If Carol hadn’t already been in love with Warren and Edward Jessop, she knew she would have fallen right then and there. “Well, sir, that sounds about right to me. Who else should be teaching young people how to farm except those who’ve made their living that way all their lives?”
“I reckon you’re right, missy. It’s just the darnedest thing, is all.”
Mrs. Gill was pleased to see the paramedics, and insisted on having everyone into the house for coffee and pie—fresh pecan pie that she’d just pulled out of the oven.
Carol didn’t know these people, but she knew that Mrs. Gill was very happy her husband now had help with the work of the farm. And apparently, she had help, too, twice a week.
“That was sweet, what y’all did for them.” Carol buckled her seat belt, waved to the Gills, then sat back to enjoy the drive to Abilene. It would take them nearly three hours to get there, which was why she was glad they were staying over one night at the Hilton.
“Nothing sweet about it,” Warren said. “Luke—our cousin who’s the principal of the school—was saying, the last time we saw him, that the school needed more folks willing to sponsor student mentoring programs.”
“Uh-huh. You’ll never convince me that you’re not sweet. No matter what you ordered and had delivered in that mysterious box.”
Warren gave her a sideways look, and Edward stared straight ahead and just grinned. She figured the men really didn’t mind that she thought they were sweet.
They stopped halfway to stretch their legs and get some coffee.
“How are you feeling?” Warren had let her know he thought her taking this step—going to see her parents and trying to mend fences—was the right thing to do.
But he also knew it was going to be difficult for her. She knew she could count on him and Edward to be there for her.
“I’m all right. This is hard, but only because I was so angry that I just…left. I am still appalled when I think of what my mother allowed herself to believe…”
“Sometimes, sweetheart, it’s not so much what a person believes as it is what they’re afraid of. Sounds to me as if this woman who terrorized your mother, when she was pregnant with you, made her think she’d done something unforgiveable—namely, irreparably harming a child.”
“There are all sorts of people, Carol, who let fear rule them.” Edward slid his arms around her from behind. “Just look at how some of the news media and some public officials have been using fear to push their own private agendas in the last couple of years.”
“I know.” She did know. She’d been thinking, not just about that fateful New Year’s family blow up, but about her mother as a person, as well. And she’d finally begun to take her focus off herself and her wounded feelings and place them on someone else—namely her parents. “I’ve been thinking about mom and dad a lot lately. My mother is sixty-nine, and she never completed high school. She’s never worked outside the home, and there’s nothing wrong with any of that. Her life has been her family and her farm and her church, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either. But it does mean that she’s been sheltered most of her life, and is not at all worldly wise.”
“You are,” Edward said. “You’re what I would consider worldly wise. But more, you’ve an open mind and a giving—and forgiving—heart.”
“I do want to fix this rift between us,” Carol said. “I just hope that my temper didn’t make things so bad that it can’t be fixed.”
“Your mother wrote to you and asked you to give her a chance,” Warren said. “Just start with that, and go from there. I think, in the end, you heart will lead you where you need to go.”
For the rest of the trip to Abilene, Carol sat quietly between her men who seemed to understand that she needed some mental space. While they each had a hand on her, neither of them insisted on chatter. Warren selected a country music station on the radio and turned it down so that it played quietly.
Carol found herself thinking about everything that had brought her to this moment in her life. We are where we are because of every decision we have ever made, and every experience we have lived.
Looking back on her childhood, she could honestly say that she’d been raised with love and boundaries. Knowing a little of what her sisters had been like as young adolescents and then teens from the stories that had always been recounted, she thought she could even understand how her totally opposite nature could have reinforced her mother’s mistaken belief. She had been a more reserved and quieter child than her sisters.
And really, what had her mother done, in the end? She’d searched for a way to ensure that Carol would be “cared for,” when she was no longer there to do it herself.
She’d never been abused, or treated badly. She really had so much to be thankful for.
And who could say, really, if she would be sitting in this vehicle engaged to two smoking hot and totally awesome men, if it weren’t for everything that had happened in her life?
“Do you want to check in to the hotel first, or do you want to head out to your parents’ place? We can do either,” Warren said.
Carol sighed. She really didn’t have to think about it too hard.
“Let’s just head out. If you take the second exit, I can direct you from there.”
“Beautiful, we already have the address programmed into our GPS.”
Both men treated her to sweet smiles and gentle caresses. Warren took the second exit, and she saw scenery flash by that was familiar and, yes, missed.
Carol was no longer nervous or scared. She was looking forward to seeing her family again.
Chapter 25
Her father and her oldest brother Lawrence stood by the corral fence, their poses nearly identical as they stared at the few horses nibbling on the hay they’d provided. The water troughs would be full, and the door on the back of the barn that led to the corral open.
When the Texas heat became too much for them, which sometimes happened, the horses would take themselves inside.
