“You want to come inside?” he asked.
“Can we just sit out here? It’s a pretty day and I’ve been riding in a car all morning. I could use the air.”
“Sure,” he said. “I’ve got a pot of coffee on. You want a cup?”
“Please.”
While Josh disappeared inside, Jenny looked around the yard. The signs of diligent labor were evident in the newly cut brush, neatly mown grass, and freshly painted yard fence. As he joined her again, she said, “You’ve been busy.”
“Kept my mind off . . . things,” he said, sitting down in the chair across from her.
Jenny took a sip of coffee, then stared down at the cup, turning it awkwardly in her hands. “I owe you an apology,” she said finally.
“I thought that was my line,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirking in a little smile.
She looked up, saw his expression, and felt some of the tension ease out of her muscles. “You didn’t do anything,” she said in a more natural voice. “You didn’t even know I was there. “
“I wouldn’t have done it if you’d been there,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I know how you are about that kind of thing.”
“But that’s just it, isn’t it, Josh?” she asked. “You should be able to throw a mad fit in front of me over a little thing and not have me run several states away.”
He shook his head. “How far did you go?”
“Colorado.”
“Why there?” he asked.
“I didn’t plan it,” Jenny replied. “I just started driving and looked up about Lamesa and realized I didn’t know where I was going. I decided to drive to Roswell and spend the night and figure out what to do.”
“See any UFOs?” he asked.
“Watched a Jaws marathon and ordered room service.”
“Even Jaws 3?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Damn,” he deadpanned, “you were desperate.”
In spite of herself, she laughed. He grinned. “At least I can still make you laugh.”
“You can,” she said softly, “but, honey, I don’t think we can laugh our way out of this one.”
He sighed and rubbed at his jaw. “I guess we can’t,” he conceded. “So what are we going to do?”
Tears came to her eyes, but Jenny kept her voice steady. “Josh, I can’t be with you right now,” she said.
She saw him clench his jaw as his own eyes filled. “Are you ever going to be able to be with me?” he asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said, “but I don’t think you want to live with me and always have to be walking on eggshells, do you?”
Josh shook his head. “No,” he said. “That’s not good for either one of us.” Swallowing hard he went on. “You hurt me running off like that, Jenny. I didn’t deserve you doing that.”
“No,” she said, “you didn’t. And I’m sorry. You’re a good man, Josh, and you’ve always been good to me.”
“But not good enough,” he said bitterly.
She got up out of her chair and knelt beside him, putting her hand on his knee. “More than good enough,” she said. “This isn’t about anything you did, not anymore. This is about me and what I can and can’t do. I don’t know who I am, honey. There’s just been too much that’s happened since I came home. I need to figure that all out. I can’t do that and be with you. I don’t have that much emotional energy.”
“Does it matter that I love you?” he asked thickly.
Jenny put her hand on his cheek, feeling the cool, smooth skin of his cleanly shaven face. “Of course it matters,” she said. “Love isn’t the problem, Josh.”
Their eyes met and it seemed that in the middle of the pain and sadness they both felt, the only thing they could do was reach for one another. Josh kissed her like a man drowning, a desperate caress Jenny softly gentled until she felt the warning edge of passion rising within her. She drew back from him then, even though staying would have been the easiest thing in the world. “We’re not doing this, cowboy,” she whispered against his lips.
“But that’s the part we get right,” he said, nuzzling against her.
“And we’re not using it to hide all the parts we get wrong,” she answered, lightly kissing him again before she pulled completely away. Reaching in the pocket of her jeans, she brought out his engagement ring. “I need to give this back to you,” she said.
His eyes grew defiant. “I don’t want it back,” he said. “I won’t take it.”
Unwilling for the moment they’d just shared to turn into a scene, Jenny said patiently. “That’s okay. I’ll just put it here on the table.”
Laying the ring down, Jenny stood, but Josh rose with her, taking hold of her arm. “Please don’t do this,” he pleaded.
Taking a deep breath, she answered him firmly. “And don’t you do this. Don’t beg me, Josh. It’s not who you are. It’s not who I want you to be.”
Still holding her arm, he looked down and nodded. “Okay.”
Jenny put her hand over his and gently slid out of his grasp. “I know it sounds like a line from a damned soap opera,” she said, “but we are friends, Josh, and you’re part of life at the Rocking L. Please don’t stay away from the ranch or from the Institute because of what’s happened between us.”
“That may take a little while to manage,” he whispered.
“Okay,” she said, kissing his bowed head. “You take the time you need. I have to go now. Are you going to be alright over here by yourself? Do I need to ask Jake to come over?”
Josh shook his head. “I’m going to go help Uncle Phil down at the river today,” he said. “I can cut across my place to get down there. I . . . I just don’t want to see everyone right now.”
“I understand,” Jenny said. She took a step to leave and then turned back. “This isn’t goodbye, Josh.”
He raised his head to look at her. “Then what is it?”
She smiled at him sadly. “What do you always tell me about a cowboy getting thrown?”
“There never was a horse couldn’t be rode, never was a cowboy couldn’t be throwed,” he answered.
