Always A Will And A Way_Western Romance Read online

  Always a Will and a Way

  By: Barbara Gee

  Always a Will and a Way

  Copyright ©2014 by Barbara S. Gunden

  All rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of Barbara Gunden, except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 1

  Kelly slowly lowered the phone from her ear and touched the red button to end the call. Her whole body suddenly felt shaky, a delayed reaction to the voice she had just heard for the first time in over nine years. A voice she’d never expected to hear again.

  “What did she say, Mom? Are we going? Are we really going?”

  Closing her eyes, Kelly took a moment to exhale long and slow before turning around to face the shining, hopeful eyes of her six year old son. “This is for him,” she told herself sternly. “You can do it for him.”

  She forced a smile and tousled his hair. “Yes, James, we’re going. We’re really going.”

  Wow. Saying those words made it sound so final, and just like that she started second-guessing her decision. After weeks of waffling back and forth, had she really just committed to a trip to Texas, during her one precious week of spring break, to visit people she had no desire to ever see again? Was she crazy?

  She opened her arms just in time to catch her happy little boy as he leapt into them.

  “Yay, Mom! Awesome! Remember how I prayed last night that we could go and you said if God wanted us to go it would happen? I’m glad God wants us to go. I guess He still doesn’t want me to have a dog, but He wants us to go to Texas, right? So we’re really, really going?”

  “We really, really are,” Kelly assured him again, placing a loud, smacking kiss on his warm little neck before releasing him. “Your Grandma said they can’t wait to meet you.”

  James grinned. “I can’t wait to get there. I wonder what she looks like. Did you ask if they have a dog?”

  Kelly’s smile became a little bit more genuine in the face of his excitement. “Sorry, buddy, I forgot to ask her about the dog.”

  “Can I call Gran and Pops to tell them we’re going?”

  “Ummm, sure,” Kelly said. “You can tell them it’s definitely a go.”

  She had been discussing the possibility of this trip with her parents for a while now, and they already knew there was a good possibility that Kelly and James would be spending their spring break in Texas. At first they had been apprehensive about their daughter and grandson making the trip, but in the end they had assured her that if she decided it was the right thing to do, they wouldn’t try to talk her out of it.

  James grabbed her phone and pressed the well-known speed dial button. Kelly began to unload the dishwasher as her little boy excitedly told his grandpa about the upcoming trip.

  “When do we leave, Mom?” James asked, holding the phone away from his mouth to ask the question.

  “Two weeks from today,” she answered.

  “We go in two weeks, Pops. And we’re gonna ride in an airplane and everything. And I’m gonna learn how to ride a horse. And Mom said they might have a big dog!”

  Listening to his chatter, Kelly tried to let James’ excitement lessen her own dread. When she had first brought up the idea of going to Texas to visit the grandparents he’d never met, James had of course asked who they were and why he didn’t already know them. James knew nothing of the history between her and his paternal grandparents, and Kelly wanted to keep it that way. So she had explained that Texas was really far away, and the distance made it hard to get together. She also told James that since his dad, Jamie, had died, his grandparents had been too sad to meet their grandson. But now they were ready.

  Thankfully, James seemed satisfied with those explanations. The real truth consisted of many years of intense anger and hurt on both sides, but Kelly kept that to herself. Having come to the conclusion that she needed to put her own feelings aside in order to give James the opportunity to have another set of grandparents in his life, she wasn’t going to influence her son against James Sr. and Maggie before making the trip.

  Kelly had wrestled with the decision for many weeks before discussing it with James, and she had prayed about it so often she was half afraid God was getting tired of hearing from her. The biggest hurdle was becoming completely convinced that James Sr. and Maggie genuinely wanted little James to be a part of their lives after all this time.

  Nine years ago they had broken off all contact with their own son, Jamie, when he chose to marry Kelly and settle in her home state of Virginia, rather than returning to the family ranch in Texas. That disownment was literally the last contact Kelly had had with her in-laws—until Maggie sent an email out of the blue two months ago, requesting that Kelly bring James to Texas and allow them to try to mend their relationship.

  Skeptical, Kelly had mulled things over for a few days, but eventually she had replied, which led to more emails back and forth. Surprisingly, Kelly had come to believe that their desire to see James was indeed sincere, and a week ago she had decided to get James’ opinion on going to Texas.

  She should have known how that would turn out. All she had to do was mention that his Matherson grandparents lived on a ranch, and James had been begging to go to Texas ever since. This evening Kelly had finally made the decision to go, and although another email would have been far easier, she’d gathered her courage and made a phone call to Maggie, needing to hear the other woman’s voice before letting her know for sure they would be coming. In spite of her trepidation, the call had gone well. Maggie was delighted to hear the news, and Kelly was now committed. No more wavering back and forth.

