My Own People Betrayed Me at My Engagement Barbecue, So I Took the Hill Back novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
Kurt toasts Tilly's pregnant cousin at her engagement barbecue, and Tilly walks out barefoot, drops the ring through the cattle guard and rents the vet's spare room until Easter.
Kurt raised a glass of my father's wine and thanked my cousin Britta for everything she had carried this summer.
He was holding my hand when he said it.
Britta stood up from the family table and laid her palm flat on her stomach.
Three hundred people on the Wiedenfeld dance floor looked at her belly.
Then they looked at me.
It was the last Saturday in September, my own engagement barbecue.
Smoke from the mesquite pits drifted in through the open doors of the hall my grandfather built.
I was wearing the blue dress my mother wore to her engagement.
Kurt let go of my hand.
"Tilly, I wanted you to hear it from me," he said. "Britta and I are having a baby."
Nobody clapped.
On the stage behind him, the accordion player lowered his accordion to the floor.
"How long?" I asked.
"Since the county fair," Britta told the floorboards. "In August."
"You helped me pick the invitations," I said.
"I know." She still would not look up.
My aunt Hilde crossed the floor in her good church dress and lifted the microphone off its stand.
She had never once asked anyone's leave to hold a microphone.
"Friends and neighbors," she said. "We lost my brother Rudolf in April, and now the Lord sends a child to fill his hall."
"Kurt will marry Britta by Christmas, right here," Hilde said.
"That baby will be born into a whole family."
"Tilly, honey, you will be the most wonderful aunt."
She smiled at me with her whole face.
"And on Holy Saturday, Amos will hand the torch to the family, same as every year."
"We will light the Easter Fire together. All of us. You'll stand with us, child."
I understood the whole thing at once, standing there in my mother's dress.
She had said it into a microphone, in front of every ranch family in the county, on purpose.
If I threw my pregnant cousin off this place, I would be the heiress who did that, for the rest of my life.
If I threw out my sixty-two-year-old aunt, I would be the girl who put a widow out of her brother's house.
They both knew it.
Every person at those tables loved Hilde, and for six months I had let them, because I would rather be liked than right.
I looked for my hands.
All twenty-two of them stood along the back wall in their good shirts, and not one of them met my eye.
Amos, who had been my father's foreman for forty years and taught me to ride, was not among them.
I had not seen him all day.
I took the microphone out of my aunt's hand.
She let me. She thought I was going to thank her.
"Thank you all for coming," I said.
"My father's beef is in the pits and my mother's pickles are on the tables, and every bit of it is paid for. Eat."
Somebody near the pits laughed and stopped.
"Kurt, I'll take care of your grandmother's ring," I said. "She deserved a better grandson."
Kurt's mouth opened.
"Britta, the baby is welcome on this ranch. You are not welcome at my table."
Britta started to cry. I let her.
"Aunt Hilde, you're welcome on the hill on Holy Saturday. So am I."
I set the microphone back on its stand.
Then I took off my heels.
I walked across the dance floor with three hundred people moving out of my way, down the steps, and into the oak drive.
I had hoped one of my hands would come after me.
None of them did.
The drive is a half mile of crushed limestone under live oaks.
I walked every foot of it barefoot, with my shoes in one hand.
The gravel cut the arch of my left foot open before I reached the creek bridge.
At the gate, a white truck with a horse trailer was parked on the county road side of the cattle guard.
Cade Tarver leaned on the tailgate with his hat pulled low.
He was the foreman's son and the county vet, six foot five.
He had been looking across my barn lot at me since July without saying a word.
He had come that morning to see a lame mare in the east pasture.
He pushed his hat back when he saw me.
"Miss Wiedenfeld," he said.
"Don't," I said. "Not today."
The cattle guard is a pit of steel rails with gaps wide enough to break a leg.
I stopped at the edge in my bare feet.
Cade walked to me and put both hands around my waist.
They closed all the way around it, his fingertips almost meeting at my spine.
He lifted me clear off the ground and over the rails.
He set me on the tailgate.
His hands stayed on my waist a moment longer than they needed to.
I felt the heat of them through my mother's dress.
"You walked out in front of everybody," he said.
"I did," I said.
"I'd have come up and gotten you."
"I know. That's why I walked."
I looked down at my left hand.
Kurt's grandmother's diamond sat on my finger, small and old.
I worked it over my knuckle.
I held it out over the cattle guard and opened my fingers.
It fell between the rails, and I heard it hit the concrete at the bottom of the pit and ring.
Cade did not say a word.
He looked at the pit, then at my cut foot, then at my face.
"Drive," I said. "I'm renting your spare room until Easter."
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