The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories

by Juliette Harper

  “I didn’t mean to hit you on the head with this, honey,” Clara said, interrupting Jenny’s reverie. “But you already knew the answer before you asked me the question.”

  Bringing her focus back to the present reality, Jenny shook her head. “Yes, I knew, but I didn’t want to know. Clara, if Daddy isn’t Mandy’s father, then who is?”

  Clara sighed, the sound moved through the oxygen line like a tired rattle. “Irene met him at the mental hospital,” she said. “He was a Vietnam vet. He came back from over there and made a real success, married a nice woman, had a family, ran a good business. Then it all just caught up with him, I guess, and he went all to pieces.”

  “Was he good to my mother?” Jenny asked. “Did he love her?”

  Clara smiled. “Irene told me he was good looking, sweet, and sensitive. She always thought Mandy was a lot like him.”

  “How did they manage to be together?”

  “That place your Daddy put her in was real upscale. I think they’d call it ‘rehab’ now. You know, the kind of joint where celebrities go to fall apart?” Clara said. “After she was there several weeks, Irene started talking to a shrink about everything that had happened to her in her life. She didn’t tell me everything they talked about and it wasn’t any of my business anyway. But, from what she did tell me, it sounds like Yankee families can go just as Tennessee Williams on each other as we can. I think a lot of her problems started with how her own Daddy treated her. Do you all know anything about her people?”

  “Virtually nothing,” Jenny said. “But from what you’re telling me, going back to them was never an option for her.”

  “And neither was running off with Phillip,” Clara said.

  “Phillip?” Jenny asked.

  “Yes, that was his first name. I never knew his last name. Irene didn’t tell him about Mandy. When he started getting better, he said he had to make things right with his wife and children. Irene was happy for him. She told me she felt like their time together was a gift from God so they could both heal enough to go back to real life and do the things they had to do.”

  Jenny blinked back the tears that suddenly filled her eyes. “She really was strong, wasn’t she?”

  “Your Mama was the strongest woman I ever knew,” Clara said. “When she came back she went to bed with Langston so he would never be sure Mandy wasn’t his. You were born a little early, so she figured she could get away with explaining Mandy’s delivery date. Old Doc Kitterell knew when to keep his mouth shut.”

  “How did Daddy take the news about the pregnancy?” Jenny asked.

  “He pitched a fit and went off up to the draw for a week. I was afraid when Mandy was born Langston would know the truth the instant he saw all that blond hair. But that wasn’t how it happened. Your Mama picked out the name Amanda, but he insisted on Elizabeth for a middle name. Said it was a family name. He was good to that child from the start, or at least as good as the old bastard could be to anyone.”

  Jenny didn’t even try to explain that in the beginning her father had believed Mandy was Alice Browning brought back to him by some benevolent reincarnation. Instead she asked, “When did Mama tell you all of this?”

  “I knew some of it as it was happening, but then when she was diagnosed with the cancer, she told me the whole story. She said that day up in the draw when she found the cave she realized she was married to a crazy man. Everything just crashed in on her. She felt completely alone with nowhere to go. Your Daddy had her trapped good and proper. Being with Phillip changed how she felt about all that. She was able to come back and do right by you girls and be at peace with it. Your Mama loved you all very much.”

  “It must have been hard for you to lose her, too,” Jenny said sympathetically.

  “Only thing harder on me in my whole life was losing Clint,” Clara said, her voice breaking. “I loved your Mama like a sister. It’s been mighty lonely all these years without her. You’re so like her, honey.”

  Jenny looked at the old woman across from her, the tired lines around her sad eyes, and the way her chest rose and fell with each laborious breath. Clara was exhausted by the conversation and the memories.

  “Thank you for telling me all of this, Clara,” Jenny said. “I really have to be getting back to the ranch, but . . . may I come see you again? Maybe you could tell me more about the times you spent with Mama?”

  The old woman smiled. “She said you’d do that.”

  “What?” Jenny asked, startled.

