Tangled Up in Texas

by Delores Fossen

She had binoculars pressed to her eyes, and her attention nailed to whatever she was watching. Probably some insect, bird or other critter. Em had a butterfly garden, birdbaths, squirrel feeders and even an area planted to draw bees and ladybugs. There was a lettuce patch planted just for rabbits, too.

  If it flew, fluttered, flounced or looked like something that belonged in a hobbit village, Em liked to encourage it to drop in for a visit. The only insects she hated were mosquitos, and she’d invested plenty of money in the metal traps to catch them and keep them away from her and the other animals.

  Em was wearing her usual cowboy boots and jeans, these with puckered-up rhinestone-red lips on the back pockets that likely hadn’t been targeted to the over-seventy shopper. She turned at the sound of Sunny’s footsteps and smiled. Not an ordinary smile, either. Em wasn’t capable of ordinary. The woman could make things feel like, well, like a magical hobbit village.

  “Come over here,” Em said. She pulled out her earbuds and motioned for Sunny to come to the window.

  She did, brushing a kiss on Em’s cheek before her grandmother handed her the binoculars. “Have a look at that hiney.”

  Although she was a little confused, Sunny obliged. And her tongue nearly landed on her kneecaps when, amid the gardens, lawn gnomes and gazing balls, she spotted the half-naked man on a ladder by the barn. Definitely no flying, fluttering or flouncing. And he darn sure wasn’t a hobbit. The guy was shirtless, his jeans way low on his hips, and he didn’t appear to be wearing any underwear. Sunny could see the top of the crack of his butt.

  “Josiah Cowan,” Em provided, taking back the binoculars for another look. “You remember him from high school?”

  Sunny nodded. He’d played football. Sunny was reasonably sure she’d never seen this much of him.

  “He does some handyman work for me,” Em explained. “But he’s doodling around with some boards that in no way need such doodling or fixing. You can bet your Sunday britches he’s here to see you. He’ll want to ask you out now that you’re free and single.”

  Sunny’s stomach dropped a little. She didn’t want to be asked out. She didn’t want men to think of her as free or single.

  “And Josiah’s not the only one,” Em went on. “In the past thirty minutes, I’ve gotten three calls and two texts from men who want to know if I need something fixed or if they could run errands for me. One of them was Elmer Goggins, who’s sixty if he’s a day. He wants to take you on a picnic.”

  Em’s phone rang, and she frowned when she looked at the screen. “Bennie Harper. He’s a volunteer fireman,” she explained, hitting the decline-call button. “He’d better not start another fire in the birdbath just so he can get your attention.”

  Since Sunny suspected Bennie had done that their junior year of high school, she hoped he wouldn’t try the ploy again. Or any ploy, for that matter.

  “Now, now,” Em said, giving Sunny’s hand a squeeze. “Don’t get that look on your face. The look that says you’re thinking about turning tail and running. Once menfolk understand you’re still getting over your ex, they’ll leave you be.”

  Maybe. But Sunny was indeed thinking of running. Briefly thinking it anyway. Then she remembered all the reasons she’d come here in the first place. She needed to be home. She needed to heal. What she didn’t need was a cowboy with a great hiney, a picnic or a man loony enough to start a fire for her.

  “Are you really still getting over your ex?” Em came out and asked.

  Even though she was wallowing somewhat in her own pity party, Sunny had no trouble hearing the concern in her grandmother’s voice. Em was worried about her, and causing worry was not one of the reasons Sunny had come back.

  “I’m fine,” Sunny assured her. But because Em had an especially good BS meter and was picking up on something, Sunny added, “I’m just having some trouble dealing with the way Hugh’s ignoring his son. I don’t want Ryan to be punished because I called off the wedding. I want Ryan and his dad to be close, the way it should be between father and son.”

  Em nodded and paused as if giving that some thought. “You’re right. But if the boy’s as bright as you say, then he already knows his dad’s all hat and no cattle.”