  Now that the decision had been made, and in spite of the fact that Kelly wasn’t looking forward to the trip herself, she honestly hoped James Sr. and Maggie wouldn’t suddenly change their minds and disappoint her son. In spite of their seeming sincerity, the sad truth was that she didn’t know them well enough to feel at all confident that their current desire to meet their grandson would last.

  Even before they had cut off all contact, Kelly hadn’t had much of a relationship with her in-laws. She had begun dating James Jr., better known as Jamie, during their second year at Texas Christian University. At that time, Jamie and his parents were already at odds. The problem was that Jamie had no desire to take over
the ranch that had been in his family for generations. His dream was to get his doctorate in physical therapy, and working on his father’s beloved ranch didn’t figure into his plans at all.

  His parents, however, lived and breathed the Wild Rose ranch, and they simply couldn’t accept that their only son didn’t want to become the fourth generation Matherson to run the very successful operation. The dogmatic James Sr. was convinced that Jamie just needed time to come around to his way of thinking, and he constantly harassed his son about coming to his senses and giving up his idiotic plans to be a physical therapist.

  By the time senior year came around, Jamie saw as little of his parents as possible in order to avoid the nonstop arguing. Although they showed up occasionally at the college and took Jamie, and a couple of times Kelly as well, out for dinner, Jamie never went home for visits, and he spent his summers doing internships at a hospital close to TCU. He even avoided going to the ranch over holidays, and instead had gone back to Virginia with Kelly whenever possible.

  While spending Christmas of their last school year with Kelly and her parents, Jamie had proposed. They decided they would get married right after graduation, and during that last semester of school, Kelly spent as much time planning her wedding as she did studying. Jamie spent an almost equal amount of time researching graduate schools. He narrowed his list down to five, two in Texas and three in Virginia.

  Just prior to graduation, he’d been notified of his acceptance to the University of Virginia, which was his top pick and only 30 miles from where Kelly had grown up. Knowing how his parents would react, Kelly had assured Jamie that she would be perfectly happy to stay in Texas, but he was adamant about going to UVA and he enrolled there without even waiting to hear from the other schools where he had applied.

  As predicted, Jamie’s parents had been furious, and naturally Kelly had been the scapegoat. How dare she take their only son from the ranch that had been in his family for four generations?

  Jamie had told them over and over that it was his decision, not Kelly’s, but in the end it didn’t matter whose idea it had been. His proud, angry parents had refused to attend their wedding that summer. Kelly had been devastated, and she once again encouraged Jamie to consider a doctoral program in Texas, hoping his parents might see it as an acceptable compromise even though they wouldn’t be involved with the ranch. But Jamie had already decided that Virginia was best for both himself and his new wife, and the wedding boycott didn’t change his mind.

  A month after the wedding, his parents had played their last card. Either Jamie returned to the Wild Rose, or he would be disinherited and all communication with his family cut off.

  It hurt badly. Kelly knew Jamie had suffered, but he had his own proud stubborn streak, and he never considered tucking his tail between his legs and taking his new wife back home to Texas. Kelly continued to assure him that she would gladly go wherever he thought the Lord was calling them, but if anything, the threat from James and Maggie only strengthened his resolve, and he started school at UVA that fall as planned.

  Both Kelly and Jamie believed that his parents would soften their stance when Kelly became pregnant with their first grandchild two years later. Jamie had called to tell them the news, although he’d had to settle for leaving a series of voicemails since they still refused to take his calls. Sadly, there had been no response.

  When James Kincaid Matherson, III was born, Kelly sent her in-laws a birth announcement, via both email and the postal service. Nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. Jamie’s younger sister, Amy, did make one surreptitious phone call to congratulate them after she had learned of the birth, but Amy was too afraid of being similarly ostracized by her parents to make any further efforts to communicate with her older brother.

  So Jamie and Kelly had gone on with their lives in Virginia. Jamie earned his doctoral degree a few months after James was born and began practicing at a hospital in their hometown. Kelly was a science teacher at the local high school, and aside from the rift with Jamie’s family, things had been pretty much perfect for their young family. Little James was their pride and joy, and Kelly believed from the day he was born that no happier, sweeter boy existed.

  If it seems too good to be true..........it just might be.

  That almost perfect life was ripped away from Kelly with one phone call on a snowy night in January four years ago, courtesy of icy roads and a drunk driver.

  “I’m very sorry, ma’am,” the police officer had said when Kelly answered his call and he had verified that she was indeed Jamie’s wife. “Your husband has been in an accident. I’m afraid he didn’t make it. I’ll be waiting for you in the ER at UVA hospital whenever you can get here. I’m very sorry to have to give you such terrible news.”

