"I swear," Mandy said, feigning a degree of annoyance completely at variance with her delighted expression, "I am going to put a tip jar in the kitchen."
"It's your own fault for having a misspent youth as a barista," Jenny countered. "You've spoiled us. Let me ride around front so I can tie Horsefly up in the shade and give him some water. I'll be in when I'm done."
Fifteen minutes later, Jenny walked into Mandy's cheerful, yellow kitchen, pausing to hang her hat on the peg by the back door before accepting a perfectly frothed and fragrant latte from her sister. "Oh," Jenny said appreciatively, "is that vanilla I smell?"
"Just the way you like it," Mandy said. "Pull up a chair."
Jenny sat down at the table and took the first sip of her drink, closing her eyes with pleasure. "Perfect," she said. "Like always."
"Where have you been today?" Mandy asked, joining her at the table.
"Riding fence up on the bluffs," Jenny replied, digging in her pocket for her phone. "Which reminds me. I need to let Katie know where I am."
Mandy watched as Jenny began to thumb type a text to their older sister. "Is she being a mother hen again?" Mandy asked knowingly.
"When isn't she a mother hen?" Jenny asked, hitting the send button.
"Is that why you have a rifle tied on your saddle?"
Jenny nodded as she picked up her cup again. "Katie asked me to start taking a gun with me. And she's right. Daddy would have had a fit if any of us had gone out for the day without a rifle. It's getting too cool for the rattlesnakes, but I really don't want to run into a bunch of feral hogs."
Mandy shuddered. "I don't like those awful things. They’re ugly and mean. Now that we have the girls, I make Joe Bob watch for signs all the time."
Jenny started to answer, but stopped herself when the first words out of her mouth were, "Josh says . . .." Her throat constricted and she had to look down as sudden tears filled her eyes.
Mandy reached across the table and laid a comforting hand on her sister’s arm, but didn’t say anything. After a minute, Jenny shook her head and went on. “The hogs are more down by the river,” she said thickly. “We haven't seen any tracks up by the house."
“I’m more worried about you than I am about those hogs,” Mandy said.
Jenny put her hand over Mandy’s. “I’m okay. It was just a slip of the tongue.”
“You’re used to having him around,” Mandy said gently. “It’s okay. It'll take a while before you stop doing that kind of thing. The situation is confusing for all of us."
Jenny nodded, sadness filling her features. “I feel like I’ve made an awful mess of things,” she confessed. “He’s your cousin. I barely let you get used to that idea before all this happened.”
“Cousin or not,” Mandy said, “I won’t have him or anyone else doing my sister wrong.”
“That’s just it,” Jenny said. “I’m not sure he did do me wrong. I just know I couldn’t be with him any more.”
“Then that’s good enough for me,” Mandy said loyally.
Jenny smiled. “Lord. You’re as bad as Katie. I think I could tell you both I did the man in and you’d just pick up shovels and start digging a hole to bury the body.”
“Oh,” Mandy said, her eyes going wide. “We’d have to use the backhoe for that. I might break a nail trying to shovel.”
In spite of herself, Jenny burst out laughing. “We couldn’t have that, now could we?”
“We could not,” Mandy agreed solemnly.
Jenny toyed with the handle of her cup and then said hesitantly, "I think you should know that Katie and Jake want me to sleep at the main house for now."
"Why?" Mandy asked.
"Buck Miller told Katie that Josh is spending a lot of time at the Bucket drinking," Jenny answered. "They're worried Josh will get drunk and show up out here."
"Did you agree to stay at the house?"
"I haven't told her yet, but, yes, at least for a little while."
"Good," Mandy said.
Jenny looked up, startled. "Good?"
"Phil knows about Josh drinking, too," Mandy said. "He told me because of the girls. They like Josh and they don't know not to trust him. They might not realize he was drunk."
"God," Jenny said, rubbing her eyes with her hand. "I hate this. Never in a million years did I think you'd ever have to worry about Josh being around Sissy and Missy."
