Jake (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

As they headed home from town, Jake regaled Meg with stories of his childhood that made her laugh so hard her sides hurt.

She wiped tears of laughter from her eyes and, when she looked at Cory, she realized he hadn’t heard a word of Jake’s story.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

The boy’s head came up sharply. “Nothing.”

“You sure?”

He gave a shrug without bothering to respond.

When the truck came to a stop at Meg’s back door, she looked over at Jake. “That was the fastest ride ever.” She touched a hand to his arm. “I love your stories about your childhood here. But I have to say that it only serves to reinforce my belief that I would have loved growing up here with my father.”

Jake closed a hand over hers. “Don’t play that game, Meg. We don’t get to choose our childhood.” He glanced past her to where Cory remained silent and aloof, his face turned away from the two of them, staring out the side window. “Some of us are dealt a tougher hand than others. But we all get to choose how we’ll live our lives going forward as adults.”

“Thanks for that reminder.” Meg smiled. “This adult still has a lot of work to do. Now to get started.” She motioned toward the door. “Cory, we’re home.”

Instead of opening the door he looked past her. “Can I go home with you, Jake? Shadow and Honey and her puppies need me.”

Jake shook his head. “That’s not my call, Cory. You’d better ask your sister.”

Meg didn’t wait for Cory to plead his case. “I know you’re happy at the Conway ranch, and it’s fine with me if you stay there, as long as they don’t object.”

Jake gave a quick shake of his head. “You know we’re all fine with it.”

With a visible sigh of relief Cory opened the truck door and climbed down, holding the door for Meg.

She paused beside the little boy who was trying to look so grown up in his cowboy hat. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Sure.” He climbed back into the truck and fastened his seat belt without meeting her eyes.

As they began moving along the driveway he turned to Jake. “You planning on spending the night out here again?”

Jake studied him. “You think I should?”

Cory looked away quickly. With his head firmly turned aside he muttered, “Yeah.”

“Okay. If you say so.” Jake was grinning. “Although the final word will have to come from Meg.”

Not that it mattered whether or not she approved. Wild horses couldn’t keep him away, he thought.

Now, more than ever, Cory’s behavior convinced him that the boy was keeping secrets. And until Cory opened up and spilled what he knew, there was no way Jake was going to allow Meg to be alone. Not tonight, nor any other night.

Of course, if she happened to relent and invite him inside, they just might find themselves in a whole lot of a very different kind of trouble.

A man could always hope.

Meg climbed the steps to the attic. When she’d been a girl, this place had been her playroom in winter, when the snow was too deep for her to make it to the barns and outbuildings.

She shoved open the door and played her flashlight around the gloom, illuminating a tangle of cobwebs and a floor littered with dusty boxes and plastic bags.

She spied the chain dangling from a bare lightbulb and yanked it, flooding the space with light. Pleased that the old light still worked, she set aside her flashlight and crawled through the assorted clutter.

She opened albums that contained photos of her father when he was a boy, and set them aside to look at in her leisure. She hoped she’d find some time to show them to Cory, as well. He deserved a chance to see his father as he’d been when he was young and strong and reckless. Maybe there would come a day when she and Cory could go through these and actually share a few laughs together.

There’d been so little laughter in the boy’s life. If she thought her own childhood dysfunctional, Cory’s was even more so. A mother who was little more than a child herself, and a father too old to do the things most fathers took for granted.

At least she’d had her father when he’d been at the height of his strength and ambition. He’d been her big, strong, brave protector.

She opened a dusty wooden box and found a few feminine trinkets inside. A girl’s hairbrush with butterflies on the plastic handle. A cheap bracelet with a rose that dangled from a small metal clip. A faded photograph of a man and woman standing very close together, while the man held a little girl in his arms. As Meg held the photo to the light, she could see the resemblance between the girl in the picture and Cory. The same smile. The same small, upturned nose. And the same scruffy brown hair.

Of course. This had to be Cory’s mother.

Meg set aside the box of trinkets and moved on to another, larger box. This contained a child’s spiral notebook. Inside, the pages were filled with letters of the alphabet, and the name Hazel Godfrey carefully printed at the top of each page.

