“Did you have anything to do with my father’s death?”
“No,” Josh said. “And that’s the truth. I heard the shot and walked to the door of the barn and saw there was nothing I could do.”
“What did you have to do with John Fisk?” Jenny asked.
Josh shrugged. “He was a gambling buddy. I tried to give him a way to work off his debt by being of use to Marino. He screwed up and got himself killed in the process.”
Jenny took another step. “Why, Josh? Why on earth would you get involved with a man like Robert?”
Josh’s boot snagged on a root and he tripped, going halfway to the ground before he righted himself, still brandishing the gun. He glanced over his shoulder at the water that was now directly behind him. “Why?” he asked. “Because he ‘acquired’ the small town forger who was my employer. If I wanted to live, my only choice was to go to work for Marino.”
“How much of what happened between us was real?” she asked.
“Jenny, goddamn it, quit pushing me,” he said, stepping into the backwater at the edge of the river.
“Answer me and I’ll stop.”
“All of it,” he cried, his voice rising. “Every damn bit of it. I loved you. I still love you.”
“Then give me that gun and let’s go talk to the sheriff,” she said, stopping at the edge of the water. “Please.”
Josh was now standing in the swirling stream up to his knees. “Oh, right,” he said. “So I can go straight to Huntsville. I don’t think so.”
“If any part of you is the man I thought I knew,” Jenny said, “then you know the only way to set things right is to confess everything. You can’t really want to work with Rafe Jackson and Retta Thornton.”
The gun in Josh’s hand wavered. “I’m not working for them,” he said, his voice breaking. “I wasn’t going to give them Simpson Browning’s body. I was going to hide it where they’d never find it. Without the skeleton, and without me, they’ll have a hell of a hard time trying to get the Rocking L.”
Jenny stared at him. “You were doing all this to save the Rocking L?”
His hand was shaking now. “I was doing it all for you,” he said. “So you won’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Josh,” Jenny said, tears filling her eyes. “I could never hate you.”
“But you won’t be with me, will you?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I can’t.”
Josh looked past her and yelled, “Katie! Come down here.”
Kate walked down the bank and stood beside Jenny. “What is it?” she asked.
“My grandfather killed Simpson Browning,” he said. “Your granddaddy blackmailed him to get the deed to the draw. But it’s okay. It’ll all be in Uncle Phil’s hands now and he won’t do anything to hurt Mandy. You’ve got Simpson’s remains. You’ll be the one to tell the story. Ask Elizabeth Jones, she’ll help you figure it all out.” He raised the gun to his temple.
Jenny started forward into the water, but Kate caught her arm and held her tight. “Goddamn it, Josh,” Kate said. “Don’t even think about it.”
He regarded them with haunted eyes. “It’s all I’ve thought about since that night in the barn,” he said. “I can’t live without you, Jenny. I don’t even want to try.”
“Josh, please,” Jenny pleaded. “Nothing you’ve done is worth taking your life over. We’ll help you. You just got in a bad way, you made bad choices, but you’re not a bad man. I know that, Josh. Please don’t do this.”
His eyes met hers and held her gaze. “I love you,” he said simply, and pulled the trigger. His body jerked backward into the floodwaters, and in a matter of seconds, he disappeared into the torrent and was gone.
“Josh!” Jenny screamed, lunging forward again.
“Jenny, stop!” Kate ordered. “Stop.”
Suddenly Jake was with them in the water, restraining Jenny and pulling her back to the bank where she collapsed in the mud, ragged sobs shaking her body.
“Jake, let her go,” Kate said, kneeling beside her sister. “I’ve got her.”
As soon as Jenny was free of Jake’s restraining embrace, she stopped fighting and reached for Kate with one trembling hand. Kate caught hold of her and drew Jenny close as the rain began to fall in a chilling torrent.
When Jenny began to shiver uncontrollably, Kate said, “Honey, we’ve got to get you in out of this rain. There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
Jenny nodded dumbly and allowed Jake to help her up. Kate looked up the bank and yelled at Dusty, “Get up to Mandy’s and get one of the trucks.”
