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“Suit yourself. If some other drifter comes along and needs a place to stay, I’ll just throw his shit out in the road for the local trash pickup.”
With a sigh, Lillian reached into her purse and pulled out a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Will this hold the shack?”
The woman grinned and ran across the yard to collect the cash. When she reached Lillian, it was all she could do not to gag. The woman reeked of beer and cigarettes.
“It’s a start. I expect the balance of what he owes me no later than Tuesday.”
Since today was Friday, that didn’t give them much time. But she wasn’t here to bail out her grandfather, though she would consider helping him if he needed help.
Nathan and she turned to the truck and quickly climbed in.
When they were safely inside the vehicle with the doors locked, he pulled away from the house and turned around.
“Don’t come out here by yourself. I don’t trust that woman. Though I remember your grandfather from when I was a child, I don’t like the place he’s living. You must take one of us with you when you come out here.”
A shiver rippled through Lillian. “Maybe my memories of him are tainted. Or maybe he’s not the man I thought him to be. Why in the world would he live in a place like this?”
Nathan turned his truck back onto the highway.
“It’s probably very cheap.”
What happened that caused the man she knew and remembered so fondly to find himself living in such a dump?
CHAPTER 8
Cal hated visiting his grandfather in this awful place. When he opened the door, the smell of urine and dying bodies smacked him in the face. He didn’t come very often because he didn’t like the nursing home or seeing his grandfather slowly deteriorating.
The man had taken him in when no one else would and raised him. He’d given him a good life. After the horse accident, Cal had tried to bring in nurses to take care of him, but it just didn’t work, and finally his grandfather had told him it was time to put him in a home.
For weeks, he’d searched for the best care facility he could find that was close enough so he could come check on him. Make certain they were treating him right, but eventually he’d had to settle for the Blessing House of Peace. A nursing home that gave around-the-clock care.
When he walked in, a woman shuffled toward him. “Have you seen my boy? He snuck off and I can’t find him.”
The woman had dementia and was living in a different time and place.
One of the caregivers came to her. “Come on, Raye, it’s time for singing in the cafeteria. I know how much you like to sing.”
The woman took her arm and together they shuffled down the hall. Dear God, he hoped he never lost his mind like that.
“Your grandfather is in his room resting,” a nurse told him.
At least they had been able to get him a private room. The place was outrageously expensive, but he was receiving the care he needed.
He walked down the hall where a man was screaming and a shiver trickled down his spine. How his grandfather could live here, he didn’t know.
When he walked into the room, the old man was sitting in a wheelchair.
“Cal,” he said grinning. “So great to see you. Sit down and tell me what’s going on at the ranch.”
Where did he begin? He’d just met a woman he would marry and accept if she would have him, but she had only come to Blessing for a wedding and to try to get the ranch back.
For the first five minutes, he updated him on the cattle and the cost of beef on the hoof and then he told him about how he’d plowed one field to raise hay for the horses and maybe even sell some.
All the while, his grandfather nodded.
“You know, you might try to get one of the mares put with one of the Nash’s family stallions. Their horses come from good stock.”
Grinning, he nodded. “We decided instead of cash money, we’d impregnate two mares. One they would receive and one I would keep. If this works out, I could have a new herd of horses in two years.”
