Page 19 of Hot Times in Heart Falls, Vignettes Vol 3

The Start of Us

In this trip back in time, we visit the beginning of the relationship between Ginny and Tucker.

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Every February, Tucker returns to Heart Falls to honour the saddest day with his friends. They’ve shared good memories, and painful ones. This year, Tucker is trying his damnedest to not notice that his best friend’s little sister is definitely all grown up. Not the place. Not the time.

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Except Ginny thinks it’s definitely the time, and the place, and there’s not much use in arguing with a Stone.

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Featuring: The Stone family: Caleb, Luke, Walker, Ginny, Darilyn Hayes (foster sister), Dustin, Tucker Stewart.

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Timeline: This scene is set mostly in February, five years after tragedy struck the Silver Stone ranch, and five years before the Stones of Heart Falls series begins.

1

Every year after the accident, Tucker returned to Silver Stone ranch in February. Not that the Stone family held an official memorial or anything, but it seemed the right thing to do.

Caleb usually said something at the breakfast table and arranged to take his siblings up to their parents’ hillside graves if the weather wasn’t too miserable.

The first year the most noticeable change was that Caleb had a wife. Her presence wasn’t a shock—Tucker had heard from Luke about Caleb’s whirlwind courtship, but now here Wendy was, blonde, beautiful, and icy as hell.

Tucker kept his mouth shut, though, because it wasn’t really his business. Besides, the woman had looked nearly ready to pop any minute, her baby belly overwhelmingly huge on her petite frame. There was no mistaking it—she and Caleb were solidly a unit.

A couple of years later when Tucker visited, Ginny and Dare hauled out photo albums from somewhere, which was both a huge hit and a terrible disaster. Tears flowed like spring rain even as the walls rang with laughter. It had been a celebration of life as much as a lament for their losses.

At this point, little Sasha was nearly three years old and had peeked at the pictures of the gramma and grandpa she’d never met with moderate interest before wandering away. Her little sister, Emma, a crawling toddler with blonde curls and endless energy, had settled in her Auntie Ginny’s lap and tunelessly sang nonsense songs. Wendy still constantly looked as if she smelled something unpleasant, but she was relatively easy to ignore.

Ginny, nearly eighteen, had filled out in ways Tucker tried very hard not to notice. Long legs and sweet curves and…

He headed home a couple days early to avoid thinking too hard about all those changes.

But this year, five years after the accident, something felt different.

The room was heavy with unspoken grief during the evening meal, the limited conversation mostly fueled by fourteen year old Dusty, who seemed the most settled into the reality of his big brother and the rest of his siblings raising him.

Ginny and Dare took off as fast as possible once the meal was done. “Ginny’s with me in the cottage tonight,” Dare announced.

“Don’t be late for chores in the morning,” Caleb grumbled. But he hauled them both in for big hugs before silently letting them go.

Everyone grieves in their own way, Tucker figured.

“Come on,” Luke demanded of Tucker. “We’ve got plans tonight as well.”

“Don’t you be late, either,” Caleb warned.

“Always on time, big brother,” Luke sang before grinning at Walker, who’d drawn the short straw and was on wash-up duty that night. “Have fun with your dishpan hands.”

Walker glanced around the room to see where the kids and Wendy were then rapidly flashed his middle finger.

Laughing, Luke hauled Tucker off to the barn for a little manly therapy, aka, beating the hell out of each other for a while.

A shot of excitement hit in spite of the sadness of the day. Fighting was outlawed in Tucker’s home. The physical kind and the verbal, both being far too uncouth and undignified for his parents to endure. Even though at twenty-four Tucker now worked and roomed at a boarding stable away from his childhood home, the rules had been very thoroughly trained into him.