"I wouldn't necessarily say I'm worried," Mandy said, "but I'm glad Phil told me. He doesn't like how Josh is handling all of this. He says it reminds him too much of his brother, Eddie."
"That's what he told Jake, too," Jenny said. "Do you know exactly what he means by that?"
Mandy shook her head. "He didn't really go into detail," she said, "but if you ask him, I'm sure he'll tell you."
"I may do that," Jenny said. "So what did you say to Sissy and Missy?"
"Joe Bob and I talked to them and told them Josh was having a real hard time right now and not to go off anywhere with him without one of us saying it was okay."
"What did they say?"
"They asked me what Josh did to make you be mad at him."
Jenny groaned. "I am so sorry. The last thing those babies need is anything more to confuse them."
"Stop apologizing," Mandy said. "You did what you had to do."
"What did you tell them about me being mad?"
"We tried to explain that it wasn't so much that you were mad, but that you realized if the two of you went on living together you'd both be really unhappy."
"Did they understand that?"
Mandy rolled her eyes. "They're almost ten. They understand drama better than we do."
"Thank God somebody does,” Jenny said miserably. “You know I didn't want there to be drama. It just came out that way. I want Josh to settle down and stop this nonsense. There is no reason why we can't all still be friends. I do miss him, I just can't be what he wants me to be. The longer I let it go on, the worse it was going to be in the end."
"I know that,” Mandy said. “And seriously, no relationship can be a good thing if it forces you to be someone you're not.”
"Listen to you," Jenny said, shaking her head. "My baby sister is all grown up and wise."
"I wish," Mandy scoffed. "I am suddenly a mother, and therefore, dumb in the eyes of my daughters."
"What?" Jenny said. "Those girls have always thought you walked on water."
"That was when I was Cool Aunt Mandy," she said, leaning back and rubbing her eyes. "Now I'm the person who nags them about their homework, fusses at them to get off the computer, and forbids them to wear makeup to school."
"Which one is doing what?"
"I caught Sissy trying to put on my eyeliner a couple of nights ago," Mandy said, getting up to refill her cup. "You want another one of those?" she asked.
"Sure," Jenny said. "So how was she doing with it?"
"She looked like the dog from that old kids' show," Mandy laughed. "The one with the ring around his eyes."
"Petey," Jenny supplied. "The Little Rascals."
"Yeah, him," Mandy said. "I was torn between scolding her and sitting down and showing her how to do it right."
"Which did you settle for?"
"A little bit of both," Mandy said as she tamped ground espresso beans to pull a shot. "I put on some eyeliner to show her how it was done and told her she wasn't old enough yet, but when she is, I'll teach her the right way to do it."
Jenny raised an eyebrow. "And you think that's going to keep her out of your makeup?"
"God," Mandy said, "I don't know. All my lectures about time spent on the computer instant messaging aren't working with Missy, and I really don't want to go all evil adopted-stepmother person on her and confiscate her iPad."
As Jenny came back to the table with another latte, Jenny said, “With you it was the telephone. Or have you already slipped into the convenient parental frame of mind that allows you to forget you were their age once?"
"You sound like Joe Bob
," Mandy said with a sigh. "But truthfully, none of the three of us have any experience that prepares us to be parents. I mean honestly, Jenny, I don't ever want to be like Daddy."
"That's not even possible," Jenny assured her. "You would never holler at the top of your lungs at those girls."
"I hope not," Mandy said, a note of worry creeping into her voice. "But I can already see when they are teenagers, it's gonna be real tempting. My God they can be stubborn, but it's so soon after they've lost their mama, I don't want to be too hard on them."
"Kids will use a situation," Jenny warned. "It's just second nature for them. You don't want to overcompensate for the loss of their parents by being too permissive. It's hard to pull back from that."
"Truth be told, I want to spoil them rotten and make it all better,” Mandy admitted. “But I know that’s not really the right thing to do. It’s just that they’re still having those awful nightmares sometimes. I remember what that's like. I had bad dreams after Mama died. It’s hard to be fussing at them about rules right now."
Jenny looked at her with surprise. "You remember having those nightmares?"