Late August meant harvesting of the grain sorghum, which was her father’s major crop, and culling the herd of cattle. The Ashwoods only had a few head as this was a farm, her father would say, and not a ranch. The livestock was mostly for their own use—for dairy as well as beef. Of course Arthur Ashwood had been known to sell a cow or two to help supplement the family’s income from time to time.
There was a stream that ran through a part of the property, and a few pecan trees that she could recall helping to harvest, as well.
Her mother made very good pecan pies.
Warren parked the Enclave beside her father’s Dodge Ram. Edward held the door open for her. She didn’t run, but she wanted to. Her father tended to be a bit on the taciturn side, but he was no stranger to giving a daughter—even a late-in-life unplanned daughter—a hug now and then.
It had been more than half a year since she’d had one of those hugs. Worse, she’d left with bad feelings between them, and now that she was here, recalling that she’d done that, hurt her heart.
Her vision blurred when her father said nothing as she approached, when he simply opened his arms to her.
“Daddy.” Tears she’d held back, tears she hadn’t let fall, poured out of her. She cried, and he let her. He’d always just let her, and right then she understood his quiet acceptance was a gift more valuable than gold.
“I’m sorry.” The words had come far easier than she could have believed. “I’m sorry I got mad and left the way I did.”
“No.” Her father took just a half step back and cupped her face. He used his thumbs to dry her tears. “Never be sorry when you stand for what’s right. I didn’t look. I didn’t see. I left you to your ma, because you were a girl, and while that was the way in my day, that don’t mean it’s right.”
“She was scared.” Even now, after everything, her love for her parents trumped the hurt, and she thanked God for it.
“I reckon. That don’t make what she done right, neither.”
&
nbsp; She stepped back and offered her brother a smile. He nodded, and then shocked her when he grabbed her into a short, albeit fierce, hug.
Then he set her back from him. “Good to see you, Carol. You look good.”
“Thanks, Lawrence. You look good, too.”
“I reckon Loretta will be over shortly to say her peace. I’ll say mine right now. I knew that ma was funny with you, and I never said a word about it. For that, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. I guess there was a lot of ‘not saying’ going on, and that’s on me, too. I just let things happen around me. I never took the reins of my life in my own hands, either.”
Lawrence looked from Warren to Edward. His lips quirked up in a half smile. “I suspect you don’t have that problem anymore.”
Warren and Edward had hung back while she’d greeted her father, but now they approached.
She turned to her father. “Daddy, I have a couple of men I need for you to meet.”
He looked up from her gaze to the brothers Jessop, and then nodded. “Yep, I’ve been expecting to.”
Now that’s an odd thing for him to say. Undeterred, she turned and smiled at her men. They took her cue and came over to her, arranging themselves one on either side of her. An extra layer of comfort and security settled over her.
“Daddy, this is Warren and Edward Jessop.” She’d considered long and hard how to present herself and the men she loved to her parents and family. What was normal and accepted in Lusty wasn’t elsewhere, and she knew that very well. She had no desire to thumb her nose at convention, or cause any kind of an upset.
However, she was going to spend the rest of her life with these two wonderful men, and she had absolutely no intention of lying about it—especially to her parents.
Her father shook both men’s hands. Then he focused on her. “Your ma’s out behind the house, in her garden. You know how she is.”
Her mother always gardened when she had a problem to work out.
Carol nodded. “Okay, I’ll head over there, but first—”
“Girl, there are some things men need to handle amongst themselves. So you leave me to get acquainted with my future sons-in-law, and you go on and see your ma.”
Carol blinked. He’d said sons-in-law as if he already knew. She couldn’t imagine how that could be so. She looked at her men.
“Go on, sweetheart. We’ll see you in a bit.” Warren tipped her chin up for a sweet, and chaste, kiss.
“We’ll be fine. We want a chance to get to know our future in-laws,” Edward said. He kissed her the same way his brother had, then turned her toward the house and patted her on the butt.
She heard Lawrence snicker, and decided to ignore it.
“Fine, then. Y’all have a good time, and don’t be tracking no blood into the house.” It was amazing, she mused, as she headed toward her mother’s garden, how her mother’s sayings could sometimes spring right out of her mouth.
She rounded the corner of the house and her heart caught at the familiar sight. Doris Ashwood knelt on a small cushion in the center of her vegetable garden, weeding her tomatoes. She let her eyes scan the rows, so neatly planted and ruthlessly maintained. There were beans, the plants nearly done for this go-round, and they’d be replaced soon. She could also see beets and cucumber and turnip. The sweet potato tops looked healthy.
The garden was smaller than when she’d had to feed her family of six. But she’d said, many times, that even when it was just her and Daddy, she’d still be planting through the year.
Not just because homegrown tasted sweeter than anything store-bought, she’d said, but because gardening on her knees put her in the perfect position to work and think and pray, all at the same time.
Carol looked over at the porch. Her own cushion was right there with her gardening hat, where she’d left them, on the shelf under the outdoor table. She grabbed them and a small hand fork, and entered the garden, going down the same row her mother was working, but on the opposite side.
