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

by Juliette Harper

  "No, honey. What?"

  "She said, 'Katie, meet your best friend.' And she is, Jake. I don't think I can stand it if she goes away again."

  "You're not going to have to stand it," he said, kissing her temple.

  "I'm going to Denver," she said quietly. "I should have cell reception, but just in case, there's a list of five cabin rentals locked in the top drawer of my desk. The key is in the liquor cabinet across the room under the brandy bottle. If you need me, call the numbers on the sheet. We'll be at one of those places."

  "Thank you.”

  "I didn't want to go off and not let you have some idea where I'll be.”

  "That's not what I'm thanking you for," he said. "I'm thanking you for trusting me."

  "Silly man," she mumbled as the pain pill finally took effect and eased her into sleep.

  "Happy man," Jake whispered as he gingerly reached over to the bedside table and turned off the light.

  Kate and Jake went into town in separate vehicles the next day. After the funeral, they said their good-byes out of sight around the corner of the church.

  Before the service, Kate had taken Clara Wyler aside and said, “I’m leaving town as soon as this is over to catch a plane in San Antonio late this afternoon. What was it you wanted to tell me before I go?”

  Glancing around to make sure they were alone, Clara said, “You come to the hotel after we leave the graveyard. I’ll make an excuse that I need to run home and get a fresh tank of oxygen. Wait for me if you get there first.”

  Clara had an apartment at the old Hotel Los Rios, a stately Spanish colonial structure that now loosely served as “assisted living” for the residents. She and Kate pulled into the parking lot at the same time, and Kate followed the old woman down the hall to her first-floor residence.

  Once inside, Clara said, “Open that closet there, honey, and take down the file box up on the top shelf. The blue one. It’s not very heavy. You can do it one handed.”

  Kate did as she was told, gingerly testing the weight of the box and then carefully edging it off the shelf and allowing momentum to carry the container to the floor.

  “Open it,” Clara ordered.

  Taking off the lid, Kate looked at the contents and then said, “Well, I will just be damned.” The box was filled with roughly two-dozen leather bound notebooks, each embossed in gold with the initials INL. “I’ll have you know we tore the damn ranch house up yesterday looking for these things,” she said.

  “How did you know about them?” Clara asked.

  “Phil told us,” Kate replied. “He thought there might be something in there that would help Jenny.”

  “Then he’s a smart man for a Baxter,” Clara said curtly. “Your Mama gave me those notebooks the week she died. She told me to keep them until I thought the time was right for you girls to see them. Her exact words were, ‘A time will come when the girls will need to know who I really was. When that happens, give them these books.’”

  “Have you read them?” Kate asked.

  Clara shook her head. “Irene didn’t leave them to me,” she said. “She left them to you all. Nobody has touched them since she put them in that box.”

  “I need to take these with me,” Kate said.

  “They’re yours,” Clara said. “Go ahead.”

  Kate frowned. “I need a bag.”

  “Look up there on the top shelf,” Clara said. “The high school band was selling backpacks a couple of years ago. I bought one just to help out and never used the fool thing. Take it.”

  Kate carefully placed the books in the black-and-gold backpack emblazoned with the words, “Eagle Pride,” and tested the weight. “It’s good,” she said. “I’ll check my regular bag and carry this on. God love you, Clara. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  “Horsefeathers,” Clara said, but she was smiling. “Now get on the road and go bring your sister home. Scoot.”

  105

  Josh sat alone in the living room of the home he’d thought of as “theirs” just a few days ago. Now, with each passing moment, he increasingly saw it as “hers.”

  When Kate didn’t come back to the ranch from George Fisk’s funeral, Josh knew what it meant. But no one would tell him where she’d gone.

  He’d never make a scene in front of Sissy and Missy, but when the girls went outside with Joe Bob to pick tomatoes, Josh turned on Mandy in her kitchen.

  “I cannot believe you’re doing this to me,” he said, hurt and anger evident in his voice.

