A light from the kitchen window sent a long, yellow shaft out across the yard. He glanced down at the clock on the dashboard. “Mama will be making breakfast, and Dad will be sitting in his recliner reading the newspaper,” he muttered as he parked the truck beside two others just outside the yard gate. “I hope I can get used to rural life again.”
Truth be told, he was a little leery about getting out of his vehicle. Every time he called home—which was at least twice a week when he could get service—his mom and dad talked about what a good job Addison Hall was doing since she had moved to the ranch several years ago to help take care of Jesse’s father.
Addy would be in the house, and Jesse hadn’t spoken to her in nearly twenty years. Up until he went to the Air Force, she had been his best friend. His first memory of her was the two of them mutton bustin’ at the Honey Grove Rodeo and tying with her for first prize. They had been inseparable from then on, but that old saying about “out of sight out of mind” was sure enough true when it came to him and Addy. About six weeks after he left for basic training, her letters and calls had stopped, and he hadn’t seen her since the night before he left home—the only time they’d crossed over the friendship line.
He opened the door of his black pickup truck, slid out of the seat, and rolled his neck to stretch the kinks out before he made his way up on the porch, which wrapped around three sides of the long, low ranch house. His father would have already come out and gotten his paper off the porch, or maybe from out in the yard if the person throwing it didn’t have good aim, so the door would be open.
A blue heeler dog turning gray around the muzzle got up from where he’d been resting under the porch swing and came to greet him. Tail wagging, the animal sat down right at Jesse’s feet.
Jesse knelt on one knee and scratched the old dog’s ears. “Good mornin’, Tex. You still keeping the cows herded?” He was procrastinating, but he just wasn’t ready to face Addy after all these years, or to meet her daughter, either, for that matter.
“Pearl, darlin’, are we expectin’ company?” Sonny’s voice rang out from the living room. “I hear someone talkin’ out on the porch.”
“That’s my cue.” Jesse straightened up. “See you later, Tex.”
He yelled as he opened the front door, “Is breakfast ready?”
“Jesse, is that really you?” His father tossed the newspaper to the side and grabbed a cane. Leaning on it, he opened up his other arm for a hug. “Hurry up, son, before your mother gets in here. I won’t get a bit of attention when she finds out one of her boys has come home.”
“Oh. My. Goodness!” Pearl joined them for a three-way hug. “We weren’t expecting you until the first of next week.”
Jesse swallowed the huge lump in his throat. When he’d been home eighteen months ago, his dad only had to use the cane sporadically, but the way he leaned on it now meant that things were definitely on a downhill slide. “I wanted to surprise you,” he said.
“Well, you surely did that.” His mother took a step back but kept a grip on Jesse’s arms. “Let me look at you. You’ve got a few gray hairs in your temples, and your eyes look tired. You need some good old home cooking and hard ranch work to put the sparkle back in your life, my son.”
“I’m thirty-eight years old, Mama,” Jesse chuckled. “I’ve earned those few gray hairs. It’s been a long week of getting things done so I could retire from the Air Force, but a few days on the ranch and I’ll be right as rain. I hope that’s breakfast I smell cookin’?”
“I know exactly how old you are, son,” Pearl said, smiling, “and that is sausage gravy and biscuits that you smell. I hope you haven’t eaten already.”
He bent and kissed his mother on the forehead. “When it comes to your cookin’, Mama, I’d never settle for second best.”
Her eyes looked weary, too, he thought. Somehow every time he came home, she seemed smaller. When he was a little boy, she had looked to be ten feet tall and damn near bulletproof, but these days she barely came up to his shoulders. She had always had chin-length hair, but it had more salt in it these days than pepper. Seeing Sonny on the decline had to be tough on her, but Jesse was home now, and he could and would take a load off her shoulders.
“And I’m glad you’re home. This old man right here”—she glanced over at Sonny—“needs your help running this place. Addy and Mia do what they can, and Henry is still a fine foreman, but he’s past seventy.” She talked as she pulled him into the kitchen.
“Don’t you be callin’ me old, darlin’,” Sonny called after her and started that way.
“The MS is getting worse,” his mother whispered. “It won’t be long until you will have to make all the decisions.”
Jesse draped an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “I’m here. What can I do to help with breakfast?”
“Good morning.” A voice from Jesse’s past floated through the air. “I’ve got the waterin’ troughs cleaned out and…”
Addy stopped in the middle of the floor. Her face lost all the color and she stammered, “Jesse, what…when…we weren’t…”
“Surprise!” he said, but his voice sounded hollow in his own ears.
Addy certainly didn’t have any gray in her kinky, dark brown hair, which she had swept up in a ponytail. Ringlets escaped and framed her delicate face. She met his stare, and their gazes locked over the top of Pearl’s head. Her crystal-clear blue eyes still mesmerized Jesse as much as they had in the past. She had put on a few pounds, but every one of them looked fine on her. Her jeans dipped in at a tiny waist, and her T-shirt dipped low in the front to show a little cleavage. She probably still got carded when she tried to buy a six-pack of beer.
“I thought you were a nurse. Why would you be cleaning troughs?” He wanted to kick himself the moment the words were out. Not a hello, how are you doing, good to see you, like he should have said.
“I am, and when Sonny or Pearl needs my nursing skills, I’m right here, but I’m also a farmhand. If you’ll remember, I was raised on the ranch right next door to this one, so I know how to clean troughs, herd cattle from one pasture to another, and—”
“Mornin’.” Another woman came into the kitchen by the back door. “Hello, Jesse. I’d know you anywhere from the pictures Nana and Poppa have on the mantle. You’re early.”
She stuck out her hand to shake with him. Her grip was firm, and her green eyes sparkled. “I’m Addy’s daughter, Mia. Does this mean the big welcome home party next week is off, Nana?” She let go of his hand and went over to the kitchen chair where Sonny was sitting to kiss him on the forehead. “Did he almost give you a heart attack, Poppa?”
“Yes, he did,” Sonny admitted. “We’ve talked so much about Addy and Mia the last few years that you probably feel like you already know all about them.”
“Yes, I do, but it’s really good to put a face to a name.” When his mother had told him that Addy had a baby and was raising the child on her own, Jesse figured that Addy had gotten involved with someone right after he had left for the military. At least knowing that made him understand why she had cut him off so suddenly and wouldn’t even take his phone calls all those years ago.