  “The day she died, your Mama took hold of my hand and said, ‘Remember it all, Clara, and tell Jenny. She’ll be the one who will come to you looking for answers one day. Be her friend the way you’ve been mine.’”

  Kate watched Josh work and blew out a frustrated breath. Since the shooting, her stamina had improved steadily, but some jobs took two hands. Fence repair was on that list. Tightening loose barbed wire used to be an everyday chore involving a pair of pliers. Now, she couldn’t get enough tension on the strand with just one hand.

  There were all sorts of ways to accomplish the job. As usual, Josh had a simple one. She watched as he put a 5-cent fence staple over the loose wire, grabbing the staple on the round end with his pliers and securing it on the other with a twisting tool, basically a short tube with a flattened end outfitted with drilled holes. He applied counter-clockwise pressure with both tools on the opposing ends of the staple, twisting until the strand pulled taut. Then he used the hollow end of the tube to bend the ends of the staple flush.

  “That’s a neat trick,” Kate said. “Where’d you come up with that one?”

  “YouTube,” he answered cheerfully, putting his tools back in his saddlebag and mounting his horse.

  They were high up in the far end of the pasture from Baxter’s Draw, riding fence. It was rough, beautiful country and both of them were enjoying the morning. Josh kept a small, ruggedized camera in a pouch on his belt and from time to time would stop and snap a few pictures. Kate had learned to anticipate these pauses and halted her own horse seamlessly to accommodate her friend.

  The first time Josh brought the camera with him, Kate asked about it. “Can you really get good pictures with that little thing?”

  “It’s a pocket super zoom,” he said. “Not the world’s greatest camera, but that’s part of the fun.”

  “What do you mean?” Kate said.

  “Well, if I want to take pictures to sell, I’ve got plenty of big ole cameras and lenses to do that,” he said. “I like taking a little camera and making it do big things. It’s fun for me.”

  At least once or twice a week, Josh showed her his photos. He could indeed do big things with the tiny camera. Through his eyes, land she knew like the back of her own hand unfolded with new drama and beauty. Josh was every bit as much of an artist as Jenny, which Kate knew was part of the couple’s steadily deepening bond.

  On this particular morning, Kate followed the rough line of sight from the camera’s lens and spotted an armadillo busily digging at the base of a big patch of prickly pear. “We need to get up in here with a pear burner,” she said. “Then turn the cows loose on it. Time to move ’em up from the river anyway.”

  “Be a hell of a lot easier to spray that pear,” he said, securing his camera.

  “I don’t like to use chemicals,” Kate said. “That’s what’s wrong with the world. People looking for easy answers. When the pear gets bad enough, you can come up here and play with the dozer.”

  Her tone was shorter than she intended, but Josh knew the real source of her annoyance. Using the bulldozer was yet another two-handed job Kate’s injury forced her to relinquish. The throttle and steering controls were on the left, the blade controls on the right. She could twist back and forth, using her right hand for both, but not with any degree of efficiency. Kate hated to waste anything, including time.

  “Josh, I feel like we’re asking an awful lot of you,” she said suddenly, keeping her eyes on the horizon in front of her. “You kinda gave u
p your life to move on this place. You came over here to be with Jenny, not to work with me. There’s no obligation for you to do all this. You ever want out, just say so.”

  “From where I’m sitting,” Josh said easily, “kinda seems like I found my life on this place. Just icing on the cake I get to run a dozer, too.”

  Kate laughed, quietly blessing the man for his seamless tact. They rode on in silence, all the tension of the moment gone. When Josh first suggested she start coming with him every day, Kate feared she’d be pressed into endless conversation. She was used to spending her days alone and Josh liked to talk. But to her surprise, Josh also knew how to be with someone in companionable silence and how to help Kate explore her new limitations without making her feel limited. That was no mean trick.

  Langston would have said the pair of them would have made good saddle tramps. By instinct, Josh and Kate knew how to communicate with one another in short exchanges throughout the day. Over several months they came to know each other well. Josh had a good sense of what Kate could handle physically and she realized he quietly pushed her to do more, helping her build a new skill set and strengthening her good arm — all without saying a word.

