Daisies in the Canyon(61)

“Coming to grips with it?” Cooper asked from the shadows of a big scrub oak tree.

She wasn’t sure what to say. There was the man whom she’d told she could fall in love with him not ten feet from her. She remembered the commitment issues she and Shiloh had talked about and it still scared the hell out of her.

“Maybe. I don’t know if I am or not. It’s easier to accept that these other people were my ancestors than to acknowledge that he was my father. And I was very drunk last night when you called.” She blurted out the last line.

“There is no doubt about that,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I went for a walk,” he said. “I should keep going. See you later.”

“Enjoy your walk.” She wanted him to stay, but then she wanted him to go. That comment about falling for him was between them and she wasn’t sure how to get rid of it.

“Thanks,” he said stiffly and she heard rustling leaves as he left.

She sat down on an old wooden bench in the dark shadows of one of the big scrub oak trees on the north side of the cemetery.

“Why did you keep watch on us, Ezra, if you didn’t want to have us around?” she mumbled. “I can’t figure it out.”

She glanced at the tombstones closest to her. They were her grandparents somewhere back down the line. “Grandparents!” She slapped her knee. “That’s it.”

It had come to her in bits and pieces, but when she analyzed the whole thing, she’d figured it out. If any one of them had given birth to a son, that child would have inherited Malloy Ranch. He’d kept a watch on his three daughters to see who was the smartest, who worked the hardest, and who wound up with the best man.

The pieces fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

If his daughters all had sons born the same month or the same year, he would have had to choose among them. What if the oldest son was a lazy shit who wouldn’t work or the youngest one got picked up for selling drugs on the street corner? Or what if one son was illegitimate and the other two had fathers but one of the fathers was a rancher and the other one was an airplane pilot?

Ezra would have chosen the best one to inherit his ranch and money through what he’d learned about his daughters. Abby thought it sad that he’d missed so much with his own daughters, only to die knowing that he didn’t have a grandson to leave his ranch to after all.

She didn’t realize how long she’d sat there until the north wind had started to blow hard enough to push its way through the bare tree limbs. She shivered and pulled her hat a little tighter. Time to head back to the house.

Leaves crunched again to signal Cooper’s approach. He sat down on the bench beside her.

“You are still here?” he asked.

“I didn’t mean to be, but I figured out something important.” She told him about the grandson idea.

“You could be right. Ezra was a cagey old fellow,” Cooper said. “Now about what you said on the phone.”

“I was drunk,” she whispered.

“I know that, so let’s delete it just like we do things on the computer,” he said.

“Is that possible once it’s been said?”

He slid over closer and put his arm around her, drawing her close to his side. “We did it with sex, didn’t we?”

She laid her head on his shoulder and it wasn’t awkward. “Okay, then, hit the ‘Delete’ button.”

“I know you aren’t growing roots, yet, Abby. But you will if you stay until spring. One day you will wake up and wonder where your wings went.”

“I’m beginning to hope you are right, Cooper, but I’m not taking that to the bank. Not yet.” She thought about leaving and suddenly there was a hole in her heart. In the next instant she let the idea of roots and staying take precedence and everything felt right in the world. But right then she was in Cooper’s arms and that could influence her decision a lot.

“You don’t have to. Just tell me when it happens.”

She nodded. “I promise.”

“That’s good enough for this day,” he said.

His black cowboy hat was pulled down low enough on his brow that she couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel him looking at her.

“Thanks, Cooper. I might not be the woman I am today if Ezra had accepted me as a daughter, so I’m trying to think about that and not hold on to the bitterness.”

Cooper squeezed her hand. “Ezra wasn’t all bad, Abby. His mother died when he was a little kid. I don’t know if it was in childbirth or if it happened when he was a toddler, but he wasn’t very old. His father raised him right here on the ranch without any women around, not even a cook or housekeeper. Your mother was the first woman in fifty years to live on this ranch.”

“How did you know all that?”

“He told me bits and pieces through the years,” Cooper answered.

“He got his comeuppance in the end, didn’t he? All that work and money he had to have paid out and still no satisfaction. Now his three daughters are living together and we really don’t hate each other, which is what he wanted us to do. I pity a man like Ezra who couldn’t move past a woman who broke his heart and love one of the three women he married.”

“Knowing Ezra, he would rather have your hate than pity.”