The Cowboy's Sweetheart

“Really?” Apparently it was the day for apologies. Was it on the calendar—a national holiday?

“We should go in and have that tea.” Etta gathered them the way a hen gathered chicks.

“Ryder, you should go.” Andie squeezed his hand. “Thank you for being here.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ll see you at church tomorrow.” She said it to watch the look on his face. She knew he wouldn’t be there. He’d gone to church when he was a kid, until his dad’s little indiscretion.

“That’s one thing I can’t do for you, Andie.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll see you around.”

Why did it have to sound like goodbye, as if they were sixteen and breaking up?

She watched him get in his truck and drive away. And it wasn’t what she wanted, not at all. She wanted her best friend there with her, the way he would have been there for her if Phoenix hadn’t happened, if they hadn’t spent weeks not knowing what to say to each other.

Watching his truck turn out of the driveway and head down the road, she felt shaken, and her stupid heart felt like it was about to have a seizure of some kind.

And her mother was standing in front of her, waiting for her to pull it together. Caroline, her mother. But Etta had been that person to Andie. Etta had been the one who taught her to be a woman. Etta had taught her to put on makeup, and helped her dress for the prom. Etta had held her when she cried.

Caroline had been in some city far away, being a mother to Andie’s twin, and to her half siblings. She’d left the less-than-perfect child with the less-than-perfect husband.

Issues. Andie had a lot of issues to deal with. But she wasn’t the mess some people thought she should be. She’d had Etta. She’d had a dad who’d done his best. She’d been taught to be strong, to not be a victim. Now those seemed like easy words that didn’t undo all of the pain.

“Come on.” Etta took her by the hand and led her to the house.

“Of course, tea will make this all better.” Andie whispered. As if tea could make getting steamrollered feel any better.

They walked through the back door into the kitchen decorated with needlepoint wall hangings that Andie and Etta had worked on together. They’d never had satellite, and only a few local stations until recently. Winters had been spent reading or doing needlepoint. It hadn’t been a bad way to grow up.

“What’s going on between you and Ryder?” Etta spooned sugar into the cup of tea she’d just poured. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that was a lover’s quarrel.”

“We’d have to be in love for that to be the case.” Andie leaned in close to her grandmother, loving the way she smelled like rose talcum powder, and the house smelled like vegetables from the garden and pine cleaner.

It was her grandmother’s house and it always felt like the safest place in the world.

Even with her mother standing across the counter from her, fidgeting with the cup that Etta had set in front of her it was still that safe place. Caroline looked up and Andie met her gaze.

“Well, it was just a matter of time,” Etta whispered as she walked away.

“What did you say?”

“I said, I hope you don’t mind sugar in this tea, and do you mind if it has thyme. It’s good for you, you know.”

“Right.”

She sat down at the kitchen island and her granny slid the cup of tea across the counter to her. Etta sat down next to her, moving a plate of cookies between them. Peanut butter, nothing better.

Andie sipped her tea and set the cup down, not feeling at all better, not the way she usually did when she came home.

“I’m surprised to see you.” Andie reached for a second cookie. “I’m the reject kid, right? The one you didn’t want.”

Caroline shuddered and Andie didn’t feel better, not the way she’d thought she would feel the sense of satisfaction she’d expected. And now, not so much.

“You’re not defective. You’re beautiful, smart and talented,” Etta spoke up, her voice having a loud edge.

Andie shot her grandmother a look, because they both knew better. She and her father hadn’t been good enough for Caroline. He’d been Caroline’s one-night stand in college, and he’d married her. A cute country boy from Oklahoma. And reality hadn’t been as much fun.

One-night stands didn’t work. She sipped her tea and pushed the thought from her mind. Better to focus on Caroline and her father rather than on her own mistakes.

“I’m not the prodigy. I’m the kid who struggled to read.” Andie no longer felt like the kid in school who didn’t understand what everyone else got with ease. She had been fortunate to have great teachers, people who were willing to help and encourage her. She’d had Etta.

“You have a challenge, not a disability.” Etta covered Andie’s hand with a hand that was a little crooked with arthritis, but still strong, still soft, still manicured. “She took Alyson. I got to keep you. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Being here with me and your dad?”

Caroline spoke up. “It wasn’t bad, was it? I mean, I know Etta loves you. Your dad loved you.”

“You can’t comment. You weren’t here.” Andie closed her eyes and tried to let go of the sparks of anger that shot from her heart, hot and cold.

“I can comment.” Caroline’s hand shook as she set her cup on the counter. “I can comment, because I know what I did and why I did it. I couldn’t take this life. I couldn’t be a cowboy’s wife and the mom to two girls. I couldn’t be from Dawson.”

Andie shook her head, feeling a little sick with guilt, with hurt feelings. “Really, would it have been that hard?”

“I don’t know.”

Andie finished off the last of her cookie and drained her cup of tea, and she still didn’t know what to say to Caroline Anderson—the woman who had never been her mother.

She thought about this two months ago when she’d slipped into a church service held at the rodeo arena after one of the events. She had sat there wondering how to put her life back together. The pieces were in her hands; Alyson, her mother and Ryder.

It was up to her to put it all back together. It was up to her to forgive.

Andie hopped off the stool. “I have to take care of my horse.”

And she planned on spending the night in the camper of her horse trailer. It wasn’t really running away. She was giving herself space and a little time to think.

Ryder woke up the next morning to the rumble of a truck in his driveway. He peeked out the window as Wyatt jumped out of a rented moving truck and then reached in for the two little girls who resembled their mom.

As he watched them cut across the lawn—Wyatt holding both girls, looking as sad as they looked—Ryder ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. Man, this was a lot of reality to wake up to.

He glanced at the clock on the coffeemaker as he walked through the kitchen. Nearly ten on a Sunday morning. And Etta’s old Caddy was going down the road, because it was time for church. And for the first time in years, Andie was in the passenger seat.

Too much reality.

Too many changes. He was nearly thirty and suddenly everything was changing. Andie was going to church and she didn’t want to talk to him. Not that he really blamed her.

But he wanted her back, the way it was before. He wanted it to be like it had been before their night in Phoenix, before her trip to the altar and God. Not that he had anything against God. He knew there was one. He’d been to church. He’d heard the sermons. He’d even prayed.

But his parents had gone, too. They’d picked a church in a neighboring town, not Dawson Community Church. And that had just about done him in on religion. His parents, their lifestyle and then the day in church when someone brought his dad forward. Man, he could still remember that day, the looks people had given him, the way it had felt to hear what his dad had done.

And he remembered the clapping of a few hands when his dad was ousted from the congregation, taking his family with him.