  So true. Well, it was true if all hat and no cattle was a put-down for someone who was a lousy father. And that was one of the reasons Ryan needed some TLC. It was a tough time in a kid’s life when they figured out they had a butt hole for a parent. Sunny knew that firsthand because both of her parents fell into that category.

  It was something Shaw knew, as well, when it came to his own father, and she thought about what he might be going through right now with another of Marty’s kids.

  “Don’t know why you got engaged to Hugh in the first place,” Em muttered.

  Sunny was having trouble figuring that out, too, and she thought she finally had a handle on it. “I’d see him in one of his bookstores, and I think I got my feelings for him mixed up with all those cool books. Plus, he’s moody and mysterious like Heathcliff and Mr. Darcy.”

  Of course, that was being generous. With his handsome, distinguished face, Hugh had indeed looked like those fictional characters. But moody and mysterious were just other ways of saying grouchy and secretive. At first she had blamed that on him being a widower. But in hindsight, Sunny could see that Hugh’s greatest asset, the thing that had drawn him to her, was Ryan. Her engagement to Hugh might have been a bust, but Ryan was a prize that she hadn’t had to give up.

  What she had had to give up was the dream of having a baby with Hugh.

  Of course, she hadn’t specifically wanted his but a baby, and that was part of the problem.

  Sunny had wanted a child for as long as she could remember, and she’d thought that since Hugh was already a father, he would want other children. With her. That’d been the same faulty logic she’d applied to her first engagement, too. It turned out that getting involved with a single father didn’t necessarily lead to more fatherhood.

  Or motherhood.

  “Let me look at you,” Em said, taking her hands and giving Sunny the once-over. Her smile dimmed. “Other than calling off your latest wedding, is there something else I should know about?”

  “I’m fine,” Sunny assured her with the best lie she could manage. “Just a little tired.”

  Em continued to stare at her as if she might press to get at the truth, but she finally nodded. Then she gave Sunny the hug that she’d been dreading. Plenty of boob pain came with it, but Sunny held her ground. Held her breath, too, until Em finally put an end to the torture.

  “Okay,” Em concluded, her eyes pinned to Sunny. “Go on up to your room and take a nap. I want you all rested up for lunch so we can have a good sit-down and gab. I want to gab some with Ryan, too. Go on,” she insisted.

  Sunny did, noticing that Em went back to watching the handyman. The one who would no doubt soon ask her out. She wouldn’t be able to say no fast enough. Even if she hadn’t been recovering, he’d be hands-off. Besides, if she wanted a rebound guy and was in any shape to have one, she’d look in Shaw’s direction.

  Especially since he’d already looked in hers.

  She hadn’t missed the glimmer of heat in his eyes or the old attraction that snapped at them like a rubber band. A little painful but definitely an attention getter.

  When Sunny made it back to the foyer, she saw Ryan heading up the stairs with their suitcases. “This is the last of our things,” he said. “I left your sister’s stuff in the SUV because I wasn’t sure where to put it.”

  Neither was Sunny. The weird underwear and several other boxes had arrived in a huge shipping crate along with instructions: “Store this at Em’s the next time you’re there. Had.”

  Apparently, her sister had been in such a hurry that she hadn’t bothered to use her whole name, and Hadley definitely hadn’t mentioned why she’d needed such things stored. Sunny
didn’t want to speculate about that why, either, because with Hadley it could be anything.

  “Miss Bernice told me which room was yours, and the one I’d be using, so I’ll put my stuff in there,” Ryan added.

  Sunny hoped the woman hadn’t doused the info with a coating of more gloom, but she knew Bernice had when Ryan added, “Look, if it’s a problem with me being here, I can find someplace else to stay.”

  She wanted to throttle Bernice for putting that idea in Ryan’s head. Especially since there was no someplace else for him. His mother had died eight years ago, and while his paternal grandparents were still living, Ryan had never even met them because they were estranged from his dad.

  And as for staying with his dad, well, Hugh had nixed that, saying that he’d needed some “me time” to get over Sunny crushing his heart into a million pieces. Yes, he’d used those exact words. He’d added that Ryan was plenty old enough to be on his own. While Ryan was more mature than most sixteen-year-old boys, she’d seen the worry all over him when he’d thought he was going to have to fend for himself for God knew how long.

