Leann Harris - A Rancher for their Mom

Joel wanted to ask more, but he saw the gleam in Jack’s eyes. “I asked if they were coming to the rodeo, but April—”

“April?” Jack again poked him, enjoying himself way too much.

“Mrs. Landers said no. Well, what she really said was ‘we’ll see,’ which the boys knew was no. So I thought you could throw in tickets for both days of the rodeo. April’s got a couple of budding cowboys there that need encouragement. If that’s a problem, I’ll pay for the tickets.”

Jack’s smile widened. “No, it’s not a problem.”

There was way too much satisfaction in Jack’s answer.

“Yo, Jack, I need to talk to you,” Graham “Shortie” McGraw shouted across the arena. “Now.”

“Coming.” Jack turned back to Joel. “See you later.”

As Jack strode across the arena, Joel wondered at his boss’s reaction. What amusement did he find in Joel calling Mrs. Landers April ? It was her name. Now, if he called her sweetie or punkin like his grandmother had called his grandfather, then Joel could’ve understood Jack’s reaction. And why did giving away the tickets to the rodeo feel as though he’d made some deep commitment? They were tickets. That was all. So what had made Jack smile?

* * *

“He was way cool, Mom,” Todd said, his spaghetti spilling out of his mouth. Sauce dotted his chin.

“Todd, keep your mouth closed while you’re eating. It’s polite.”

Todd’s fingers pushed the spaghetti back into his mouth. Wes snickered. She’d made the boys’ favorite meal, hoping to take their minds off Joel Kaye.

After swallowing, Todd continued, “Did you see how Mr. Joel handled Helo and Sadie? He was so good, making friends with them first.” He looked at his brother. “And Mr. Joel’s birthday is in March and he’s a real good cowboy.”

Todd wasn’t going to let go of his brother’s false claims anytime soon.

Wes shrugged off the comment. “He was good with the lasso. I want to learn how to do that, too, ’cause you have to do that to be a cowboy. Opa was good. He started to show me how to throw, but—” Wes fell silent.

“Maybe Mr. Joel could show us,” Todd suggested, his eyes going wide.

Wes perked up. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. He threw as good as Opa.”

Cora clapped her hands together, squishing a strand of spaghetti between them. “Yeah, cowboy.”

The boys hadn’t stopped talking about Joel since he’d left this afternoon. Of course, maybe that was a good sign, since the incident with Mr. Moore stepping on the pitchfork and knocking himself out had given them all a scare. Both boys had gone white, but Todd had seemed particularly shaken.

“I don’t know if Mr. Joel will have the time to teach you. He’ll be here to plant crops and do other chores that Mr. Moore would’ve done.”

The boys fell silent, then traded calculating looks.

“Okay.”

Why did Wes’s okay worry her more than a protest?

April needed to stop any shenanigans before they got out of hand. “Maybe Mr. Waters could show you how to whirl a lariat after church sometime. He used to compete in the rodeo.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “He’s ancient, Mom. He must be fifty.”

“No, eighty,” Wes added.

Todd’s brow crinkled. “Yeah, and I don’t know if he would remember how to throw.”

April choked on her spaghetti and quickly took a sip of tea. Andrew Waters was only thirty-eight.

“I don’t know, boys. I don’t want you to bother Mr. Joel while he’s working.”

The boys’ faces fell.

“Aw, Mom.” Wes put his fork down and frowned. He made it sound as if she’d just stomped on his dream.

Todd stared down at his plate, too, his posture only emphasizing how much the boys wanted Joel Kaye to teach them how to throw a lariat.

“I promise I’ll check with Mr. Waters to see if he’ll teach you how to throw.” Her words went over like lead weights on a rubber raft.

“May I be excused?” Wes asked.

“Me, too,” Todd added.

She felt lower than a snake’s belly, stomping their hopes. She nodded and the boys slipped away from the table. Cora frowned, reaching for her brothers. April pulled Cora from her booster seat, wiped her hands and mouth, then set her on her feet. She hurried after her brothers.

“Good job, April,” she murmured to herself. “No one’s happy.” And that included her.

* * *

April poured herself a large iced tea and wandered out onto the back porch. An hour and a half ago, she’d put three subdued children to bed, and those sad little faces had nearly brought her to her knees.

Scanning the bare fields behind the house, April felt a ray of hope and a huge helping of pride.

When Joel had told her the boys hired him, it’d taken her a moment to understand what he was saying. That her boys understood she needed help and wanted to provide it made her chest puff out with pride. It also disheartened her that they knew the ranch was in trouble.

With the death of her husband and in-laws over the past three years, she was now the only adult left on this ranch. Her neighbors had helped for a couple of months after Vernon’s death, but they had their own ranches to care for. Lately, several of the ranchers at church had offered to rent her fields to plant their own cash crops.

She’d toyed with the idea, but it felt as though she’d be giving up on the ranch, on her dreams. She loved this place and had never thought that she’d be in this position.

Her father’s job as a rig manager for a major oil company had kept them on the move throughout her life. She’d lived on several continents and in some exotic places, but none had felt like home until they moved to this place in the Texas Panhandle. When her father had been transferred to Lubbock her junior year in high school, she’d found her heart’s desire on the Llano Estacado and the Caprock.

Added to the feeling of coming home, the first day in English class she’d met Ross Landers. He’d smiled at her and she’d been smitten. Ross had introduced her to all his friends, but it was when he brought her home to this ranch that she knew she was in love.

A home.

Roots.

And something that lasted. The Landers family had ranched this piece of land since the 1880s. Over five generations, through good times and bad, through times of plenty and drought, the family had persevered. That legacy flooded her with purpose and direction. She could do this. Needed to do this.

April and Ross had married a week after graduating from high school and he’d immediately gone to work on a rig out in West Texas, which had surprised her, since Ross had never mentioned he didn’t want to stay on the ranch. He visited home often while she was pregnant with Wes but missed the baby’s birth. Two years later, when she got pregnant with Todd, Ross immediately got one of the treasured jobs as a roughneck on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that her father oversaw. His excuse for taking that job had been that the extra money he’d receive would help with the expenses of the new baby.

Ross never came back for any length of time after he left. He made it home sporadically for the next four years. When his mother, Grace, was diagnosed with breast cancer, Ross came home that Christmas. That gave April hope that he’d changed, but she quickly learned that wasn’t the case. Ross refused to take his mom to any of her chemo sessions. He did promise to attend Wes’s first-grade Christmas pageant, but he didn’t show. Instead he got drunk with other oil field workers from West Texas. With Todd, Ross would either throw the four-year-old around as if he was a rag doll, hold him upside down by his feet or ignore him, which confused the boy.

When Ross took the assignment on a new rig in the Gulf, Vernon, Grace and April all breathed a sigh of relief that his disruptive presence was gone. Six weeks later Ross died in a freak accident. After they buried him, April discovered she was pregnant with Cora. The money she’d received from Ross’s life insurance, which her in-laws insisted she save and use for her babies, was now almost gone.