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“Sure, about a year and a half ago, he showed up. I was in the photography store, framing some pictures, when he walked in and asked where you were.”
“Are you sure it was Travis?”
“Sure, he asked about you, then said he was planning on surprising you, but you were out of state at a dog show and were going to be gone for the entire week. So he told me not to tell you that he was there, although I think the statute of limitations has expired on that one, since it was more than a year and a half ago and I heard he’s back in town.”
Ellen blinked. She hadn’t heard that he had visited at all, but it made sense. If he was trying to surprise her and hadn’t been able to, then he probably never mentioned it.
“But I’ll tell you what, he’s filled out since last time I saw him. He was just a string bean before but now, wow. Those wide shoulders, and he’s got a man’s chest, if you know what I mean.”
“Okay,” Ellen said, a little unsure. She supposed Jan could have been telling her that Travis was fat, but she didn’t think so. She’d find out soon enough. On the one hand, she was glad she didn’t know he’d been back and she didn’t get to see him. It would have made missing him harder.
If she recalled, that was the big show that Chewy had come in second to her daughter—the pup that was born the night Travis was there to deliver them. Ellen had trained and then sold her, along with her littermates.
It had marked her training as successful, and after that, she had no trouble selling her dogs for a lot of money.
She still got pictures from the family who bought her, a couple in Montana who were using her on their cattle ranch out near Butte.
“Travis said he wasn’t going to make it tonight,” she murmured as they flattened out the tablecloth and taped it down.
“Oh? That’s too bad. I’d heard that country-fried steak was his favorite, and I made that for my bucket. What’s in yours?” Jan said with a wink.
Jan, and everyone else in the town, thought Ellen and Travis were just friends. That’s what she’d been saying for the last decade. And sometimes she even convinced herself it was true. But the way she felt now, at the idea of Jan fixing a bucket just for Travis, made her feel like maybe he wasn’t just a friend to her. After all, Jan was her friend, and she should be happy to see two of her friends get together.
It didn’t really make her happy. It made her...jealous.
Maybe that was just because she hadn’t seen him for a while and she wanted to spend some time catching up before she had to give him up to someone else. Yeah. That must be it.
It wasn’t long after that that they were joined by several other ladies, and the festival started. The auction was first, although they didn’t sell the dinner pails until last. There were some craft items and some tools people had donated to raise money for improvements to the sidewalk and the park in town.
Ellen stood in the back, a little nervous. She wished she had fought a little harder to not be in the auction, but she hadn’t considered that it might actually be a thing. She never once thought that they would truly auction her off.
Regardless, surely it couldn’t be that bad. These were all friends and neighbors, mostly people she knew, although there were some new people in town that she didn’t recognize or know well.
There was the family who had bought the Sweet View Ranch. She knew some of them, was friends with Claudia, one of the sisters, but they’d spent a lot of time fixing the ranch up and weren’t in town much.
From rumors around town, she knew Travis was involved in it somehow, but she wasn’t sure how. She could talk to him about it whenever she saw him again.
Which hopefully would be soon.
She was tempted to pull her phone out and text him, asking when he would be arriving in town, but she didn’t. Something must have held him up, but as long as he wasn’t in any danger, she realized that was just the nature of his business.
It was the thing that had kept them apart for the last five years. Although, knowing that he had been in town and wanted to surprise her had made her sad. Even though she was glad that a puppy she had bred had won that dog show, and her business had benefited from it, she would give that up in a heartbeat in order to see her friend.
“And, ladies and gentlemen, we have one last thing to auction off. Ellen?” announced Mr. Higginbotham, the auctioneer. She supposed that was her cue.
Wishing she’d been standing closer to the front so she didn’t have to walk the entire length of the building, she started up the aisle.
Maybe to fill in the time, or maybe he really wanted the audience to be well-informed, Mr. Higginbotham started talking about her.
“You guys all know Ellen. She grew up in town. Tadgh and Ashley are her parents, and they’re well respected in town. You guys all know that Ellen is a hard worker, and I’m sure we’ve all seen her around with her cow Daisy and her dog Chewy.”
She felt like she was still thirteen, rather than twenty-three. Maybe that was how the town saw her, with her dog and cow. Maybe if she wanted to catch a certain man’s eye, she should start being a little more feminine.
It was always interesting to see how people saw her, she supposed. But she didn’t know what she expected. They saw what she presented, and that was exactly right.
“She had promised to donate a lunch for the auction, and she came here empty-handed, so this is what we do with people who don’t do what they say they’re going to do.”
She felt like that was a little unfair. She’d gotten her lunch to the parking lot. If it wasn’t for Chalmer, she would have her lunch in the building too.
