Karen Rock - Christmas At Cade Ranch

“Oh. It’s just something kids say,” Sofia said quickly, hating how a few children had picked on Javi for his secondhand clothes and the card he used instead of money in the cafeteria. Someday she’d give him everything that other kids had so no one would ever make fun of him again. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Yes, it does,” Javi insisted through hands covering his face. “It means we’re poor trash. Least that’s what Timmy Rice says.”

“That’s a mean thing to say,” Joy insisted, indignant. “It’s better to have no money than no heart.”

Javi peeked up through his fingers. “Is that true?”

“I swear.”

“A lady at a desk called me a waste of space. Is that true?”

“Absolutely not,” declared Joy, her voice firm.

Javi threw his arms around her. “I like you.”

Joy smiled, blinking fast. Her trembling hand passed over his hair. “I like you, too, honey. A lot.”

He angled his head to peer up at her. “How come?”

“Because you’re a Cade, and Cades always stick together.”

“Mama says the Cades ride on top of mountains and don’t ever fall off. Their hats touch the clouds. Right, Mama?”

Sofia dropped her eyes at Joy’s surprised look. Okay. Maybe she’d exaggerated a bit about Jesse’s family, but she’d wanted Javi to believe he came from good people...strong men and women...a family he could be proud of, unlike her.

“That’s right, Javi.” Time to change the subject. “Joy, I’m not sure if you ever mentioned how you found us...?”

Joy produced a cell phone with a familiar rodeo buckle cover. Jesse’s phone.

“The police returned this to us a couple years ago, but I didn’t... I couldn’t bring myself to look through it. Not until recently. Then I saw this.”

She flipped the phone around to show a picture of Sofia in a hospital bed, a newborn Javi in her arms. Jesse grinned as he crouched beside them. The name Cade was scrawled in big letters on the empty baby pen nearby.

“That’s me!” Javi exclaimed.

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“Mama said I cried a lot. Is that why Daddy left?”

“Honey!” Sofia exclaimed. Out of the mouths of babes. Javi had been a colicky baby. True, she had worried at one point that taking care of a demanding baby had driven Jesse back to drugs, but she knew that was not the case at all.

“Mama said he got sick.”

Joy nodded. “Yes. She has the right of it.” She cleared her throat. “Javi, would you find me some holly berries?” She pointed to a patch of bushes beyond the pine bunch. “Celtics believed they were good luck.”

“Like basketball?”

“No, honey. Ancient people. They’re all gone now.”

“Like Atlantis? Mummies?”

“Something like that...”

“Got it!” Javi leaped off the bench and raced away, eager as always to help. He lived to save the day like his beloved superheroes.

“Don’t eat them, now!” Joy called.

The bushes were in their line of vision but out of earshot. Sofia admired the woman’s deft handling of this tricky moment. She pressed clammy palms on her jeans and perched on the edge of the bench. Her insides felt frozen, her heart beating in a block of ice.

“So Javi doesn’t know about Jesse’s addiction.”

“No,” Sofia said swiftly. “I don’t want him knowing about any of that.”

Joy studied her for a long moment, then nodded. “He won’t hear of it from me.”

Sofia released a breath. “Thank you.”

“I’ve been searching for you ever since I found this.” Joy tucked the phone in her purse. “I figured out who you were by searching his contacts, but your number no longer worked.”

“I’ve moved around a lot.”

And Sofia couldn’t afford a phone, or this conversation. It brought up too much of her past. She needed to leave. Now.

Joy’s eyes glistened as she studied Javi scuttling across the whitened ground on his hands and knees. The sky spit a few snow flurries. A first volley of more to come, Sofia worried. A low howl rose in her ears.

“I—I—” Sofia was struggling to think of a graceful way to extricate herself when Joy buried her face in her hands and her shoulders shook. Overhead, a pair of cooing mourning doves alighted on a branch. “I’m sorry I upset you.”

“No!” Joy lifted a tearstained face and a left-sided dimple appeared. “This is wonderful. It’s just hitting me that this is real.” She released a shaky breath. “Javi’s my first grandchild. Knowing there’s a part of my Jesse still here on this earth, well, it’s the first thing that’s made me feel alive in a long, long time.”

Sofia’s heart felt like it might explode. “I wish we could stay longer and visit, but our bus leaves soon. May I call you when Javi and I are settled?”

“I’d appreciate that. Will I see you again?” Joy rose.

“I’m not sure,” Sofia temporized. She reached for her wallet and came up empty.

Had she left it by the grave? Her eyes flew to the area and landed on Javi’s backpack. Perhaps she’d stowed it in there. The events of this anxious morning blurred. Her panicked thoughts knocked against each other, and her temple throbbed. When was the last time she’d had it?

“Javi, have you seen my wallet?” she asked, hustling to the backpack.

“Uh-uh.”

She scrounged through Javi’s backpack and her purse. Nothing.

“Our bus tickets were in there. Money. Identification...”

“Let’s retrace your steps. If we can’t find it, you’ll stay at the ranch until everything’s sorted,” Joy declared in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Wooo-hooo!” Javi shouted. “I want to see Daddy’s ranch! Can we, Mama? Can we?”

She stared into two pairs of hopeful eyes. Her throat constricted as though someone slipped a noose around it and tugged. If she didn’t find her wallet, they’d be out of options, and this small town didn’t look like it had a shelter.

Where would she and Javi sleep during the blizzard?

It’s only one night, a voice whispered. A chance for Javi to see what a real family looks like and meet his aunt and uncles.

Fine.

CHAPTER TWO

“MOVE IT! MOVE IT!” James Cade hollered as he thundered at breakneck speed alongside a stampeding herd of longhorns. His siblings’ bloodthirsty howls filled the broad valley. Pelting snow obscured his vision and froze his throat. He yanked up his bandanna to cover his nose and mouth, leaned low over his palomino’s neck and galloped flat out to redirect the rampaging group before they plunged off the bluff ahead. His heart drummed. Stinging sweat dripped in his eyes.

“Hee-yah!” pealed his younger brother Jared, his lusty shout ringing above the bellowing cattle’s din.

Their trampling hooves slapped the hard, rocky earth in a heart-pounding rhythm. At James’s finger point, Jared swerved away in the white murk and chased after a breakout group of cows and heifers, his face animated, eyes intent, back straight. He looked as unruffled as he had when they’d begun searching for the runaways who’d broken from their winter pasture hours ago. Of course, it’d take a lot more than a hundred out-of-control livestock to rattle golden-child Jared’s bone-deep confidence.

As for him? Chaos got under James’s skin, made it itch. And whenever chaos hit, James’s restless thoughts didn’t quit until everything on the family ranch he managed was in its proper, predetermined place. The rules he’d instituted after his youngest brother Jesse died and older brother, Jack, left to seek justice were needed to protect his family and their way of life. Otherwise, their carefully pieced-back world risked falling apart again.

“Yip! Yip! Yip!” hooted his sister, Jewel. She barreled at lightning speed along the right side of the cattle atop her large bay. Her dark eyes flashed, and her mouth curled slightly at the edges in a fearless smirk. She’d lost her black Stetson, he noticed, and snowflakes clung to her dark, braided hair. Red filled in the pale skin between her freckles. If she was tired after their grueling day, she wasn’t showing it. Not that she ever would.