Since the name was unfamiliar to Meg, she was about to ignore the box until she caught a photograph of Cory’s mother half hidden beneath some old school papers. In the picture, the girl couldn’t have been much older than Cory was now, and the name Hazel had been crossed out, replaced by the carefully printed name Arabella.

Intrigued, Meg began removing papers and notebooks from the box, and discovered that many of them bore the name Hazel Godfrey, while many more had been crossed out or erased, and replaced with the name Arabella.

There were pictures of the girl with other adults. Men and women, and occasionally other children. None of them bore any identification. And in all of them, the girl was unsmiling, often with her face turned away, as though distancing herself from the others in the pictures.

Cory had said that his mother grew up in the foster-care system. That might explain the unidentified photos of families, and the little girl who looked as though she never belonged.

Meg’s heart went out to this stranger. This girl named either Hazel or Arabella. Or perhaps both. Could it be that Hazel Godfrey had changed her own name in order to give herself a new identity?

Whatever her background, she had apparently cared enough about these meager belongings to keep them.

Meg set the box aside with the other things, and continued opening yet more boxes, and examining the contents.

In one long box she found a carefully preserved wedding gown layered with blue tissue. Had it been her mother’s, she wondered, or had it belonged to one of her father’s other wives? She supposed there were wedding photos somewhere that would identify the bride who’d worn this particular gown. Not that it mattered. She had no use for it, and she doubted anyone else would, either. She set it aside and moved on to other boxes, and other family mementoes.

Several hours later, she gathered the things that interested her and placed them in a single big box before turning out the light and descending the stairs.

In the kitchen she made a pot of coffee and began going through the items in the box. Though she wasn’t certain the things she’d collected belonged to Cory’s mother, she was convinced enough in her own mind to add them to the pile of things she thought he might want to look at.

When she’d sorted through everything, she carried an armload of photo albums and memorabilia up the stairs to Cory’s bedroom.

After setting them on his bed she turned and was about to leave when the framed photograph on his dresser snagged her attention.

Cory had said it was a picture of his mother and the boy named Blain.

As she studied the gawky teenage boy, Meg had a sudden flash of recognition. The cowboy who’d been sitting in the back of church the day of her father’s funeral. Though she couldn’t be absolutely certain, she felt strongly that he’d been the one. His face was older and tougher, and his body leaner.

His seat had been vacant by the time the service ended, and she’d all but forgotten him until now.

But she hadn’t forgotten that feeling of being watched during the funeral service. That fingers-up-the-spine tingle that had been distracting while Reverend Cornell had been speaking.

She picked up the photo and started down the stairs. Tomorrow, when she saw Cory, she intended to ask a few more pointed questions about his mother and Blain. And this time she intended to get some answers.

The day had been a long and busy one.

As Jake was leaving for Meg’s ranch, he motioned for his grandfather to follow him to the mudroom.

“What’s up, boyo?” Big Jim leaned against the open doorway. “Where’re you headed at this time of night?”

“I’m going to Meg’s. I’m not comfortable with her being alone there.”

“I don’t blame you, boyo. She talks a good game, but a city girl so far from civilization, with no one close by that she can turn to in an emergency, is probably spending her nights shaking in her boots.”

“I wonder if you could keep an eye on Cory.”

“Sure thing. Is he spending the night in the barn again?”

Jake nodded. “The boy’s troubled, Big Jim.”

“He has a right to be. Both his parents gone, and a stranger his only kin. If that’s not enough, there’s someone out there who seems bent on destruction. That’d be enough to keep anybody awake nights, let alone a seven-year-old.”

Big Jim dropped an arm around his grandson’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, boyo. I’ll keep watch over the lad. I’ve been meaning to stop by and see how Honey and her puppies are getting along.” He paused. “Now about you spending nights at the Stanford ranch…” He gave Jake a sharp-eyed look. “Just keep in mind that you’re there to protect the lass.”

“I will, Big Jim.”

As he plucked his hat from a hook by the door, the old man cleared his throat, causing Jake to turn back.