  He also knew that watching him do things like repairing a fence grated on her nerves, but he didn’t try to make the reality of her situation better with empty platitudes. Josh Baxter was rapidly becoming one of Kate’s closest friends, and the fact that he loved her sister only made her think more of him.

  After several minutes, he asked, “Did you spend days like this with Langston when you were growing up?”

  “Where’d that come from?” she asked.

  “Old Langston might be dead,” Josh observed, “but I swear to God he’s haunting this place. Or at least haunting you all. I’m trying to understand the man.”

  “Fair enough,” Kate said. “Yeah, Daddy and I used to work together like this. In fact, those days may have been the only good ones we ever had together. We’d go all day and never say a word. Just work.”

  “Jenny tell you she’s having nightmares?” he asked, scanning the fence to his left as he talked.

  Kate frowned. “No, she didn’t. Are they about Marino?”

  “No, about Langston,” Josh said levelly. “She wakes up at night gasping for air. I don’t dare touch her until she asks me to, then I can feel her heart beating like a jackhammer.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Kate said. “What are the dreams about?”

  “She doesn’t really tell me,” Josh said. “She just says she’s trying to figure out everything that happened back when you all were kids. Why your Daddy acted the way he did. She can’t quit looking at those pictures he drew.”

  Well, Kate thought. No time like the present. She recounted her conversation with Jenny the day before and explained her sister’s plan. Josh didn’t interrupt as Kate talked, but when they came to the corner of the fence line, he drew up his horse and turned toward her, taking his left leg out of the stirrup and hooking it around the saddle horn. “What do you think about all this, Katie?”

  “I think we ought to let her do it,” she said.

  “Let her?” he grinned. “You sure as hell are bent on taking your life in your own hands, aren’t you? She’s gonna do it no matter what we say.”

  Kate laughed. “Yeah, Josh, she is. But she’s a little worried about how you’ll take it.”

  “She has to get Langston out of her head,” he said. “If that means going up to the draw, then I’m not gonna pitch a fit. He was a hard man, your daddy.”

  “Yes, he was,” Kate said, “but I liked the life, even when I was a kid. Daddy was part of that. He taught me everything I know about ranching. Jenny’s right. He and I did have common ground.”

  “Jenny likes the life, too,” he said, “otherwise she wouldn’t have given up New York so easy. I know she squawked when the will was read, but this land runs deep in her. Deep as it does in you. She needs to make peace with that as much as with Langston. She got it all mixed up in her head. She thought to hate him, she had to hate Texas, too.”

  Kate sighed. “Exiling herself up north wasn’t building a different life, it was just running from the one she had. I always knew that.”

  “Hardest part on her was being away from you and Mandy,” Josh said. “Sometimes those nightmares are about you getting shot. That night, when it was all going on? Woman had nerves of steel, but she was terrified of losing you.”

  “I know,” Kate said. “I remember you all finding me in the draw. Mainly just Jenny’s face in the moonlight begging me not to die.”

  “Finding out Langston was an artist has made her think she might be able to find her own common ground with him,” he said. “I get that. I don’t like the idea of her up there in that draw doing this by herself any more than I reckon you do, but it’s the only way for her.”

  “You really do love her, don’t you, Josh?”

  “I do,” he said simply, his face softening. “I know it sounds silly as hell, but I think I loved her the minute she started cussing me for getting her thrown off Horsefly that day.”

  Kate laughed. “She is something when she’s fired up and spitting mad.”

  “Prettiest woman with murder in her eye I’ve ever seen,” he grinned, sitting back in the saddle. “Come on, we’re burning daylight.”

  “That’s my line,” Kate said, grinning back. Nudging Bracelet forward, she rode beside Josh down the fence line. After a hundred yards or so she said, “You gonna ask her to marry you?”

  “Yep.”

  “When?”

  “When it won’t make her run backwards like a scared rabbit.”

  “Good plan.”