  At the age of 26, Kelly was a widow.

  Little James was fatherless at two, too young to even remember his wonderful daddy and how much he was loved by him.

  In the first few days after the tragedy, Kelly had braced herself for contact with Jamie’s parents, who would no doubt find a reason to heap the blame for his death on Kelly, along with everything else they blamed her for. Unbelievably, they maintained their total silence. Kelly finally realized that when they had disowned their son, claiming that he was as good as dead to them, in their hearts he was already gone. His actual, physical death was a nonevent to them, because they had lost him years earlier.

  Unable to even conceive of such callousness, Kelly eventually got to the point where she realized she needed to let go of her bitterness. She couldn’t change what had happened, and dwelling on it was giving James Sr. and Maggie a power over her life that she was no longer willing to concede. Lots of prayer, and many long sessions with her pastor, had eventually led to forgiveness, if not understanding. With forgiveness had come peace, and as time eased the shock and pain of losing Jamie, Kelly had learned to find joy in life again, even though she deeply missed her husband and best friend.

  She still had James, her parents, and wonderful friends, and Kelly could honestly say she felt immensely blessed.

  “Mom, Pops wants to talk to you.”

  Startled out of the stream of memories, Kelly took the phone from James, a little surprised to find that while her mind had wandered into the past, she had completely emptied the dishwasher and put everything away.

  “Hey, Dad,” she said, giving herself a mental shake and jumping back to the present. “I guess James told you the news.”

  “So it’s a done deal, honey? You’re going for sure?”

  “I got off the phone with Maggie about thirty seconds before James called you,” Kelly said, watching as James happily ran into the living room to watch cartoons.

  “Honestly, Dad, I can’t believe we’re going to see them. There is no part of me, not one single atom, that wants to go to the Wild Rose ranch to visit James Sr. and Maggie. Ever since I got that first email, I have prayed and prayed that I could find it in my heart to be happy about a chance to finally build a relationship with them, but I’m still not feeling it. I mean, I want it to happen for James’ sake, and I’m hoping for the best, but I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’m dreading this trip.”

  “That’s understandable, Kelly. You’re doing this for James, and only James, and that’s okay. I don’t think God or anyone else expects you to instantly make up with the Mathersons after so many years of hurt. The important thing is you’re taking the high road and giving them a chance to prove that they can be a positive part of little James’ life. Like we’ve all said a thousand times, no one can have too many--”

  “I know, Dad,” Kelly interrupted, chuckling. “No one can have too many people to love them. And if they truly have changed, I do want them to be in James’ life, and not only his grandparents but also his Aunt Amy. I’m just having a hard time accepting their change of heart at face value. After all these years, they suddenly want me to bring them their grandson, who is now six and didn’t even know they existed until I brought up the possibi
lity of this trip two weeks ago. Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “I don’t know why, but I’m proud of you for making James your priority, honey. Your mother and I are both very proud.”

  “Maybe you should be the one to take James to them, Dad. I wouldn’t consider sending him with anyone else, but I would have no problem if you and mom would take him.”

  “But James and Maggie specifically asked for you to come. Haven’t they told you they know they have a lot of explaining to do and prefer to do it in person? That’s most likely the only way you’ll get your answer as to why they’ve changed their minds.”

  Kelly closed her eyes and groaned. “How can they possibly explain it, Dad? Their son got married---nothing. He had a child--nothing. He died, Dad. Their only son died, and I heard nothing. Not a word. And now they want to be a part of our lives?”

  Her father laughed softly. “I know you too well, Kelly. You’ll drive yourself crazy wondering why. The best thing is to simply go to Texas with James and see what’s what. It’s only a week. If things don’t go well, just change your flight and come home early. At least you’ll have given them a chance. Whether or not they can redeem themselves and make the week bearable is up to them.”

  “I wish I could just wake up and have that week be over with.” Kelly gave a short, disgruntled laugh when she realized what she’d said. “Oh wow, I never in my life thought I’d be wishing my spring break away! But then again, I never expected to be spending it in Texas, either.”

  “It’ll be okay, Kelly. James is so thrilled to be visiting a real ranch. He’s wanted to be a cowboy since you gave him those cowboy boots for his fourth birthday.”

  “Which you and mom have generously replaced every birthday since,” Kelly reminded her dad.

  “A child’s heritage is a precious thing, Kelly, even though acknowledging it isn’t always easy.”

  “You might need to keep reminding me of that, Dad. I’m afraid I’m going to get cold feet in the next two weeks.”