“You were right about one thing, boyo.” The old man grinned. “Meg Stanford is just about the prettiest redhead this town has ever seen.”

Jake’s smile grew. “I thought that might have slipped past you.”

“I’m not that old yet, boyo.”

His rumble of laughter followed Jake all the way out the door to his truck.

“Jake’s riding shotgun again tonight, Clemmy.” Big Jim stood with his hand on the headstone in the small plot of land just beyond the barns. It was a pretty place, with the summer breeze whispering through the trees, and a stone bench set to one side, so that Big Jim could sit and visit. Surrounding the tall grave marker were five smaller ones, decorating the graves of the five sons Clementine Conway had given birth to and then buried before each had reached a first birthday.

Big Jim came here almost daily to chat with his Clemmy and fill her in on the latest news regarding the family. Besides sharing news, he often left a plate of her favorite food or dessert, even though he knew it would draw the wild creatures to this spot. It pleased him to think that even the animals paused here to pay their respects.

“The boy’s falling hard, Clemmy. I’m not sure he knows it yet, nor does she. But when I see them together, I see us.” He chuckled. “We were just as young and randy, and just as brick stupid about love. But it was the real thing, darlin’, and I thank heaven every day for you.”

A small figure stepped out of the shadows and peered at Big Jim as though he’d just sprouted two heads. “Who’re you talking to?”

Big Jim looked over to see Cory walking toward him. “My wife, Clementine.” He patted the headstone. “I buried her and my five sons here many years ago.”

“And you talk to her?”

“I do, boyo. Just about every evening.”

The boy’s eyes grew round. “What do you tell her?”

“How my day went. Anything that’s bothering me. All the good—and bad—things that happened. All the things I shared with her when she was alive.”

“Why?”

Big Jim motioned toward the stone bench, and Cory followed him over. When they were both settled Big Jim looked toward the headstone. “I shared everything with Clemmy when she was living, and it just makes me happy to share things with her now. In my eyes, she’s never been gone. She’s just…not visible to others.”

“Do you see her?”

Big Jim nodded. “In my mind, she hasn’t changed a bit. She’s still the prettiest girl in all of Wyoming. And the best thing is, she never grows older.” He studied the little boy. “How about you, boyo? Can you see your mama in your mind?”

Cory nodded.

“Can you still hear the sound of her voice?”

Cory stared down at the ground and swallowed. “Yeah.”

“In my day, we said ‘yes, sir.’” Big Jim laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I bet your mama told you that.”

“Yeah…yes, sir.”

Big Jim smiled. “Women are God’s special gifts to us, boyo. They deserve to be cherished. Oh, I know they’re strong and capable and willing to do whatever they have to do to take care of us. But men, good men, recognize that they also need to be taken care of and treated like the treasures they are. We always have to put their safety ahead of our own.” He stared at the headstones. “Women are responsible for life, and they have this deep core of goodness and reason that they pass on to each generation. Sometimes, when we find ourselves in trouble, or we feel like doing foolish things, we need to listen to their voices in our heads, telling us to do the right thing.”

Cory looked over. “You mean our conscience?”

Big Jim arched a brow. “That’s a mighty big word for a little boy.”

“Jake talked about it.”

“Did he now?”

“Uh-huh. And my mama talked about it, too.”

Big Jim smiled. “That’s good, boyo. As you go through life, always listen to your conscience. You do that, you won’t go wrong. As long as you do things for the right reasons, they’ll work out.”

The old man got slowly to his feet and the boy did the same.

As they passed the headstones, Big Jim paused and rubbed a big hand over the edge of the tallest one. “Good night, Clemmy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As they walked away, the old man set his hat on his head, and Cory followed suit.

Big Jim paused. “Is that Jake’s old hat?”

Cory nodded. “Jake said I could have it.”

“Did he now? You must be pretty special, boyo. Jake loved that hat. His ma brought it back from a trip to Jackson Hole, and after she gave it to him, I don’t think he ever took it off. Not even to sleep. His pa would sneak into Jake’s bedroom after he was asleep and hook it on the bedpost. Jake would wake up in the morning and have that hat on before coming down to breakfast.”