  54

  Just as the sun was coming up, Josh tapped lightly on the kitchen door at the main ranch house. When Kate opened it, he put his finger to his lips to signal her to be quiet then stepped aside pointing into the yard.

  Kate joined him on the porch and saw a magnificent whitetail buck at the feeder. Mentally she counted fourteen points. She grinned. Imposing a hunting ban at the Rocking L might have cost them corporate lease money, but the sight of that beautiful animal living as safe as she could make him meant far more to Kate.

  She and Josh went in the house and Kate closed the door quietly before speaking. “Big boy’s looking good today,” she said, by way of greeting.

  “Why thank you, ma’am,” Josh grinned.

  Kate rolled her eyes. “Damn. I walked right into that one. Coffee?”

  “Nope, I’m headed into town. Figured you might want to come along.”

  “No, you go on,” she said. “I have some things to do around here.”

  Josh raised his eyebrows. “You sure? I’m going to the cafe for breakfast. It’s Friday. The special is biscuits and gravy.”

  “Tempting as that sounds, yeah, I’m sure,” she said. “I need to talk to Jenny. Sister stuff.”

  “Any of that sister stuff have anything to do with what’s stuck in her craw over that Clara Wyler woman?” he asked.

  “So you see it, too,” Kate said.

  Josh scrubbed at his freshly shaved face. “Yeah, ever since she got back from visiting Mrs. Wyler something’s been kinda off.”

  “You ask her about it?”

  He chuckled. “No, ma’am. I’ll let you rope that one.”

  “You know,” Kate said, “I can’t be the interpreter between you two forever.”

  “It’s not exactly interpreting, Katie,” he said, still grinning. “It’s more like mine detecting.”

  “Send the big sister in to get blown up first?” Kate said. “You just warm my heart, Baxter.”

  “I am a cautious man,” he said. “Besides, she hasn’t talked to me about the draw. No sense stirring up a hornet’s nest when that business isn’t settled yet.”

  “Okay, that I will give you,” Kate conceded. “That part is my fault. I haven’t made the time to sit down and tell her about the conversation you and I had. Besides that, I
swear to God she’s been avoiding me since she talked to Clara.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Josh said. “Most I got out of her was that it was good to see an old friend of your Mama’s. Do you have any idea why she got it in her head to go over there at all?”

  A little warning bell sounded in Kate’s mind. Jenny hadn’t told Josh about finding the photo taken at the Wyler’s, which meant he also didn’t know the story about the two older Lockwood girls living with the couple for several months. As far as Kate knew, there was no reason for Jenny not to share that information with him, but if she hadn’t, then Kate needed to find out what was going on before she said anything else. “We were just talking about Mama the other day,” she answered, “and we were remembering how much we loved it when Clara would bake a pecan pie and come over with it.”

  “Oh Lord, I do love pecan pie,” he said, adding hopefully. “Don’t suppose any of you all have a good recipe?”

  “Josh Baxter, you think with your stomach. Now shoo. There’s biscuits and gravy waiting in town for you.”

  After Josh left, Kate refilled her cup and walked across the yard to the studio. Jenny was at her desk, the windows and doors of her workspace thrown open to let in the fresh air. Kate tapped on the doorframe to get her sister’s attention and said, “Morning.”

  Jenny looked up and smiled. “Morning, yourself. Come on in.” She got up from her chair to refill her own coffee cup and then joined Kate on the sofa. “I thought you’d be going to town with Josh.”

  “No,” Kate said. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you that he and I talked and he’s not gonna pitch a fit about you going up to the draw.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Jenny said. “He never said a thing to me.”

  “He’s smart enough to let you raise the subject first,” Kate said. “In fact, the only living creature on this ranch with better people sense is Horsefly. Now, you want to tell me what you’re keeping to yourself about your visit with Clara Wyler?”

  Taken aback at the abrupt change in topics, Jenny’s face showed an equal mixture of confusion and indecision. Never in her life had she been able to look Kate in the eye and tell her a lie, but this time she didn’t want to share the truth either. Finally, Jenny looked down into her cup to hide her warring emotions and said, “Not really, Katie.”