Without a word, Dusty turned and disappeared into the heavy curtain of rain.
“I killed him, Katie,” Jenny said, through chattering teeth.
“No, honey,” Kate said. “You didn’t kill him. His choices killed him.”
Epilogue
Jenny sat on the floor in Mandy’s living room leaning back against Kate’s chair. They were all watching Sissy and Missy tear into a mountain of Christmas presents with a lot of help from Jazz and Rapp, who were ripping the cast-off paper to shreds in a frenzy of mock puppy viciousness.
When she felt her sister’s hand on her shoulder, Jenny reached up and entwined their fingers. She hadn’t strayed far from Kate’s company since Josh committed suicide. Once again, Kate found herself sitting on Jenny’s bedside during the night calming her fears when she awakened from the throes of yet another nightmare.
All the dreams were the same. The three of them standing in the water at the river’s edge. That moment when Josh declared his love and pulled the trigger. Kate was torn between sympathy for the damned fool and white, hot anger that he’d left her sister with that memory.
On one of those nights, Jenny looked up at Kate with a tear-stained face and said, in a choked voice, “I’m sorry, Katie. I just can’t go home yet. I see him everywhere I look.”
“You are home, honey,” Kate said simply. “Now hush, and try to sleep.”
And so Jenny stayed in her childhood bedroom, but now, instead of touching off a stream of bad memories, the room felt safe there because Kate was just down the hall.
It didn’t help that the Rangers had been unable to find Josh’s body even after days of searching. Jack Swinton came to the ranch in person to tell Kate they were giving up. “It was the biggest flood on the South Llano in 50 years, Katie,” he said. “That poor son of a bitch could be anywhere.”
“I know, Jack,” Kate said. “It would just be easier on her if she had something to bury.”
In the end, Phil solved that dilemma. “I have Josh’s hat,” he told Kate one evening when he came to check on Jenny. “He left it at my place by mistake a couple of days before he died. We can bury that.”
The service was a simple one, held in a grove of pecan trees where the Baxter land joined the Rocking L. The gray granite tombstone gave nothing but Josh’s name and his birth and death dates. As they walked away from the burial site, Phil told them about Josh’s will. “It’s all over now,” he said. “There’s not going to be any more squabbling between the Baxters and the Lockwoods over land. I’m having my will changed and leaving it all to Mandy.”
Elizabeth Jones wasn’t so sure, however. “This is a helpful, although tragic, development,” she told Kate. “But Ida Belle and I have uncovered a wealth of irregularities. Our suggestion would be that you divest yourselves of Baxter’s Draw once and for all. Break your father’s will and give the land to the State of Texas. I know it would mean dividing the Rocking L, but as Jenny has so often pointed out, no good comes out of that draw.”
Kate promised to consider it, just as she promised to consider Jake’s marriage proposal. It seemed she had her own choices to be making in the new year, but for now, she was just concentrating on getting her family through the end of the old one.
As for Retta Thornton, her source of campaign funds dried up rapidly, and shortly before Christmas she announced that she was withdrawing
from the mayoral race. Jinx Brewer showed up in Joe Bob’s office the next day, contritely apologizing and asking for her job back. “It wasn’t personal, Mr. Mayor,” she said.
“Yes, Jinx, it was,” Joe Bob answered. “I’m sorry, but your services are no longer required in this office.”
An anonymous tip to the Texas Department of Banking brought a hoard of examiners down on Rafe Jackson’s head. To his shock and indignation, the board voted him out as bank president. No one really knew how the case was going to turn out, but it wasn’t going to matter much to Rafe.
The week before Christmas he stepped out on the sidewalk in front of the bank and took a fist right between the eyes. By the time Buck Miller pulled the assailant off of him, there was little left of Rafe’s face but a bloody pulp.
As the attacker delivered the final blow, which was a vicious kick to the banker’s head, he said, “And that’s for my little girl, you sick bastard.” According to the doctors, if Rafe did wake up, the brain damage would be extensive and debilitating.