  Although her expression showed how deep the remark cut, Mandy squared her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Josh,” she said, “but we can’t tell you where they are.”

  “Because you know I’ll go to her and try to make it right?” he asked indignantly. “How is that a bad thing?”

  “Katie doesn’t think that would be a good idea.”

  And that’s what did it. Those were the words that finally pushed him too far.

  “Katie doesn’t think it’s a good idea,” he said in a low voice, struggling to control himself. Wheeling around to confront Jake, he said, “The last time I checked, I wasn’t sleeping with Katie. Oh, but wait, I guess that means you do what she says, too, doesn’t it, Professor?”

  A muscle twitched in Jake’s jaw, but his voice was calm. “When she’s right, yes,” he said. “If you go looking for Jenny and act the way you’re acting right now, you’ll never get her back.”

  Phil moved toward his nephew. “Son, please sit down,” he said. “You don’t know everything that’s going on here.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Josh snapped.

  “It means if Jenny doesn’t come home before a week from Saturday,” Dusty said flatly, “my brother is planning to ask the judge to review Langston’s will.”

  Josh looked at them all incredulously. “This is about the ranch?” he said. “You people are supposed to be my friends. My family. My life is falling apart and you’re worried about the damned ranch?”

  “It’s not a little thing,” Jake said. “Katie has to get Jenny back here, then you all can work this out. If you go charging after them, it will only make things worse. Whether you like it or not, Katie is right.”

  Days of frustration and worry rose in Josh’s system like bile. “You know what?” he said. “You can all go to hell.” He strode rapidly toward the door, then paused with his hand on the knob and looked back at them. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said in a strangled voice. “I tried to love that woman. I just didn’t realize I was attempting the impossible.”

  With that, he pushed out the door. Through the window, they watched him stride rapidly across the drive to his truck. Mandy started to go after him, but Phil stopped her with a gentle hand. She turned and looked at him imploringly. “Daddy, please. We can’t let him go like this!”

  “He’s not going to listen to us, honey,” Phil said. “He thinks we’ve picked sides.”

  “Haven’t we?” Dusty asked.

  They all turned to look at her with shocked expressions. Nonplussed, she went on. “The day I got back to town a deputy sheriff tried to get me to talk ranch business with him on Main Street,” she said. “I told him when I sign on with an outfit, I ride for the brand. That’s what we’re all doing and we might as well own up to it.”

  Jake sat down heavily at the table with her, and after a second, Mandy and Phil joined them. “Dusty isn’t wrong,” Jake said finally. “Jenny has to come back, for all kinds of reasons.”

  Phil absently drummed his fingers on the tabletop and then said softly, “I don’t want you all to get it in your head that you're betraying Josh. I know that’s how he feels right now, but he’s not looking at the big picture.”

  “What is the big picture, Daddy?” Mandy asked miserably. “Because I don’t think I’m seeing it either.”

  Phil smiled sadly. “Do you know what collateral damage is, honey?”

  She shook her head, but before Phil could answer, Jake said, “Collat
eral damage is when some of the good guys have to die so you can win the war.”

  Mandy regarded them both with horror. “What are you two talking about?”

  “They’re talking about being practical,” Dusty said. “Katie went up there to get Jenny because she can’t stand the thought of her not being on this place. That would cripple Katie more than any bullet ever could, but the cold hard truth is that if Jenny doesn’t come home, you all lose the Rocking L.”

  “Which would also kill Katie,” Jake said in a tired voice.

  “Exactly,” Dusty said. “Josh can get pissed off at Katie all he wants to, but thanks to my son of a bitch of a brother, she’s not working with a lot of good options here.”

  “It’s not just her,” Jake said. “The Rocking L affects more people’s lives than it did when you all came home a year-and-a-half ago. Including those little girls out there in the garden with Joe Bob.”

  Mandy looked at them all, tears now flowing down her cheeks. “There has to be a way to make this all right. And besides, you can tell Rafe you’ll tell everyone what he did to you.”

