And forgetting about her two sons.
“That’s true. When she married your dad, she never thought she would be stuck here all the time. Do you ever want to travel and see the world?”
Ben stepped to the peg and plucked off his cowboy hat. After setting it on his head, he turned toward his grandmother. “No, I love the ranch.”
“It seems to me you have more of your dad in you than you realize, and Grady has more of his mother in him. He’s the one who traveled and saw the world.”
Ben needed this conversation to end. He strode to Cody, picked him up and gave him a hug. His heart swelled as he inhaled his son’s baby scent and heard his giggles. Then he passed Cody to Mamie and headed for the front door.
“Have you read the letter yet?”
“No.”
“Why not? Aren’t you curious what Cody’s mother had to say?”
“We don’t know that for sure.” Alana Peterson. He rolled the name of the woman in the wreck—Cody’s mother—around in his mind.
“Then, why else did she write a letter addressed to you and have all those baby items in her car? Read the letter and find out.”
He opened the door and glanced back at Grandma holding a content Cody. “I’m afraid to read it.”
“You aren’t afraid of anything. You’ll try everything at least once.”
“Not anymore. I’m a father now.” He would not abandon his son like his mother had, or for that matter like his father, who had been there for him physically, but not emotionally. “I know he has you and Grady, but I want Cody and me to have a strong relationship. I want him to know I love him.”
“Your dad loved you.”
“He had a funny way of showing it. I’m not the same man I was the day I found Cody on our doorstep.” And he did have fears, even if he didn’t let on to others. He didn’t want to end up like his father, bitter and alone, or like his mother, rootless and aimless. His examples of being a parent weren’t the best, and he prayed he didn’t end up like one of them.
Ben left the house and headed for the barn, his hand slipping into his pocket where the letter was. Mamie was right. He couldn’t keep putting off reading what Alana had to tell him. He made a detour toward the corral near the barn and watched a stallion prancing around, showing off to the mares in the field nearby.
He leaned back against the railing and slowly removed the letter. He’d made a lot of mistakes in the past, and this short fling with Alana was one of them. He couldn’t continue casually dating, never settling down. His son needed a mother, stability.
He opened the single sheet and read, his teeth grinding together. With a tight throat, Ben stared at Alana’s words written in a neat handwriting.
“I tried being a mother. I just wasn’t any good at it. I just want to have fun. You should understand that and not condemn me. I did some checking. I know your grandmother will help you. I have no one.”
Those sentences jumped out at Ben. How about me? I would have helped if you’d have let me know about Cody.
Ben crushed the paper into a ball, then stuffed it into his front pocket of his jeans. He remembered how he’d been before the accident, and he could see why Alana would say that. He’d always gone into a relationship with a woman knowing it was only temporary and casual. He didn’t want to be responsible for another person’s feelings. He’d already disappointed his father after trying for years to be the son he wanted. His mother, the one parent who he’d thought loved him unconditionally and accepted him for who he was, had left him, rarely contacting him because she was too busy building a new life with a new husband. And now she was dead and he had no chance of having a relationship with her.
He looked at the house, where his son was. He didn’t deserve him, but maybe he could learn to be a good father, give him what he hadn’t had with his own dad.
But not by living the way he had before. That was no life for a child. He needed at the very least a good nanny, or maybe it was time for him to get serious and settle down. Maybe in the future even marry. He had to change. He couldn’t keep going down the same road. It led nowhere.
Where do I start? He felt lost and out of his depth. Then he remembered one of Grandma Mamie’s favorite Bible stories about the prodigal son who finally came home, broken and humble. His father had greeted him with love and celebrated his return. Maybe it wasn’t too late for him to reconnect with the Lord.
* * *
Lucy stopped by her small white house not far from Main Street to change from her uniform into more appropriate clothes to go riding with Ben this morning. She must be getting desperate to ask him if she could hang out at the barn when Maddy was working. But in her gut, she knew the girl and Betsy were somehow connected to the thieves. She needed results, and soon.
As a police officer in San Antonio for a few years before returning to Little Horn, she’d been a valuable member of several important cases. She wasn’t alone in her frustration. The members of the Rustling Investigation Team of the Lone Star Cowboy League were aggravated, too. Their speculations of who the thieves might be weren’t enough without hard evidence. In the past few months there had been enough accusations flung at certain people without any proof. That had divided her hometown. She didn’t want to see that anymore. She needed hard evidence before arresting anyone, especially teenagers.
After changing into jeans, boots and a blue T-shirt, she headed to her personal car, put her gun in the glove compartment and drove to the Stillwater Ranch, bordered on one side by Carson Thorn’s huge spread. She and Carson, as the president of the Lone Star Cowboy League, had been working closely to find the Robin Hoods. She always appreciated his counsel and was glad he finally was engaged to his high school girlfriend, Ruby.
Lucy parked next to the barn where other vehicles were, drew in a composing breath and climbed from her eight-year-old Mustang, purchased the first year she’d been a police officer in San Antonio. She’d always wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps. She’d thought the action in a big city would prepare her for anything in the county when her dad retired from being the sheriff. But her hometown and rural county were very different from San Antonio.
As she walked into the long barn through the double doors off the yard, two female voices came from one of the stalls on the right. Lucy spied a cowhand, not Ben, at the other end. She made her way to the girls cleaning out a stall.
Lucy stopped in the entrance, the scent of manure and hay overpowering. “Hi, Maddy. Christie. Do you know where Ben is?”
Maddy smiled. “He went up to the house but said to tell you he’d be right back.” The two teenagers exchanged looks before Maddy added, “He mentioned y’all were going riding.”
From the gleam in their eyes, Lucy wondered if Ben had implied something more about her presence here today. “Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve ridden. I don’t want to get rusty.”
“I can’t see you forgetting how to ride. Remember you used to come out here when your dad visited mine, and we usually ended up riding.”
Ben’s deep baritone voice shivered up Lucy’s spine. She glanced over her shoulder as he approached her. His cowboy hat,
