Carolyne Aarsen - Cowboy Daddy

She closed the closet door and glanced around the room. It was the best, supposedly, in Millarville, and she guessed it would do. She hoped she wouldn’t have to stay here long. Staying here resurrected memories she had relegated to the “before” part of her life.

Before the Williams family took her in.

“Are they okay? How do they look?” Her father sounded a bit better, as if the news sparked new life in him.

“They’re fine.” Nicole thought of Justin and Tristan, and her heart contracted.

She knew the Cosgroves wouldn’t simply hand over the boys to her as soon as she had arrived. From what she had discovered, the boys had been at the ranch since Scott took them away.

Kip’s family was the only one the children knew. A family, she discovered, which included Kip’s mother, a younger sister and a married sister with six children.

Nicole couldn’t stop a nudge of jealousy at the thought of Kip’s large family, then quashed it. She’d had a full life with the Williams, and she owed her adoptive parents more than she could ever repay. That Brent’s natural daughter was the one gone only increased her guilt.

“Is the family treating them okay? Do they seem to have a stable home life?”

“The farmhouse is a bit of a wreck,” Nicole said, thinking of the worn flooring, and the faded paint. “It looks as if no money had been spent on the house in a while.”

Yet in spite of the mess, when she walked into the spacious kitchen of the Cosgrove house, she felt enveloped by a sense of home. Of comfort and peace.

Something she seldom experienced in her father’s cavernous house.

“They’re well taken care of.” She tucked the phone under her ear, pulled her laptop out of the bag and plugged it in. Thankfully, she would be able to do much of her work for the family’s foundation while she was here.

“You sound like you think they should stay.” Her father’s voice held an accusatory tone.

“No. I don’t,” Nicole assured him. “But we can’t simply remove them immediately.” She knew she sounded practical, however, her feelings were anything but.

When she saw the boys, a feeling of love, almost devastating in its intensity, bowled her over. She wanted to grab them, hold them close, then run away with them. She couldn’t understand or explain the unexpected power of these feelings. The only time she’d experienced this before was when she saw her little sister, Tricia, for the first time.

“It was what your sister wanted,” her father said, a hard note entering his voice.

“I know. It’s what I want as well, but we have to proceed carefully. The boys don’t remember their mother and they most certainly don’t know who I am.” She highly doubted Kip would tell them in the next few days.

“I should be there,” her father said, his voice harsh. “I should be meeting with that lawyer.” This was followed by a bout of coughing that belied his insistence.

“You know yourself that once lawyers get hold of things, the process grinds to a halt.” She ignored a sliver of panic at the thought. When she arranged to come here, she had given herself three weeks to bring the boys back. Sure, she could work here, but she also needed to spend time with the boys so the transition from here to Toronto wouldn’t be so difficult.

“Who do the boys look like?” Brent asked, a thread of hope in his voice.

“They look exactly like Tricia.” Nicole pressed her fingers to her lips, restraining her sorrow.

“You have to bring my boys back, Nicole. They are all I have left of Tricia. Those boys don’t belong there. They’re not even blood relatives.”

Nicole knew her father spoke out of sorrow, but his words struck at the foundations of Nicole’s insecurities. Tricia was Sam and Norah’s natural daughter.

Nicole was simply the adopted one.

“Tomorrow I’ll see Mr. Cosgrove’s lawyer,” Nicole said, opening her laptop and turning it on. “We’ll have to take this one step at a time.”

“When you talk to that lawyer you make sure to let him know that James Feschuk is working for us. His reputation might get things moving a bit. I also want a DNA test. If they don’t believe us, then we’ll get positive proof that Scott Cosgrove was not the boys’ father.”

“How will that happen?” Nicole asked.

“James told me that you can get DNA tests done locally. He suggested one called a grandparent’s test. Get that grandmother to get tested and we’ll find out. I’ll get tested too. Then we’ve got some teeth to our argument.” His voice rose and Sam started coughing again.

“I’m saying goodbye,” Nicole said. “And you should go to bed. Make sure you take your medication and use that puffer the doctor gave you.”

“Yes, yes,” Sam said. “I’ll get James to phone that lawyer. Tell him we insist on a DNA test. Give me his name and I can take care of it.”

Nicole pulled out her cell phone and called up the name and number and gave that information to her father. “I’ll let you know the minute I hear anything.”

Nicole said goodbye. She turned back to her computer, but only sat and stared sightlessly at the screen, her work suddenly forgotten as she thought of Justin and Tristan. Tricia’s boys.

Seeing them had been heartwarming and heartrending at the same time.

Again she felt the sting of her sister’s betrayal when Tricia had left without a word those many years ago. Nicole had hoped and prayed for an opportunity to talk to her face-to-face, to apologize. But the only letter in the envelope was one to her parents pleading for forgiveness. Nothing for her.

Nicole glanced around the room as memories of other evenings in other motel rooms crowded in.

Nicole tried to push the memories away, but the emotions of the past day had made her vulnerable and her mind slipped back to a vivid picture of herself, sitting on a bed in a motel room, a little girl of five, waiting while her aunt smoked and strode back and forth, watching through the window.

When Nicole’s natural mother died, her father, a long-distance trucker, put Nicole into the care of his sister, a bitter, verbally abusive woman.

Whenever he came into town, Nicole’s aunt would bring her to a motel where they would meet her father. She would stay with him for a couple of days and then he would be gone.

That evening they waited until the next morning, but he never came. His truck had spun out of control and he had died in the subsequent accident.

After six months, her aunt had her moved to an already-full foster home.

Four years later, she was adopted by the Williams family at age eight, and her life went from the instability of seven foster homes in four years to the stability of a wealthy family. She was told enough times how blessed she was, and she knew it.

Yet each night as she crawled into her bed, she would wonder when it would all get taken away. People had always left her. It would happen again.

Then something magical and miraculous happened to her and the Williams family. Norah, who was never supposed to be able to conceive, became pregnant. When Tricia was born, Nicole bonded with this little baby in a way she couldn’t seem to with Norah and Sam. Tricia became as much Nicole’s child as her parents’.

Nicole took care of her with a fierce intensity. She stood up for her in school, listened to her stories of heartbreak and sorrow. Defended her to Sam and Norah whenever Tricia got into yet another scrape. She was Tricia’s confidant.

Then Tricia turned thirteen. She withdrew. Became sullen and ungrateful. She started hanging around with the wrong crowd and staying out late. Nicole had tried to reason with her, to explain that she was throwing her life away.

But Tricia kept up her self-destructive lifestyle. Finally, in frustration, Nicole fought with her.