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

by Juliette Harper

  "Nice," Kate said. "I'll bet you're getting some glorious sunrises over those mountains."

  "Gorgeous," Jenny agreed, her voice cracking.

  "You gonna let me come inside?" Kate asked. "It's getting cold out here."

  Jenny stepped aside, but when Kate went through the door, she caught her hand, tried to speak, failed, and just shook her head.

  "I told you I'd come find you," Kate said. "That day up in the draw. You remember?"

  Jenny nodded.

  “Well, I’m here, and we're going to figure this all out. Now, please God, tell me you've got a pot of coffee made."

  At that Jenny let out a sobbing laugh, bringing her sister's hand to her lips and kissing it. "Of course I have the coffee made," she whispered, adding. "I'm so glad you're here."

  Kate squeezed Jenny's hand as she leaned in and kissed her sister's forehead. "Where else would I be?" she asked. "Come on. Pour me a cup of coffee."

  Busying herself in the kitchen gave Jenny time to regain her composure, which is what Kate had intended. For her part, she pulled the screen away from the fire and added a log to the blaze.

  When Jenny came into the living room and handed her a steaming cup, Kate asked, "How long have you rented this place for?"

  "Originally a week," Jenny said, "but I called the guy today and paid for another five days starting Saturday.”

  "Why just five more days and not another week?” Kate asked.

  "Because it would take me two days to drive back to Texas before my 14 days is up," Jenny said.

  Kate shook her head. “I’ll be damned,” she said. “You remembered."

  "Of course I remembered," Jenny said. "I wouldn't do anything to risk us losing the Rocking L. Now, sit down before you drop. You look exhausted."

  They each settled into the chairs by the fire. And Kate took a sip of her coffee, closing her eyes in appreciation when she tasted the strong brew. "You always could make a good cup of coffee," she said.

  “I should be able to,” Jenny said. “You’re the one who taught me how.”

  They sat in companionable silence listening to the fire crackle until Jenny said simply, "Tell me."

  "We buried George Fisk this morning."

  Jenny sighed. "God love him," she said. "He'd been living on borrowed time for weeks. How's Pauline?"

  “Holding up,” Kate said. "Clara and the ladies are taking good care of her."

  "And Lenore?"

  "Just grateful for the time she had with her father there at the end," Kate answered.

  "Did Elizabeth go to the service?"

  "Yes," Kate said, "but not where anyone could see her."

  Another silence fell, and then Jenny said in a low, cautious tone, "How is he?"

  "Hurt. Angry. Confused. Sorry as hell about what happened.”

  Jenny blew out a breath. "Lot of that going around. How did you figure it all out?"

  "The tracks in the dirt at the barn," Kate said. "You backed out of there pretty fast."

  "Josh told you what I saw?”

  Kate nodded. "He said he was putting one of the swings for the playground together. The bolt was stripped. He lost his temper and threw the whole thing across the room. It hit that stack of old oil cans and Josh had a cussing fit. That pretty much it?"

  "Yes," Jenny said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. "That's it."

  Kate put her cup down. “Have you been sitting up here being hard on yourself?” she asked.

  Jenny shook her head. “At first, yes, but not so much these past few days.”

  “Phil Baxter says he thinks you have post-traumatic stress from Daddy and Marino," Kate said. "That's why you panic."

  “Maybe,” Jenny said, her eyes still closed. "But if I do, I've had it for so long it's just a part of who I am now, and that's the problem. Who I am. Not who Josh is."

  Kate studied her sister’s face in the flickering light. "Have you been sleeping?" she asked.

  "Better than you might think," Jenny said. “I think it's the mountain air. What about you?"

  "Last night was bad," Kate admitted. "Jake got me to take one of those damned pills."

  Jenny opened her eyes, drawing her brows together in concern. "And now?" she asked.

  "I'm tired," Kate said. "It's been a long day."

  "Then we should go to bed," Jenny said, sitting up. "We can talk about all this in the morning."