“We’ve both gotten bucked off,” she said. “This is the time when we get back up.”
“First time we met, you were the one that got throwed,” he pointed out.
“I know,” Jenny said, “and I let you put me back up on that horse instead of doing it myself. As much as you’re not going to like hearing this, Daddy was right. I have to learn to saddle my own horse in life before I can ride alongside anyone . . . including you.”
“I’m not just going to sit around and wait,” Josh said, his voice taking on a stronger note.
“I don’t want you to,” Jenny said. “In fact, I’ll be mad as hell at you if you do. You hear me, Josh Baxter?”
In spite of his roiling emotions, Josh smiled. “Quit your squawking, woman,” he said. “I hear you.”
He watched her walk down the steps, climb in her SUV, and drive out the front gate. Turning, he picked up the diamond ring she’d put on the table and slipped it in his pocket. Her coffee cup was sitting there as well, the liquid still hot. Something about that tiny detail of normal life was just too much for Josh. He sank into the chair, and leaning his head back, closed his eyes, as tears streaked his cheeks.
He’d do what she told him to and get back up, but for right now, with all the wind knocked out of him, Josh Baxter couldn’t do anything but sit on that porch.
When Jenny walked into the kitchen at the main ranch house, Kate didn’t even ask. She just held out her good arm and drew her sister into a hug. “Awful?” Kate asked quietly.
“God awful,” Jenny affirmed.
“Come on,” Kate said, “sit down and let me get you some coffee.”
“What time is it?” Jenny asked.
Kate glanced at the clock. “About 2 o’clock. You want some whiskey in it anyway?”
“Dear God, yes,” Jenny said, pulling back a chair and sitting down at the table
.
They heard the front door open and Mandy’s voice called out, “Hello?”
“In the kitchen, Baby Sister,” Kate answered.
When Mandy appeared from the hall, Kate was standing with a bottle of bourbon poised over a coffee cup. “Uh oh,” Mandy said, looking at Jenny. “I’m guessing you talked to Josh.”
Laughing, Jenny stood up to embrace her sister. “I did,” she said. “And I am so glad to see you I can’t stand it. How are you, honey?”
“Better now that you’re home,” Mandy said, hugging Jenny back. “And really better all the way around. It’s hard to stay depressed with two little red-headed girls galloping all over the place.”
“You want some coffee?” Kate asked.
“Yes, please,” Mandy said, “but without the whiskey.”
When they were all seated at the table, Mandy said, “So how did it go, really?”
“As well as could be expected,” Jenny sighed. “He’s hurt. We’re both sad, but I think in his heart of hearts he knows this is the right thing. I told him we all want him in our lives.”
“How did he react to that?” Kate asked.
“He needs some time,” Jenny said. “We have to let him do it his way. But I really don’t want to talk about this anymore. Not when we have a big surprise for you, Mandy.”
Mandy’s face brightened. “You brought me a surprise?”
“We did,” Kate said. “Come in the study.”
As the three of them walked down the hall and into the tiny room, Mandy said, “I’m still not used to being able to come in here whenever I want to. Daddy was such a bear about this room.”
“Daddy was a bear about a lot of things,” Kate said, opening the roll top desk, “but now you’re going to get to meet the one who was really strong.”
Mandy’s eyes tracked to the desktop and widened when she saw the leather notebooks Kate had arranged there. “Oh my God,” she said. “You found Mama’s notebooks! Where were they?”
“Clara Wyler had them,” Jenny said. “She gave them to Katie right before she left to fly up and find me. I hope you’re not mad at us for looking at them without you.”
Running her fingers reverently over the gold embossed initials on the cover of one of the books, Mandy said, “I’m not mad. Oh my God, Jenny, it’s like Mama knew that you needed her and she came to you.”
Kate picked up one of the books and undid the leather tie. “They’re all in chronological order, but I want to show you something first.” She flipped through the pages and handed the book to Mandy, who rapidly scanned the creamy white card tucked tightly between the pages. She let out a happy squeal.
“Mama knew Jacqueline Onassis?!” she cried. “Oh my God. I have died and gone to heaven.”
“What are you showing her?” Jenny asked.
“They broke ground for the Kennedy Library in Boston in 1977,” Kate said. “Mama was invited. Her sister Amanda forwarded the invitation to her. Jackie wrote a note on the card saying how much she would enjoy seeing Mama again.”
Jenny frowned. “But wasn’t Mrs. Kennedy a lot older than Mama?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “I looked it up. There was about a 20 year age difference.”
“How in the world did they know each other?” Mandy asked.
“Some family connection I guess,” Kate said. “Trust me, Baby Sister, you’re going to find out a lot about Mama in these books that none of us, Daddy included, ever knew.”
“Phil knew,” Mandy said, her eyes shining with happiness. “He told me we all have had the wrong idea about Mama. That she was nobody’s victim.”
“He’s right about that,” Jenny agreed. “See for yourself.”
For the rest of the afternoon, and for many afternoons to come, Irene Lockwood’s daughters sat together in the study with their mother’s notebooks, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying about the woman who had been taken from them far too soon. In those pages, and in conversation with Phil Baxter, they came to understand the gift of their mother’s self-sacrifice on their behalf.