  Me time could go on for a while.

  “You’re staying here,” Sunny assured the boy. “Just ignore Bernice like everyone else does. The producers wanted a crotchety housekeeper to contrast with Granny Em’s cheer and sass so they talked Em into hiring her. Bernice has stayed in character for three decades.”

  Well, either that or the woman had been going through menopause and PMS, simultaneously, for just as long.

  “And besides,” Sunny went on, “Bernice is normally only here a couple of hours each day, so you won’t have to put up with her too much.”

  Pushing thoughts of Bernice aside, Sunny stepped in the doorway of her childhood bedroom and did something she always did when she came back for a visit. She froze, then muttered, “Sheez, Louise.” Somehow, she always seemed to forget that the room was like a time capsule.

  Or maybe the scene of a crime.

  Obviously, Em hadn’t done an ounce of redecorating here. Neither had Sunny on the many visits she’d made back. Simply put, she hadn’t stayed long enough to get rid of the things that now brought back too many memories.

  The large loft-style room was divided into three distinct areas, like a rectangular pie cut into a triangle, with beds, chest of drawers and tables forming each section. Her section was in the right corner, where it’d been for as long as Sunny could remember. According to Em, it’d been where their mother had put them shortly after she’d brought them home from the hospital.

  Ryan didn’t remark on the teenage girl decor. Perhaps because he didn’t even recognize the posters tacked onto the walls of the respective areas. Sunny’s had the boy bands. NSYNC, Backstreet Boys and 98 Degrees. But there were also ones of the stand-up comics of the day, Robin Williams and Jerry Seinfeld.

  Even though Sunny had come back to the ranch many times over the past fifteen years, something just now occurred to her. The things she had on display were like those labels the producers had given her and her sisters.

  Maybe her brush with possible death had given her some kind of insight. Or maybe her mopey attitude was causing her to peer through non-rose-colored glasses. Either way, her triangle screamed Funny Sunny, so much so that it made her want to toss it all into the trash. Made her want a fresh do-over. Of course, some would say that’s exactly what she’d attempted when she’d become a runaway fiancée.

  Not once but twice.

  She was guessing when it happened twice, it was no longer a do-over but a sign that she should stay celibate and become a youngish crazy cat lady.

  Sighing over the possibility, Sunny shifted her attention to McCall’s area. Hers screamed prissy pants/good girl, what with her pink lace comforter. Princess Diana and Jane Austen posters were on her walls—all precisely framed, of course—and her trophies and awards were for all the good service and the civic-minded stuff she favored. Still favored, Sunny mentally amended. After all, McCall had become a relationship counselor. A very successful one.

  And then there was Hadley’s triangle.

  Living up to the hype, Badly Hadley had painted her walls glossy black. Not especially well, either, since the long-dried paint was glopped in places, making it look as if it were oozing down like an oil spill. The posters were of Thelma and Louise and heavy metal bands, including one band member gripping his own crotch with an Edward Scissorhands-type glove. Sunny wouldn’t have been surprised if it had deballed the guy.

  There were no trophies or awards in Hadley’s space since there hadn’t been any. No framed high school graduation diploma, either, because she’d flunked out and gone the GED route. The only sign of things to come for Hadley was a stack of dark superhero graphic novels that the producers had given her as props and the basket of fabric on the floor next to her bed. The scraps were black, too, with some grays and bloodreds tossed in, but maybe whatever Hadley had been sewing before she turned eighteen had led her to become a costume designer.

  Pulling herself out of the decor memory lane, Sunny turned to Ryan, who was taking in the space as if it were a museum, art gallery or—yes—a crime scene.

  “You didn’t take any of this stuff with you when you left?” he asked before she could say anything.

  “Not really.”

  Basically, she’d packed some of her clothes and hightailed it to college. Anything in the dresser drawers, she’d boxed up and put in the attic. Including the diaries. Yes, she’d been one of those girls who’d written daily, complete with titles, dates and even a memento or two that she’d taped onto some of the pages.