  Kate looked like she was going to argue, and then seemed to think better of it. “For once," she said, "I'm going to admit you’re right, but don’t tell anyone I said that.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Jenny chuckled.

  “Where do you want me to bunk?"

  "The room next to mine," Jenny said. "I . . . I want you close by."

  "I'm not going anywhere," Kate promised. "Don't worry about that. Just let me get my bags out of the car." She stood up and gasped as her shoulder protested the sudden movement.

  Jenny put her hand on Kate's arm, feeling the muscles. "My God, Katie," she said. "They're locked up tight as a drum. How long has it been like this?"

  "All day," Kate said through gritted teeth.

  "Come with me," Jenny ordered. She led her sister into the oversized bathroom that included a huge walk-in shower with multiple heads.

  "The water pressure is unbelievable," Jenny said, "and the water is good and hot. It'll help those muscle spasms. Did you bring the liniment?"

  Kate nodded. "In my bag," she said. "Help me out of this, will you?"

  Jenny undid the buckle on the broad belt around Kate's waist and eased the padded cuff off her wrist. "Can you manage the shirt?" she asked.

  When Kate shook her head, Jenny helped her undo the buttons and slip the cloth over her shoulder revealing the tangled mass of scar tissue that extended down onto her upper arm. No matter how many times Jenny saw the remnants of Kate’s gunshot wound, the pale, gnarled cords of flesh still shocked her.

  “Can you take it from here?” she asked.

  "Yes," Kate said. "I'm okay now."

  "There's a robe behind the door," Jenny said. "I'll put your things in your room. It's the door on the right at the end of the hall."

  After 15 minutes under the pounding, steamy spray, the muscles in Kate's shoulder began to slowly relax. She sighed in relief as the painful tension loosened, but stayed under the water a few minutes longer for good measure.

  When she got out of the shower, Kate discovered Jenny had put the bottle of liniment just inside the door. Drying herself with a large, fluffy towel, Kate applied a thick coating of the warming salve before slipping into the robe and stepping out in the hall.

  The light was on in the room Jenny had indicated she should take, and Kate found her own pajamas laid out on the bed, which had been turned down. The door across the hall was half open, but the light wasn't on. When Kate got under the covers and switched off the lamp, Jenny's voice carried across to her in the darkness. "Katie?"

  "Yes, honey?"

  "I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

  "I know that."

  "I can't be with him right now."

  "I know that, too."

  Several seconds passed, and then Jenny asked, "Was it hard for you?"

  "Was what hard for me?"

  "Letting Jake see your scars for the first time."

  In the dark, Kate frowned. Where did that come from? "I was nervous," she said simply.

  "What did he say?"

  "He said there was nothing about me that he would ever see as ugly."

  Jenny didn't speak for a long while. Kate thought she might have fallen asleep, and then Jenny’s voice came out of the dark, sounding hollow and lost. "I have the kind of scars you can't see."

  Kate considered the words. "And you're afraid those scars are too ugly for Josh to deal with?” she asked.

  "I'm afraid they're too ugly for me to deal with,” Jenny answered, her voice rough with unshed tears.

  Kate started to speak again, but Jenny cut he
r off.

  "Good night, Katie."

  With tears in her own eyes, Kate said, "Good night, honey. Call me if you need me."

  The next morning, Kate awakened early, dressed quietly, and went into the kitchen to make coffee. She slipped into one of Jenny’s shirt jackets and carried her cup out onto the cabin’s back porch. The sun was just coming up over the mountains, and the air was so clean it tasted good.

  Kate sat down in one of the rocking chairs scattered across the porch and set the rails in gentle motion as she watched the sunrise. Behind her, she heard a floorboard creak and then Jenny’s voice commanded softly, “Lean forward.”

  When Kate complied, Jenny placed a soft blanket over her shoulder. “It’ll seize up again if you let it get cold,” Jenny said, adding as an afterthought, “and good morning.”

  “Good morning to you, Mother Hen,” Kate said, smiling.