  “I can and I will if it comes to that,” Dusty said. “But there’s no guarantee that will stop him. A bluff can go either way, Mandy. That’s why we haven’t confronted him yet. I might just make Rafe mad enough that he’ll take the Rocking L down with him just because he can.”

  “Dusty’s right, honey,” Phil said gently. “Confronting her brother is dangerous ground. The best way to counter his threats is for Jenny to come home before the deadline. That’s the surest way for you all to keep the ranch and everything that comes with it.” He hesitated and then added, “But that may not include Josh right now.”

  “But we don’t know what Jenny has decided!” Mandy said desperately. “Maybe this will just all blow over.”

  Phil took hold of her hand. “If it was really all going to blow over, Jenny would have come home by now. Josh is getting angry at us because he sees the handwriting on the wall, too. But we didn’t do this. Jenny did. We’re just dealing with the fallout until she comes back home and cleans up her own mess.”

  Although Josh was sitting alone just up the hill and never heard his uncle’s words, his own thoughts followed the same path. He might not understand Jenny, but he had been living with her for almost a year; he knew her, and that made him feel like a condemned man watching the clock tick down.

  The longer Jenny stayed away, and the more time she had to think, the greater the chance that they were over. Was he just supposed to sit here and wait for her to tell him to leave? Or worse yet, for her to send Kate to do her dirty work for her?

  “I love you, Jenny,” he muttered to himself, “but a man has to have his pride.”

  He got up and restlessly wandered through the rooms, his fingers trailing over objects. In the studio, he looked at Jenny’s drawings, moved as always by the depth of the images. She channeled all the emotion she couldn’t face in life straight into her artwork. It was all there — pain, confusion, insight, love.

  She was a complicated woman. He’d believed with all his soul that at the heart of that complication lay a simplicity he could reach. But nothing he’d done to help her feel safe and loved could get through to that soft place she protected with bands of steel.

  Langston Lockwood’s unfinished portrait of Alice Browning still sat on an easel in the corner. Beside it was the oil Jenny was painting of her father.

  She sent her brush down into dark places to capture the man. The Lockwood patriarch glared out from the canvas with dark eyes alight with intelligence and a fire Josh could only describe as evil.

  Jenny had chosen to paint Langston without his trademark Stetson, opting instead to make his graying hair windblown and wild. The setting was Baxter’s Draw against the dark sky of a raging thunderstorm that matched the electric energy roiling off the subject.

  Josh felt his skin crawl every time he looked at the damned thing. He took no comfort from the memory of the day Jenny showed it to Kate. Her only remark had been, “My God. Those are Daddy’s eyes alright.”

  Maybe they were all crazy. Josh didn’t know, but he’d had enough. From the moment he’d realized what Jenny had seen in the barn and how she reacted to it, a single line from a comedy video they’d watched on YouTube kept running through his mind. “When someone wants to walk out of your life, let them go.”

  Jenny hadn’t walked, she’d run away in the night without so much as giving him a chance to speak for himself. It didn’t matter if Josh understood why she’d gone or not. It wasn’t right, and he wasn’t going to beg to stay.

  “You win, Langston,” he said to the portrait. “I’ve been fighting your ghost from the first day I laid eyes on your daughter, and now I’m done.”

  With that, Josh quietly and efficiently began to pack — not just his clothes, but his life. He methodically went through every room removing his possessions. When he was done, he carried the boxes out and placed them in the bed of his truck.

  “I’m sorry, son,” a voice said from beneath the live oaks.

  Josh turned to find Phil standing on the path leading up from behind the barn. Without speaking, Josh took out his keychain, removed a single key and handed it to Phil. “I don’t want her thinking I can get back in,” he said.

  Shaking his head sadly, Phil took the key. “The two of you are still going to have to talk,” he said. “This doesn’t have to be forever.”