When she heard the news, Dusty’s comment was unadorned and direct. “Good. That’s one less bastard we have to worry about.”
Thankfully the family succeeded in shielding Sissy and Missy from the worst of the events. Mandy and Joe Bob had no choice but to tell them about Josh’s death, but, with that peculiar wisdom of children, they seemed to understand better than the adults.
“Uncle Josh had a lot of trouble inside, didn’t he?” Missy asked.
“Yes, honey,” Joe Bob said, “he did have a lot of trouble.”
“So you think he’s where our Mama and Daddy are now?” Sissy asked. “Because if he’s there, the trouble is over.”
Mandy, choking back her tears, said, “Yes, I think that’s where Uncle Josh is now and everything’s okay for him again.”
“Mandy,” Sissy said, “can we ask you and Joe Bob something?”
“Of course,” Mandy said. “You can ask us anything.”
“Would it be okay if you all went ahead and asked us about getting adopted and told us about the baby so we can all be happy about something?”
Mandy and Joe Bob exchanged a shocked look and then they both burst out laughing. “Yes,” Joe Bob said. “It would be okay. How do you feel about all that?”
“We vote yes on the adoption and yes on the baby,” Missy grinned.
Mandy giggled, “Well, that’s good, since we can’t exactly send the baby back.”
Now, on Christmas Eve, with all their gifts opened, Sissy and Missy were passing around flat packages wrapped with identical paper and ribbon. Each one was about the size of a greeting card. “Okay now, we all have to open these at the same time,” Mandy said. “This is a gift from me and Joe Bob to everybody all at once. Okay . . . go.”
When Kate pulled the paper away, she grinned down at the card in her hand. One side contained a miniature copy of a petition applying to adopt Savannah and Madison Wilson, while the other held a single image of a pregnancy test strip that was clearly positive. The words emblazoned on the card proclaimed, “We are expecting twins and a baby. Merry Christmas!”
The room erupted into a happy round of congratulations. Phil Baxter quietly slipped out of the melee and walked out into the cold, clear night to stare up at the stars. As he gazed skyward, Phil wondered if somehow, somewhere, Josh might be looking at the same constellations.
Sunday, December 13, Two Miles Downstream from the Cave
Josh almost missed the weighted line Phil had flung across the raging stream, but at the last moment he caught the slender cable and held on as Phil and two men standing on the bank began pulling him to safety.
After what seemed like agonized minutes, Josh’s boots touched bottom and he was able to stagger the last few feet up the bank, where he dropped to his knees in front of Texas Ranger Captain Jack Swinton. Someone threw a blanket around Josh’s shoulders as he coughed up a lungful of dirty river water.
“Can you stand?” Swinton asked.
Josh nodded, rising unsteadily to his feet.
“Good,” Swinton said. “We don’t have much time. We have to get you out of here and on your way to the FBI boys in Austin.”
“Can I say goodbye to my uncle?” Josh croaked.
“Make it quick,” Swinton said. He motioned to his men to step away.
Phil put his hand on his nephew’s arm. “You okay, son?” he asked.
Josh shrugged. “For a man who just shot himself in the head and fell into a flooding river, I guess I’m okay.”
In spite of himself, Phil laughed. “Lord, boy, you and that Ranger sure cooked up one hell of a cover story for this witness protection thing.”
“We had to make it look good,” Josh said. “The Lockwood women are too smart to take any chances.”
“That they are,” Phil said, shaking his head. “For what it’s worth, Josh, you’re doing the best you can with this whole mess.”
Josh looked down, blinking tears away. “At least my testimony will put the rest of Marino’s people away and someone will answer for John Fisk’s murder. I guess that’s something.”
From across the clearing, Swinton called out. “I’m sorry, Baxter, we gotta move.”
Josh held out his hand. “I guess this is goodbye, Uncle Phil. The will is all drawn up and legal. All the Baxter land is yours now.”
