Rustic Hearts (Poplar Falls Book 1)

by Amber Kelly

  I stand and start toward the door.

  “Miss Lancaster, I need your signature,” Mr. Phillips calls after me.

  “No, you don’t. I don’t want it. I don’t want any part of her shares. I don’t want the shares I have. I just want to leave.”

  I open the door, and I run from the building. I pull my purse up on my shoulder, and I sprint across the road. I have no idea where I am or where I’m headed. I just know I have to go.

  I get to the next corner before I hear footfalls behind me. I try to keep running, but I can’t. I’m lost and out of breath. I turn and throw my hands up in front of me just as Braxton makes it to my side.

  “Don’t,” I yell as he reaches for me.

  “It’s okay, Sophie,” he says carefully.

  “No, it’s not okay. I don’t want to hear it. Whatever it is they think I need to know about my mother, I don’t want to know.”

  He steps closer and takes my bag from my hand. “Why?”

  “Because I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Being angry with her too. She’s all I have,” I admit before I crumple.

  He wraps me in his arms. “That’s not true. Not anymore.”

  I bury my face in his shirt, and I sob.

  He holds me while I let it all out. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  When we walk into the house, Madeline is in the living room. She stands as I enter and starts to speak.

  “Don’t,” I say as I raise my hand to halt her words. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. My mother is not the villain here. You are,” I spit my vile at her.

  She lowers her head and says nothing as I move to pass her.

  “Sophia Doreen, you apologize to her,” I hear Daddy’s command as he enters from the kitchen.

  “No. Why should I? You replaced us. You threw Momma and me away, and you replaced us with her.”

  “You be angry with me, darlin’. I deserve it. I will take it. But this is her house, and you will show her respect.”

  I turn quickly and mutter the words, “I’m sorry.”

  The truth is, I have grown to like Madeline these past few weeks. It’s confusing to both love and hate someone at once.

  I turn, and with my back to her, I continue addressing Daddy, “I am sorry. I’m going to get my things. I should have never come back here. It was a mistake. I don’t know what I expected. An apology, maybe an explanation. Something. Perhaps I just wanted to see what was so good about them that you would want them instead of me. And I get it now. They’re great. Your family is great.”

  I run up the stairs to my room and start packing. Braxton follows, stands in the door, and watches as I toss everything into my suitcase.

  My phone keeps ringing, and I’m sure it’s Mom or Charlotte wanting an update, but I just don’t have it in me to talk to them.

  “You want to sleep at my place tonight?” he asks.

  “I’m going to go to the airport and try to book an earlier flight to New York,” I say in answer.

  “Running away?”

  I turn on him and hurl my anger in his direction. “What’s it matter to you if I am? You and your sister and your aunt can have this place. You can have him. I’m done.”

  He walks in and picks my bag up off the bed. “Okay. Have it your way. Take your ass back to New York and hide. I’ll drive you to the airport myself, but first, you’re going to sit your ass down and hear what Jefferson has to say.”

  Braxton

  We walk downstairs, and I leave Sophie in the living room and go in search of Jefferson after she reluctantly agrees to sit down with him before leaving. I have no idea what secrets he’s keeping, but they need to clear the air before she walks out that door.

  I hear yelling from the backyard, so I follow the voices.

  “You need to tell her the truth, Jefferson. It’s time,” Doreen demands.

  “I don’t see the point. It’s only going to hurt her. Let her be mad at me.”

  “For goodness’ sake, stop playing the martyr. That girl has been hurting her entire life because of the lies. She deserves to know. Maybe if she does, she can finally move past it.”

  He throws his mug against the side of the house, and it shatters into a million shards.

  “You mad?” she yells.

  “You’re damn right, I’m mad.”

  “Well, so am I. You didn’t just cut her out of your life. You cut her out of all our lives, and we’re not having it any longer. She is our flesh and blood, and you’re going to darn well start treating her that way, or so help me, you are going to be fending for yourself all alone out here on this ranch.”

  “What good would it do now? You saw her face in that office. She doesn’t want to know.”

  Jefferson, Aunt Madeline, Doreen, and Ria are in a standstill on the back deck.

  “She needs to know the truth, Jeff,” Doreen iterates.

  “I can’t change what happened back then, and I don’t want to cause her any more pain.”

  “She’s spent her whole life in pain, and you have the power to do something about it.”

  “She’s leaving,” I announce, and they all turn to face me.

  “She’s been up there, packing. I told her I would take her to the airport, but she had to face you first. It’s now or never, old man. I don’t think she’ll ever come back here if she leaves without answers.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” he says.

  “Best for who? You?”

  “Son, you don’t know …”

  “You’re right; I don’t know. But the man she thinks you are is not the man I know you to be. Doreen is right; she is hurting. She’s shut herself off so much that she thinks that sitting home alone on the holidays is perfectly normal. She’s content in isolation because no one can hurt her there.” I point an accusing finger at him. “That’s your fault.”

  His face falls, and he stands there, facing us all.

