Page 100 of The Coppersmith Farmhouse (Jamison Valley 1)
I was glad to see him smiling and relaxed. I’d wanted to ask him more about his relationship with Wes but not until we were together and comfortable. When he was here with us in a safe place and there would be no interruptions to our conversation.
“You said the other day that you and Wes were friends,” I said.
“Yep. As far back as I can remember. Must have started when I was little. Think my dad and Jack used to get together. Brought us boys along to play. Why?”
“I was just wondering what happened. You turned out, well . . . you,” I said, throwing a hand out to indicate all of the goodness that was my Jess. “And Wes, well, he took a dark path.”
“Honestly? I don’t know. Thought about it a lot, especially as he kept getting deeper and deeper. He was a different person growing up. All through high school, we stayed tight. Worst we did was drink. I left for the academy. Came back two years later and he was different. I tried to pull him out. Get him back. But . . . it was like he didn’t care. About anything. Family. Friends. Nothing. I asked Lissy about it a hundred times but she never would tell me what happened.”
“Lissy?” I recalled Wes mentioning her name at the café a couple of months ago but I never had remembered to ask Jess who she was.
“Felicity. My sister.”
Right. His sister. He rarely talked about her and I wanted to know more, but I didn’t want to stop him while he was talking about Wes.
“How would she know what happened with Wes? Just because she was living here?” I asked.
“No. Wes and Felicity dated for years. Hooked up when she was a freshman in high school. Were together until the day she left. I came home the week before her graduation. Figured he’d be proposing to her. She’d be moving to the Drummond farm, gearing up to raise her and Wes’s babies. Shocked the hell out of me when I came home and he was a wreck. Couldn’t believe it when she left him behind the day after she graduated.”
“Huh,” I muttered.
“Yeah. Been fourteen years and she still won’t tell me what happened. Silas won’t either.”
“You lost me again. Silas?”
“Silas stayed around after we graduated. Started working on his family’s ranch. He knows what happened while I was gone but he’s as tight-lipped as Lissy. And right after she left, he up and joined the army. Did ten years. Came home right as I was running for sheriff.”
“I don’t understand why he won’t tell you what happened. Especially if it had something to do with your sister,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too. I asked him so many times I lost track. Finally stopped when he got so pissed at me one night he punched me. Not many men could get the jump on me, except Silas and maybe Beau. Broke my nose.”
“What?” I gasped. “He hit you?”
“Who hit you? It’s not nice to hit,” Rowen chimed in from the floor, my outburst taking her attention away from coloring.
“Oh. Ah, no one, sweetie. We were just, ah, talking about football,” I stuttered.
“There’s lots of hitting in football, Mommy,” Rowen said, totally buying my bold-faced lie. “But Jess said it was okay because they’re grown-ups and because it’s part of the game. He said that they get paid good money to take the hard hits. If the pussies can’t take it, they should be kicked out of the league.”
My jaw dropped wide open. My four-year-old daughter had just said “pussies.”
“Ah . . . Roe. I thought we talked about keeping our talks in the garage a secret. Just between me and you. Remember?” Jess said.
“Secrets aren’t nice, Jess,” she scolded.
“Shit,” he muttered.
I closed my eyes and shut my mouth, counting to ten. Then I had to count backward because when I hit ten, I was still really, really, really mad.
“Now, Freckles—” Jess started, but I stopped him by shoving my palm in his face.
“I’m going to let this go,” I said. “With a reminder that she is a sponge. She’ll suck up anything you say, even when you don’t think she’s paying attention. Now in order for me to let this go, I am going upstairs to take a long, hot bath. By the time I’m done, I’ll be over it and no longer mad at you. But I promise you this, Sheriff. The day that any teacher calls to discuss Rowen’s language, I’m going to give them your number. You get to deal with it.”
He grinned, clearly amused at my declaration.
He knew full well that I’d have a talk with Rowen later about using bad words and that if her teacher ever did call me, upset by her language, I’d apologize profusely and promise it would never happen again.
“Love you,” Jess said as I stood to go and take my bath.
