Jackson: The McBrides of Texas

by Emily March

  She tore her gaze away from the door and offered him a tremulous smile. “I really appreciate all you did for me today, Jackson. It was a pleasure to meet you. Maybe someday I’ll get to finish my tour of Enchanted Canyon.”

  “Maybe someday,” he repeated. He gave her hand a quick, comforting squeeze. “I was glad to help. I hope all goes well, Caroline. I’ll be thinking of you and your husband.”

  “Thank you.”

  Then, without a backward glance, she was gone.

  Chapter Six

  Caroline’s nerves stretched like taffy on a pulling machine as she approached the cardiac ICU. Through the clear glass wall of the waiting room, she saw a crowd of familiar faces. Oh, joy. Elizabeth must have called every one of their mutual friends. Bet they’d all had a field day discussing Caroline’s absence. Talk about running a gauntlet.

  Well, she didn’t really care, she thought as she entered the waiting room. The only thing that mattered was Robert’s health.

  She spied her sister-in-law by the coffee bar at the center of a group of six. “Elizabeth?”

  “Finally!” exclaimed the woman dressed in her usual, stylish St. John, her voice frosty, her eyes blue ice. She gave her head a little disapproving toss as she lifted her nose into the air, which sent her chin-length silver hair swaying.

  Seven years older than Robert, Elizabeth Garner took her role of big sister seriously. Their mother had died young, when Robert was in elementary school, so she’d filled that role, too, for much of their lives. She’d never really approved of her brother’s relationship with Caroline. The age difference had always bothered her. However, because Robert loved them both and they both loved him deeply in return, the two women had made an effort to get along.

  The events of the past year had slowly eroded that cooperation, and Caroline’s decision to place Robert in a memory care facility had wiped it out completely.

  Ignoring the sharp comment, Caroline asked, “What’s the latest?”

  “They are doing a test at the moment, and they asked me to step out. Someone will come get me when it is okay to go back in.”

  Us. They’ll get us. “What sort of test?”

  “I don’t recall,” Elizabeth responded, waving a hand. “Something that ends with phy.”

  Caroline worked to swallow her annoyance at her sister-in-law and the frustration at the timing of her arrival. The need to see Robert—and to see him now—was a living, breathing thing inside her.

  Another voice spoke up. Caroline identified Elizabeth’s BFF, Lorraine Hayman. “Exactly where were you when this terrible thing happened, Caroline? Why were you unavailable to answer the phone during this emergency?”

  “I was out of town doing research for an assignment. The area has no cell phone service.”

  “I see,” she drawled with syrupy doubt.

  Caroline set her teeth. “It’s a place called Enchanted Canyon. It has no cell phone service.”

  “Mm-hmm. And who accompanied you to Enchanted Canyon?”

  “A very nice woman named Maisy Baldwin who is the president of the Chamber of Commerce in Redemption. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll get some coffee.” With anger simmering inside her, she turned toward the refreshment bar where she filled a Styrofoam cup with black coffee.

  “Carruthers family?”

  Caroline forgot all about her drink as she turned toward the nurse standing in the doorway.

  “You are welcome to come back now. Room seven.”

  Elizabeth bumped into her in her rush to be the first person through the ICU door. Caroline didn’t care. Elizabeth and her judgmental friends didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except her husband’s health. Her heart in her throat, she stepped into room seven, unable to stop the tears from flooding her eyes. Robert lay still and pale.

  Pale as death.

  Please God. I’m not ready.

  * * *

  Jackson caught a ride back to Enchanted Canyon with a friend who owed him a favor. He arrived to find camp set up, but his cousins were nowhere around. Hiking somewhere, he figured, since both the Jeep and Tucker’s motorcycle stood parked at the campsite. He decided to do some exploring himself, and he followed the road to Ruin.

  The ghost town was a collection of dilapidated buildings right off a movie set. A grin twisted his lips as he pictured horses at the hitching posts and black-hatted cowboys wearing low-slung gun belts pushing through swinging saloon doors. If the walls could talk. He thought of the famous photograph taken in Fort Worth of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Wonder if those two had ever made it down to Ruin?

