.
meal was coming from. He’d hated school so much his mother had let him quit after the seventh grade. He loved working with horses, living alone and driving his pickup until the odometer circled twice. He was afraid of being left out here on his own.
Following his uncle to the porch, Wilkes watched Vern limp toward his cabin a hundred yards away. Light from the second-floor windows of the main house illuminated the old man’s path. The massive home had been built fifty years ago to hold a dozen kids. It now held one. Wilkes.
Vern had watched his brother, Wilkes’s grandfather, take over the ranch. When he died, Wilkes’s father became the manager. Vern said all he wanted to do was cowboy. The job of boss wouldn’t suit him.
Uncle Vern had been around all of Wilkes’s life, working cattle with the ranch hands, training horses with his father and eating supper every night at the family table in the big house. This life was all he knew. All he wanted to know.
Wilkes shook his head as his heart ached for Vern Wagner, who’d lived long enough to go from being Wilkes’s hero and teacher, to friend, to responsibility. His uncle had taught him to ride, cussed him out when he left the pasture gate open and bought him fireworks every year, even when Wilkes’s mother said she wouldn’t allow them on the ranch. The old guy may have danced with a few girls in his day, but he had never married. He was loyal to the family, loyal to the Devil’s Fork brand.
Wilkes watched the lights flick on in Vern’s cabin. “I better start looking for a fat, rich wife so I can start breeding Vern’s next guardian angel,” he mumbled as he downed the last of his whiskey, knowing he was only half kidding. Then he climbed the stairs and slept in the second room off the upstairs landing. The first bedroom was bigger, the master, but when Wilkes had returned home to take over the ranch, he hadn’t felt as if he deserved the master suite. He still didn’t.
The next morning as he drove into town to pick up fencing supplies and eat breakfast with a friend, Wilkes thought about the conversation the night before. Vern was right about one thing. Wilkes had had a lady once. The perfect one. He’d loved Lexie Davis the minute he first saw her, chased her through high school and college; but she’d never really been his. When he’d left for the army a month after they both graduated, she promised she’d wait, and she had... Only, she’d counted her time in hours. Sixty-three days into his deployment, she’d written him one letter. It said simply she’d met someone else. She’d added five words below Love, Lexi: don’t bother to write back.
Wilkes told himself a hundred times that he was over her. Maybe not everyone was meant to find that forever love. Vern hadn’t. But something broke inside Wilkes the day Lexie walked out of his life and he feared he would never mend.
Hell. Vern was right. Maybe he should start thinking about finding a wife, but it wasn’t exactly a scavenger hunt. He should make a real list. It’d be pretty much the opposite of Vern’s. He liked long-legged women with midnight hair that dropped down to their waist and laughter dancing in their eyes. Women like Lexie.
Lexie, the woman he was over, Wilkes reminded himself.
While he waited for the supplies to be loaded, Wilkes walked along the wide main street. The business district of Crossroads looked as if the stores must have been bought from a clearance rack. All different sizes, ages, styles. Nothing matched. Crossroads was a town more likely to be called quirky than quaint.
He noticed a few new stores since he’d last been in town. Businesses that had filled in where empty gaps had stood. Shiny as new teeth in an old mouth, he thought. The change made the little town look a bit more prosperous.
One empty hull had become the Forever Keepsake Shop. In his opinion, the only folks who bought knickknacks to sit around gathering dust must be orphans, because every time one of his relatives died, he inherited another crate of “treasured” family keepsakes. Sometimes he wondered if his great-great-grandparents had hauled their junk from the old country to Texas in a wagon train and not just one wagon. All the old trunks and lanterns and dusty quilts came back to Devil’s Fork like ugly buzzards coming home to roost.
Wilkes walked into the new shop hoping he might offer to supply the place. Old tools, butter churns, wall telephones, he had them all in supply.
Two women in their forties giggled when he stepped inside and closed the door. He knew them by last name. The Franklin sisters. They probably had first names, but years ago when his mother would point them out to him, she always said simply, “There’s the Franklin sisters. Poor things. Bless their hearts.”
He’d been twenty before he found out why they were poor things. Apparently, in the late seventies or early eighties, they’d both fallen for the same boy—a good-looking Gypsy kid with bedroom eyes and the last name of Stanley. He ran off with a girl from another Gypsy family in town, and both the Franklin sisters were brokenhearted. They swore over an ocean of tears that he was the only man either would ever love and they would never marry.
Some thought that sad; others just thought it was their escape, because the two weren’t likely to marry anyway. By eighteen, they both tipped the scales at over two hundred pounds, and at twenty-five, they’d gained another fifty or sixty. By thirty, they both sported faint mustaches.
Even on a dark night no one would mistake them as pretty. But they were sweet as warm toffee. Every few years they took up a new business in town. As far as he could remember, they’d had the Sweet Shop, the Quilting Bee and a used bookstore called the Book Hideout.
Wilkes smiled at the two sisters. “Morning, Miss Franklin and Miss Franklin.” Even round and hairy, there was something about the ladies that was adorable.
Both giggled. “How can we help you, Wilkes?” they said at once.
Wilkes didn’t want to seem the village idiot, so he said, “I’m looking for a keepsake to give a friend who is visiting.”
“Do you know him well?” the shorter Miss Franklin asked.
Wilkes lied again. “No. He’s just someone stopping by for a cup of coffee. He’s thinking about going into ranching.” Dumb lie, Wilkes thought, but he was too far in now to back out.
“We know just the thing.” Each woman grabbed a box from the stacks behind the counter.
Wilkes didn’t care what was in the boxes. He picked the smallest and thanked them. Handing them a twenty, he wasn’t surprised to get only coins back. They managed small talk about Uncle Vern’s health while one sister bagged his purchase.
When they passed it to him, one Miss Franklin started mentioning every relative she had who was still unmarried. “Fran’s newly divorced, you know, but she’s a treasure.”
The other sister chimed in. “Avis is a little older than you, but she’s real pretty, and then you know Molly and Doris. I think you went to school with them. Both were engaged last year, but it didn’t work out.”
Wilkes never knew what to say. He’d been tricked into a dozen meet-the-single-relative dates, and they’d all turned out bad.
The taller Miss Franklin must have gotten the message, but she wasn’t ready to toss in her matchmaking wand. “I guess you heard Lexie Davis is moving back.”
He hadn’t heard. He didn’t care, but that didn’t stop the conversation.
“Her second marriage didn’t work out, you know, and her aunt is poorly. Lexie is hoping to get on at the high school. She can teach both drama and English, she claims, though she’s never had to work. Married well both times, you know.”
Wilkes had to get out of the store. He didn’t want to hear more about Lexie. Not in this lifetime. Besides, how “well” are marriages that don’t last two years?
“I wish I could visit, but I’ve got my hands full this morning.” Wilkes had a death grip on his box as he backed toward the door.
They both looked sad.
Wilkes couldn’t talk about Lexie. One goodbye letter while he’d been away in the army had been enough to kill