It was easy, to put love there.
When Barbara rode back to the Genda ranch over an hour later, Edna insisted she stay for dinner. She accepted eagerly even before learning the menu would be fried chicken and roasted corn on the cob, followed by homemade apple pie.
By the time dinner was over and she was saying goodnight, Barbara felt she had already been adopted. Before she was allowed to leave, she had to promise she would come back soon and often. Barbara knew she would, not only for the Genda's motherly and fatherly companionship, but so she could ride Becky again.
Barbara had promised Gail she would call her, soon as she had a chance after arriving in Mohave. She went downstairs to Ma Phelps's lace-curtained parlor to ask if she could make the long-distance call on her telephone that night. She found the woman sitting on the edge of her cushioned wing-back chair, an ear almost pressed against the speaker of her pride and joy, a handsome Philco console radio standing next to her chair.
A copy of the new magazine, Life, had fallen from her lap and lay open at her feet.
The parlor smelled of too much lilac water, and on the backs and arms of couches and chairs rested more anamacassers and lace doilies than Barbara had ever seen before. It was a little old lady's room and it felt homey.
"Oh, it's so exciting!" Ma enthused. "It's my favorite new radio program, Gang Busters. Want to sit and listen with me?
This week they're re-enacting Ma Barker and her boys getting killed. They're shooting it out with the FBI, like they did for real last year."
"Thank, you no. I'll come back later," Barbara said and went back upstairs.
When she returned to the parlor an hour later, her landlady was dozing off in her chair, listening to some sleepy-time music on her Philco. It was quiet enough, but Ma turned it lower, not so Barbara could make her phone call, but so she could overhear it.
"Well, I'm here, Gail!" Barbara said after the friends exchanged greetings. "I'm not exactly sure where here is, but I'm here."
She told Gail about the airport and said she was close to going in with the owner on it as a partner. Gail wished her luck and said all was well with her and Paul. Barbara hadn't expected much change because she had only been gone about two weeks. The big change in her friends' lives, the arrival of their baby, was several months away. Barbara was excited about that herself, both eager and a little anxious to become a godmother.