sipped her tea. “Raymond was the product of an affair your grandfather had early in his marriage. He was raised by his mother outside our family but died shortly after his fortieth birthday.”
Teague’s mind usually worked at hyperspeed, but it felt suddenly mired in these new, confusing facts. “He died? Was it an accident? Cancer?”
Margaret laid her hand on Teague’s forearm. “A brain aneurysm, dear.”
Teague jumped up from her seat and paced the patio, flinging her arms upward in frustration. “Was nobody going to tell me that my father was really my uncle? That the next family gathering will likely to be my funeral?”
“I know this is a shock, but don’t go off the deep end.” Margaret sipped her tea. “I love this blend. What do you think of it?” She waved a dismissive hand. “Doesn’t matter. I like it, so I’ll ask Beverly to order some more.”
Teague paused a second. “Tea? You want to talk about tea?” Teague gesticulated wildly as she spoke. “I could drop dead in the next month. I have to call my doctor. I need to get my life in order. I need to update my will and find good homes for my animals. What will happen to my estate?”
“Calm down. You’re going to work yourself into one of your episodes.”
Teague fought her rising anxiety. “I just found out I have a year or less to live.”
“Nonsense. These are modern times with new medical advances every day.”
“Easy for you to say. You are related by marriage, not blood.”
“Amanda Teague Maxwell. You’re a scientist. I can’t believe you’re buying into that stupid curse rumor. I think half of the family members who’ve died after turning forty caused their own aneurysm by stressing over that alleged curse, and you will too if you don’t pull yourself together.”
“I am going home.” She headed toward the house.
“Wait, honey. I don’t want you to leave here upset.” Margaret rose from her chair.
Teague stopped, paced back to her, and initiated the hug she normally avoided. “I am not upset with you. Thank you for finally telling me, but I need to think, and I do that best at home.”
* * *
Baye eyed the tall stack of adoption applications. Some were months old, so the applicants likely had found pets at another rescue or local shelter. Libby was right. The number of dogs, cats, puppies, and kittens was almost tenfold the number they had expected the rescue would attract. She sighed, opened a can of supercharged energy drink, and began sorting the applications into three piles—those more than two months old, ones that might still be viable, and those with enough red flags to go straight into the trash. Two hours later, she threw her hands up and hunched over to gently bang her head against the tabletop.
“This is going to drive me crazy. Adopting out one animal at a time will never work.”
The concept of running a rescue had seemed like a great one. Libby was reluctant, but they had used a huge piece of their trusts to convert the large barn into kennels and build a cathouse that contained a modest clinic for vet visits. The two buildings included reception and “playrooms,” where prospective adopters could get to know the animals they hoped to adopt. Managing the building project was a ton of work, but Libby and John, the gardener-slash-groundskeeper, handled most of it, while Baye painted a beautiful mural on the face of the barn that identified the new venture as “Heavy Petting Animal Rescue.” She modified the design to produce business cards, print T-shirts and souvenir mugs, and use as the logo for their website.
Everything was fantastic at first. Baye recruited a network of volunteer fosters to keep the farm’s animal census to a reasonable number, plus a handful of high school and college kids to help at the farm. She was very sociable and loved working with people and animals.
She wasn’t great, however, at keeping appointments, delivering feed and supplies to the volunteer fosters, or managing her young volunteers. Most of the fosters eventually left to help other, better organized rescue groups. And she wanted so desperately for the teen volunteers to like her, word got around that she let them do things their parents forbade—smoke cigarettes, vape, and play video games all night. Her house had become a hangout for kids who had no interest in working in the kennels, and those teens ran off those who did want to work with the animals rather than goof off. Libby ran off the loafers after the workers quit.
At least during those first years she was awesome at organizing adoption events. After a while, however, she earned a reputation for poor communication with the stores offering space for the events and skimpy cleanup afterward, so the store managers instead began to book other, more reliable rescue groups.
She drummed her fingers on the table. Screw ’em. Those stores had too many rules anyway. She brightened. She would plan a huge adoption event here at the farm. Yeah. That would work. She could hire a face-painting artist and maybe rent one of those big slides for the kids, and get a DJ to play music. People could fill out an adoption application online in advance and bring it with them to avoid a bottleneck of potential adopters completing paperwork at the event. Baye raised her arms over her head and mimicked the noise of a crowd cheering her idea. She needed to text Libby. This would be so great!
She stood. “Problem solved for now.” She grabbed her phone and began to tap out a long explanation of her idea to Libby, who didn’t answer because she was working at her new job. “No matter,” Baye said cheerfully, grinning and indulging in a few celebratory dance moves. “I better check on the kittens.”
* * *
A Sicilian donkey with one long ear and a second half ear galloped along the other side of the driveway fence to keep pace with Teague’s vehicle, his raucous brays alerting the rest of the estate to her return. A half dozen chickens, a llama, a goat and her two kids, three sheep, and a mountain of a dog emerged from the small barn, surrounding pastures, and expansive yard. She drove carefully around the house to park outside her four-car garage and got out to greet the convergence of animals. The donkey stopped braying long enough to use his thick lips to unlatch the pasture gate and swing the gate open for himself and others, and Teague braced herself for his affectionate head-butt that was always part of his enthusiastic greeting.
“Asset, hello. Yes. I am home. Thank you for announcing my arrival.” She grabbed four cloth bags from the back seat, having filled them with various fruits and vegetables at her favorite roadside stand on the way home from Margaret’s house, and held out an apple to the donkey. “Stuff that loud mouth of yours with this.”
She led the others back into the pasture while handing out vegetables and fruits to most, plus a foot-long rawhide bone for Snow, a Great Pyrenees mix, and his terrier sidekick, Badger, to share. The goats and llama gobbled up the raw turnips and collards, and she threw out a few handfuls of cracked corn for the chickens. Geese honked their greeting but apparently were satisfied grazing down by the pond inside the pasture.
