“As manager, he sees to the daily operations so Britt and I can concentrate on training. We’re busier than ever this year.”
“I don’t know what we’d do without Colton,” Britt added. “You’ll enjoy working with him, he’s a great guy.”
Yeah, Kendra thought, but looks aren’t everything. She could hardly tell them that, so instead she said, “I was just a bit surprised, that’s all.”
“He’s fair,” Joel assured her, before turning to walk down the barn aisle. Britt and Kendra followed as he continued. “He’s usually here by seven a.m., so you’ll want to be out to the barn by then.”
“Today was crazy,” Britt said. “I don’t know how much you heard earlier, but his wallet was stolen from his car this morning—in broad daylight.”
It’d barely been dawn, but Kendra couldn’t tell them that either. Instead, she asked, “He left his wallet in his car?”
“He thought he’d locked the car, but that’s beside the point. It’s a quiet, residential neighborhood. I guess that doesn’t matter these days.”
“Hey,” Joel said. “If Colton was stupid enough to leave his wallet in plain sight, he kinda had it coming. I mean, nothing like issuing an invitation to the selfish little—”
“Okay-okay,” Britt held up a hand to stop him.
Kendra wanted to crawl in a hole. In Colton’s defense, his wallet had been in the glove compartment. But, she didn’t want to defend him, so instead, she changed the subject and insisted she’d start work the very next morning.
At dinner she met her younger nephew, and Dustin charmed her as effortlessly as Cody. Halfway through the best meal her deprived taste buds had enjoyed in days, she even forgot to feel like an outsider. Noah acted as if he’d known Joel and his family all his life, and Kendra had to fight tears as she watched him laugh.
Afterwards, Joel suggested he and Kendra take a walk. Her discomfort returned as they made their way down the porch steps toward one of the corrals. She worried Colton had changed his mind, and couldn’t think of a single thing to say without the buffer of everyone else around them.
Joel stopped by the fence that ran along the length of the tree-lined driveway. “What was she like?”
She hadn’t expected that question. In the moment it took for her to think of how to answer, he rested a foot on the bottom rail and leaned his forearms on top, fiddling with a piece of grass he’d picked.
“Well, to tell you the truth…when I was younger, there were times when I wondered why she had me.” Joel’s gaze swung to hers, full of surprise, and a hint o
f sadness. Kendra shrugged and quickly trained her gaze on the mountains that lined the evening sky. “After Noah, when I saw how happy my Dad was, I realized she did it all for him.”
“She loved him?”
“Very much. Dad died a year after Noah was born though. She changed after that, became more of a mother to us since Dad didn’t take up so much of her time. A year later, she was diagnosed with cancer and spent a year battling it, then four years in remission.” She turned to lean her back against the fence. “That’s when she became a mom. The end was hard because it was so sudden, and she’d been well for so long. When the cancer came back, she was gone in less than two months.”
Her voice broke at the end. She took a moment to compose herself before answering his original question. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that she was as good a mother as she knew how to be. Nobody’s perfect.”
She pulled an envelope from her pocket. She hadn’t planned to show it to him—not with Robert’s name inside, but now that she’d met him, heard and saw his pain where their mother was concerned, how could she not?
Kendra extended the worn envelope. “She left this for me; you should read it.”
He looked at her outstretched hand as if the paper were poisonous. Finally, he reached to take it.
She turned to walk away. “I’ll let you read it by yourself.”
Joel stared at the envelope. All the old feelings of the past, the ones he’d thought he’d dealt with and laid to rest, were right there in his throat. It was difficult to concentrate past the hammering of his heart.
This shouldn’t matter to him. She shouldn’t matter. He’d tried not to give much thought to his mother over the years, beyond the fact that she’d left him and his dad. He hadn’t thought about her having other children when she so obviously had not wanted him.
Now he wished she were still alive so he could ask why? What had been wrong with him? Why had she kept her other children and left him?
His hand shook as he pulled the letter out. It was as worn as the envelope, as if it had been read many times. It started abruptly, and he realized there were pages missing. Kendra had only given him what she wanted him to see. He turned toward his sister—man, that still sounded strange—only to see she was already halfway to the guesthouse.
Unable to put it off any longer, his gaze dropped to the paper in his hands.
You have another brother, Kendra. I know this will shock you and I am so sorry. His name is Joel Morgan, and he owns the JBM Ranch in Colorado with his wife and two sons. I located him with the help of a private investigator last week. To go back a little farther, before I met your father, I was married. I met Joel’s father when I was sixteen and married a year later when I found out I was pregnant.
He hadn’t known that; his father never told him they’d had to marry.