Suddenly Texan (13 page)

Unfortunately, Leo was now standing near Cal and the other man, who was presumably the person Christie wanted her to meet. Amanda ignored eye contact with Leo.

“Amanda, I'd like to introduce my brother-in-law, Troy Crawford. Troy, this is our new friend, Amanda Allen.”

She felt the blood drain from her brain. The man Cal had been talking to was his brother.
Her
brother! He turned to her with a smile that didn't quite reach his gray-blue eyes.

Crawford eyes, Leo called them.

“Hello, Amanda. I've been looking forward to meeting you.”

He looked a little bit like their mother. His hair was a medium brown and his mouth more full than Cal's. He was tall and athletic-looking, built like his brother.

And now both of them were staring at her.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand.

Troy shook it with a firm grip, holding on a little longer than was polite, as if he were sizing her up. But why would he do that if he didn't know who she was?

Her attention—and her suspicions—turned immediately to Leo. “I picked Troy up at the airport this afternoon,” he explained. “Surprise!”

“For Cal's belated birthday, right?” Christie asked,
a smile on her face. She obviously didn't know or sense anything amiss. But Amanda did. Leo was telling her that he'd talked to Troy about his belief that she was Calvin Crawford's love child. Ha! He couldn't be further from the truth. There had been no fatherly love directed at her or any love for her mother, from what Amanda could tell.

“We need to talk.” She narrowed her eyes at Leo. “Someplace private.”

Myra walked up and put her arm around Amanda, which earned surprised looks from everyone. “You
all
need to talk. Now, before this goes on any longer.”

“What do you mean?” Cal asked.

“Leo thinks Amanda might be a distant relative,” Troy told his brother.

“I never used the word
distant,
” Leo said carefully.

“Why don't we go into the study?” Christie suggested. She looked back over her shoulder. “Bobbi Jean, can you and the girls hold down the fort for a little while?”

“You bet. You take all the time you need. We'll show everyone the photos after you're finished.”

The moment of reckoning had arrived, Amanda realized as she walked behind Christie and beside her new best friend Myra, who had picked up a large envelope from the table. The men trailed after them. Leo no doubt wanted to tell everyone that he'd been the first to realize the newcomer to town was related to the Crawfords. She wouldn't be surprised if he had a manila folder marked The Amanda Project hidden somewhere in his condo.

She settled in a chair near the window. She would have preferred the door, but everyone was still filing in, filling up the space until she could barely breathe. Or
maybe she was hyperventilating again, as she'd done during Cal's party.

“Are you going to talk first, girl?” Myra said bluntly once everyone was seated.

“What's this about?” Cal asked from his position behind the big desk.

“You just hush,” Myra said, waving her hand in his direction as though this wasn't his house, his study and his family. “Well, Amanda?”

“I—I don't know where to start.”

“Okay then, I figured that was the case, so
I'll
begin.” Myra slapped the envelope down on Cal's desk. She settled in a little rocker that looked as if it was at least a hundred years old.

“Back when we were both newlyweds, your mother, Luanna, and I became friends. We met at the grocery one day. I recognized a kindred spirit in her when I saw her moping down the aisle, throwing dried beans and cans of hominy in her cart. We got to talking and realized we had something in common—we both had second thoughts about the men we'd married.”

Myra took a deep breath and settled her hands on her knees. “Bud could be a real downer even back then. When we dated, we had some fun, but once we got married, all that stopped. I guess your father—” she looked back and forth between Cal and Troy “—was the same way. Luanna liked to dance and sing to the radio. She liked to pick wildflowers. She tried real hard to be a good wife and stay true to herself.”

“My father worked long hours,” Cal said. “He did almost everything on this ranch himself.”

Myra held up her hand. “I'm not saying he should have been a lazy man, but there's a difference between
loving your ranch and loving your wife. If you give all your attention to those cows and the fence rows, there's nothin' left for her.”

“She has a point,” Troy said to Cal. “Dad and Mom never did anything together. She took care of us and the house and he took care of the ranch.”

Cal shrugged. “That's the way a lot of marriages worked back then.”

“Spoken like a man!” Christie exclaimed. “I think that's the way a lot of marriages didn't work!”

