Page 24 of Homicide in Water Creek

Her gaze met his. “Those are the exact words I said to King the other night.” She chuckled, shaking her head before she lifted the can to her lips.

“He will need more than four days,” Granddaddy agreed. “Not that I can blame him, or you, for that matter.”

She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “I want to believe you were caught between a rock and a hard place.”

The look in his eyes told her she wasn’t far off. “In a way, I was, but I picked a hard place instead of rock.”

“Which one am I?”

“My rock, of course,” he answered, leaning back and gesturing around the house. “You think I don’t know I would have had to give up all of this a long time ago if you weren’t here to handle all the books for the school and the ranch.”

“You managed just fine when I was a kid, and it was a working ranch then.”

He pointed his bottle at her. “Only because I hired someone to do the books. I was bucked off a bronco and hit my head way too many times to keep track of numbers.”

“And you’re still paying someone. Me. I’m doing my job, Granddaddy.”

“I’m not paying you. We’re partners in this,” he said, motioning around again. “Regardless, my point is that I’ve depended on you as much as you’ve depended on me, and I should have chosen my rock.”

“Had you not chosen the hard place, you’d have lost your best friend.”

“Yep, that’s the definition of being between a rock and a hard place.” His hands shook as he lifted the bottle to his lips.

“Granddaddy, the tremor is worsening. You need to see a doctor.”

He shook his head. “You know what they’ll say.”

“I do. They’ll say it’s the result of a traumatic brain injury, but there are medications you can take now. You don’t have to suffer.”

“I’ll think about it.”

She sighed. That was always his answer. It had been his answer since the tremor appeared ten years ago. “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth, Granddaddy?”

Jackson laughed, but the sound was not amused. It was sad. “Baby girl, what was I supposed to say? I knew where Keene was coming from. He didn’t want Dean stuck here for his whole life.”

She motioned toward the door in frustration. “He’s still here!”

“That’s true, but he left and chose to come back. That’s different from being forced to stay.”

“But it was okay if I was forced to stay.”

He glanced up sharply. “Where else would you go?”

She rested her forehead against her hand. “You missed the point, Granddaddy. Do you understand what you and Keene did?”

He nodded slowly. “We gave Dean a chance to escape.”

“For the sole reason that King had potential.” He nodded again. “And it never crossed your mind that I had potential, did it? It never crossed your mind that if I went out into that big world, I could make something of myself, regardless of the brace I wear on my leg. King may have had potential, but so did I. At least until you both decided I didn’t.”

Her granddaddy shook his head back and forth vigorously. “That’s not true. We knew you had potential.”

“Then why didn’t you give me the same chance you gave King?”

He was silent for far too long, staring at his bottle, his hand shaking. When he spoke, his voice shook in time with his hand. “I was being selfish.”

“Selfish?”

He finally looked up to meet her gaze, and she saw tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. “I knew that if you went out into the world, you’d make something of yourself and I’d never see you again. I didn’t want to give you up, so I chose the hard place. If I had picked rock, I would have lost mine. I saw what happened to Keene when Dean left the ranch. It broke him. I didn’t want to be broken.”