"I remember you and Katie coming into my room and making a big deal about driving the monsters away," Mandy said. "You used to throw the closet doors open while Katie went after whatever it was that I was sure was hiding in there or under the bed."
"We had to do something when you woke up crying. We didn't want the real monster coming down the hall and scaring you more."
"Daddy," Mandy said.
"Daddy," Jenny agreed.
They sat silently for a moment, both of their minds turning back to life in the house with Langston Lockwood. Then Jenny broke the reverie. "You won't ever be like him,” she said firmly. “Stop worrying about that. The girls need structure in their lives. It will help them to feel safe. Just put out one brush fire at a time. I think that's what most parents do. It won't be long before you have bigger challenges with them than computer time and makeup."
Mandy regarded her sister with a slightly horrified expression. "What do you mean bigger challenges?"
"Honey," Jenny said. "They're almost ten. You got your period when you were 11."
Mandy’s eyes grew round with panic. "Oh my God,” she said. “You mean talk to them about . . . about . . . oh my God."
"I think the word you're looking for is 'sex,'" Jenny said helpfully.
"Oh. God. Stop!" Mandy commanded. "I refuse to think about that until it's absolutely necessary.” Then an idea seemed to strike her. “Oh. Wait! Maybe I can get Katie to do it for me," she said hopefully.
"Coward," Jenny accused.
"I'm good with being a coward," Mandy assured her earnestly. "I completely embrace my cowardly-ness."
"Cowardice."
"Whatever," Mandy said. "I'm good with it."
Unable to contain herself any longer, Jenny started laughing. "What do you suppose Joe Bob is going to do the first time one of them has a date?" she asked.
"He will be that father with a shotgun," Mandy said. "I know he doesn't look like the type, but he's already absolutely nuts about them both. When we drove to Kerrville the other night for supper, he ran into a guy he was in college with. You should have seen how proud Joe Bob was when he said, 'And this is my wife and our daughters.'"
"Aw," Jenny said. "That's so sweet. When are you all going to legally adopt them?"
“We’d do it tomorrow if we could,” Mandy said, “but it just feels like it’s too soon after losing Rick and Jolene. We have full guardianship, but I think we need to talk to Lura Lee and Bill and make sure they’re okay with an adoption. They are the girls’ grandparents after all.”
“Yes,” Jenny agreed. “You want everyone to be on the same page, but given how bad their health is, I imagine they're just glad the girls will be safe and well cared for.”
“We were thinking we’d let the holidays get over and then ask the girls how they would feel about adoption,” Mandy said. “They have to be okay with it or we’re not doing anything.”
“I think that’s smart of you,” Jenny said. “And it’s not like you don’t have plenty of other things to be worried about, what with the election coming up in the spring.”
“So far no one else has filed,” Mandy said, “but we’re still going to run a regular campaign and make sure we listen to what people have to say and what they want their mayor to do. That’s really important to Joe Bob.”
“He’s been a good mayor,” Jenny said. “I think he'll be re-elected without any trouble.”
"I hope so," Mandy said, "but have you noticed that there isn't much we do around here without trouble?"
Jenny blew out a breath that sounded very much like one of Horsefly's opinions on the comings and going of humans. "Trust me," she said ruefully, "I have noticed and then some."
114
Josh Baxter cut the truck engine. He stared at the tiny beer joint known locally as the Bloody Bucket. It had been in the same spot for so long that the stained white stucco seemed to grow straight out of the cracked asphalt. The red tile roof sagged and the crooked string of old Christmas lights tacked up around the front door only made the place seem more disreputable.
The Bucket was now the lone sentry guarding the northwest approach to the South Llano bridge. A grocery store once shared the parking lot, albeit with a half fence segregating the two businesses. But honky tonks apparently had more economic resilience in this part of Texas. The market closed down and the Bucket wheezed on.
The town’s residents gauged how much the Bucket was jumping on any given night by a quick count of the parking lot filled with beat-up old pickups and the occasional bored horse.