  Josh pushed his hat back and ran his hand through his hair. “Maybe it does, Uncle Phil,” he said. “Everybody has been talking about what Jenny wants. I’m going back to the old home place to think about what I want.”

  “That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Phil said. “Get your temper under control so you can really listen to her when she comes back.”

  “I’m not sure I want to listen to her,” Josh said.

  “Right now, I’m sure you don’t,” Phil said, “but you may change your mind. Can I come check on you tomorrow?”

  “Do what you like,” Josh said, getting in the truck and starting the engine. “It’s not like you don’t know how to get to Baxter land.”

  Phil watched as Josh drove out the gate before turning to walk slowly back down the trail to Mandy’s house.

  When Kate got off the airplane in Denver, she turned on her cellphone and found a text message from Mandy. “Josh moved out. Call me.”

  Groaning inwardly, Kate stepped into a quiet area away from the crowd and hit a speed dial button. Mandy answered on the first ring.

  “What in the hell happened?” Kate asked.

  Mandy described the scene in her kitchen and then the exchange Phil had with his nephew before Josh drove away. When she was finished, Kate said, “You can’t blame the man.”

  “I don’t,” Mandy said, her voice strained. “But I hate this.”

  “I hate it, too, Baby Sister,” Kate said.

  She heard Jake’s voice in the background and then he came on the line. “How you holding up, honey?” he asked.

  “I was doing better until I heard all this,” Kate said. “Are you going to try to talk to him? He does work for you.”

  “I’m going to give it a day or two,” Jake said. “Let him cool off.”

  “Good idea,” Kate replied. “Let me talk to Mandy.”

  “Okay,” Jake said. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Mandy came back on the line. “What are you going to do now?” she asked.

  “I’m going to rent a car and go find our sister,” Kate said. “I’m sorry you’re having to deal with everything down there.”

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of my turn after everything you and Jenny have handled for me?” Mandy asked.

  Kate smiled. “I’ll let you know when I find her. I love you, Baby Sister.”

  “I love you, Katie,” Mandy said. “And tell Jenny I love her. We all do. Tell her I said to come home.”

  106

  Kate's flight had taken a littl
e more than two hours. By 7 o'clock she had grabbed a sandwich, rented a car, and was following directions on her iPad to the first of the five cabins she needed to check.

  After studying the locations of each rental and considering the time of day, Kate decided Jenny would have preferred to be a ways out of the city. The third cabin on the list was 20 miles outside of Denver. All the others were closer to town.

  Kate figured she might as well tackle the farthest one first, and if she struck out, she’d get a room for the night and start again in the morning.

  But luck was with her. When she turned down the small dirt road, she saw lights at the end of the drive and Jenny's SUV parked under a covered carport off to one side of a good-sized log home.

  Kate cut the engine and stepped out of the rent car just as the door of the cabin opened. Jenny stood silhouetted against the rectangle of light.

  "How did you find me?" she asked, as Kate approached her.

  "Mandy looked at the browser history on your computer," Kate said, stopping in front of Jenny. “Apparently whatever you use syncs up across all your machines no matter where you are. She found the websites you looked at when you were trying to find a place to stay up here.”

  The corner of Jenny’s mouth twisted into a smirk. “When did our little sister get so smart?”

  “Beats the hell of me.”

  Neither woman spoke for a moment, and then Jenny looked down. "You mad at me?" she asked in a small voice.

  "For what?" Kate asked, still not moving.

  "Oh, let's see," Jenny answered. "Hiding cash, lying to you, running off in the middle of the night, not answering your messages, and making you come all the way up here to find me."

  Kate shrugged. “It’s your money same as mine,” she said. “What happened the other night blindsided you, so in my book that doesn’t count as a lie.” She glanced around in the deepening twilight. “And as for coming up here, it looks like pretty country. Is that water I hear?"

  Jenny looked up. The porch light glinted on the tears in her eyes. "There's a trout stream over that way,” she said.