Page 87 of Boston
Bailey nodded to Cora, a small smile appearing on her face. “I am exhausted and was hoping to take a nap before I have to go over to my parents’ farm.”
“The cabin, please, Sheela,” Cora said as she lifted the badge on the lanyard around her neck. She held it out so Sheela could type in Cora’s management authorization code. “Same price, please, and I want her to have a restaurant voucher for two nights, and the drink coupon.”
She moved out from behind the counter, her job done. “I hope that’s okay,” she said. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
“It’s okay,” Bailey said. “Really. And I’ll take the restaurant vouchers, because I chose to stay here because you have places to eat on-site. But I don’t drink, and the coupons will just go to waste.”
Cora raised her eyebrows. “Are you sure? You can get mocktails or even just bottled water with them.”
“Oh, okay,” Bailey said. “Then I’ll take them.”
Sheela started taking care of everything, and Boston turned to Bailey again. “You’ll be here through next Saturday?”
She nodded, something tightening around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. “Yes. I’m doing all the rounds—my parents, aunts, uncles, your family, OJ.” She gave a light laughthat didn’t sound happy at all. “No wonder I need to front-load with a nap.”
“Take some painkillers too,” Cash said, and he chuckled.
“All right, ma’am,” Sheela said in her uber-professional voice. “This is a map of the property, and I have you in cabin three.” She circled it on the map, and Cora backed up a step.
Thankfully, the cowboy cousins could read a situation, and they both quickly hugged Bailey one more time and came with her.
Cora had so many questions, but she waited until they’d all piled into Boston’s car to ask, “OJ? Why would she go visit OJ specifically?”
Boston looked over to her, but it was Cash who said, “Because she’s his biological mother.”
Cora had no idea what she’d been expecting either of them to say, but it wasn’t that. “What?” burst out of her mouth. “She had—she’s—with Otis?”
Boston burst out laughing. “No, she and Bryce. OJ is Bailey and Bryce’s biological son; they had him when they weren’t married and neither of them felt capable and ready to raise him. Otis and Georgia adopted him as a newborn.”
“It’s an open adoption,” Cash said from the backseat. “Everyone knows about it. OJ texts Bailey all the time. She comes to town from time to time. That kind of thing.”
“She’ll go out to Bryce’s farm too, probably with OJ,” Boston said. “It’s a whole thing.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “I just keep wondering when she’s going to move back here.”
Cash chuckled. “Who knows, brother? If OJ asked me to do something, I wouldn’t be able to say no. That kid’s got character.”
Boston laughed too, but Cora hadn’t met OJ yet, and she blinked as the branches of the Young family tree splintered and reformed themselves. She thought of the larger-than-life BryceYoung, and the way he held his baby boy in his arms, so much love and joy radiating from him.
To think he’d had a baby with someone who wasn’t Codi and given him up for adoption…and could be filled with such light—it gave Cora nothing but hope for herself.
Hope that she too could find the path that God wanted her to be on and have the courage to take steps down it.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Boston groaned as he sat up from Cash’s comfortable couch. “I guess I better get back,” he said, scrubbing his hands through his hair and down his face.
“You could just stay here,” Cash said, and Boston looked over to him.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, this place has three bedrooms,” Cash said. He did not look tired in the least, and Boston had no idea how he stayed up so late.
Of course, Boston had gotten up far earlier than Cash, and maybe he was a little stressed taking his cousin to lunch with Cora, and seeing Bailey in the lobby, and then texting his mother for a haircut and finding out that she couldn’t do it that day. She’d had a lot of flower orders to get out before the Fourth and then they’d be closed all weekend.
Boston had plans to go tomorrow morning, as Cash had finally texted his daddy and had set up a patriotic Independence Day breakfast with everyone in his family.
Boston figured he’d spend the day with his parents and half-siblings too, and then he’d come back here to get ready for theconcert in the park and the fireworks, which he and Cora were attending together.
