Liz breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Uncle Haskell sounded busy and happy, so he wouldn’t want his land and house back in the spring, and that gave Liz a measure of hope that he really would sign it all over to her. If not, she might just look around the area for another twenty acres with a house that did not have wheels.

“Got to go now. I see Poppa headed out to the repair barn. If I don’t get out there soon, he’ll do too much.”

She barely had time to utter “love you” before Haskell cut the connection. She hurried to the kitchen window and looked out at the barn—her barn. She rushed back to her bedroom, kicked off her shoes, stomped her feet down into cowboy boots, and grabbed her denim jacket.

“Merry Christmas to me,” she sang as she headed out the back door toward the big metal building. Not only did she have a house without wheels, but she also had a barn, which meant that she had tons of storage room. She could park the carnie trailer that she’d lived in her entire life inside that big building and have room left over to store whatever she wanted to buy.

She slid the door back and the smell of hay, feed, and leather all hit her nose at the same time. She’d grown up accustomed to that odor, only it came from a pen where the riding ponies were kept. The carnival had had Shetland ponies when she was a little girl, but as they got too old for the carnival, Tressa had replaced them with Rocky Mountain horses, and Liz had fallen in love with them. The extra tuft of hair on their feet made them look like they were flying when they pranced.

“I could have some right here. I could breed Rocky Mountain and have baby colts. There’s plenty of room for a pair,” she told the dog as they wandered through the big building, discovering a riding lawn mower and a small tractor. And a mama cat with a litter of kittens hiding in the back corner, but they were all so wild that she couldn’t get near them. Located in the northeast corner of the barn, the tack room was about the size of her living room. Shelves lined the walls, and when she opened the door the leather smell overpowered the hay and feed smell. Boxes of every size and shape were shoved on the shelves and were labeled in Haskell’s spidery handwriting.

She pulled an old ladder-back chair over from the worktable. She hopped up on it and grabbed the first box she could reach. It wasn’t heavy, but when she moved it, the dust flew into her hair, her nose, and eyes. Once the box was on the table, she opened it with a knife that was lying on the table.

Inside the box she found old-fashioned Christmas lights, the kind with big, multicolored bulbs, and they had been wrapped carefully around a cardboard tube. She wouldn’t even have to waste hours and hours untangling them when she got ready to put her tree up.