“You've got that right,” Myra muttered. “Anyway, it just about sucked all the life out of Luanna. I saw her get more and more sad. Sometimes she'd get excited about something and come over to my place, just a bubblin' like she used to when she was just twenty-one. Sometimes she'd bring you, Troy, when your brother was in school. She'd say to me, ‘Turn on that radio and we'll all dance.' She'd take you by your little arms and pretend you were her partner. We'd all laugh and drink lemonade.”

Myra frowned and narrowed her eyes. “That is, until Bud came home from work and complained that we were making too much racket.” She shook her head. “The point is that Lou and Calvin weren't the least bit compatible, from what I could tell, and her leaving was going to happen sooner or later.”

“But why did it happen when Cal was about to graduate and I was only fourteen?” Troy asked. “We never understood why she packed up one day without telling us where she was going or why.”

Myra shrugged. “That was the way she thought was best. She told me she wanted a clean break. And as for
where and why, I think maybe Amanda should tell you that part of the story herself.”

“Amanda? What does she know about our mother?” Cal asked with indignation.

Amanda looked down at her lap, where her fingers were twisted together in her sweater. She smoothed the hem as best she could and raised her head, glancing between her brothers, then looking briefly at Leo. There was interest but also sympathy in his eyes, which she didn't want to see. It made him seem too kind, too human, after all his meddling.

She took a deep breath. “The reason Myra wants me to tell the rest of the story is because…because I'm the reason your mother left you.”

“You?” Cal asked. “How could you cause our mother to leave? You were what…just a little kid back then. That was nineteen years ago.”

“I was seven.” Amanda bit her lip and blinked. “I think she figured I needed her more than her sons, because the woman who had raised me, my Nana Allen, had passed away, and I had nowhere else to go.”

“Nana Allen, as in our Nana Allen?” Troy asked.

Amanda nodded. “She was my grandmother also.”

“What, so you're our cousin? But whose…I mean, I don't remember anyone mentioning you or anything about you.”

Amanda shook her head. “I'm doing a terrible job explaining this.”

“What she's trying to say,” Leo said from across the room, “is that you and she have the same grandmother.” He paused and stared at Amanda for several heartbeats. “And the same mother.”

There was complete silence in the room for about three seconds before Cal and Troy both erupted.

“What?” They turned their attention from Leo to her.

“No way,” Cal said sarcastically. “We would have
known if our mother had another child. Don't you think we might have noticed a little girl running around the house?”

“Hear Amanda out,” Myra commanded.

Amanda smiled at the older woman, grateful for her support.

“From what my mother told me, there was a time when Nana Allen got sick. I think it was her gallbladder. Both of you were in school then, and Cal was involved in a 4-H project. Mom left you to come to Arkansas and take care of Nana after she had surgery.”

“I remember that,” Troy said. “I forgot why she had to go, but I remember Cal dressing me for school every day. I think Mrs. Hammer brought over casseroles and put them in the refrigerator for us.”

“I sure did. Lou asked me to help take care of you boys without getting in the way of your father.”

“I had to do my morning chores around the ranch and get Troy ready for the bus because Mom wasn't there,” Cal said, obviously still bitter.

“What you didn't know was that she was pregnant at the time,” Amanda said softly.

Cal shook his head. “No, way! I knew about animals giving birth. I would have recognized a pregnant woman.”

“Not if she hid it from you really well. She told me she wore aprons and kept the pockets filled. She claimed she was putting on a few pounds. She did whatever she could so that her boys didn't notice and her husband…well, he didn't want her to be pregnant and preferred to think that she wasn't, I suppose.”

“Are you telling me she had an affair?” Troy asked.
“That our dad didn't want the baby because it wasn't his?”

Amanda shook her head, the old hurt returning full force, the memory of her mother's bitter explanation fresh in her mind. “No, she didn't have an affair. He didn't want another child, and he was angry that she got pregnant. I don't claim to understand his reasons.”

Myra snorted. “I do. Low sperm count,” she said. “That's what the doctor told him when he went in for a checkup 'cause he was having trouble peeing. You know how older men get,” she said to the room in general. “Lou told me about it and said Calvin and she barely had…well, you know, relations. When she turned up pregnant, he said there was no way it was his. He told her he wasn't raising another man's bastard and she'd best get rid of it or he'd get rid of her.”

Christie gasped. “No!”

“He sure as hell did—told her that right in my kitchen after they had a big ol' fight and she came to my house to get away. He followed her there and said some vile things. I expected her to leave right then and there, but she didn't. Said she couldn't just up and leave her boys.”

