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Of course—she eyed Claudia—sometimes enemies could turn into lovers as well.
“I better get back. I parked my car around back, and I left Travis sleeping. He’s not going to know where we went, because I forgot to write a note. You know how hard it is to juggle the baby and a baby bag and all of the paraphernalia that you have to take whenever you go out somewhere? Even some place as simple as the post office.”
“I have to take your word on that, I have eleven siblings, but I’m one of the younger ones, so I don’t have the war stories that the older kids have of taking care of us younger ones.”
“You have nieces and nephews, though.”
“A couple,” Claudia said, and she didn’t say anything more.
With losing their parents, and then selling the family farm, and moving to Sweet Water, and trying to get the ranch up and running and making enough money to support all twelve of them, no one in the family had had much time to get married.
Not because folks in Sweet Water hadn’t been trying to marry them off. For years, the Peacemakers had been a matchmaking group in Sweet Water, but most of the ladies had finally hung up their hats, or crafting supplies as the case was.
One, June, had moved away.
They waved goodbye to each other, and Ellen walked around the post office, humming softly to herself.
It was true, having a baby was a lot more work than what she had ever figured. But every day, she fell in love with Alice just a little bit more. As far as she knew, Travis hadn’t decided for sure what he was going to do about her. The main thing had been to get her settled in and make sure that she was being properly taken care of.
He might have mentioned in passing that he thought that maybe her mother would come back around, but she never had. At least so far.
He could hardly adopt her without her mother’s permission. And he couldn’t really do much of anything without her giving him at least guardianship rights.
More than that though, Ellen wasn’t sure where she and Travis were headed together. Not that it mattered, she’d go wherever he wanted, just...she wanted to talk about it and get things straightened away or at least planned out.
Calling Chewy, who jumped up from where she lay in the shade of the post office, falling into step beside her, she walked around the building and toward her car.
Chewy jumped in and lay down in the back seat while Ellen struggled to figure out the front carrier. Taking Alice out and getting her in her car seat without waking her up was quite an accomplishment and took a little bit of finagling.
As Ellen latched the final buckle of the car seat and straightened, reaching to close the car door, a woman she didn’t know jumped in the driver’s door.
“Hey! What are you doing?” She was too shocked to move for a moment before she realized that the lady was starting her car.
The tattoos on her neck looked familiar, as well as the dark hair, and the tattoo sleeves on both arms.
“Hey! I know you!”
The lady had the car started and looked back over her shoulder as she yanked it into drive. “Get out my way!”
Maybe it was Ellen’s imagination, but the lady paused for just a moment, as she seemed to recognize Ellen, before she slammed her foot down on the gas.
Ellen didn’t have time to run around the car. The car started moving, and Ellen did the only thing she could think of. She threw herself in the passenger window which was thankfully down. Her air conditioning didn’t work, and her car was such an old clunker that she never thought that anyone would even think about stealing it. Of course, it was Sweet Water, and everyone left their keys in the ignition, especially if they were just going to the post office.
Ellen had never thought anyone in their right mind would try to steal it.
Ellen struggled to get the lower half of her body in the car as the woman shouted at her, “Get out! Get out!”
“Stop,” Ellen said, trying to dodge the woman’s hand as she stiff-armed Ellen, trying to push her back out the window.
“You’re the mother of this baby!” Ellen said, wanting the woman to know she recognized her. Did she steal the car on purpose? Had she been following Ellen around, waiting for the opportunity to take her baby back?
“I didn’t mean to take your car!” the woman said, and then she started to sob as she careened around the hardware store, shot out the alley, and bounced into the street, swerving around Billy who stood looking at her, placidly chewing his cud like a carjacking was something that happened every day, and nothing could faze him.
“Pull over. You don’t need to take my car. If you need something, I’ll help you,” Ellen said, feeling like it was obvious, but some people just defied logic. After all, if the woman could take her baby to Travis, and Travis took care of it without saying anything, surely she could ask him for help if she needed a car.
Ellen finally managed to get her feet in the window, although she had to hold on tight as the woman jerked the wheel, taking them down the lane past the diner, then jerking it again to go around the block, coming back out on the main street, and flipping in the opposite direction, screeching the tires as she yanked the wheel, dodging the newly planted trees along the sidewalk and a recycling bin.
Ellen sat up in time to see Billy calmly watching them leave.
