“C’mon in. It’s open.”
Lola walked into the kitchen surrounded by a buzz of energy and a bright smile. Definitely a morning person. “I am so ready for yoga classes to begin again. I’m thinking about holding them in the cookhouse until we can go back outside. Want to join us?"
“Thanks, Lola. I think I want to stay on track with my research. Don’t want to lose the momentum. How does LoveJoy Horses sound for the name of a riding school?”
“I like it! And I completely forgot to tell Buck about your idea. I’m gonna call him right now.”
“No. Lola, wait. Don’t bother him. I’m sure he has plenty to do today.”
But Lola had already reached her husband. Ignoring Carli’s pleas, she said, “Hey, sweetie. Could you take a break and come to Carli’s? We could use your help.” Lola pressed the red End Call button on her phone. “He’ll be here in a second.”
Carli rolled her eyes but did appreciate Lola’s support. She hated to disturb the ranch foreman with her silly ideas. He must have more important issues to deal with.
Buck knocked on the door and opened it at the same time. As usual, he took a second to stomp any dirt from his boots.
“What’s up, ladies?” He found them in the back den where Carli had set up her office.
Lola gave him a peck on the cheek. “Hon, Carli has a new project for the ranch. I think you’ll like it.”
“Oh,” was all he said as he took his cowboy hat off, rubbed his fingers through his graying hair, and set the hat upside down on an end table.
Carli read the worry in his lined face and was embarrassed that Lola had disturbed him. “I’m not bothering you, am I? If this is a bad time, we can talk later.”
Lola handed him a mug of coffee. He smiled at her, set the cup down, and paced a little to look out the window. He wasn’t a man to sit still for very long, just like Lank, Carli noticed.
“And let me say it isn’t anything you’ll have to add to your To Do list. Nathan is lending me a hand with this.” Carli stared at him and swallowed.
“Spring is a busy time around the ranch with calving season, but I’ll always make time for you, Miss Carli.” He laughed. “So, let’s hear it.” Buck eased into a leather chair and stretched his long legs on the ottoman. He lifted his mug again.
“I’ll leave you two at it. I need to make some phone calls to my yogis, move tables, and get the cookhouse set up.” Lola gave Carli a pat on the shoulder. “Tell him about the girl in the coffee shop.”
“Lexi Brown is her name. Do you know the family?” Carli gave a quick wave to Lola and turned her attention to Buck.
He shook his head and Carli continued. “I want to start offering riding lessons at the ranch.” She told him about the incident in the coffee shop and about the first ride with Lexi. Buck stood and looked over her shoulder at the computer screen as she showed him the public page for LoveJoy. He offered ideas on horse-related activities for the kids should the weather be too cold or rainy for riding.
“What kinds of kids are we looking for?” Buck asked.
“All kinds. Kids who want to learn how to ride, and at-risk kids too, which covers teen alcoholism, domestic abuse, violence, and crime. Maybe their parents are incarcerated. Kids who just need an escape from their reality. And kids with mental health issues like autism. If we can offer several hours of something they love, it would be a step in the right direction.” Saying it out loud made Carli realize just how much more she needed to know. Working with disciplined show horses and young riders from affluent families in Georgia, to rural Texas kids with deep emotional issues would be a big transition.
“Your grandparents would be so proud that you’re here,” Buck said.
“I’ve heard that from several people, but I didn’t know them, so I don’t feel any kind of connection, but I am learning to love this ranch. I hear what you’re saying, but I haven’t grasped the family thing. Maybe in time. I hope to leave my own mark on the Wild Cow. Tell me about my grandparents. When were you hired? Did you know my mother?”
He sat down, a look of concentration and a frown deepened on his face. He shrugged out of his jacket and tugged to loosen the black silk wild rag around his neck.
“If you’d rather not talk about it, Buck, I understand. The past can be painful.” Carli couldn’t help but hold her breath.
He hesitated, took another sip of coffee, and then looked at her. “I don’t know where to begin.”