  He poked around for a little while and in the process, scared off a couple of rabbits, disturbed a grazing axis deer, and came way too close to stepping on a rattlesnake. Throughout the exercise, his thoughts bounced around between memories of his marriage, the events of today, the drive with Caroline Carruthers, and the possibilities of the future, namely, what could he and his cousins do with Enchanted Canyon?

  A ghost of an idea began to shimmer in his mind.

  Upon finishing his tour of Ruin, Jackson turned his motorcycle around and thus took the road to Redemption. As he approached camp he saw that his cousins had returned while he was at Ruin. He parked his bike next to Tucker’s, switched off the engine, and the roar of the motor faded away. Tucker observed, “You’re back faster than I expected.”

  “Called in a favor from a friend. He picked me up at the hospital and brought me back.”

  Boone asked, “How’s Caroline’s husband?”

  “Not really sure. I didn’t hang around once we arrived at the hospital, but he didn’t die during the drive to Austin, thank God.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t have to deal with that.”

  “Me too. Believe me.” Jackson gestured toward the campsite. “Looks like you two have been busy.”

  Tucker nodded. “Yep. Had to unload the Jeep in order to get to the cooler for lunch, so we figured we might as well set up camp. After that, we did a little more exploring. Wait until you see what we found in the cathouse.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Jackson responded as Boone opened the Jeep’s door, removed a box from the passenger seat, and handed it to him. The box contained three items—a leather-bound journal, a gold pocket watch, and a harmonica. Jackson picked up the harmonica and studied it. It was a Hohner, an old one. He ran the pad of his thumb across the name etched into the metal.

  “Why don’t you try it out?” Boone suggested.

  “Not until I clean it. No telling what’s growing inside it.”

  “I don’t think spit germs would survive for a hundred years,” Tucker observed.

  “Maybe not, but I’d just as soon not get a mouth full of spider eggs.”

  He returned the harmonica to the box and picked up the watch. He depressed the catch, and the cover flipped open. For my love was engraved in script, and the numbers on the clock face were in Roman numerals. The second hand ticked off the seconds. Boone said, “We wound it. Keeps perfect time.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Jackson set down the box and picked up the journal. He opened the book and thumbed through the pages. “Whenever I see handwriting this perfect, I always wonder how much practice the writer had to do in order to produce it. Did y’all read any of this?”

  “The first part of it. I’m looking forward to diving into it later on. A woman who must be an ancestor of ours, Ellie McBride, wrote it. It says she came to this area in the eighteen fifties and was number sixteen of seventeen children.”

  “Whoa.” Jackson said. “Busy guy.”

  “Three wives.”

  “Idiot.”

  “That’s the way it worked back then,” Tucker observed. “Women had babies until they died.”

  “I’m not saying women didn’t have it bad. I’m saying the idea of having three wives chills my blood.”

  Tucker nodded.”Can’t disagree with you there.”

  Boone smirked and continued, “In the introduction to the
journal, Ellie wrote that she intended to record the stories that her father had relayed to her and her siblings about the Comanche raids, outlaw deeds, and cattle drives of his youth.”

  “Very cool. A journal like that probably should be in a museum.”

  “The watch and the harmonica, too,” Tucker said. “I’d like to find out who the watch belonged to, though. Maybe it’ll say something about it in the book.”

  Jackson returned the journal to the box and handed it back to Boone. “So what other exploring did you do while I was gone?”

  Boone answered. “Hiked. Found an animal trail that we followed for a couple miles. Some pretty views. We planned to come back here and try out the swimming hole.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Jackson said. Then, because cousins do what cousins do, he yanked his shirt up and off and bent to untie his boots while he said, “Last one in has to do the dishes.”