Amanda felt true sympathy for her mother. What a crushing blow it must have been, to discover you were going to have another child, only to be told both you and the child were not wanted.

“Lou was tired of coming in fourth on Calvin Crawford's list of priorities. I'm sorry to say this about your daddy, boys, but you know I'm right. There was no way she was going to bring another child into that family, not when Calvin wouldn't believe the baby was his own
flesh and blood. Back then, there weren't any of those DNA tests.”

Again, the room fell quiet for several moments. “So,” Cal said at last, “let me make sure I've got this straight. Our mother found out she was pregnant, told our father, who denied it was his. According to Myra, the baby
was
his. So instead of leaving, Mom stayed home and just pretended to all of us that she wasn't pregnant.”

“That's right, for about five months,” Myra said.

“Then Nana Allen got sick and Mom went to Arkansas to stay with her after gallbladder surgery. She gave birth to the baby in Arkansas and gave it to Nana to raise. And then Mom came back to the Rocking C and we all went on with our lives in ignorance.”

“That's what happened,” Myra said. “And the baby wasn't an ‘it,' it was a girl.”

Amanda looked up to find everyone staring at her.

 

L
EO MADE HIS WAY AROUND
the room to Amanda. She looked so very alone sitting in that big chair. One young woman against the Crawfords, who may or may not believe that she was their sister.

Hell, he couldn't blame them. He'd been with her for a week and all he'd come up with was that she was Calvin's illegitimate daughter. He'd been wrong because who would have believed the truth?

And he did know it was the truth. Myra had no reason to lie.

“So you're claiming to be our sister,” Cal said. “Do you have any proof?”

Leo settled against the wall near Amanda. He wasn't sure what he expected, but he wasn't going to let Cal or Troy gang up on her, and he wasn't going to let
her run out to the car and drive away. He suspected she had every thing she owned packed for her getaway tomorrow.

He didn't even know where she'd slept last night. She could have stayed in her car, as she'd threatened, or in a cheap motel full of temporary workers and folks of questionable morals. He would have gone out and looked for her if he'd thought it would have done any good. He couldn't exactly drag her back to his condo. She would have accused him of meddling in her life—again.

And she would have been right. How was it that he could think he had solutions for everyone else, yet couldn't answer his own questions? Like what he really wanted out of life.

“I have a driver's license and a birth certificate. But honestly, I didn't come here prepared for an interview. I came here to find out why our mother made the choices she made—before I was born and up to the time she got me from my aunt and uncle's house in Arkansas and took me to Oregon.”

“It's just that…well, hell, it's always been the two of us,” Troy said. “It's hard to believe that our parents could have kept something that big a secret.”

“Lots of parents aren't all lovey-dovey,” Cal said with bitterness. “We both knew our mother was odd, bordering on crazy, as far back as I can remember.”

“She had bipolar disorder,” Amanda said firmly. “It's not like she asked to have it. And later in life, she took her meds and she was better.”

“We found out about the bipolar disorder later, but that didn't make it easier to accept that our mother up and left us,” Cal said.

“Well, it didn't make it easy for me, either, when
I knew that I had a family in Texas that never knew about me,” Amanda shot back. “I had a father and two big brothers who I never got to meet. I had a mother who needed help staying grounded, taking her meds and coping with life in general. Do you have any idea how depressed she got about leaving you? Mom always said it was for the best, that her moving to Oregon was the only option for all of us, but I always resented growing up alone.”

“Why didn't you tell us earlier?” Troy asked. “Mom has been dead for what, at least ten years? Dad died when I was still in college. It's not like we moved away and you couldn't find us.”

“No, you're right, I knew where you were.” Amanda looked down at her lap again and twirled the hem of her sweater around her fingers. “But all my life I'd been told I wasn't wanted, and fantasizing about my big brothers was easier than contacting you and being told to my face that you wanted nothing to do with me.

“And about finding out about when Mom died…that newspaper clipping was from me.”

“You?” Cal and Troy spoke at once.

“I sent you the obituary when Mom died. I sat down to write you a letter, but in the end, I threw every one I wrote away and mailed the clipping without a return address. I was just a teenager. I didn't know who Myra was, either, until after Mom died, and even then, she was just a name on some old letters.”

