Chapter Two #2
Frankie had clearly aligned herself with the Lemmons, leaving Trish to feel left out and alone.
She didn’t want it to be her against them.
She didn’t want to have to explain herself to all of them at once.
She wasn’t even sure she wanted to explain herself at all to the Lemmons.
What she’d gone through with her divorce and IVF and the usual drama with her mother wasn’t something she cared to share with anyone but the women she’d once considered her sisters.
But with Frankie being so cold toward her the night before, Trish worried that she might have permanently damaged her relationship with her cousin.
Maci had also defended the Lemmons to her, insisting that they weren’t the con artists Nolan Stokes thought they were.
And apparently it was possible Maci had fallen for one of them, but Trish figured Maci was more likely to pick whatever side Frankie was on than anyone else’s.
Those two had always been so close. Trish had lost that closeness with them years ago, long before her dad had died.
She’d started slipping away from them after she got engaged. Her mom, and her expectations for the wedding, had taken over Trish’s life. She’d let her mother and then her ex-husband take over way too much of her life. And now some men she’d never met before were taking over the ranch.
It was all too much.
She didn’t have to be here alone, though. Her lawyer had offered to handle everything for her just as he’d handled her divorce. But after talking to Frankie and Maci over the phone, she had some concerns about his motivation.
“Why aren’t you just walking in?” The question came from behind Trish, and she turned to find Frankie walking up the driveway from where she’d parked her old conversion van along the curb a short distance down the street.
“Did you follow me here?” Trish asked. She’d been so quiet when she’d awakened that morning that she hadn’t thought anyone else had noticed her leaving.
“I think your bigshot lawyer has made you paranoid,” Frankie said.
She couldn’t necessarily argue against that; Nolan Stokes had made her a bit paranoid about her ex and about the Lemmons.
He’d been right to caution her about her ex, so he could possibly be right about the Lemmons, too.
Maybe they had conned her dad into including them in his will, as Nolan suspected, and maybe they’d also conned Maci and Frankie into thinking that was really what her dad had wanted.
“I came to Maci’s to talk about you,” Frankie brazenly admitted. “About how you showed up last night all knocked up and how you disappeared already this morning. And here you are, so I guess I don’t have to talk about you behind your back.”
Instead of being offended, warmth filled Trish.
She’d missed Frankie so much. She’d missed how open and honest her cousin was.
Appreciative of the honesty, she closed her arms around Frankie’s shoulders and hugged her.
And one of the babies pushed against her belly, kicking with his or her usual vigor. She gasped.
And so did Frankie. “Was that a kick?”
“Yes, they do that a lot,” Trish replied. And she thanked God every time that they did, grateful for the assurance they were strong. They were healthy. They were viable after all the failed pregnancies.
“They…” Frankie shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re having two.”
Trish patted her huge belly. “I can. Sometimes it feels like I have a whole chorus line in there.”
“A what?”
The question came from behind Trish, and she turned around to find the door open behind her and Maci standing in the opening. Then Maci saw her belly, and her blue eyes widened in shock.
“Chorus line,” Trish replied as she patted her belly. “From the way they kick me.”
“They?” Maci asked.
“Just two,” Trish said. “That’s all I had left of my embryos and the money I’d saved for my IVF treatments.”
Maci’s forehead creased with deep furrows. “I don’t understand any of this…” She turned toward Frankie as if she had the answers.
Frankie shrugged. “I don’t know. She showed up late last night, and I thought she would fill us all in this morning. But after I took care of Cocoa, who I think Brett must have already fed, I found her truck gone. Her trailer was still there, though.”
“Trailer?” Maci asked.
“Cocoa?” Trish asked. “Who’s Cocoa?”
“The calf who thinks Frankie is her mother,” Maci answered her question.
“You have a calf?” Trish asked with a rush of happiness.
During the days when she’d been confined to complete bedrest so she didn’t lose this pregnancy, she’d had so much time to think.
She had come up with so many plans for the ranch, plans that might be even easier to implement than she’d thought.
“The Four Corners is a beef ranch,” Frankie said. “Of course we have calves. Lots of them right now. Calving season just ended.”
Trish’s happiness dimmed with the way that Frankie was talking to her, as if she assumed that Trish didn’t know anything about the ranch. Until college, she had spent every summer at the Four Corners. It was part of her and held the happiest memories of her life.
“This particular calf, though, lost its mother at birth,” Maci said. “Frankie saved the calf, though. And now they’ve bonded. We keep teasing her about how she’s going to take Cocoa on the road with her when she goes back to traveling with her band.”