  The water was cool and clear, the swimming hole deep enough to dive in places and shallow in others so that they could stand and talk once they quit splashing and dunking like the old days. Tucker shared a little bit about his work, enough to make Jackson believe he was no longer stationed in the “sandbox”—aka the Middle East—but nothing that gave his cousins a clue as to where he was assigned. Boone spoke about life in Eternity Springs.

  “I like it. It’s slow paced and low stress. People are friendly and they’ve made me feel a part of the community.”

  “You sinking roots there?” Tucker asked him.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure. I sort of thought I was, but…”

  When Boone’s voice trailed off, Jackson prodded, “But what? You having second thoughts about running away from Fort Worth?”

  “I didn’t run away,” Boone snapped.

  Yeah, right. Jackson and Tucker both shot skeptical looks his way. “I did not run away,” Boone repeated. “I chose to strategically retreat.”

  Jackson met Tucker’s gaze and shared a smirk. Boone remained almost as closed-mouth about what had sent him fleeing Fort Worth as Tucker did about his work for the Army, but Jackson knew him well enough to know that he’d moved to Colorado in order to lick his wounds. “Well, we’re here for you, Boot. You decide to go kick some ass, you can count on us to stand beside you.”

  “Well, maybe a little behind,” Tucker clarified. “Let him get the broken nose next time.”

  Boone flipped him the bird and all was right in the McBride family world.

  They roasted German sausages over a campfire for dinner and broke out a bottle of bourbon to sip while Boone read aloud from the journal, relaying what was supposedly a Comanche legend about the Ghost Riders of Enchanted Canyon. They turned in to the music of howling coyotes, the lingering scent of cedar rising from the campfire coals, and a sky filled with stars. Jackson drifted off to sleep contented in a way he hadn’t been in years.

  He dreamt of angels riding horses and awoke in the morning with the idea that had simmered beneath his consciousness the previous day developed into a full-blown plan.

  “Hey, guys?” Jackson said as he put biscuits into an iron skillet to cook over the fire. “I know what we should do with Enchanted Canyon.”

  Part Two

  Chapter Seven

  THE FOLLOWING SPRING

  Her heart pounding, her mouth dry, Caroline made one last slow circle, studying the empty building and imagining the possibilities, before she licked her lips and told the real estate agent, “Let’s make the offer, Sam.”

  “Excellent.” Sam Willis, the sixty-something real estate agent dressed in khakis and a golf shirt, grinned. “I have it all written up and ready to submit.” He flipped back the cover on his tablet, opened an app, and in seconds, it was done. “Knowing the owner, unless he’s on the golf course I expect we’ll hear back within an hour.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Caroline gave him a nervous smile. “Tell me again that you think I have a good chance to get it.”

  “Darlin’, you’re gonna get the building. Only question is the final price. Bernard will want to dicker a bit—he’s a horse trader from way back—but I predict you won’t need to raise your offer more than three thousand dollars. Especially if the news I spread around the Bluebonnet Café this morning gets back to Bernard’s wife, Marsha. She’s an avid reader. She’s gonna love having a bookstore in town. Shoot, if I’d had my thinking cap on, I’d have tipped her off at church yesterday morning. If Marsha had been working on him for twenty-four hours, we probably could have lowered your initial offer five thousand.”

  Caroline grinned at the woebegone note in his voice, then decided to trust in his confidence. She pulled out her notebook and began a priority list. She’d made it only to number six when the agent checked his phone and let out a chortle. “Here’s your counter offer, Mrs. Carruthers. He’s asking for two thousand dollars more and a promise you’ll have a book club that meets on Monday night for old geezers like him who still read Westerns. Tuesday and Wednesday are already full.”

  Delight along with a measure of real panic washed through her. “Counter the counter. I can’t discriminate based on age.”

  The agent chuckled, typed a text, and a moment later said, “Bernard says no problem. Redemption has its share of young geezers, too. It’s a deal. He’s signing the paperwork. Congratulations.”

  “Wow. Okay.” Caroline’s knees went a little weak, so she crossed to the only seating available in the empty room and sank down onto one of the staircase steps. “I guess I’m really doing this.”