  “How are you today?” Jenny asked.

  “Much better,” Kate said. “That shower is amazing.”

  “I thought it might help,” Jenny said. “You want some breakfast?”

  “In a little while,” Kate said. “Let’s sit out here and have our coffee.”

  Jenny disappeared into the house and came back with her own cup, pulling one of the rockers close and matching the rhythm of Kate’s chair. The imagery was not lost on her. “Look at us,” she said. “We’ve turned into a couple of old women sitting on a porch in rocking chairs.”

  “Wore out more than old,” Kate said, “but I’ve always loved a good rocking chair. Makes the world slow down.”

  “I need it to slow down,” Jenny said bitterly.

  Kate stared out across the meadow. “Don’t go blaming yourself for all this,” she said. “Life just happens. We do the best we can with what it throws at us.”

  “I blame myself for letting things with Josh happen as fast as they did,” Jenny said. “There was so much going on at the ranch and he was helpful and willing . . . and good looking. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “About what?” Kate asked.

  Jenny looked over at her. “For starters, that I am an extremely difficult woman,” she said honestly.

  Kate grinned. “I wouldn’t say extremely.”

  “Lord,” Jenny said, rolling her eyes. “Sometimes I think you’d defend me if I committed cold-blooded murder.”

  “I imagine I would,” Kate admitted. “You wouldn’t kill anybody unless they needed killing.”

  Jenny smiled. “Thank you for that loyalty, honey, but you know I’m right. No man should have to be worried that the woman in his life is going to take off at the slightest sign of trouble.”

  Kate sighed and looked back toward the mountains. “And you don’t see yourself being able to get past that?”

  “I thought I was past it,” Jenny said seriously, “but here we sit. Josh has been nothing but good to me. He’s a fine man, he’s a wonderful partner, he’s incredible in bed, and I still ran. Without a second thought. I’m always going to be me, Katie. He wants a woman who’ll feel safe and settle down and give him a family. I don’t think I can do that. I know I can’t do it right now. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Kate said, “and I can’t find fault with what you’re saying, not when Jake tells everyone he had to drop a mountain on my head to get my attention.”

  “How is it with the two of you?” Jenny asked curiously. “You’ve been alone a lot longer than I have. It must be strange being in a relationship.”

  Kate considered the question. “It’s good because we’re not crowding each other,” she said. “I don’t want to get married and neither does he.”

  “Really?” Jenny said with surprise. “Jake doesn’t want to get married?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Kate said. “I got that conversation over with pretty quick. I needed to know what he was thinking.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “By telling him the truth,” Kate said. “There’s no one else I want to be with but him, but I’m not the marrying kind. Frankly, I think he was relieved to hear me say it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jake is incredibly involved in his work,” Kate said. “He’s already getting invitations to join digs in Central America. What he’s found on the ranch has catapulted him to the top of his field. I want him to be able to seize those opportunities and feel like he’s free to come and go as he pleases. He knows I’ll be right there on the Rocking L when he gets back.”

  “And that’s enough for you?”

  “More than enough,” Kate said honestly. “More than I ever expected to be comfortable with to tell you the truth. You know I’m a lone wolf, honey. Jake’s actually not all that different, he just likes people more than I do.”

  Jenny smiled at her fondly. “You like people,” she said, “you’re just particular about which ones.”

  “That I am,” Kate agreed, getting to her feet. “Come on. If we’re going to continue solving the problems of the world, we need bacon and eggs.”

  Once they were seated over their plates, Kate looked over the table at Jenny. “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I want to spend the next few days right here with you,” Jenny said. “Can’t we just stop for that long, Katie? Sit out on that porch in the morning and by the fire at night and just be with each other? I don’t feel so damned complicated when it’s just the two of us.”

  Kate nodded. “I think I’d like that,” she said. “I didn’t realize until I woke up this morning just how tired I am either. All the stuff we have to deal with back home isn’t going anywhere.”

  Jenny sighed. “That’s the good news and the bad news,” she said.