We. The we used to be the three of them: Frankie, Trish and Maci. But Trish knew that the we now meant Maci, Frankie and the Lemmon brothers. It stung that she’d been replaced.
“I’ll figure out how to bring Cocoa with me,” Frankie said. “Right now she’s still small enough to fit in the van.”
“I’m sure the calf would be happier at the ranch,” Trish said. Just like she was sure she would be happier there, too. That was why she’d packed up everything she owned. “I could keep her for the petting zoo I want to start for kids’ day camps and summer camps at the ranch.”
“What?” Both Maci and Frankie asked the question at the same time.
Excitement bubbled up inside Trish. She had so many plans for the ranch, to make it the ideal place for her children and for other children to enjoy, just like she had as a child and even as a teenager.
She’d lived all year with the anticipation of spending her summers at the Four Corners.
And she knew that, like her, other kids from the city would benefit from the fresh air and open space of the ranch. They would love it as much as she had.
Before she could launch into all her plans for the place, Frankie asked, “You’re going to stay?”
Trish nodded. “That’s the plan.” And it was the only one she had. So she had to figure out a way to make this work for her and for her babies.
* * *
“Thanks, Grandma…” Those words echoed in Sadie’s head and her heart long after Brett left Ranch Haven. The last of Lem’s grandchildren, their grandchildren now, had called her Grandma. Happiness curved her lips into a smile.
“Hey, there, my beautiful bride,” Lem said as he and Feisty, their long-haired Chihuahua, joined her on the patio just outside the open French doors of the kitchen.
His white hair and snowy white beard were a bit damp around his flushed face. He was taking his exercise seriously these days, and it showed, because his belly, which he’d never needed to pad to play Santa Claus for Christmas in the Willow Creek town square, was much smaller now.
“Was that a truck from the Four Corners that I saw when Feisty and I were heading back from our walk?” he asked as he dropped into the chair across the table from her.
She nodded.
“I couldn’t tell who was driving,” he said. “It was going so fast, I couldn’t catch a glimpse of the driver. Who was it?”
“Brett,” she replied.
“And he put that smile on your face?”
“Yes,” she said. “He called me Grandma for the first time.”
“Wow,” Lem said, and he reached out to squeeze her hand. “That’s wonderful.”
Her smile slid away. “It would be if he hadn’t been so upset,” she said.
“Oh, no. More trouble with Trish and her lawyer?”
She nodded. “Trish showed up last night, very pregnant…”
“Pregnant?” Lem asked, his blue eyes widening with surprise. “I thought she just got a divorce.”
Sadie nodded. “She hasn’t explained anything yet either. And the reason Brett was in such a hurry when he left was because Blake called him. That lawyer of hers showed up at the ranch.”
“And you didn’t go back with him?” Lem asked, his blue eyes widening with even more surprise.
He knew her so well that she smiled again. “I offered,” she admitted.
“Of course.”
“And he thanked me for wanting to help,” she said. That was when he’d said it, when he’d called her Grandma for the first time.
“But he declined,” Lem surmised, then he sighed. “Brett is the most like his father. Stubborn. Independent.”
Sadie chuckled. “Is he more like his father or his grandfather?”
Lem shrugged. “Perhaps both. But like his father, Brett is also a loner.”
Lem had never been a loner. He’d always been there for his family, whether they’d wanted his help or not. He had also been there for the entire town he’d served for years as mayor and now served as deputy mayor. And for her…
Lem had always been there for Sadie despite how much they’d butted heads when they were young, when they weren’t as wise as they were now.
“Brett came here,” Sadie reminded him.
“Yes, but then he refused your help.”
“I don’t think he came here for help,” Sadie said. “I think he came here to remind himself he has a place to come if he has to leave the Four Corners.”
“So she is still contesting the will?” Lem asked, his voice ripe with resentment.
Sadie shrugged. “They didn’t talk last night.” She updated him on what Brett had told her.
“But in that text she sent Maci yesterday she said that she would explain everything,” Lem said.
Sadie nodded. “Maybe she’ll do that now. Maybe that’s why her lawyer showed up at the ranch.”
Lem let out a noise that sounded like one of Feisty’s growls when she was tugging on the cuff of someone’s jeans. “We should be there, too,” he said.
Sadie patted his hand. “He said no. But he promised to fill us in on what happens.”
Some tension eased from Lem’s stiff body. “Okay. That’s good.”
“And once we know what’s going on, then you and I will figure out what we need to do.” Step in and help with a lawsuit or with what they’d done for so many other of their grandchildren: matchmaking. Because there had been something curious in Brett’s tone when he’d talked about Trish Dempsey…
Something that hadn’t sounded like resentment at all.