Her mother said nothing for a long moment, and if it hadn’t been for the slight hesitation in her work, Carol would have thought she didn’t realize she was there. Carol worked around one tomato plant, nipping off the small feeder stem, pulling the few weeds that had foolishly dared to poke their heads up in Doris Ashwood’s garden.
Some of us have two fathers, some of us three. But we all only have one mother.
Carol Ashwood only had one mother, and that woman wasn’t getting any younger. She’d been a good mother in many respects, all of her life.
Maybe it’s time for me to learn how to be a good daughter.
Carol sat back on her haunches and looked at her mother. “I owe you an apology, Mom. I let my anger and my pride get in the way between us. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not the one who needs to apologize.” Doris Ashwood looked up, and Carol nearly gasped at the way her mother’s face seemed to have aged in just a few months.
“I’m ashamed of the way I let one person poison my mind. The Good Book says that we’re to trust the Man of God, but it don’t say nuthin’ about trusting his wife. I should have remembered that. I let Mary Ellen MacLean poison me, and then I let the fear take me. I’m sorry, Carol. I’m sorry that I let my weakness get in the way of what we had—and the way I let it stop us from havin’ more.”
“I think we’ve both made mistakes.” She wouldn’t deny her mother the right to face her own reality, any more than she would let anyone get in her way.
“Now that’s the God’s truth.” Doris nodded. She looked down at the tomatoes. “I was out here working, and I was thinking about that time when I’d planted and then had that bad cold, and couldn’t get out every day and tend the plants. I’d started them, but really hadn’t put much time into them. And some of them did wither, but some grew good and strong anyway.
“Like you. I didn’t give you what a normal woman would need from her mother, growing up, like I should have. But you grew good and strong, anyway.”
“Thank you. I love you, Ma. Even when I was mad, and I left, I loved you.”
“Oh, honey, you weren’t mad, you were hurt. And I never stopped loving you, either. Let’s go on in and have us some tea.”
There was a comfort in the familiar, in the way she dusted off her legs beside her mother, and then washed her hands at the mudroom sink before going into the kitchen.
“Do you have any peanut butter cookies?”
“In the tin. We had an interesting visitor a few weeks back.” Doris brought some glasses down to the table, went to the fridge for the pitcher of tea. Carol fetched a plate from the cupboard and then set cookies on it, the best peanut butter cookies in the whole world.
“You had a visitor?”
“Hmhmm. A lady you know who speaks very well of you. Mrs. Kate Benedict.”
“Grandma Kate came here?”
Doris’s smile was small, but there. “She did indeed. She wanted us to know you were doing fine, that you were working and safe and happy. And she wanted to tell us a little about the town where she lived—where she moved to when she was a young nurse during the Second Great War.”
“That’s why Daddy said what he did.” And how like Grandma Kate to reach out to someone she didn’t know in order to help someone she did.
“Lusty is…it’s kind of hard to describe the kind of place it is. Aside from the fact that a lot of the residents lead…um…”
“Alternate lifestyles?”
Carol raised both eyebrows. She didn’t think she’d ever heard that phrase pass her mother’s lips before.
“Yeah. I’ll tell you something that Warren and Edward don’t know.” Belatedly she realized her mother would have no idea who they were. “Um, Warren and Edward Jessop. They’re brothers, and paramedics, and…”
“Your boyfriends?”
She had a sudden inkling then not only of why her father was interested in talking to her men, but why they were eager for the exchange as well. She felt her face heat. “They as
ked me to marry them. I guess that’s what they’re talking to Daddy about.”
“I reckon. So what is it they don’t know?”
“When I left here, I went to Waco. I’d lined up a couple of apartments to see, online. I rented one, and then I got hired on at the spa in Lusty. It was about an hour’s drive from my apartment to work but that wasn’t really a problem.”
“No, you’d be used to that, living here and working in Abilene.”
“Well, the person who was the manager in the building I was living in helped himself into my apartment one night, just as I was getting ready for bed. Really scared me. I grabbed the baseball bat one of the women I worked with in Abilene suggested I get, and he left. I dragged a large piece of furniture in front of the door so I could sleep. Next day at lunchtime I went to see Jake Kendall—he’s a lawyer and is kind of in charge of the empty apartments and such in town. I asked him if there was anything available that I could rent.” She shook her head. “He has good instincts, because he guessed something was wrong and it sure didn’t take him long to get out of me what the problem was.” She looked at her mother. “I was moved into the small house I have now by that evening. Jake and a few of the men went with me to the furnished apartment I’d rented in Waco, to help me get my stuff out. I believe he had a word or two with that manager, and I would not be surprised to learn he complained to the building owner, too. That’s the kind of place Lusty is. They really didn’t know me, but somehow, they’d made me one of them.”
“That’s what I thought, listening to Mrs. Benedict. It sounded like a place that took care of its own.” Her mother sat down at the table and poured them each a glass of sweet tea. Then she put her hands together, the way Carol had seen her do on occasion, whenever her father had been annoyed with her.
Love Under Two Responders [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 25