even more high and mighty. I’m not going to agree with her about pulling the plug or the way she handled your funeral. She’s too self-righteous and full of herself to say I’m right, so the elephant remains.”
Jayden pulled a few more dandelion weeds from around the tombstone, went back to her truck, and looked over her shoulder at the grave site. “I’ll miss coming by to see you next month, but I’ll be back the first of August.” She opened the door and slid behind the wheel, shifted into gear, and started home. With midday traffic, the thirty-minute trip back to her apartment took more than an hour.
Jayden had not dipped strongly into her grandfather Jay Denton Grant’s gene pool when it came to patience. Gramps had the patience of Job, even with Skyler’s tantrums. “Dammit! Do you have to count to twenty after the light turns green?” she fumed when the fifth person in a row took their own good, lazy time moving forward.
You’re showing off your Bennett temper, her mother’s voice rang clear as a bell in her head.
“If people don’t know how to drive, they should keep their butts at home,” she argued, “and if a little road rage is all I got from Daddy, that’s a good thing.”
When she finally got home, she flopped down on the overstuffed sofa. Thank God she didn’t have to explain to anyone why she was leaving for eight weeks. She didn’t have a boyfriend, not for lack of wanting one. But relationships weren’t easy—neither was trust after being right in the middle of her parents’ messy divorce. Her mother and grandparents had passed away, and she’d already been to the cemetery to talk to her mother. Her dad was off with wife number two. Skyler had never blamed him for the divorce and had always kept up with him better than Jayden had, which was another bone of contention between them.
“No one cares whether I’m here or not,” she muttered. “Just set the thermostat, call an Uber to take me to the airport, and I’m off to live in a cabin with three unruly girls for eight weeks. Skyler, you owe me big-time, and I’ve got two months to think of a way to make you pay me back.”
Chapter Two
Elijah didn’t enjoy flying anymore, but sometimes it was necessary. Every time he got into the small plane owned by Piney Wood, he remembered the missions he’d flown in a helicopter during his years in the air force. His eyes misted over at the memory of the three coffins that he and his teammates had accompanied home. His enlistment had been up, and he only needed one more hitch to get his twenty years for retirement. Yet when it came time for him to sign on the dotted line a couple of weeks after all their memorial services, he couldn’t force himself to do it, and neither could Buddy, Chuck, or Tim. His friends went home after the funerals, but Elijah had spent a month and a half of his savings right there in San Antonio, trying to figure out what to do with his life.
“I’ve always been bad luck. Anyone I get really close to dies,” he said out loud.
Bullcrap! Uncle Henry’s gravelly old voice was clear in his head.
That brought back the day that Uncle Henry had shown up on his monthly rental motel doorstep in San Antonio and told him to pack his bags.
“You’re going to work for me, and once you get yourself straightened out, you’ll be taking over my job when I retire,” he’d said.
“What makes you think I want to work with a bunch of rich, bitchy little girls?” Elijah had asked as he twisted the top off a beer.
“You’ve got to do something, and you might like it. Taxi is waiting—put that beer down. You’ll be flying us home to Alpine. I brought the plane down here, but it’s time for you to stop moping around and get on with your life.” Uncle Henry had left no room for argument.
Most of the fight had gone out of Elijah by then anyway. He’d shoved what clothing he had into a duffel bag, left the six-pack of beer in the refrigerator, and checked out of the motel. Looking back two years later, he didn’t regret his decision. There had definitely been something therapeutic about putting teenage girls back on the right track.
That first time he settled into the little company airplane, he’d sweat buckets. Nausea