One late night, when Kate sat alone in that room, she heard the ghostly sound of her father’s footsteps come to the threshold and stop as if the man himself stood there in the darkness, waiting.
“Go away, Daddy,” Kate said quietly, speaking to the formless blackness outside the room. “We’re done with you.”
After a few seconds, she heard the sound of those boots turning and disappearing down the passageway. Kate got up and extinguished the lamp, walking without fear of the night to the room where Jake lay sleeping.
As she climbed into bed, he came half awake and mumbled, “Were you talking to someone?”
“No, honey,” Kate said, lying down against his warm body, sighing as his arm came around her. “It was nobody.”
THE END
Part VI
Book 6 - Jenny’s Choice
112
Jenny Lockwood’s eyes scanned the fence line to her left looking for flaws in the rusty barbed wire. Although it was only 9:30 in the morning, she and Horsefly had left the barn just as dawn broke at 6:20. When she was a young teenager, being assigned the tedious job of riding fence was one of the many things she resented about life on the ranch. But in the weeks since her breakup with Josh Baxter, Jenny had come to appreciate the solitary hours in the saddle.
Horsefly was good company, and it wasn't long before Jenny was doing exactly what her sister Kate predicted she would do – engaging in long, one-sided conversations with the patient old horse. There was no particular degree of religion in Jenny's rearing, but she possessed the faith of a person born and raised in the country. She had witnessed far too many of nature's miracles not to believe that there was something greater than herself at work in the Universe.
While Jenny might have been uncomfortable with the idea of praying in a conventional way, talking to a horse was different. In the notebook she kept by her bed, Jenny reserved a few pages for quotations about horses. One of her favorites was an Arabian proverb. "The air of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears."
She couldn't be certain how much Horsefly understood the things she told him, but he listened without judgment. When he did offer a companionable snuffle, however, it always came at an apt time in her narrative, which made Jenny suspect he knew exactly what she was saying. At almost 25 years of age, the old horse had seen his fair share of human foolishness, but sometimes even the most patient creature has to put in his two cents worth.
Jenny knew she had a lot to talk about and to work out in her mind. She preferred to seek her therapy, however, in the fresh Texas air among the gnarled cedars and the rocky draws where the canyon wrens laughed as the day grew brighter. Had the tall, bewhiskered jackrabbits standing sentinel in the grass been outfitted with suits and watch chains, they could have passed for learned associates of Dr. Freud, an idea that made Jenny giggle aloud. Horsefly tossed his head approvingly at the sound. He'd never come right out and say so, but he privately nursed the notion that all humans should laugh more.
Like most of her generation, Jenny had put in her time with an actual psychologist, a kind woman in New York who knew nothing of life on a Texas ranch, but who came up with plenty of labels for Jenny's father, Langston Lockwood.
For all Jenny knew, the man had indeed suffered from borderline personality disorder – and narcissistic personality disorder – and all the other disorders the good doctor mentioned. But in the end, there was just one definitive thing to say about Langston: he was a thoroughgoing old bastard.
Jenny herself possessed too much of the strength of the Lockwoods not to defy him, to the point of leaving home at far too young an age and going to a city that terrified her in the beginning almost as much as her father did. That defiance, however, didn't spare her the scars of her upbringing that now made her react in knee jerk, reflexive ways to the pressures of life.
Six weeks earlier, when she witnessed a private and uncharacteristic burst of temper from Josh, her
reaction had been to steal away from the ranch in the dead of night. Holed up in a cabin in the Rockies, she decided to end their relationship. By the time she returned, however, Josh had already moved out. He went back to the old Baxter home place, which abutted the Rocking L on the west. Since then, there had been little contact between the two of them.
He continued to work as a photographer for the Langston Lockwood Institute for the Study of Mesoamerican History created more than a year earlier, but his assignments took him mainly into the cave network in Baxter's Draw. The subterranean complex was proving to be even more extensive than they'd first imagined. Professor Jake Martin and his interns were currently absorbed in creating a 3D model of the interior.
After the collapse of the cave entrance in the draw itself, the researchers used the "back door," which opened onto the South Llano River. That allowed Josh to cut across his own land and go to work without coming near the cluster of buildings that formed the Rocking L compound.
Although Jake, Jenny, and Kate had all spoken with Josh and assured him he was still welcome on the ranch and in their lives, the break-up was too fresh for a new normal to settle into place.
Jenny was not without her pangs of regret over the end of the relationship, but when she walked back into her home the day she returned from Colorado and felt nothing but relief, she knew she'd made the right decision. Certainly there were things she missed about Josh. But the sobering realization that she had tried to alter her own nature to conform to another person's expectations forced her to stop and take stock of what she was doing with her life.
These solitary sessions with Horsefly surrounded by the rugged Texas Hill Country were an active part of that process, and already she could feel a healing sense of calm taking root in her spirit. Denying her love of the Rocking L had never solved the conflicts Jenny dealt with in her heart and mind, but opening herself to the beauty and heritage of the land seemed to be working.
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 74