  Daily whinings, laments and angsts punctuated by lustful fantasies about Shaw.

  It was depressing to think that if she continued writing in diaries, there’d be too many similarities between now and then. As far as she was concerned, they could stay boxed up. She’d gone into too many details, bared too much of her soul. Written way more than she should have.

  Including the one and only time she’d had sex with Shaw.

  That one she’d titled “Hot Dreamy Shaw,” and she’d taped one of his chest hairs to the page.

  Sunny cleared her throat and her mind of the images that came. Shaw had indeed been hot and dreamy. “I just wanted a fresh start,” she added.

  Which she hadn’t gotten, of course. Not when her college classmates had discovered her “celebrity” status. It hadn’t been fandom like a real actor or rock star would have gotten, either. Because that’s when Sunny had realized that she, her life and her childhood had been one big joke.

  “What was it like?” Ryan’s voice pierced through the silence and her thoughts. “Having a camera follow you around all the time?”

  “It sucked,” she answered readily. “Most of the time,” Sunny amended. “It made me feel special because it wasn’t the norm. And it made me feel like a freak because it wasn’t the norm.”

  Ryan made a sound to indicate he got that. And he likely did. Boy geniuses probably didn’t always fit in with the rest of the kids.

  “It wasn’t like what you saw on TV,” Sunny added a moment later. “Things that happened were often edited, and we were prompted...pushed.”

  Yeah, that was the right word. And her mother had usually been the pusher. Sunshine had been driven by the need for high ratings, and she’d learned darn fast that the way to do that was for her little cowgirls to do something funny. Sunshine hadn’t cared a rat’s butt if it was also embarrassing.

  Unless it was her, of course.

  Sunshine had added many conditions to her contract as to how she’d be filmed. One of them was that no footage of her would be used when she was without her Spanx and makeup.

  Ryan went to the side of her bed and bent down to pick up something from the floor. It was a necklace containing her name etched in silver. Since Sunny was certain she’d packed that away, it meant Em had likely taken
it out. Why, Sunny didn’t know. She didn’t particularly need a reminder of who she was.

  On the other hand, maybe that was exactly what she needed.

  “The necklace was something I had to wear nearly every episode,” she explained to Ryan. “Just as Hadley and McCall had worn theirs. It was so the viewers could tell us apart. Hadley used to turn hers backward so that it spelled Yeldah. She told people she’d been possessed by a Ukrainian peasant.”

  Ryan smiled, then got quiet for a moment. “How’d you feel having a face that’s exactly like two other people?”

  She’d gotten a lot of variations on that question over her thirty-plus years, and she’d never had an easy answer. “It made me feel both special and like a freak,” she said, paraphrasing her earlier response. “It was nice though to be able to see how new makeup, a hairstyle or new clothes would look on me without ever having to try it out.”

  For instance, she knew without a doubt that she hadn’t wanted any of Hadley’s black Goth lipstick and the safety pin piercings on her eyebrow.

  Ryan took another glance at the diverse corners of the room. “Did you ever like swap places or things like that?”

  “A couple of times,” she admitted. “McCall and I swapped anyway. She sucked at math so I took some of the tests for her.” Sunny winced. Cheating in school probably wasn’t something she should confess to a kid. “And a couple of times Hadley tried to pretend she was either McCall or me so she could leave the house after being grounded. It didn’t work.”

  Which was another reason not to get a pierced eyebrow. Those holes showed even without the safety pin.

  “Sorry,” Ryan muttered. “You probably just want to go to bed, and here I am peppering you with questions.”

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind your questions.” But she did motion for him to follow her. “You’ll be staying in my brother’s old room.”

  It was at the other end of the hall with her parents’ bedroom and Em’s in between. Hayes had wanted to be as far away from his triplet sisters as the Victorian floor plan allowed. Even that hadn’t been far enough though because Hayes had also created his own getaway in the attic, which had easy access for him since the attic stairs were in his closet.