AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The man nodded. “Maybe the decision is for you to stay and take over the running of the ranch.”
“I’ve been considering it. But it’s such a life change for me. I don’t know yet,” she said. “Thanks for being patient with me.”
“No problem. I loved Lillian and Will and want to do what’s right by them.”
Picking up her purse, she walked out of the conference room and headed out the door. Jim White stood outside waiting for her.
“How about some lunch,” he said.
Oh hell no.
“Thank you, but I’m sorry, I have another appointment I need to get to,” she said.
“Oh, well then, I hope to see you again before you leave town.”
“Good-bye, Mr. White,” she said and quickly got in her car.
Putting the address into the GPS, she pulled out of the parking lot and drove toward Granny Jones, wondering if the woman could tell her about her family.
Preston had offered to go with her today, but she really wanted to speak with the woman alone.
Pulling up in front of a large Victorian home, she gazed at the house from an older time and admired the gabled roof and wide porch.
After getting out of the car, she hurried up the steps.
The woman met her at the door. “Come on in, child. I’ve been anxious for this day.”
“Thank you for speaking to me today,” she said.
“Have a seat on the couch,” the older woman said, sinking down into a rocker. “I’m not much good these days for standing. These old bones don’t hold up too well.”
What could she say to that?
“I’m curious about my family. What can you tell me about my grandparents and even my father.”
The old woman took a deep breath and shook her head. “Let’s start at the beginning.”
Leaning back in her rocker, she began to speak.
“Your father was the only child your grandmother Lillian could have. The doctor told her to never get pregnant again, and before she could stop them, her husbands went and got a vasectomy. It broke her heart, but they didn’t want her to suffer the way she had when your father was born.”
“I guess that guaranteed she would never get pregnant again,” Kalie said.
“Yes, and she wasn’t happy about it, even though what they had done was with love for her. So she doted on your father. If he was going to be her only child, then she bought that child anything and everything he wanted. He had the best of everything. But there was one problem.”
“What?”
“He hated ranch life. Never took to it from the time he was a little boy. And when he went off to college, he learned that our way of life was not good. He started dating a preacher’s daughter and she told him in no uncertain terms that she would never condone our way of life. It was sinful.”
Thinking back to her father, she realized he was one to raise hell and damnation at every turn of events. The world was coming to an end and she should be prepared. It wasn’t a bad thought, it was just so negative that even today, she found it hard to sit in church.
“He didn’t marry that girl because his fathers took him out and tried to talk some sense into him. But your father was a rebellious man. College had shown him that we were heathens and he didn’t want anything else to do with the town of Blessing or the lives or the families here. Your grandmother was devastated. She loved him so much. For years, I know she sent him cards and letters on his birthday. Anything to bring him back into the fold, even if he didn’t want to live our way of life.”
“My father was a cold man,” Kalie admitted. He could have done something like this.
“When he married your mother, his family was not invited to the wedding,” Granny Jones said. “Your grandmother’s heart was broken. For years, she didn’t know you had been born. And then she contacted your father and said she wanted to meet you, but he refused. No child of his was going to be influenced by their evil ways.”
Because of his inability to accept their life, she’d missed out on meeting her grandparents, and for that, she almost hated him at this moment. He’d always been a callous, stiff man who couldn’t show love to the people who cared about him. All he’d had to do was tell her she had grandparents who lived a strange life and she would have accepted them.
