Page 53 of Second Chance With a Cowboy

Ford and Elizabeth were sitting at the big, scarred oak table with Mack while Dodge and Maisie were putting together a cutting board full of sliced sausage and cheese in the kitchen when Duke, Chevy, and Leni came into the house. They were all laughing about something but stopped as they took in their subdued expressions.

Murphy got up from his dog bed by the fireplace and came running toward Chevy to rub against his leg. That dog could always read his emotions and must have felt the tension in the room.

Duke strode toward the table, a frown on his normally jovial face as he stared at Mack. “Son, I think you’ve got some explaining to do.”

The color drained from Mack’s face. His shoulders fell as he nodded solemnly at Duke. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“What’s going on?” Ford asked, his body tensing as he stood and went to his grandfather’s side.

“We just ran into Bucky Ferguson outside of the hardware store,” Chevy said. “He said the guy his son was sending up from Texas got beat up by a bull last week and isn’t going to be able to come up here and help us out this fall.”

All eyes turned toward Mack.

“I swear, I didn’t mean to deceive anybody,” Mack said. “Honestly, when I first got here, Chevy said you all knew I was coming, so I somehow figured you knew who I was. It wasn’t until later that I realized you thought I was some guy from Texas sent here to be a farm hand. And by then, I’d spent time with you all, and you’d made me feel like I was already part of the family, and I really liked every one of you.” The volume of his voice lowered, and his shoulders fell even further as if the weight of a tractor had been set upon them. “And I guess I just didn’t want that to change when you found out who I really was.”

“So, who the hell are you?” Ford asked, moving closer to Elizabeth.

Mack’s wallet was sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter beside his phone and truck keys, and Dodge grabbed it and flipped it open. “I’ll tell you who he is,” he said, peering down at the driver’s license inside. Then all the color drained from his face as he looked at Mack then at Gramps then at each of his brothers. “Nah,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “You couldn’t be.”

“What?” Ford said, striding over and snatching the wallet from his brother’s hand. “Holy shit,” he said, staring down at what Chevy assumed was the guy’s license. Ford’s face held a mix of hurt and anger as he looked up then waved the wallet at Duke. “Did you know about this? Abouthim?”

Chevy stood frozen…anxiety and fear filling his chest. It took a lot to rattle Ford, and his older brother was clearly rattled. Leni took his hand, and he drew strength from having her at his sideas he squeezed her palm. “Would somebody please tell me what the ever-lovin’ shit is going on?”

Mack sat silent; his head lowered as he stared at a scar on the table.

Ford threw the wallet onto the table. “His driver’s license says his name isMack TruckLassiter.”

Chevy jerked his head back. “What the hell kind of name isMack Truck?” Then it hit him, all the pieces falling together. Mack’s blue eyes and dark build, so similar to Chevy’s. With his free hand, he gripped the back of the chair in front of him to steady himself.

“My dad drove a semi,” Mack said quietly, still not looking at any of them. “Or at least that’s what she told me. I never met him.”

The room was deadly still, as if every person in it were afraid to breathe.

Then Duke let out a weary sigh as he slowly shook his head. His voice was soft and sounded as if every word pained him. “June and I wondered if she might have been pregnant when she left. If that was part of why she’d taken off like she did. We figured it had to do with some new guy she’d met.” He sank into the chair in front of him. “She’d gotten a job at the diner out on the highway, so she was either leaving early or coming home late, and we were all busy with the boys and the cattle, so we probably weren’t paying enough attention. I remember she seemed to be sick a lot, and she’d put on some weight. But I swear, I didn’t know. She never said a word. All these years, she never told us about you.”

“She never told me about any of you either.” Mack finally looked up at Chevy. “Like you said the first day I met you. Our mother was a real piece of work.”

“Wait,” Dodge said, the hurt and betrayal plain on his face. “So, yougrew upwith her? She never left you behind?”

Mack huffed out a dry laugh. “In a sense. Yeah, I grew up living with her, but she left me behind plenty of times. She’d take off for days or weeks at a time, sometimes leaving me a fridge and cupboard full of food, sometimes leaving me with nothing but a box of cereal, an expired carton of milk, and a couple of crumpled twenty-dollar bills. We lived in a crappy apartment with more cockroaches than insulation, and I never knew when I woke up in the morning if she was going to be there or not.”

Chevy was torn between feeling sorry for the guy and then equally envious and angry at the fact that he still got to grow up with their mother. “But she always came back for you,” he said, his lips tight.

“She never came back for us,” Dodge said.

“We haven’t seen her in decades,” Ford added.

From the set of their shoulders and the wary way they were looking at Mack, Chevy knew that his brothers were feeling the same way he was.

“I just found out about you,” Mack told them. “She’d gotten a phone call—I think now it might have been from one of you all’s dads—then she got sloppy drunk and confessed that I had three half-brothers in Colorado. She said they grew up on a ranch with her parents. She made it sound like it was real nice here. But she told me she’d met a guy, a trucker who came into the diner where she worked, and when she got pregnant with me, he promised her this big life. But I guess he said he couldn’t take on four kids, he just wanted to raise his own, so the next time he came through town, she got in his truck with him and left. From what I could gather, she traveled around with him until I was born, then he dumped us in Texas and never came back.”

Dodge’s brow furrowed as an expression of pain crossed his face. “So, she leftmebehind so she could go off to raise you? I was still in diapers.”

Mack looked just as miserable. “I’m sorry.”

“Stop,” Duke said, slapping his hand on the table. “Don’t youdareapologize. This isnot your fault. You were a child. Brandy Lynn is my daughter, and I will always love her, but I’ll never understand the way she treated you boys. She was an addict—booze and pills and I don’t know what all—so I know she was a prisoner to her addictions. Her mother and I prayed every day that she would break free of those chains, and Lord knows, we did everything we could to help her, but there came a point where we had to let her go and just focus on you boys. But that was on her. It had nothing to do with you boys…” He paused to look each of them in the eye. “You hear me, now? Her deciding to leave wasnoneof your faults.”

Chevy heard his grandfather’s words, but the pain of knowing his mother had cared about alcohol, and herself, more than she’d cared about him, or his brothers, was something he’d lived with his whole life.

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