by Liz Isaacson
Nothing would.
Rhett might.
The thought suddenly sprang to her mind, and she had no idea where it had come from. But in the past, when she’d had a problem she couldn’t solve, Rhett had been there. Asking her questions. Making her think. Feeding her buttermilk pancakes and freshly squeezed orange juice.
Though it was Thursday, she really wanted to eat breakfast with him and find out where things had gone so wrong between them.
Her phone buzzed, and she looked numbly down at it. He’s not coming to the ranch today. Callie had been a huge support to her for years, always playing the motherly role since they’d lost their mom so early in life.
And she suddenly knew where she needed to go. She put the car in gear and eased away from the church building, intending to drive just down the road and around the corner to the cemetery. It bordered the church along the back fence, but the entrance was down here. And after she visited her mother, she needed to go see her dad.
She hadn’t brought a jacket, and the weather didn’t truly require one. Not really, though the wind seemed to be whipping around town today. Evelyn walked down the rows of headstones, searching for a reason to be happy.
She came to her mother’s grave, and she knelt down to trace her fingers along the letters in the granite. She’d only been five years old when her mother had died. Evelyn only knew her through pictures and stories, but somehow, she felt a very real connection to her mother.
She didn’t talk to her. Burden her with the things she’d done wrong. Ask for help. She simply stayed with her mom until it felt like she was alone again. That moment came quickly this time, and Evelyn bowed her head and said a silent prayer of gratitude that she’d gotten any time with her mother at all.
“Now,” she said, standing up and facing the rest of the graveyard. “Tell me what to do to make things right with Rhett Walker.”
No immediate answer came, but she knew where she needed to go next.
When she arrived at her grandmother’s home, her father’s truck wasn’t there. She glanced up and down the street, as if a neighbor had borrowed it or something. Thursday morning…she didn’t think he or her grandmother had anything that took them out of the house on Thursday mornings.
Grandma’s hair appointments were always on Tuesdays. She went to the senior citizens center on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Fridays, she and Evelyn’s father did their grocery shopping.
A born and bred cowboy, her father liked doing things by a schedule. She’d never known him to be step out of the house one minute earlier or later than six-thirty in the morning, and his internal alarm was forever set an hour before that.
That hour gave him time to make his girls breakfast, pack their lunches, and sip his coffee. Grandma drove the girls to school, and in the winter months, he sometimes didn’t see them before he went to work on the ranch.
Evelyn used to love to set her alarm for six-twenty-five just so she could see him for five minutes. As she made her way up the front sidewalk to the door, she really hoped they were home. Maybe her dad’s truck was in the shop or something.
She couldn’t stand to be by herself anymore, and she had nowhere else to go. “Dad?” she asked as she opened the front door. “Grandma?”
They weren’t home, and she sighed as she turned around and sat on the top step. Maybe they wouldn’t be gone for too much longer, and honestly, it wouldn’t matter if they were. She didn’t have anything to do today.
She flipped her phone over, realizing she’d missed some messages when she saw the flashing blue light. Simone had texted to ask if Evelyn could help with the Fall Festival set-up tomorrow night.
Of course, she typed in, dread filling her entire body cavity. I’ll be there.
But the last thing she wanted to do was show her face in town. The Fall Festival was very popular in Three Rivers, as it brought men and women off their ranches and into town. It was part celebration of the harvest, which the farmers and ranchers participated in, and part family fun for Halloween.
It ran for eight straight days, and Simone was hoping to sell out of everything she’d been working on for months. Evelyn was hoping for that too, and she couldn’t refuse her sister her help.
But Evelyn didn’t want to be seen around the festival. There would be dozens of women there, setting up their own tables. And they’d have plenty of questions for her. She could hear them all now, and the imagined noise of them made her cringe.
Several minutes later, her father’s old truck sputtered into the driveway. For one horrible moment, Evelyn thought he might hit her car, but he managed to park beside it with a foot or two to spare.
She went down the sidewalk again, her heart thrashing against her ribcage. “Hey, bugaboo,” he said in his raspy farmer’s voice. “What brings you here?”
“Hey, Daddy.” She grabbed onto him a moment before the sobs shook her shoulders.
“Oh, hey.” He held her tight, and though she was forty years old, she really needed the love of her father right now. “What’s wrong? Hey, it’s okay. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
If only that were true. “It’s me and Rhett. We split up.”
“The cowboy down the lane?”
“He was my husband, Dad,” Evelyn said, trying to breathe through her tears. Her husband. In some ways, she’d certainly treated him like her husband. In many others, though, she’d held him at arm’s length, never allowing him to truly take part in her life. And by refusing to talk to him and share her troubles with him, she’d kept herself out of his life too.
“I’ve made some mistakes,” she said. “Did you and Mom always get along?”
“No, they did not,” Grandma said, hobbling around the truck. “I remember this one fight they had. Your mother threw eggs at his truck.”
“Oh, Mom,” Evelyn’s father said, shaking his head. “But she’s not wrong. Come on, bug. Come tell us all about it over coffee. We ran out, so we had to go get some more.”