“Don’t worry, son,” Phil said. “Rafe Jackson and Retta Thornton won’t get their hands on our land or on the Rocking L. I’ll leave it all to Mandy, just like we talked about.”
On impulse, Josh pulled his uncle into a tight hug. “Take care of Jenny for me, Uncle Phil. She’s gonna be in bad shape for awhile. She won’t tell anybody but Katie, but promise me you’ll be her friend.”
“I promise, Josh,” Phil said, holding him close. “I’ll take care of her for you and for Irene.”
As Phil watched, Josh climbed into the back of a black SUV. Swinton himself got in the driver’s seat. The windows on the vehicle were tinted, so Phil couldn’t see his nephew put his head in his hands and sob.
THE END
Part VII
Short Story - Langston’s Ghost: Aftermath
Chapter 132
Prelude to a Suicide
On a sunny spring day in Central Texas in 2014, a 75-year-old man named Langston Lockwood killed himself. He committed the deed in his barn on the Rocking L Ranch — 10,000 acres of prime land that had been in his family for six generations. Langston hoped the land would go back to the State of Texas, courtesy of the harsh terms of his will. His three girls would never agree to abide by the conditions he placed on them. By taking that route, Langston didn't have to disinherit his daughters. They would do the job for him.
In his bitter assessment of the current state of his life, Langston concluded the time had come to end the Lockwood legacy. In the weeks leading up to his death, his long-held secrets threatened to slip through his fingers. He could not face the exposure of a lifetime of deception. Instead, Langston decided to remain in control of his destiny right up to the final moment of his life. But, with his trademark arrogance, he didn’t consider that his choices were not the only ones that would shape the future.
By killing himself, Langston could thwart the plans of the man who wanted a piece of his ranch. He could twist the knife one last time in the back of an old friend who had betrayed him. He could avoid the personal embarrassment of having his private life disclosed. But he could not control the events that began to unfold the minute he pulled that trigger.
And for a man like Langston Lockwood? That would prove to be the definition of hell.
Chapter 133
Contemplating the Deed
On the day of his death, Langston Lockwood sat in his study with a single sheet of paper and a pile of old pictures on the desk in front of him. Writing a suicide note proved to be a harder task than he imagined. He was certainly capable of setting down his thoughts in writing, but he loathed the idea of explaining himself to anyone.
; Besides, how could one piece of paper hold all the complex motivations behind the action he was getting ready to take? He could write a book and never examine in depth all the complex rumination that had brought him to this place. Even the mechanism of his demise, an antique Colt .45, was a calculated choice. There would be no damned open casket funeral with unctuous mourners filing past, all nursing the secret wish to spit on his corpse.
He estimated that the town’s wagging tongues would enjoy about a week of fevered speculation over his suicide before the terms of his will were revealed. His death would create delicious gossip, but the forced disinheritance of his daughters would become the stuff of legends. The two actions in tandem should effectively erase the minuscule goodwill he still held in the community.
As Langston looked at the details of his plan laid out before him like chess pieces, however, he grappled with bitter and private truths. He did not set out to become the biggest son of a bitch in three counties, nor did he enjoy that reputation.
The original Rocking L land was a reward to Collins Lockwood for his service during the Texas Revolution. In each generation thereafter, the old Lockwood men built up the ranch Langston now planned to give back to the State of Texas. He liked the idea of the symmetry of the action, but he feared the wrath of his ancestors.
Langston picked up the stack of aged photos and gazed at the images of his antecedents. Collins, his son, Seaton, then Weston, and Langston’s own father, Milton Lockwood. All Langston had to do was look in a mirror to see his ancestors in his own features. The family’s physical traits were as definite and as immutable as their strength of character. But neither he nor Milton had been any credit to the men who came before them.
Dismantling the family was the best thing to do, but the sense of failure plagued Langston. His girls were young enough. They could go out and make new families. The Lockwood blood would become diluted until the name was nothing but letters etched on aging gravestones. That was all Langston could do now, wasn’t it?
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 92