  “It will hurt; you’re right. But she’s been so confused all these years. She thinks you abandoned her, Jefferson. That you didn’t love her. It’s time to tell her. She deserves the chance to start forgiving, and maybe she’ll finally be able to heal,” Aunt Ria gently pleads.

  “I know you thought the only person suffering was you, being painted the bad guy, but can’t you see how we all have suffered? Sophie most of all,” Doreen adds.

  “It has to be you, sweetheart,” Aunt Madeline encourages. “She needs to hear it from you.”

  He lifts his eyes to meet mine, and he focuses behind me. I see the moment he surrenders as his eyes fall on Sophie.

  “I’ll be on the front porch,” she murmurs.

  He nods, and I follow her.

  Sophie

  I tightly hold Braxton’s hand and let him lead me to the porch, Daddy follows a few minutes later and sits in a rocking chair.

  Braxton turns me to face him and lets go. He cups my face with his hands. “Hear him out. It can’t be worse than what you already imagine in that gorgeous head of yours.”

  I nod, and he kisses my forehead. I take a seat on the porch swing, and he grasps Daddy’s shoulder for a moment before he walks back inside.

  We sit in silence with nothing but the crickets and tree frogs groaning around us.

  Finally, he leans his elbows on his knees and starts to speak, “That year was a hard one for us. There was a severe drought throughout the county, and as a result, wildfires ravaged the mountainside. One took out over half our grazing pastures and most of our cattle. Pop and I saved what we could, but it spread too fast, and we had to fight it with all we had just to save the house and the barn. Some of the ranches west of us lost everything, including some lives, so at the end of the day, we counted ourselves lucky. Lucky but in dire straits. We had no steers to take to auction that year. We lost our best heifers. We knew it was going to take years to recover, if we recovered at all.

  “So, when a Hollywood scout showed up at the door one afternoon, lookin
g for a location to film for a big motion picture that was in production, we had no choice but to accept. They paid us a decent sum of money for the use of one of the grain silos and a few acres of land off the backside of our property line. They were going to be here for eight weeks. Eight weeks, and he promised we wouldn’t even know they were here.”

  I vaguely remember the fires but not the severity he’s describing.

  “I hated the thought of them on our land. I hated them trampling the fields, cutting back trees, and littering our space with trailers and campers and equipment. It was a nuisance, but Vivian, she loved it all. She was always enamored with Hollywood. She liked to sing and dance, and she was fairly good at it—as far as her little bit of experience at the local town theater. She was always on the piano, practicing for some production they were putting on.”

  He gets a far-off look in his eyes.

  “She had the sweetest voice. I loved to come home and hear her singing in the kitchen.”

  He looks back at me. “She was vulnerable. I should have paid better attention, but Pop and I were so preoccupied, working sunup to sundown, trying to repair the damages as much as we could ourselves. Once you were off to school, she would spend her entire day down there, watching the goings-on with the filming. Then, it got to where she wasn’t picking you up at school on time or doing anything at the house. One day, I happened to be coming to the barn for some tools—I can’t remember what exactly—and Mrs. Martin was pulling up with you in her car. You had been sitting at the school for over two hours, waiting for your mother to pick you up, and finally, she brought you home when they couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone at the house.”

  I recall that day. I was so embarrassed that my teacher had to bring me home.

  “You were upset. You had sat there for hours. I got you inside, and your mother was nowhere to be found, but I knew where to look for her. I got you settled, and I headed for the filming location. When I got there, it looked like they had finished up for the day. A few people were milling around, and I asked for the director. They pointed me to a trailer that I assumed was his office. I stormed in to ask if he had seen your mother.”

  He stops for a moment as pain crosses his face. He focuses his eyes on the porch floor.

  “He knew where she was all right, and it wasn’t an office. It was his personal trailer. They were in his bed together. In the act. I lost it and flew into a rage. I pulled him off of her, and I beat the man. Beat him bad. She kept screaming and trying to get me off of him, but all I could see was him defiling my wife. My love.”

  He takes a deep breath.

  “I dragged her from the site. Told them to pack up their gear and get the hell off my land. Your mother wasn’t even remorseful. She was angry. She told me that they were in love and that he was going to take her to New York and make her a star. He was full of shit. He saw a pretty, naive girl, and he took advantage.

  “The film crew packed up the next day and headed out. I sat and watched until the last truck pulled out. Then, I went to the fishing cabin for a couple of nights. I needed to clear my head, and I didn’t want to lash out in anger, not in front of you. I needed a little time to calm down. I could forgive her. I loved her that much. She broke my heart, and I was furious. But I could forgive her, and that was what I came to tell her when I found the note you’d left for me. She had packed the two of you up in the middle of the night and taken off.”

  He stops his trip down memory lane there and waits. I let his story rattle around in my brain.

  Fragments come to my memory. The film crew leaving abruptly. Mom’s frantic state that night. Daddy’s odd fishing trip in the middle of the week. All of it.

  “Sophie, sweetheart, say something.”

  “She lied to me,” I whisper.

  Sophie

  I stand from my seat on the swing and walk over to him.

