Brenda Minton - The Cowboy's Sweetheart

And then the back door opened again.

Andie had forgotten about that car in the drive. She shouldn’t have forgotten. It was Ryder’s fault and it would have felt good to tell him that. But she didn’t have time because the woman standing on the back porch was now walking down the steps. She was nearing fifty and stunningly beautiful. And she was smiling. Andie hadn’t expected the smile. She wanted this woman to be cold, to live up to Andie’s expectations of her.

A woman that ditched a child couldn’t be warm. She couldn’t be loving. Andie replayed her list of words she used to describe her mother: cold, unfeeling, hard, selfish.

The list used to be more graphic, but Andie was working hard on forgiving. She’d started with the easy “need to forgive” list. She would forgive Margie Watkins for spreading a rumor about her. She could forgive Blaine for gum in her notebook back in the fifth grade. She’d kept her mother on a list by herself, a final project. Saving the most difficult for last.

So now Andie knew that it was true—God had his own timing, reminding her that He was really the one in charge. She had really thought she’d wait a few months to contact Caroline.

“You okay?” Ryder stepped next to her. “I thought I ought to be here for you.”

Cowgirls do too cry. They cry when the man they are the angriest with shows up and says something like that. They can cry when they see their mother for the first time in twenty-five years. She nodded in answer to his question and blinked away the tears, because she’d never cried this much in her life and she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like that her edge was gone.

Was this really the plan, really what God wanted? For her to forgive the person who had hurt her more than anyone else, even more than Ryder when he ignored her phone calls?

If so, it was going to take some time.

“Caroline wanted to see you.” Etta’s tone was noncommittal and Andie wondered if her mother had been invited or just showed up.

Oh, the wedding. Alyson’s wedding.

“Did she?” Andie managed to stand tall. “Or is she here to see Alyson? To help plan the wedding.”

It made sense that her mother would show up to help plan Alyson’s wedding. She had never shown up for anything that had to do with Andie.

“I’m here to see you.” Caroline was close enough to hear, to respond. And she had the nerve to smile like she meant it.

But really? Did she?

“That’s good.” Andie managed words that she didn’t feel. Standing there in the yard, the sun sinking into the western horizon, red and glowing, the sky lavender. The sky matched Etta’s hair. At least that lightened the mood.

“I know I should have come sooner.” Caroline glanced away, like she, too, had noticed the setting sun. She stared toward the west. “I don’t have excuses. I’m just here to say that I’m sorry.”

“Really?” Apparently it was the day for apologies. Was it on the calendar—a national holiday?

“We should go in and have that tea.” Etta gathered them the way a hen gathered chicks.

“Ryder, you should go.” Andie squeezed his hand. “Thank you for being here.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I’ll see you at church tomorrow.” She said it to watch the look on his face. She knew he wouldn’t be there. He’d gone to church when he was a kid, until his dad’s little indiscretion.

“That’s one thing I can’t do for you, Andie.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll see you around.”

Why did it have to sound like goodbye, as if they were sixteen and breaking up?

She watched him get in his truck and drive away. And it wasn’t what she wanted, not at all. She wanted her best friend there with her, the way he would have been there for her if Phoenix hadn’t happened, if they hadn’t spent weeks not knowing what to say to each other.

Watching his truck turn out of the driveway and head down the road, she felt shaken, and her stupid heart felt like it was about to have a seizure of some kind.

And her mother was standing in front of her, waiting for her to pull it together. Caroline, her mother. But Etta had been that person to Andie. Etta had been the one who taught her to be a woman. Etta had taught her to put on makeup, and helped her dress for the prom. Etta had held her when she cried.

Caroline had been in some city far away, being a mother to Andie’s twin, and to her half siblings. She’d left the less-than-perfect child with the less-than-perfect husband.

Issues. Andie had a lot of issues to deal with. But she wasn’t the mess some people thought she should be. She’d had Etta. She’d had a dad who’d done his best. She’d been taught to be strong, to not be a victim. Now those seemed like easy words that didn’t undo all of the pain.

“Come on.” Etta took her by the hand and led her to the house.

“Of course, tea will make this all better.” Andie whispered. As if tea could make getting steamrollered feel any better.

They walked through the back door into the kitchen decorated with needlepoint wall hangings that Andie and Etta had worked on together. They’d never had satellite, and only a few local stations until recently. Winters had been spent reading or doing needlepoint. It hadn’t been a bad way to grow up.

“What’s going on between you and Ryder?” Etta spooned sugar into the cup of tea she’d just poured. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that was a lover’s quarrel.”

“We’d have to be in love for that to be the case.” Andie leaned in close to her grandmother, loving the way she smelled like rose talcum powder, and the house smelled like vegetables from the garden and pine cleaner.

It was her grandmother’s house and it always felt like the safest place in the world.

Even with her mother standing across the counter from her, fidgeting with the cup that Etta had set in front of her it was still that safe place. Caroline looked up and Andie met her gaze.

“Well, it was just a matter of time,” Etta whispered as she walked away.

“What did you say?”

“I said, I hope you don’t mind sugar in this tea, and do you mind if it has thyme. It’s good for you, you know.”

“Right.”

She sat down at the kitchen island and her granny slid the cup of tea across the counter to her. Etta sat down next to her, moving a plate of cookies between them. Peanut butter, nothing better.

Andie sipped her tea and set the cup down, not feeling at all better, not the way she usually did when she came home.

“I’m surprised to see you.” Andie reached for a second cookie. “I’m the reject kid, right? The one you didn’t want.”

Caroline shuddered and Andie didn’t feel better, not the way she’d thought she would feel the sense of satisfaction she’d expected. And now, not so much.

“You’re not defective. You’re beautiful, smart and talented,” Etta spoke up, her voice having a loud edge.

Andie shot her grandmother a look, because they both knew better. She and her father hadn’t been good enough for Caroline. He’d been Caroline’s one-night stand in college, and he’d married her. A cute country boy from Oklahoma. And reality hadn’t been as much fun.

One-night stands didn’t work. She sipped her tea and pushed the thought from her mind. Better to focus on Caroline and her father rather than on her own mistakes.

“I’m not the prodigy. I’m the kid who struggled to read.” Andie no longer felt like the kid in school who didn’t understand what everyone else got with ease. She had been fortunate to have great teachers, people who were willing to help and encourage her. She’d had Etta.

“You have a challenge, not a disability.” Etta covered Andie’s hand with a hand that was a little crooked with arthritis, but still strong, still soft, still manicured. “She took Alyson. I got to keep you. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Being here with me and your dad?”