Linda Ford by Once Upon a Thanksgiving

Author:Once Upon a Thanksgiving
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“So you’ve lived there all your life.”

“Yep. And I plan to die there, as well.” No city—big or small—for him. His roots were planted in Hawk’s Creek land and he didn’t think he could flourish anywhere else. “What about you? You live in Cleebit Springs your entire life?”

“Most of it. I arrived there when I was seven years old and stayed put until today.”

“And now you want to move to Tyler.”

She shrugged and kept her gaze on the road. “I’m just ready for a change.”

Another restless spirit? Like his brother, Ry. And Belle, his first love. And Martha, his second.

“Do you have any family?” she asked, pulling him out of his thoughts.

He noticed she was quick to turn the discussion away from herself. “An older brother and younger sister—Ry and Sadie.”

“I always wanted siblings.” Her tone was wistful. “But my mother died when I was three and my father never remarried.” She glanced back his way. “I guess the three of you live on that ranch together, like a real family.”

He shook his head as he raised a hand to smother a series of chest-tightening coughs. “Both Ry and Sadie moved on,” he said when he’d caught his breath again. “Ry left a long time ago, back when we were both still teens. Went to live in Philadelphia with our grandfather.” It had been hard when his big brother chose life back East over life on the ranch, and it had driven a wedge between the two of them, a wedge that had only recently been dislodged when Ry married Josie and moved back to Texas.

“And your sister?”

That was another move he hadn’t seen coming. “Sadie got married last year, to a fellow who moved to Texas from New York. It was a whirlwind kind of thing. And, as it turns out, both she and Ry ended up in the same town—Knotty Pine. It’s about sixty miles southeast of the ranch.” He tried not to be jealous of their closeness. And their newfound happiness.

“So you live alone now?”

He shifted in the saddle, suddenly annoyed with all her questions. “Inez is there.”

“Inez?”

“Inez Garner—I guess you’d call her our housekeeper. But she’s more than that, more like part of the family. Inez has been at Hawk’s Creek since before I was born—I can’t imagine the place without her. After my ma died she was the glue that helped hold us all together.”

“She sounds like a special lady.”

“That she is.” Enough of answering her questions—time to ask a few of his own. “What about you? You said you don’t have any family—who raised you?”

Was it his imagination or did some of her cheeriness ebb? Maybe he shouldn’t have brought up her orphaned status.

“I reckon you could say just about everybody in Cleebit Springs had a hand in raising me,” she answered. “After they buried my father—I was seven at the time—the whole community banded together to make certain I was provided for. Different families took turns looking out for me.”

Close-knit communities were like that, he supposed—doing what they could to help their neighbors when there was a need.

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