  “Come again?”

  “What’s waiting for me is asking Josh to move out of my place.”

  Kate shoved her eggs around on her plate. “Not really,” she said. “I had a message from Mandy waiting for me when I got off the plane. He’s already gone.”

  A look of pained grief washed over Jenny’s face. “I know I’ve hurt him,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “You’ll have to talk to him when you get back,” Kate said. “You owe him that.”

  Jenny nodded. “I do. And I will,” she said. “But I’m not ready to face him yet. I have a lot to think about.”

  “I may have brought something with me that will help with that,” Kate said.

  As she explained about Irene’s notebooks, Jenny’s expression grew more and more excited. “Where are they?” she asked.

  “In that Eagle backpack you put on the floor of my room,” Kate grinned. “Didn’t you wonder what I was doing carrying that God awful thing?”

  “I did,” Jenny laughed, “but I decided not to ask. Can I go get them?”

  “Of course,” Kate said. “Take them in the living room where we can spread out. I’ll make another pot of coffee and we’ll look at them together.”

  107

  In later years, when they were old women sitting on the porch of the Rocking L, Kate and Jenny would describe that day as the first time they really met their mother. Neither of them had a clear idea of what to expect in the pages of Irene Lockwood's notebooks, but what they found forever altered their perception of the woman they thought they knew.

  Instead of existing as the trapped wife of a controlling and abusive man, Irene's daughters discovered she led a full and rich life completely apart from anything Langston said or did. The notebooks, which were meticulously tagged and dated with small, white cards labeled in Irene's fine script, started just after she left Boston to come to Texas in 1975.

  Kate and Jenny arranged the books in order, and opened the first one only to discover that their mother, although engaged to staunch Republican George Fisk at the time, made secret donations to Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign. That was only the first of Irene's quiet rebellions carried out under the noses of the men who thought they told her what to do.

  In 1977, Irene recorded the first ordination of
a female Episcopal priest adding, "Father will have a heart attack." That same year, she placed a bet on Seattle Slew in the Kentucky Derby, and privately mourned the death of Elvis Presley. She filled the margins with song lyrics and movie lines that came to her mind on any given day and composed her own short verses, some lyrical and haunting, others droll and bordering on the bawdy.

  Irene reserved four pages at the back of the book for observations about her first pregnancy. The night Kate was born, in a hand clearly betraying her physical fatigue, Irene wrote, "I have a daughter. I had thought I would name her Amanda, but I can see in her eyes she's a Kate, strong and resolute."

  On Jenny's birthday, Irene described her second daughter as, "More thoughtful than Katie. Is is possible to look at a baby and know she will be moody?" Then came Mandy. "This is my Amanda," Irene wrote. "She has my sister's smile and her father's eyes."

  Had they read those words only a few months earlier, Kate and Jenny would have thought their mother was speaking of Langston, but now they knew Irene had looked down into her baby's face only to see Phil Baxter looking up at her.

  The greatest shock to Kate and Jenny both was the revelation that Irene lost a baby when Kate was less than a year old. Unlike the incandescent happiness with which she wrote of her daughters, Irene said bitterly of her boy, "Langston's son was born and died today. Thank God. There must be no more tyrannical Lockwood men."

  But Phil Baxter had been right when he told Kate and Mandy that the notebooks Irene kept were not journals. The paper, which was creamy and fine, did not have conventional lines, but was, instead, covered in a fine blue grid. Irene arranged her thoughts in groups, connecting ideas and related information with arrows and boxes as if she were drawing a flowchart, only to suddenly diverge from any suggestion of formality to sketch an interesting person she saw on a city street.

  Jenny was most attracted to her mother's casual drawings. Rendered with a simple ballpoint pen, the images were not remarkable for any suggestion of tone or perspective, but rather for the insightfulness of their content. Rough and more suggestive than refined, Irene's eye caught hats at rakish angles, hands animated in conversation, and the shoulders of a tired man bent against the wind.