“You miss it, don’t you?” Raylen said. “Your voice has a haunting sound to it when you talk about your poppa and that place out in west Texas.”

“Of course I miss it. Would you miss ranchin’ if suddenly you lived in the middle of Dallas?” she asked.

His expression changed to dead serious. “I couldn’t survive without ranchin’ and horses and tractors. Missin’ it wouldn’t even cover the feelings. I’d probably wither up and die in the big city. Is that what you’re going to do here, Liz? Wither up and die?” he asked.

Liz turned around and met his eyes. “No, I am not. I’ve wanted this forever and I’m going to grow roots right here. But I’ll always miss a portion of carnie life. It’s what my family is, not just what they do. Uncle Haskell was the only one who ever quit the business and even then, when he came home for the holidays at Christmas, he helped Poppa paint.”

***

Raylen heard an elusive thing in her voice that he couldn’t put into words. Until that lonesome sound left when she talked about her family, he didn’t figure there was enough good rich Red River dirt to grow roots on Liz’s heart. Like she said, the carnival and constant movement was what her family was, not just what they did. And Hanson blood flowed in her veins. It was what she was and that involved wings that flew from one place to the other.

He removed the tarp from the first wooden cutout and revealed a dark-haired woman in a bright orange harem-looking outfit sitting in the fork of a Saguaro cactus. She was barefoot and had a Santa stocking on her head. The cactus had Christmas garland wrapped around it and holes drilled in it for lights.

“Guess this year’s decoration is in celebration of you taking over the house. I hadn’t seen it before but that is you, Liz. You look like a dark-haired I Dream of Jeannie. Evidently, I was wrong about the dancing costumes. Is that the one you are going to wear to the party?” Raylen asked.

His heart did a nose-dive into his boots. Every cowboy in the whole county would be panting after her. He wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of getting a date with her—and he was the one who had taunted her into wearing that skimpy thing.

“Yes, it is, Raylen. It’s my orange belly dancing outfit, and I think I will wear it to the Halloween party. Orange goes with Halloween, doesn’t it?” she asked as she folded her arms across her chest and studied the piece of art.

“There’s holes in the cactus for Christmas lights.” Raylen couldn’t take his eyes off the cutout.

“Well, that does make it a little more Christmas-like. Let’s look at the rest of them.”

“You want to look at them from oldest to newest or in reverse?” Raylen asked.

“You mean they’re organized?”

Raylen pointed to the bits of paper thumbtacked on the wall above the tarps around the room. Each one had five years penciled on it, beginning with 1975–1979.