“We haven’t been all that close since Mama died,” Jayden whispered to herself as she went back into her apartment and picked up her purse. “But if there’s more going on, you could have been honest with me. But then, I wasn’t up-front with you, either.”
She locked the door behind her, crossed the lawn, and got into her truck. Before she left for the summer, she had to go visit her mother’s grave and talk to her.
She drove through Boyd, where she and Skyler had been raised. Her mother’s house had sold two months after she’d died, and Jayden noticed as she drove by that the yard needed mowing, the rosebushes hadn’t been trimmed, and one of the shutters was hanging askew. She and her mother, and then her grandfather when he moved in with them, had spent such wonderful hours together, taking care of the yard and flower beds.
“I’m glad y’all can’t see this, but why didn’t you leave the house to me instead of Skyler? I wouldn’t have sold it. I would have taken good care of it.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
From there, she took a farm road back to Hog Branch Cemetery, where her mother had been buried five years before. She parked her truck under a big pecan tree and wandered back to the tombstone marked WANDA SKYLER BENNETT.
“We were so close, Mama.” She laid her hand on the top of the tombstone. “Why didn’t you give me power of attorney? I would have never pulled the plug and let you die. People have come out of a coma after years of being asleep.”
“Mama, Skyler is holding out on me,” she tattled as she dropped down on her knees and pulled a few dandelions from the front of the tombstone. “She’s talked me into going to some sort of roughin’-it camp and doing her job so she can traipse off to Europe. I know what you’re thinkin’. If we’d kill the elephant that’s been in the room since you left us, we could get along better. I’ll never understand why you put all the power in her hands, and you didn’t even tell me about it. We shared everything, and she just came and went sporadically. Since then she’s acted even more high and mighty. I’m not going to agree with her about pulling the plug or the way she handled your funeral. She’s too self-righteous and full of herself to say I’m right, so the elephant remains.”
Jayden pulled a few more dandelion weeds from around the tombstone, went back to her truck, and looked over her shoulder at the grave site. “I’ll miss coming by to see you next month, but I’ll be back the first of August.” She opened the door and slid behind the wheel, shifted into gear, and started home. With midday traffic, the thirty-minute trip back to her apartment took more than an hour.
Jayden had not dipped strongly into her grandfather Jay Denton Grant’s gene pool when it came to patience. Gramps had the patience of Job, even with Skyler’s tantrums. “Dammit! Do you have to count to twenty after the light turns green?” she fumed when the fifth person in a row took their own good, lazy time moving forward.
You’re showing off your Bennett temper, her mother’s voice rang clear as a bell in her head.
“If people don’t know how to drive, they should keep their butts at home,” she argued, “and if a little road rage is all I got from Daddy, that’s a good thing.”
When she finally got home, she flopped down on the overstuffed sofa. Thank God she didn’t have to explain to anyone why she was leaving for eight weeks. She didn’t have a boyfriend, not for lack of wanting one. But relationships weren’t easy—neither was trust after being right in the middle of her parents’ messy divorce. Her mother and grandparents had passed away, and she’d already been to the cemetery to talk to her mother. Her dad was off with wife number two. Skyler had never blamed him for the divorce and had always kept up with him better than Jayden had, which was another bone of contention between them.
“No one cares whether I’m here or not,” she muttered. “Just set the thermostat, call an Uber to take me to the airport, and I’m off to live in a cabin with three unruly girls for eight weeks. Skyler, you owe me big-time, and I’ve got two months to think of a way to make you pay me back.”
Chapter Two
Elijah didn’t enjoy flying anymore, but sometimes it was necessary. Every time he got into the small plane owned by Piney Wood, he remembered the missions he’d flown in a helicopter during his years in the air force. His eyes misted over at the memory of the three coffins that he and his teammates had accompanied home. His enlistment had been up, and he only needed one more hitch to get his twenty years for retirement. Yet when it came time for him to sign on the dotted line a couple of weeks after all their memorial services, he couldn’t force himself to do it, and neither could Buddy, Chuck, or Tim. His friends went home after the funerals, but Elijah had spent a month and a half of his savings right there in San Antonio, trying to figure out what to do with his life.
“I’ve always been bad luck. Anyone I get really close to dies,” he said out loud.
Bullcrap! Uncle Henry’s gravelly old voice was clear in his head.
That brought back the day that Uncle Henry had shown up on his monthly rental motel doorstep in San Antonio and told him to pack his bags.
“You’re going to work for me, and once you get yourself straightened out, you’ll be taking over my job when I retire,” he’d said.
“What makes you think I want to work with a bunch of rich, bitchy little girls?” Elijah had asked as he twisted the top off a beer.
“You’ve got to do something, and you might like it. Taxi is waiting—put that beer down. You’ll be flying us home to Alpine. I brought the plane down here, but it’s time for you to stop moping around and get on with your life.” Uncle Henry had left no room for argument.
Most of the fight had gone out of Elijah by then anyway. He’d shoved what clothing he had into a duffel bag, left the six-pack of beer in the refrigerator, and checked out of the motel. Looking back two years later, he didn’t regret his decision. There had definitely been something therapeutic about putting teenage girls back on the right track.
That first time he settled into the little company airplane, he’d sweat buckets. Nausea had come in waves, and he could swear that he smelled the blood of his buddies. Uncle Henry had laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “You can do this, Elijah. Not only can you do it, you need to fly again.”
He worried about being close to his aunt and uncle. Would being around him bring them bad luck, like it had his only brother, his parents, and now three of his best friends?
“So far, so good,” he muttered. But he wasn’t ready to think about any kind of relationship.
He landed his plane and climbed out to stretch his legs. He crossed the tarmac in long, easy strides and opened the door to the office to find his three passengers waiting with their suitcases beside them. Thank God they had only brought one piece of luggage each. His plane wouldn’t hold much more than that.
“Mornin’, ladies.” He nodded toward them.
“Good mornin’,” Diana and Novalene said in unison.
The third woman stood up and extended her hand. “I’m Jayden Bennett.”
“Elijah Thomas,” he said, looking her in the eyes, which his six-foot frame ordinarily prevented. She was almost as tall as Elijah. Her steely blue eyes held his gaze. Brunette hair floated on her shoulders. She sure didn’t look like someone who would be trying to help a group of girls work through their problems.