Texas Heroes: Volume 1 by Jean Brashear

Author:Jean Brashear [Brashear, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Anthologies & Literary Collections, General, Short Stories, Anthologies, Western, Anthologies & Literature Collections, Genre Fiction, Westerns, Romance, Texas
Amazon: B006EODK6W
Publisher: Jean Brashear
Published: 2014-01-13T06:00:00+00:00

“Slow down, Davey,” Perrie called out. Mitch still had not appeared by lunchtime, so she’d fixed them lunch and left his warming in the cabinet on back of the woodstove.

Her steps slowed as she reached the small clearing.

Davey darted here and there, all the energy of the two days before exploding from his small frame after being released from the cabin’s boundaries. “Look, Mom, I see tracks over there!”

Perrie couldn’t answer. Before her stood the grandfather spruce Grandpa Cy had called the Old Man of the Mountain.

I spread his ashes around the grandfather spruce.

Perrie’s hands clasped between her breasts, her vision blurred by her tears.

“Mom, come—” Davey’s voice turned worried. “What’s wrong?”

She could barely hear him, lost in a thousand memories of the gruff old man who’d been her foundation. Over all the years her mother had dragged her from place to place, boyfriend to boyfriend, the only anchor in Perrie’s world had been Cy Buchanan.

You didn’t care enough…too bad you broke his heart.

She dropped to her knees, doubled over by the pain.

I’m so sorry, Grandpa. I should have been here. If only I’d known—

“Mom?” Davey was close now, close enough to touch. “What’s the matter?”

She shook her head and opened her arms, enfolding him in her embrace and rocking him from side to side while tears rolled down her cheeks.

Davey hugged her once, tightly, then pulled back. “You’re sad?”

She nodded, sliding first one palm and then the other across her damp skin. “I’ll be all right.”

“Is it Grandpa Cy? Is that why you’re sad?”

Perrie tried for a smile, then pulled him down on her lap, mindless of the snow under her knees. “He would have loved you so much.”

“That’s what Mitch said.”

She blinked at that, surprised at Mitch’s generosity. He would never forgive her, but she would never forgive herself, either. She should have been in touch the first instant she was away from Simon. She should have sensed, somehow, that Grandpa needed her. Should have felt in her bones that something was wrong with the most important man in her life.

Not for the first time, Perrie felt the sick rage of shame for what she’d gotten herself into, for being a blind, naïve fool, for letting Simon dominate her for so long.

“Maybe you could talk to Grandpa Cy like Mitch told me I could still thank my fish. It might not be too late.”

From the mouths of babes. Feeling an odd spurt of hope, she set Davey on his feet, then rose herself and held out her hand. “I think you’re right. Let’s give it a try.”

Hand in hand, they crossed the white powder. The wind blew through the trees, keening a faint moan that could be a dirge. “Grandpa Cy loved these mountains,” she told Davey. “He never tired of their changing seasons, of the different faces they showed, day to day, and year to year. He called this big tree the Old Man of the Mountains. He said that if I would listen closely, I’d hear the stories this tree could tell.

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