  “Daddy, why didn’t you come for me?” I ask as I sit in the rocking chair next to him.

  He stares off into the night sky for a few moments, carefully choosing his words. “I tried. Once she got you to the city, it was hard to track you down. That director fella—Patrick Stone was his name—he had moved you two into an apartment. He, uh, was worried about the scandal of it all. See, he had a wife and two kids back in California. He tucked you and your mother safely away in New York and paid me a visit a few days later. He threatened to press charges for the assault, and he threatened to sue Pop and Rustic Peak for breach of contract because I’d forced them to leave before the eight weeks was up. We had already used some of the funds they had paid for sod and to do one of the major fence repairs, and we needed the rest to pay the lean we had against the ranch and purchase new heifers and just survive for the rest of the year. I couldn’t pay him back, and I didn’t even have the money to fly to New York to get you and fly us both back. My back was against the wall. He knew it.

  “My plan was to come and get you after the next season. By then, I was sure he was going to shake Vivian loose. He was only keeping her up to try to hush everything until after his movie released.”

  “You never came.”

  “I did. Once. Your mother met me in the city, and she came without you. The director had cut her off, just as I’d predicted, but she had moved on and was seeing some wealthy businessman. She was so happy and full of light that I hadn’t seen in years. She begged me not to take you from her.”

  “And you just walked away?”

  “I did. I knew that man could give you two a life I couldn’t. I was a broken man back then. I wanted to get myself together, and I did. I met Madeline and fell in love again. She’s a good woman. By the time I planned to come visit you and try to mend fences, the accident happened, and we took the kids in. Things were hectic, and then time passed. Too much time. So much time that I thought it was better for you if I just stayed out of your life because if I came back around, I was going to have to tell you some hard truths, and I thought it was better you hate me than your mother,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “Vivian is codependent. I knew she had married a couple of times, and I didn’t know if the current one would last. She needed you. She needed you to believe in her.”

  “But I needed you.”

  Pain passes his eyes as he explains, “I failed you. I was still trying to take care of and protect Viv. I guess I have been all these years. Even now.” He shakes his head in disbelief.

  “Your mother was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I still remember the first day I met her. She came to the door, selling fresh eggs from her parents’ chickens. She was wearing this simple yellow cotton dress, and her hair was in a braid. She took my breath away. I think I fell in love right then and there. Pop wouldn’t buy her eggs because we had chickens of our own, so I kept sneaking out and meeting her at the gate to buy a couple with my own money each morning just so I could see her. Gram made me eat eggs for breakfast, lunch, and supper, but I didn’t care. The days were better when they started with her smile. You have the same one.”

  He looks over to me with a soft expression.

  “I’d have done anything back then to make her smile, and when the time came, I even let her go to see it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She didn’t belong here. She had to escape this life. Our life. She was suffocating here. Did I like the way she did it? No, ma’am. Hurt like a son of a bitch. Coming home and finding my girls gone. I knew that man was no good and was just going to use her up and spit her out. But she had stars in her eyes and wouldn’t listen to reason, and I had to stop trying to hold on to her. She was like a caged bird. Every day, she grew a little bit sadder, and it broke my heart to see her light fading. I loved her so much, and I wanted to keep her forever, but I couldn’t.”

  I look around the porch as a light wind kicks up, and the tinkle of the wind chime dances in the air. “I can see that. Mom is too much personality for this place.”

  He nods in agreement. “I think y
ou and her have that in common.”

  “I don’t know. I was happy here with Pop and Gram and Emmett and you. I hated leaving. I missed Dallas and my horse. I was so homesick. Don’t get me wrong; I love the city now. I love my life there, but this feels like home too.”

  “You are the best parts of both your mother and me. You have her curiosity and thirst for adventure and my stubborn attitude and appreciation for your roots.” He looks over at me with tears in his eyes. “I think that makes you pretty special, sweetheart.”

  He takes a deep breath.

  “She loved you too, you know. Anytime I brought you up, she would fall apart. Like even thinking about you was too painful. I thought you’d broken her heart, and that was why. After a while, I stopped mentioning you.”

  “She did love me but not enough to stay. Love is defined by choice. If there were only one option, then you are just that—the only option. Choosing to love another person in spite of all the other options available … that’s the part that makes it special. That’s the part that makes it all worth it. I chose her, but she didn’t choose me. That’s our love story in a nutshell.”

  Sophie

  Daddy and I sit and rock for a long time without saying anything.

  “I forgive you, Daddy,” I finally say into the darkness.

  He reaches over, takes my hand, and squeezes it tightly, and I see a tear roll down his cheek. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him cry before.

  “You’re going to have to forgive her too, darlin’.” He motions toward the headlights that are coming down the driveway.

  A black SUV pulls in front of the porch. The back door opens, and my mother steps out.

  “How?” I ask.

  “I called her this morning when you bolted from the attorney’s office. She got on the first flight she could.”

  Mom speaks to the driver, and he pulls an overnight bag from the hatch and sets it on the step. Then, he returns to the truck and pulls away.