Over the past month, Josh had become such a regular that Sadie, the bartender, began pouring his drink the minute he walked in the door. With the talent of that tribe of women born to dispense alcohol to hurting souls, she could tell by his expression if it was a beer evening or a straight-whiskey night. Sometimes Josh himself didn't even know until a glass or a bottle came sliding over the bar in his direction.
He told himself that so long as he did his drinking in the company of a bar full of patrons, he wasn't drowning his sorrows in the bottle. With country music spilling out of the jukebox and the clack of pool balls over his shoulder, becoming a fixture at the Bucket was far better than sitting on his own front porch with a bottle of bourbon. That's what he'd done for the first two weeks after Jenny laid her engagement ring on the table, got in her truck, and drove out his front gate.
In the aftermath of that day, Josh continued to go about the routines of his life. He hadn't shown up late to work even once, no matter how his head felt. He produced crisp, detailed photographs for Jake and the other researchers in the cave. He helped his Uncle Phil put the roof on his tiny cabin. And there wasn't a single weed or errant bramble around the Baxter ranch house. It was, in fact, the lack of brush to cut that drove Josh almost to the brink of desperate distraction. As long as he could crank up his chainsaw and tear into thick mesquite and cedar tangles, he could keep his hurt and anger at tolerable levels.
But there was only so much brush a man could cut, and by his count, Josh had enough cords of firewood laid up to get him through this winter and probably the next one, too. The first day he found himself at loose ends, Josh decided a good house cleaning was in order. He was standing in the kitchen drying dishes, staring out the window thinking, when the sense of raw injustice that never left him began to kindle his sense of outrage to a burning level.
Without realizing what he was doing, Josh gripped the glass in his hand with such force it shattered. He looked down at the sound and watched as blood poured out of a gash in his palm. Almost as if he were performing the act for another person, Josh simply pulled a glass shard out of his flesh, ran cold water over the streaming cut, and wrapped his hand in thick layers of gauze. He didn't even consider stitches until he arrived at the cave the next morning for work, and Jake, horrified that the cut was still bleeding, drov
e him to the emergency room.
"What happened?" Jake had asked as they pulled out the front gate.
"Nothing," Josh answered. "I just broke a glass."
The look on Jake's face at the brief reply wasn't lost on Josh. He saw the warring desire to believe the simple story and the evident suspicion that there was more to be told. But then why wouldn’t Jake think he was lying? The good professor was, after all, sleeping with the almighty Kate Lockwood herself.
It was in the aftermath of that incident that Josh started going into town in the evenings. He told himself he just wanted to get a beer and be alone in a room full of people to take the edge off his nerves. But one beer led to the next, and then he was asking for the Jack Daniels and the voices in his head that he wanted to silence only screamed louder.
Before too many nights, Sadie began to peer at him over the bar at last call, a lit Camel dangling from her scarlet lips, and asking with concern, "You okay to drive back to the ranch, baby?"
So far he had been okay, but there were moments when Josh almost wished he would wrap his truck around a tree or drive off an embankment. The injustice of the whole thing with Jenny grated on him more every day. Damn it all to hell. She’d never found out about any of the things he didn’t want her to know. He’d bent over backwards to be the perfect partner.
Then, in the privacy of the barn in the middle of the night, he lost his temper with an inanimate object. He cussed and threw a damn piece of hardware. What man hadn't done that very thing at some point in his life?
And now, just because one high-strung woman saw the whole thing and lost her mind, his world and all of his plans for the future were turned upside down. No matter how much Phil or Jake or anyone else tried to talk to him, Josh couldn't get it out of his head that he'd been used and discarded. The more those thoughts swirled in his mind, born along on a steady stream of alcohol, the darker his resentment grew. Just who the hell did Jenny Lockwood think she was, anyway?
That was the very idea that absorbed Josh so completely that afternoon in the Bucket parking lot he almost jumped out of his skin when Rafe Jackson tapped on his truck window. A flash of anger rolled through Josh as he furiously cranked down the glass and barked, “What in the goddamn hell do you want?”
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 76
