A Thousand Miles

Part 16

By the time they got out of town and onto the highway JoLynn managed to compose herself. She had wanted him to meet her grandmother, and that meeting at least had gone very well. A smile touched her lips. The arrowhead had been a nice touch, and a good guess on his part. It was exactly the kind of gift that would mean something to Grandma. She took a deep breath and let it out quietly, trying to let the humiliation of ten minutes ago roll off. It probably would have been a much better idea to have just brought him out here to meet Grandma alone. But she hadn't wanted the situation to seem like a formal meeting of the relatives sort of thing. Not just yet, anyway. She suppressed an ironic laugh at how the strategy of keeping it casual had backfired, and he'd seen the whole crazy dysfunction anyway.

She should have known that Kelly wouldn't pass up any opportunity to put her in her place, and remind her that she took priority in Harlan's life, and that JoLynn was just the baggage from the first marriage. She should have especially known that Kelly would relish doing such a thing in front of one of JoLynn's friends. And even more especially in front of a male friend the likes of Shane. Competing was Kelly's life and she lived every day to win.

As a little girl, JoLynn hadn't been the least bit equipped to contend against the whole Miss Texas thing, so she never even tried. Maybe she should have. Now, of course, she knew that her father would have taken her side, at least to some degree, but as a child there was no way she could have known it. All she could see was Kelly's sparkle juxtaposed against her own pre-teen awkwardness.

"Your dad and Kelly have been married awhile?" Shane asked, as if he'd been reading her mind.

"Since I was eight." JoLynn glanced out the window noticing for the first time that they were high up in the hills. Shane turned the car off the highway and onto what looked like a private drive. "He had an affair with her. She got pregnant. So he divorced my mom and married her."

They were on a blacktop road with a yellow stripe down the middle. But not a road she was familiar with. She sat up, a little more alert, noticing the rising and falling of the hills.

"So it was just you and your mom?"

She shrugged. "Until she got remarried and started having more kids. She has three besides me. Where are we going?"

He cast a sidelong glance at her and smiled. "You'll see."

His enigmatic smile was infectious and she caught it. The humiliated sting inflicted at her grandmother's house eased as the mesmerizing, wooded hills outside flew past.

"So your mother must have been pretty devastated when old Harlan divorced her." Shane's assumption broke the silence.

JoLynn shrugged. "I think she got what she wanted from the divorce."

"You?"

She smiled. Sweet that he would say that, or think it. Maybe the sentiment spoke to what kind of family man he'd be one day. But she seriously doubted that custody was all her mother had wanted. She shook her head. "A generous settlement."

"Ah." Shane nodded as if he'd known it all along, as if his assumptions about rich people were suddenly justified. JoLynn sighed and felt her shoulders sag. Maybe they were.

"I don't know." JoLynn raised one shoulder. "I don't think she married my dad for his money. I can remember them being happy together. At some point I know they loved each other. But after he had the affair..." She swallowed the rising ache in her throat. "It was an ugly divorce."

He turned the truck off the blacktop and onto a gravel path that led them through a thick grove that seemed carved from the landscape. A slow smile erupted despite her current sense of regret and she leaned forward, anticipation of this new discovery—whatever it was—whispering through her.