“Where is Flower?” Teague surveyed the grounds, her gaze snagging on the sunroom door sliding open. A furry capuchin face appeared briefly, then disappeared back in the house. “Cappie, you better get out here. Have you and Flower been watching my television again?”
She started for the house, only to be met by a mass of furiously flapping blue and gold feathers. The macaw landed a few feet away and waddled toward her. “Nobody home. Check the barn. Nobody home.”
Teague held out cluster of grapes. “Want to think that over, Mac?”
The large parrot tilted his head, eyeing the grapes as if considering them. “Bad pig. Bad monkey. Lock him up. Lock him up.”
Teague handed over the grapes to her informant. “Aha. So Cappie let Flower in the house?”
“Bad monkey, pick the lock. Ticktock, pick the lock.” Mac’s tattling dissolved into indistinguishable satisfied noises as the parrot clutched his third grape with his foot and delicately peeled away the skin to nibble at the juicy pulp.
Cappie reappeared in the doorway, then ran across the lawn to snatch a few of Mac’s grapes. He watched Teague and stayed just out of her reach while he stuffed several grapes into his cheeks and scurried back to the sunroom.
“Thief!” The feathers on Mac’s neck stood out like a lion’s mane as he spread his wings in a threatening gesture. It was a game with them. Since both ate a similar diet, they were constantly stealing from each other. He dragged what was left of his grape cluster a few feet away, as if that could stop the lightning-quick monkey. “Time out. Time out.”
“Yeah, yeah. That tree-climbing devil is going to get a lot of time-out in his cage if I find Flower in the pantry again.” Her growled words didn’t seem to bother her menagerie. Her bark rarely had any bite behind it. Still, she stomped into the house and gasped. The kitchen counters and floor were covered with flour, uncooked pasta, rice, condiments, cereal, and a ton of other foodstuffs. It looked like twenty monkeys had held a party, and a two-hundred-pound pig was in the middle of the mess, its snout stuck in a huge jar of peanut butter.
“Flower!”
The pig dislodged the peanut-butter jar with a squeal and scrambled around behind the large kitchen island. Cappie, the monkey, bounded into the house and ricocheted off the sofa in the sitting area next to the kitchen to leap and swing from one of several play ropes dangling from the beams of the vaulted ceiling. He kept up a scolding chatter until Teague pointed to him. “You are toast, too, Monkey King. I do not think that Flower can open the latch on the pantry and pull all that food down from the shelves.”
Cappie, however, wasn’t intimidated or showing any remorse for the mess, while Flower peeked at Teague from behind the kitchen island. Her pig brain apparently determined her owner wasn’t too angry, and she approached, making happy little grunting noises and swishing her short tail rapidly back and forth.
Teague sighed. She should be angry at them, but, damn it, they were just too adorable, and she was suddenly aware her time with them might be short. A heavy blanket of sadness seemed to drape over her. What would become of her annoying, beloved pets?
Chapter Three
Baye showed another family into the cathouse. “Y’all play with them as much as you want. If you have any questions, just find me, my cousin Libby, or one of the volunteers wearing a yellow Heavy Petting T-shirt.”
She headed outside to check in with Libby, who was manning the adoption tables where people were filling out paperwork to adopt an animal they’d chosen. “How’s it going?”
Libby looked up from the application she was reviewing. “Are you okay adopting out cats to be barn cats? A lady here wants to adopt a mama cat and her entire litter of four.”
“You have to watch out for anyone who wants to adopt several, especially kittens. They could be someone looking for a meal for some huge snake.”
“I can assure you that Mary Anne is not looking for snake food.”
Baye turned to find a tall, dark-haired woman with arresting brown eyes and the longest lashes she’d ever seen that weren’t fake. She smiled and held out her hand. “Hi. I’m Baye Cobb, and this is my first cousin, Libby. We own Heavy Petting.”
The woman nodded but ignored Baye’s hand. “Teague Maxwell.” She pointed to the property adjacent to Heavy Petting. “I am your neighbor.”
“Ah. The mysterious neighbor with the impressive menagerie.”
“Have they been bothering you?”
“No. Not at all. They come down to the fence sometimes, like now, to mooch a few treats.” She pointed to the fence where Asset, Flower, three sheep, and three goats were holding court with a small group of children feeding them dog biscuits. “But they’re no problem. People seem to think they’re just part of the adoption festival.” Baye swept her arm in an arc to indicate the bounce tent and inflatable slide she’d rented for the event, and the ice-cream truck she’d hired to hand out free icy treats.
“Adoption festival?” Teague surveyed the good-sized crowd. “I thought this was a child’s birthday party or something. I did not mean to impose, but I stopped by to speak to Mary Anne Beck after I recognized her truck.”
“Birthday parties. What a brilliant idea. We could book birthday parties here, and the kids could play with the dogs and kittens as part of the party.” Baye bounced on her toes a few times as her ideas began to flow. “It could be extra income for the rescue. We could offer for the birthday kid to request donations to the rescue rather than gifts.”
She widened her eyes and clapped her hands to her cheeks as a sudden epiphany hit her. “We could make up cards with the animals’ photos on them and let the kids pick a dog or cat to benefit from their donation. Plus, I bet we’d adopt out more than a few dogs and cats when the parents come to pick up their kids from the party.”
“You know Ms. Beck?” As usual, Libby interceded to bring Baye’s focus back to the original conversation.
“Yes. She is the owner of River Run Riding Stables. I leased a horse there for occasional riding until a few years ago. She just added a second barn to her property so she could keep her schooling horses separate from the show horses she boards and trains.”