Carli froze, the half-smile set on a face of stone but inside her stomach jumped into her throat. She had never asked him direct questions about the past before, particularly involving her mother, Michelle.
Chapter Ten
“It was such a time of turmoil at the Wild Cow after your mother ran away.” Carli’s ranch foreman Buck looked at her intently for several seconds before saying anything more. He settled back in the overstuffed chair and swung his lanky legs onto the ottoman, balancing his mug on the chair arm. Carli turned her desk chair around to face him.
Buck’s voice was soft, very controlled. He looked at ease sitting in her grandparents’ study, now her office, but he hesitated before saying anything more as if weighing what he should or should not say. “I like to remember some of those times. It wasn’t all bad. Your grandparents, Ward and Jean, were my best friends as well as my employers. Lola and I came here as newlyweds, and I wasn’t exactly a Christian back then, still sowing my wild oats as they say. My dad was a tough guy, not the most loving. I couldn’t wait to get out from under his iron fist. I left to do my time for our country in Nam, but then came back to the Wild Cow and I’ve been here ever since. Ward and Jean gave me a home as well as a start on my faith walk. I learned a great deal from them.”
“What do you remember about my mother?” Carli leaned forward, listening to every word. He set his empty coffee cup on the side table, but she didn’t offer to refill it. Afraid to break the moment, she wanted him to keep talking.
“Jean and Ward were older when they started their family. When Jean gave birth to your mom, Michelle, it was a happy time on the Wild Cow. We had just hired on because Ward bought a neighbor’s place and he lost his best hand, Jean. Your mom was a newborn then. I guess little kids bring joy with them from heaven. Michelle used to climb on my shoulders, and I ran around with her as she giggled like crazy, and Jean and Ward beamed with ear-to-ear smiles. They taught her to ride a pony almost as soon as she could walk. A bundle of energy, that kid had to stay busy all the time. We had many years during her childhood that were so memorable. Just like any young family, I guess. Lola and I were unable to have kids, so we readily adopted your mom. She called us ‘Annie’ or ‘Tía’ for Aunt Lola and ‘Unky Buck’ or ‘Tío’ for me.”
“What happened to change everything?” Carli asked.
“She became a teenager?” He shrugged and frowned, as if dark thoughts clouded his mind. “When Michelle was around fourteen or fifteen, the boys were really noticing her. She was a pretty girl, big eyes, long silky hair. You do look just like her, you know. As much as Jean and Ward loved her, they also had a lot of ranch responsibilities as well as the rodeo circuit. Maybe Michelle felt pushed to the back of their attention. They had lots of money tied up in roping horses back then. They hauled Michelle around with them since she was a little tyke. I guess she got tired of it and thought boys were a whole lot more exciting than ranch work and the rodeo circuit. She was always independent and wanted her freedom.” He looked at her, his eyes cool and steady. A frown creased his forehead.
“Go on,” Carli prodded.
“So, more and more, she fought with her parents and whined about the chores, and then started lying, too. Michelle would concoct some story about girls at school having a weekend sleepover. She was very dramatic and told her parents it would 'ruin her life' if she missed out on events with her friends. Of course, it’d be a weekend Jean and Ward had commitments to travel to the rodeo. So, they believed her and let her stay home. Lola and I knew she was lying.”<
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Carli wanted more than anything to understand what made her mother do the things she did. Why did Michelle have this incessant need for constant fun and lies to her parents? For as long as Carli could remember she had been the exact opposite, always seeming older than her years. Honestly, the popular party crowd always bored her. Carli couldn’t help but wonder what her life might have been like if her mother had raised her instead of the Fitzgeralds.
“Michelle loved people and parties. We saw her around town, and we heard rumors, but we were caught between a rock and a hard place. Was it our place to rat her out? Now, I wish we had. We were so young and in love, and I just kept my nose buried in the ranch work. If we had said something, it might have stopped her from running away, but then again, she was so darn stubborn. If you tried to rein her in, it just made it worse. Nobody could control the runaway train wreck that was Michelle.”