“Dad, there’s no way you ran out of coffee,” she said, following him at a snail’s pace down the sidewalk. “You get two containers every week.”
“Well, I couldn’t find it,” he said.
The moment they were in the kitchen, Evelyn started opening cupboards. Most of them were overflowing with dishes or bags of pretzels. Sure enough, in the fourth one she opened, she spied the coffee, right next to the sugar and the flavorings her grandmother had discovered. “Right here, Dad.”
“That’s empty,” he said.
Evelyn opened it, and sure enough, it was empty. “Then why do you still have it?” She threw it in the trash, noticing how full that was too. Looking around, Evelyn quickly became overwhelmed with the state of things inside this house.
“When’s the last time you threw anything away?”
Neither her father nor her grandmother answered, and Evelyn started cleaning up the trash. Empty grocery sacks and bread twist ties, empty bottles of water, and old mail. It all went in the garbage, and she emptied it into the big black container by the carport.
The house didn’t smell, but the amount of stuff her father and her grandmother owned could make anyone stop and stare. Literally every surface held something, whether it be a knickknack or a picture frame or a stack of books.
Each item held a memory, though, and Evelyn did like that. She picked up a picture of her mother and father, obviously taken on their wedding day. Her mother looked so much like Callie, it was almost freaky. Evelyn had gotten the rounder face, the lighter eyes, more of her father’s jaw. Simone was an equal mix of the two of them, and Evelyn could pick out the parts from each parent for each sibling.
“Coffee, bug?” her dad asked, and Evelyn replaced the picture on the side table.
“Yes, please.”
“Tell us what happened with Rhett,” Grandma said. “You two always looked so happy at church.”
With a jolt, Evelyn realized she’d spent so much of her time with Rhett pretending. First, she’d pretended
not to like him at all. Then she’d pretended they were just friends.
Then, they’d had an entire pretend marriage. And she pretended to be so joyously happy whenever they went out in public together.
It was time to stop hiding and face the truth. Time to stop pretending.
“I’m bad at communicating,” she said. “So that’s made things hard.”
“That would be your dad’s fault,” Grandma said. “He was never good at telling you girls how he felt.”
“They know how I feel,” her dad shot back at his mother. “But I will take some of the blame for that.” He gave Evelyn a kind smile.
“You just need to channel some of me, dear.” Grandma patted her hand. “There’s nothing you’ve done that you can’t undo.”
Evelyn thought of the fake I-do. Pretty sure that could be undone, and in fact, Rhett had told her he’d filed for divorce that morning. So Grandma was wrong about that.
“Can you go back to not being in love?” she asked. She wasn’t even sure she had fallen in love with Rhett, but with the way her misery pulsed around her, she was starting to think she had.
Love was like a thief in the night. It could sneak up on a person when they weren’t even awake, making them say and do irrational things. Or, in her case, keep everything bottled up tight.
“Oh, sure,” her grandmother said, waving her hand. “That’s the easy part.” She continued talking, but Evelyn watched her dad shake his head.
He waited until his mother stopped speaking, and then he said, “No, Evelyn. Once you fall in love with someone, there’s no going back. You’ll always love them, at least on some level. That’s why married couples can forgive each other.”
“What if I’ve done something Rhett can’t forgive?”
“Apologize,” he said. “Make it right.”
“Make it right,” she echoed, wondering if she could really just say I’m sorry and everything would magically be okay.
She didn’t think so, and she knew she needed to look inward before she could go to Rhett.
Please help him wait for me a little longer, she prayed. And please help me figure out what’s wrong with me so I can make that right first.
Praying was the only recourse she had left, and she figured God had never given up on her yet. He surely wouldn’t now.
Chapter Twenty
A week passed, and then two. Evelyn didn’t contest the divorce, and Rhett only went back to the house on Quail Creek Road after he’d texted Callie to find out where Evelyn was. She’d been helping Simone set up tables at the Fall Festival, and he’d run to their house to pack his essentials.
Everything else he left in the house. He didn’t need more couches or a bed at Seven Sons. Just his clothes. Somewhere to stay without tension and awkwardness.
His brothers had welcomed him with open arms, and he’d confessed everything to them about the marriage. In the end, it had shockingly been Jeremiah who’d said, “Wow, Rhett. It sounds like you did the right thing.”
“Yeah,” Liam had agreed. “Don’t you feel stupid now for being such a jerk?”
“Yeah, actually.” Jeremiah had given Rhett a big hug and then cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Rhett.”
And those words had fixed things between him and his brother. He’d typed them out a dozen times for Evelyn, but he couldn’t get himself to send the message. He knew she was back on her family’s ranch too, and he was dying to know how things were going for her.
Had her clients all bailed on her? What would she and her sisters do without her income?
He’d visited the idea of giving them a bunch of money, but he knew he’d be doing it just to ease his conscience. Callie wouldn’t take it anyway. She might be willing to let him work for her for free, but she wasn’t going to take his money outright.
He’d never committed to his mother about going to Grand Cayman for the holidays, and she was hounding him daily now. He finally relented and said, Yes, Mom. I’ll be there.
With Evelyn?
