Rescue Me

little of the day-to-day running of the JH as she chose. She hadn’t really decided how much she would take on yet, but she had come to the conclusion that she was a lot like her daddy. She loved the JH, but hated cattle. Stupid, smelly animals only good for T-bones, shoes, and really good handbags.
    She turned off the highway through the gates of the JH. Unlike the last time two months ago, there was no black truck broken down on the side of the road. No big, strong man who needed a ride into town.
    She couldn’t help but wonder if Vince had returned from Seattle. Not that it mattered. Their friends-with-benefits relationship was over. Done. Dead. Buried. He hadn’t tried to call or even text her since that night in his apartment, and she wished she could take back the words she’d said that night. She wished she hadn’t blurted that she loved him. Mostly, she wished it wasn’t true.
    Still.
    The late afternoon sun blazed through the front windshield, and she lowered the visor against the piercing rays. She’d fallen in love with an emotionally unavailable man. A man who couldn’t love her back. A man who’d pulled her in, only to push her away. After she said she loved him. On the worst day of her life. Which pretty much made him the biggest jerk on the planet.
    Other than her daddy, she’d shed more tears for him than any man on the planet, too. Certainly more than he deserved. She was heartbroken and sick and she didn’t have anyone to blame but herself. He’d told her up front he wasn’t a relationship kind of guy. He’d told her he got bored and moved on. She wished she could hate Vince, but she couldn’t. Each time she worked up to a full head of anger at him, and it wasn’t hard for her to do, the image of him naked, pulling air into his lungs, and staring at things only he could see, entered her head, and her heart broke all over again. For her and for him.
    Once again she’d fallen for an emotionally stunted man. This time she’d fallen harder and deeper, but as with all the other stunted men who had ever taken up space in her life, she’d get over him.
    She pulled the Saab to a stop in front of the main house and grabbed her overnight bag and purse from the backseat. The Parton sisters were still around someplace, but the house was silent when she entered. A copy of her daddy’s will sat on top of a stack of mail and other documents on the table in the entry. She dropped her bags and carried the stack into the kitchen. She grabbed a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and moved to the breakfast nook where Vince had once sat, chowing down on Carolynn’s ranch hand special.
    She flipped through the will that included the letter her daddy had written to her and smiled. Unlike the Hollowells of the past, she would be modernizing the house. She would have all her father’s bedroom furniture stored and her own things moved in. The cowhide couch and all the portraits of her father’s horses were going into storage also. If she was going to live at the JH, she wanted to make it her own. She was also giving serious thought to taking down the numerous portraits in the hall upstairs. If and when she ever did have children, she didn’t want all those ancestors scaring the crap out of her kid as they had her.
    She flipped to the part of her daddy’s will that had provided for any unnamed beneficiary, which she’d assumed meant any child or children she might have. She raised the bottle of Coke to her lips and frowned. She didn’t know if she’d misheard the clause or if it hadn’t been read right, but the clause talked about a trust fund set up for an unnamed beneficiary. An unnamed beneficiary born June tenth of 1985 in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
    June tenth of 1985? What the hell did that mean? Las Cruces, New Mexico? The trust fund couldn’t be about her. She’d been born in Amarillo. And it couldn’t have anything to do with any future children she might have. What did this mean?
    The back door screen slammed shut and Sadie jumped.
    “I saw you drive up,” Clara Anne said as she entered the kitchen. “If you’re hungry, I can get you something from the cookhouse.”
    She shook her head. “Clara Anne, you were there when my daddy’s will was read.”
    “Sure was. Such a sad day.”
    “Do you remember this?”
    “What, honey?” Clara Anne bent over the document and her hair dipped a little to one side. She shook her head. “What is that?”
    “I’m not sure, but why would my