Carli’s heart raced. She wanted to tell him about the birth certificate she found with the name of her birth father, but she was afraid. Of what, she didn’t know. For some reason it was her secret still. She wanted to hang on to the knowledge for a few days more. “Do you know any of the guys she might have dated?”
“Michelle had many boyfriends, if the rumors were true. I hate to speak of the deceased in a bad way, but you’re asking. I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Your mother was so full of life. Her smile lit up a room the minute she walked in and she never knew a stranger. Everyone claimed to be her friend. Everyone wanted to be her friend.”
“What did my grandparents do?” Carli finally stood, walked into the kitchen to get the coffee pot and refill their mugs.
“It was the classic pushing and pulling between parent and child for dominance, for authority. They grounded her or took her car keys away, forbade her from riding her horse, but she’d rebel and lie about her whereabouts, then things kept getting worse. Coming home late, red eyes or the smell of alcohol, until finally she didn’t come home until the next day or even second day. She talked back to them. Harsh, ugly words were said. Words that can never be taken back. And your Grandma Jean cried. It was becoming an impossible situation. On nights she didn’t come home, they hated to bring the sheriff into it because rumors were already going around. Jean and Ward hated the gossip and attention it brought to the Wild Cow.”
“And then what?” Carli was on the edge of her seat.
“And then she became pregnant with you.”
“Oh.” Carli let out a sigh and rose. “What happened then? Were they upset?”
“I think they were really sad. But I gotta say, neither Ward nor Jean ever yelled at Michelle after that. They showed her love. Unconditional love. And said they would help her raise the baby. You.”
Buck turned quiet, staring into his mug. Lost in the past. “And then she was gone,” he mumbled under his breath. “Vanished. All I remember was the sound of a motorcycle one night. I thought it was someone riding through headquarters really slow but now I know he was parked out by the corral, waiting. The roar when he gunned it was ear splitting and then the sound grew fainter and fainter. I didn’t even look out. Now I know Michelle left with him.”
“My grandparents must have been devastated.” Carli’s heart hurt.
“And she left a scrap of a note,” Buck continued. “If I can remember right, it read something like, ‘I’m leaving. Can’t stay. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’ Pretty much broke their hearts. Not only was Michelle gone. But she took you, too. Their only grandchild.”
“What did they do?” Carli leaned in closer and scooted to the edge of her chair.
“They called the sheriff this time. We never found out who she rode off with. The sheriff questioned all her friends, but turned up nothing, so we think the guy must have been from another town. Michelle covered up her tracks well, but she had to have had help. If anyone knew who took her away that night, they weren’t talking.”
Carli let out a whoosh of air, though she hadn’t realized she was holding her breath. She paced over to the windows, her back to Buck. Was the man on the motorcycle that night her birth father? A sadness crept over Carli as she listened. She might never know the truth. “When did they find out I was born?”
“Jean and Ward figured approximately when you’d be born. They asked all over Texas it seemed. Contacted Michelle’s school friends again, asked everybody they knew at rodeos if they’d seen her. Someone kept her hidden, but we never found out who. As for your grandparents, it’s as though the joy was sucked out of them. They kept hitting dead ends until finally they hired a private detective. After that, he gave them the sad report. He tracked your mother to Los Angeles, interviewed a few of her new party-going friends out there who didn’t really want to talk to him until he slipped them a little cash. Ward and Jean spent a fortune trying to find her. Once again Michelle was able to stay hidden. She had slipped through their fingers.”
A sadness jolted her heart. “Was she an addict by then?”
“Some of the crowd she hung with were, as far as I can recollect from what Ward and Jean told me. Others were just free spirits—artists, street musicians, homeless vagabonds. You know the type. Michelle was probably a little of both. But you know what? During all that time she never gave up her one passion, horses. But even then, her parents could never find her. They heard about the men she’d taken up with and the shows she competed in, but it seemed like they were always one step behind. She probably changed her name many times.”