Leo's heart went out to her. He'd known she was lonely; he just hadn't realized how truly alone she felt.

“Why now? What changed?” Cal asked.

Amanda looked up. “Oh, that's easy. Our mother worked as a waitress for years before she got sick. One
of her customers was an older man. He left her a bequest in his will. Apparently he never changed it, even after she died. The money goes to Luanna Allen or her heirs. The lawyer handling the estate asked me if I was her only child and I told him about you two. I asked him for a month to find you and tell you myself.”

She shrugged. “I figured you'd rather find out something like that from me than from a letter. Or, I don't know, maybe I just used that as an excuse to come here and finally see you face-to-face.”

“So you came here to make sure we got an inheritance?” Troy asked incredulously.

Amanda nodded. “It's not a lot of money. I think it works out to about eight thousand dollars each after the administrative fee. I know that to you, that's not a fortune, but to me, it means a lot.”

“So you didn't come here to get a share of the Rocking C now that we're back in the black?” Cal asked.

“Cal! How can you say that?” Christie exclaimed. “She came here to find you.”

“That would be the nice thing to believe,” Cal said. “I'm just a little suspicious of the timing.”

Amanda stood up. “Look, I don't want your ranch or any part of your money. I just thought the time was right to tell you that I exist. And I wanted to try to understand why our mother never told anyone about me, about why she…she denied me my family.”

Amanda sniffed and Leo knew she was barely holding on. He pushed away from the wall and took a step forward.

“I'll tell you why,” Myra said. “Lou knew nothing had changed. Calvin wasn't going to believe the baby was his. The boys thought she was crazy. Coming back
here or even contacting them wasn't going to change that.”

“I know, but—”

“I'll tell you what she did do, though,” Myra continued as if Amanda hadn't spoken. “She wrote me letters and she called me sometimes, asking how everyone was doing. She sent me pictures and I sometimes sent her some. She might have left you boys, but that didn't mean she stopped caring. She just never could come back, not without leaving Amanda. She felt guilty enough about abandoning her in Arkansas the first seven years of her life. She told me more than once that she and her daughter needed each other. She said she loved her boys, but they didn't need her anymore.”

Cal looked solemn. Troy looked shaken. Amanda looked devastated.

“I kept every one of her letters. They're in this envelope—” she slapped her hand on Cal's desk “—all sealed up for when you're ready to read them.” Myra pushed herself out of the rocking chair. “Now, I think I'm gonna have some dessert before I make my way back home. I don't stay up so late anymore.”

After Myra walked out of the room and closed the door, silence fell again. “So, what happens now?” Leo asked to no one in particular.

“I have no idea,” Troy said.

“I guess there's nothing else left to do,” Amanda said. “I did what I came here for. I've told you who I am. Whether you believe me or not…well, that's beyond my control.” She sounded resigned. “The lawyer, Curtis Salter from Portland, will contact you tomorrow about the bequest and I'm sure you'll need to prove who you are to him so you can get your money.” She rose from
the chair. “I think I'd like to see the photos the ladies copied for me.”

“But what will you do?” Christie asked. “Where are you going?”

“I'm going to drive to Arkansas to visit my cousins. We aren't real close, but I figured it might be nice to see them since I'm within a day's drive. Then…I'm not so sure. I don't have to go to New Hampshire to meet Troy any longer. I guess I'll decide whether to go back to Portland or find a new place to live.”

“Stay here,” Leo said suddenly, the words popping out before he could think about his reaction. “This is a good place to live.”
Besides, I care about you. Really, I do.

Amanda smiled sadly at him. “Yes, it is a great place to live, if I had a good reason to stay. But really, Leo, I don't think I do. It's best that I move on.”

He stared at her as she made her way to the door of the study. Amanda seemed to pause for just a moment. Her shoulders lifted as if she were taking a deep breath. Then she opened the door and walked out, closing it gently behind her.

Christie jumped up. “I'm going to make Amanda feel welcome. I, for one, believe her.”

Leo believed her, too, and he'd already told her he wanted her to stay, at least twice.

Besides, her decisions weren't about him. They were about her brothers, her desire to be part of their family. Leo had heard the pain in her voice as she'd talked about growing up without a father, with a mother who was undependable at best. Amanda wanted to belong somewhere, but she didn't feel that this was home. Es
pecially since her brothers hadn't exactly made her feel welcome. She didn't want to stay here.