Evelyn and I broke up. He stared at those words for a long time before sending them, hurrying to add, I don’t want to talk about it. I’m fine.
His mother didn’t call, but she did send message after message until Rhett had to silence his phone and leave it face-down on the desk so he wouldn’t go insane.
Fall finally arrived in Three Rivers, and Rhett found himself starting a new routine. He’d been through a fresh start half a dozen times since coming to this new town and Seven Sons Ranch.
When he’d first come, he’d started each day with damage assessment, and he spent the day working through task after task. He had so much to do, he sometimes forgot to eat. His brothers had arrived, and with the extra muscles and manpower, they’d gotten their ranch back to operational within a decent amount of time.
His routine had shifted then, as each of the brothers settled into their role on the ranch. Jeremiah shouldered the bulk of ranch management, dealing with their permanent hired help and day-to-day operations on the ranch. Tripp and Liam did chores around the ranch, but they both still worked in the tech industry part-time.
Rhett had taken to making sure everything around the property was in good repair and putting up new gates and decorations. He’d helped the Foster sisters next door the most. He’d had his breakfasts with Evelyn. He was basically the public relations director for the Walker family.
Then he’d married Evelyn, and everything in his life had changed. A sigh came from his mouth as he made his new morning drive into town for his breakfast and coffee. This new routine got him up and out of the homestead. Away from Tripp’s glances and Jeremiah’s whisperings with Liam.
He wasn’t satisfied with replacing seeing Evelyn in their kitchen with breakfast at the pancake house, but honestly, he didn’t have anything else.
“Morning, Sandy,” he said when it was his turn at the hostess booth. She owned the pancake house, but she still worked right out front with the customers.
“Rhett.” She smiled. “Back again?”
“It’s my new thing,” he said, following her to a booth in the corner. He’d specifically requested somewhere he could stay out of the way and stay as long as he wanted. The pancake house seemed busy no matter what day of the week it was, which was fine by Rhett. But he wanted to nurse his coffee and maybe order another pastry while he psyched himself up to go back to the ranch.
He was still working at the Shining Star, and he liked to go over later in the day. That way, he had less of a chance of running into any of the Foster sisters. Callie had been kind, and she texted him the things she wanted him to look at or work on each week. He texted her back when he finished.
He didn’t go into the farmhouse for lunch anymore, and he hadn’t seen Simone in days and days.
“Well, I know a lot of women have started making it their thing too.” Sandy smiled as she handed him the menu he didn’t need.
“What?”
She leaned down as she poured his coffee, the delicious steam rising up to meet his nose. “Come on, Rhett. You Walker men are like the lottery. No one quite knows how to win you, but everyone wants to try.” She looked right and left while Rhett tried to figure out what was going on. “Since you started coming in every morning, I’m serving at least a dozen more women too.”
She straightened, that smile still stuck in place. “You’re good for business. Now, if you could get that Jeremiah off the ranch, you’d be a rockstar.” She left then, and Rhett glanced around too.
There were definitely groups of women in the pancake house. His divorce wasn’t even final, and he felt sick to his stomach. He wasn’t interested in anyone else, and he ducked his head and started doctoring up his coffee with cream and sugar.
A waitress came over, and said, “Same thing, hon?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He handed her the menu, and she smiled before walking away.
He stayed as long as he wanted, eating the Western omelet he loved with salsa and a hefty side of bacon. He didn�
��t glance around again, and as he prepared to leave, a text came in from his brother Wyatt.
“He’s retiring?” He picked up the phone and swiped to get the full message from his middle brother. Well, technically, Liam was the middle brother, as he was born seven minutes behind Tripp. But as far as brothers went, Wyatt started the younger ones. He’d been riding the rodeo circuit for almost two decades, and his text said he was hanging up his spurs in December.
Wondering if you have room at Seven Sons, the end of his text said.
Of course. Rhett sent the message without checking with anyone else. The brothers all got along decently well, and Wyatt had never caused a problem for anyone. And there was plenty of room at the homestead. Have you told anyone else?
Been talking to Jeremiah, Wyatt said. He said to ask you. It’s your ranch.
Rhett scoffed at his phone. He may have put down the money for the ranch, but it was as much Jeremiah’s as his at this point. He probably should talk to the brothers about that, so everyone knew he wasn’t the king of Seven Sons. They could make decisions together.
We’d love to have you, Rhett sent. He pulled out his wallet and threw some money on the table before getting up and leaving the pancake house with a tip of his hat to Sandy.
Heard about you and Evelyn, Wyatt said next, and Rhett almost tripped over his own feet. Sorry about that.
Rhett paused and looked up into the stormy sky. He was sorry about it too, but he’d said everything he needed to. He’d thrown the ball into Evelyn’s court a dozen times. She had to decide what to do with it, and he knew that could take months, if she ever did anything with it at all.
A sense of peace came over him, and he closed his eyes as he tilted his face toward the sky. It began to rain, and he normally didn’t like the feel of the raindrops on his skin. But today, he let them wash him clean, and he thanked the Lord for the peace and comfort, even if it only lasted for that moment.