Carli quietly listened to Buck. The story fit her mother so well based on the one time Carli met her when she was around fifteen. Her adoptive guardians hadn’t objected. Carli remembered her beautiful smile, but definitely her lifestyle had taken its toll. She looked worn and tired, older than her years with dull hair and eyes. Carli never told anyone before, but she followed the horse show circuit results. Sometimes Michelle used her real name, Jameson, and Carli dreamed about finding her. And then one day she was older with a job and didn’t care as much.
“What about you? Where were you all this time?” asked Buck.
Carli shrugged. “I was born in Amarillo and given to the Fitzgeralds, my guardians, as a newborn. They never legally adopted me which is why I still use the name Jameson. All they told me is that they learned about me from some of their cousins. Michelle signed me over and went on her merry way, and the Fitzgeralds took me back to Florida. Then Georgia. End of story.” Just saying it out loud created an ache in her heart. Why couldn’t she have been a part of her grandparents’ life? The stupid decisions Michelle made had cheated them all.
He swung his legs off the ottoman, hunched his shoulders and looked down. “I guess Michelle hit rock bottom in California.”
“Yes, the attorney told me she overdosed just a few months before my grandpa Ward died.”
“I don’t think Jean and Ward were ever the same after Michelle ran away. It seemed as though the joy evaporated from their life. Then they put all their efforts into finding you, but they were too late. Michelle had given you up and they lost track of her too. It pains my heart to think what her life might have been like, surviving from one fix to the next. Such a waste. She was a beautiful girl. And your grandparents came so close to finding you both. Ward was alive one month before you got here.”
Carli struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. Stupid and careless decisions can affect so many lives in ways people have no understanding of the outcomes. Her mother had chosen drugs over her. It didn’t seem fair.
Buck stood and put a hand on her shoulder. “But it’s not the end of your story. You’re home now. And I believe God had something to do with that. It’s an answer to Jean and Ward’s prayers, but not in their timing. We don’t know why. You’re here now and that’s the most important thing.”
“I know,” Carli said. “I’m still upset about my grandfather’s passing. I wish my attorney Del had found me sooner. Then I could’ve met him, talked to him.”
“Out of the blue, Michelle sent Jean and Ward a s
hort letter saying she had put you up for adoption. It was the last they heard from her. So, they had some little clues. A little closure if you can call it that.”
Still so many unanswered questions, but Carli learned more about her mother in this one conversation with Buck than she had during her entire life. Her heart ached at the suffering her grandparents had endured.
“What’s all that?” Buck pointed to a stack of papers on the floor.
“Just some old invoices and bank statements. I’m gradually cleaning out cabinets.” Carli looked at him intently for a few seconds and then asked, “You ever hear of a man named Taylor Miller?”
“Yeah. J.T., we called him. Hired him one summer to build fence. Why?”
Her heart thudded in her chest. She was certain Buck could hear it. Carli cleared her throat and looked into her mug. “No reason. Just noticed his name on some papers, is all. Why J.T.?” Obviously, he didn’t know about her birth certificate since there didn’t seem to be any concern as to why she was asking about the kid named J.T.
Buck chuckled. “His first name was John. He was the star quarterback his junior and senior years for the Dixon Wildcats. Sure did enjoy watching them play. They went to District playoffs and made it to State the next year when J.T. was a senior. J.T. threw the winning pass but the receiver dropped it. They still talk about that game around here.”
“So, what happened to him?” Carli tried to ask as though she didn’t really care if he answered or not, but she felt as though Buck noticed her sudden interest. She didn’t want to point out the connection between J.T. and her mother yet.
“There’s one person who might know J.T.’s whereabouts. And if he’s still alive.”
“Who’s that?” Dread hit Carli the minute the question escaped her lips.
“The man who grew up here and thought he would inherit the Wild Cow Ranch before the attorneys located you. Billy Broderick. He and J.T. were best friends in high school.”
Follow a Wild Heart: A Christian Contemporary Western Romance Series Page 6