Mind Games

But she couldn’t deny she had nights where she dragged herself out of sleep because he walked into her dreams.

She turned into the clearing and the house where her grandmother had once brought soap and balm for a baby with ringworm. She remembered the little boy playing in the dirt—about Bray’s age then.

About twenty now, she calculated, and a corporal in the Marine Corps. His little sister, in high school, worked summers in the town bakery. And the baby—before twin boys had come along—an A student, a track star, hoped for a scholarship to make him the first in his family to go to college.

The mother, Katie, stood outside, humming to herself as she hung clothes on a line. She had a battered straw hat on her head, and an apron around her waist with pockets to hold the clothespins.

The little house had a fresh coat of paint, and Thea knew there’d be some money in the jar since her husband had joined Knobby’s crew a few years past.

The yard boasted a tidy vegetable patch boxed in with marigolds.

Katie lifted a pillowcase from her laundry basket and spotted Thea and Bunk.

“Hey there, Thea, hey there, Bunk. Y’all chose a hot one for a hike.”

“We did, but it’s been a pretty one. Still some mountain laurel blooming.”

“Bunk, you go have a drink from Rufus’s bowl. The boys took the dog with them. They’re off fishing, and I hope they bring supper home with them. Let me get you something cold.”

“No, I’m fine.” Thea held up her water bottle. “The house looks so nice, Katie.”

“Billy and the boys painted it last month. Every day, I swear, I’m grateful he’s out of the mines and on Knobby’s crew. In my heart, I know it saved his life.”

And maybe yours, Thea thought. Katie couldn’t have hit forty yet, and though the years showed, Thea saw they sat lighter on her than they had a decade before.

“I’m nearly done here if you can sit a spell.”

“I would, but Rem’ll be waiting for me. I should’ve started back already, but I got hypnotized.”

Katie laughed. “The hills do that. No place on earth like them.”

“Not for me. It’s good to see you, Katie.”

“I’m glad you walked this way. You give your brother my best, and the same and more to Miss Lucy.”

“I will.” And because they’d known each other for those fifteen years, Thea shot her a smile. “Fish coming for supper.” And held up six fingers.

On a hoot, Katie clapped her hands together. “I better get this wash hung, shuck some butter beans, and go make us some cornbread.”

Pleased with the walk, the quick visit—and thinking cornbread sounded like a fine idea—she started back.

She might’ve picked a hot one, but spotting a stubbornly blooming wild rhododendron, the swish of a tail of a red fox driving into the brush, listening to the forest birds’ call and response made it more than worthwhile.

Then she heard something else besides birds and chittering squirrels.

“I ride!”

Her hike took on a little more glow as she walked to a fork in the trail. Heading east, looking sweaty, Ty carried Bray on his back.

“I see a couple of explorers.”

“Hi, hi, hi!” One hand fisted in Ty’s hair like a rein, Bray waved the other. “We’re taking a hike!”

“One of us is.”

“We saw a deer and he had…”

“Antlers,” Ty supplied.