“Trailer?” Maci asked.
“Cocoa?” Trish asked. “Who’s Cocoa?”
“The calf who thinks Frankie is her mother,” Maci answered her question.
“You have a calf?” Trish asked with a rush of happiness. During the days when she’d been confined to complete bedrest so she didn’t lose this pregnancy, she’d had so much time to think. She had come up with so many plans for the ranch, plans that might be even easier to implement than she’d thought.
“The Four Corners is a beef ranch,” Frankie said. “Of course we have calves. Lots of them right now. Calving season just ended.”
Trish’s happiness dimmed with the way that Frankie was talking to her, as if she assumed that Trish didn’t know anything about the ranch. Until college, she had spent every summer at the Four Corners. It was part of her and held the happiest memories of her life.
“This particular calf, though, lost its mother at birth,” Maci said. “Frankie saved the calf, though. And now they’ve bonded. We keep teasing her about how she’s going to take Cocoa on the road with her when she goes back to traveling with her band.”
We. Theweused to be the three of them: Frankie, Trish and Maci. But Trish knew that thewenow meant Maci, Frankie and the Lemmon brothers. It stung that she’d been replaced.
“I’ll figure out how to bring Cocoa with me,” Frankie said. “Right now she’s still small enough to fit in the van.”
“I’m sure the calf would be happier at the ranch,” Trish said. Just like she was sure she would be happier there, too. That was why she’d packed up everything she owned. “I could keep her for the petting zoo I want to start for kids’ day camps and summer camps at the ranch.”
“What?” Both Maci and Frankie asked the question at the same time.
Excitement bubbled up inside Trish. She had so many plans for the ranch, to make it the ideal place for her children and for other children to enjoy, just like she had as a child and even as a teenager. She’d lived all year with the anticipation of spending her summers at the Four Corners. And she knew that, like her, other kids from the city would benefit from the fresh air and open space of the ranch. They would love it as much as she had.
Before she could launch into all her plans for the place, Frankie asked, “You’re going to stay?”
Trish nodded. “That’s the plan.” And it was the only one she had. So she had to figure out a way to make this work for her and for her babies.
* * *
“Thanks, Grandma…”Those words echoed in Sadie’s head and her heart long after Brett left Ranch Haven. The last of Lem’s grandchildren, their grandchildren now, had called herGrandma. Happiness curved her lips into a smile.
“Hey, there, my beautiful bride,” Lem said as he and Feisty, their long-haired Chihuahua, joined her on the patio just outside the open French doors of the kitchen.
His white hair and snowy white beard were a bit damp around his flushed face. He was taking his exercise seriously these days, and it showed, because his belly, which he’d never needed to pad to play Santa Claus for Christmas in the Willow Creek town square, was much smaller now.
“Was that a truck from the Four Corners that I saw when Feisty and I were heading back from our walk?” he asked as he dropped into the chair across the table from her.
She nodded.
“I couldn’t tell who was driving,” he said. “It was going so fast, I couldn’t catch a glimpse of the driver. Who was it?”
“Brett,” she replied.
“And he put that smile on your face?”
“Yes,” she said. “He called me Grandma for the first time.”
“Wow,” Lem said, and he reached out to squeeze her hand. “That’s wonderful.”
Her smile slid away. “It would be if he hadn’t been so upset,” she said.
“Oh, no. More trouble with Trish and her lawyer?”
She nodded. “Trish showed up last night, very pregnant…”
“Pregnant?” Lem asked, his blue eyes widening with surprise. “I thought she just got a divorce.”
Sadie nodded. “She hasn’t explained anything yet either. And the reason Brett was in such a hurry when he left was because Blake called him. That lawyer of hers showed up at the ranch.”