  “We’re all excited to have a bookstore in town. Now, I’ve been in real estate long enough to know that right about now, you’d like some time to yourself here.”

  “Is that allowed?”

  “In Redemption it is. Now, how about we meet for lunch over at the Bluebonnet in a little bit to celebrate? My treat. You can return the key then. Meet in, say”—he glanced at his watch—“forty-five minutes? We will beat the rush that way. The special today is fried chicken, and there’s always a crowd.”

  “Lunch sounds lovely. Thank you. Though I’ll probably skip the fried chicken and stick to salad.”

  “Now you sound like my missus. She’s into rabbit food, too.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I tell her she doesn’t know what she’s missing, but she worries about keeping her girlish figure.” He patted his oversized belly and said, “Luckily, I don’t worry about that.”

  He winked at her as he handed her a key, waved goodbye, and exited the building, shutting the door softly behind him.

  Caroline hugged her notebook to her chest and rose from her seat on the staircase. Again, she turned in a slow circle, picturing the shop like she’d imagined it since the first time she’d walked into the space. Shelving there and there and there and there. Revolving displays here and here. A new-releases and featured table at the front. The checkout counter there. The aroma of fresh roasted coffee perfuming the air. Classical music playing in the background accompanied by the kaching of a cash register ringing up sales and giggles from the Children’s section during story time. Locals and tourists milling about, exchanging recommendations. Energy. Good, positive energy vibrating throughout.

  Old-fashioned gold lettering spanning the picture window: The Next Chapter.

  Caroline’s Next Chapter. Her friends all thought she was crazy.

  She laughed aloud and tried to steady her nerves. From out of nowhere, tears stung her eyes, and she blinked furiously. What were these? Tears of joy? She’d like to think so, but she couldn’t be sure. It had been so long and there had been so many of the other kind. Sadness. Despair. Mourning.

  It had been eight months and three weeks since she’d buried her husband.

  The Next Chapter. She was still debating whether to add “Books” or “Bookstore” at the end. If she did that, would she need to add “and Coffee Shop,” too? Since she planned to sell more than simply books and coffee, she leaned toward stopping at Chapter. “I’ll need to decide soon,” she murmured as sh
e headed upstairs to check a window measurement. Logo design was one of her top priorities.

  The building dated back to the 1880s, and previous owners had modernized the facilities. Twenty years ago or so, someone had converted the office space above the shop into an apartment. It would be a perfect space for her for now with two bedrooms and an office. A cozy nine hundred square feet—so much better suited to her than the lovely, tastefully decorated, four-thousand-square-foot mausoleum where she’d tottered around for the past decade. The house had been Robert’s choice, located in the right zip code and with all the appropriate amenities to impress.

  It had sold within six hours of being listed. Closing was next week.

  Caroline had been tackling the downsizing process for some time now, the keepsakes chosen and stored, the rest of her things ready to be sold or donated to charity. Caroline planned to live in the apartment until she found a house she wanted to buy, and then she’d list it as a vacation rental. She’d furnish her new home from the ground up. That’s what starting over was all about, wasn’t it?

  After determining what size blinds she needed to order, Caroline stood in the window of what would be her bedroom and gazed out upon Main Street of Redemption, Texas. “It’s a nice little town, Robert. I like it here. I think I can make a home here.”

  She allowed herself a little cry then, mournful tears this time for sure. This wasn’t what she’d wanted. Wasn’t the life she’d dreamt of when she married. But this was the hand she’d been dealt. The last year, the last few years, had come close to breaking her, but she was still standing. She’d survived.

  And now she’d found her way to Redemption. After a dozen visits since Robert’s death, she’d returned to Redemption for good. She didn’t know what it was about this little town. Didn’t know why it called to her or calmed her troubled spirit, but it did just that. The coincidental meeting on her and Robert’s anniversary with that sweet Celeste from Colorado had been her own personal blessing. She liked it here. She intended to make a home for herself here. In Redemption, Texas, where her troubled spirit found a measure of peace.