Jesse had never had so many tangled feelings about life and death before in her life. There was nothing sadder than the knowledge that the only reason you were sad to see someone pass away had to do with the fact that they were one of the only living people who could have answered the major questions plaguing your life. Jesse had needed the truth from Joe Hernandez about her roots. She wanted to know what his relationship with her mother had really been. She wanted to know if he could tell her the truth about her parents’ accident. Jesse needed to ask him where her mother’s missing journals were. Now she would never know what he’d known. There was no way to bring him back and no way to right the plethora of wrongs that had been done to her and her family.

Or maybe those thoughts were just part of her very limited perspective on the situation. Who was she to say this stuff anyway? Jesse Collins was going to be hopelessly biased about this situation anyway.

Ugh! This was so confusing. She just wanted to go home. Avery was shrieking and moaning as though she had just lost the love of her life. And maybe she had. The woman had claimed she was going to leave Joe, even while he was going through cardiac rehab! Now she was acting as though she had never had such thoughts at all.

“My husband is dead!” Avery moaned. “My life is over!”

They had been moved from the hospital hallway to a private family waiting room down near the nurses’ station for obvious reasons. Of course, the most pressing reason had been Avery’s absolute devolution into tears and her very loud expression of grief.

Finally, Jesse couldn’t take it anymore. “Avery, don’t you think you’re being a tad overdramatic? Two days ago you told the cardiac rehab lady that you didn’t need to hear what she had to say because you were leaving Joe anyway. You said he was on his own!”

“But I didn’t mean it!” Avery drew back in horror. “Do you really think I would leave my husband? Good wives don’t do that!”

“Good wives?” Jesse ground her teeth together and tried to have a little compassion for the woman. It was very difficult. “What about good husbands? Joe was hardly a good husband to you.” Jesse had to be careful here. As much as she wanted information, she really didn’t care to sit here and browbeat a grieving widow.

“Joe was a good man.” Avery sniffed and pressed a lace-edged handkerchief to her nose. “He always treated me well. He just had some trouble with the faithfulness part of things. But some of it was the behavior of other women!”

Jesse blinked. She couldn’t stop staring at the hankie. There was a border carefully stitched around the edges of the thing. Sun. Moon. Stars. A date. There was a date on it somewhere. In the corner maybe. Why did Avery have that handkerchief?

Jesse felt a rush of anger. She snatched the hankie away from Avery. The woman tried to snatch it back. Jesse could not imagine what anyone would think of her now. Stealing a silk handkerchief from a woman grieving the loss of her husband only a few moments ago! Except this hankie didn’t belong to Avery Hernandez. It had belonged to Amelia Collins.

“Why do you have this?” Jesse asked coldly. “And don’t try to bullshit me, Avery. Why do you have this? I know what this is. I remember this! My mother told me that Mrs. Farrell had sewn these for my mother to celebrate her wedding.” Jesse turned the hankie in her hands and finally found the date carefully stitched in royal purple thread. “Right here. See? This is the date my parents got married.”

“Don’t be silly.” Avery tried to snatch the hankie back, but Jesse pulled it away. “You give that back, you little thief. Don’t you think you’ve stolen enough from me over the years?”

“What?” Jesse gaped at Avery. “What are you talking about? Do you think it’s somehow my fault that your husband is dead? You just killed him by making him freak out while he was lying in a hospital bed recovering from a massive heart attack! You got him all excited, and don’t tell me that you didn’t mean to do it either. Any woman who was honestly worried about her spouse would not have stood there railing at him, accusing him of things that she knew were making him agitated. You killed him on purpose, and you know it.”

“Don’t you dare!” Avery shot to her feet. She pointed at Jesse. “Get. Out! You’re not fit to be in here. You’re Amelia’s daughter, and everything that was wrong with my husband was your harlot of a mother’s fault!”

Jesse had felt a lot of anger in her lifetime, but this sensation pressing heavily on her chest right now was more than she could handle. The sheer violence of the emotions whipping through her right now was almost too much for Jesse to handle. She stood slowly and handed the handkerchief back to Avery. The woman snatched it up as though it honestly belonged to her. Although, if Jesse was right, then Avery had been the one to pack up Jesse’s parents’ house after their deaths. That mean Avery had felt entitled to Amelia’s things simply because she felt wronged by the other woman.

“You’re a sad old woman and I pity you,” Jesse told Avery quietly. “You were my mother just as much as Amelia Collins. I had my real mother for eleven years. I’ve had you ever since. Tell me. Do you feel as though you were a good mother to me? Or do you maybe feel that you blamed me for what my mother and your husband did together?”

“Blame has nothing to do with it,” Avery hissed angrily. “Your mother seduced my husband. You were a constant reminder to him of the woman he loved and a constant reminder to me that I was not the woman my husband truly longed for. Tell me, girl, what would you have felt if you had been in my position?”

“Pity,” Jesse said flatly. “That’s what I feel right now.”

Jesse walked out of the family waiting room and closed the door behind her. She heard Avery pick up her wailing right after Jesse was out of sight. The pure fakery of that sound was almost too much. Did Avery honestly believe that anyone would feel as though she were a real widow? She had not appeared in public with her husband for nearly a year now. She refused to “deal” with his attitude, his drinking, his embarrassing himself and the family in public, or even his interference in her children’s lives. Now, all of a sudden, she wanted to be the one who received sympathy from others because she had lost her husband?

Jesse snorted. She wished she were here by herself. She was ready to go. She was hungry and tired, and she just wanted to be home.

“What’s wrong?” Cal suddenly appeared beside her. “Are you all right? Where’s my mother?”

“Your mother?” Jesse offered Cal a very fake, very sugary-sweet smile. “She can go to hell for all I care. And if she honestly believes that anyone is going to buy her grieving widow routine, then she’s more foolish than I ever gave her credit for.”

Cal drew back, but she could not decide if that was disbelief on his face or just regular old run-of-the-mill disgust. It was tough to tell. Then he held out his arms, and Jesse went willingly into his embrace. He wrapped her tight and pressed his lips to her hair. They stood that way in the middle of the hall for probably longer than was appropriate or necessary. Jesse didn’t care. At the moment, appropriate didn’t mean anything to her. She was sick and tired of appropriate.

“Did you call your brothers?” Jesse whispered to Cal. “I imagine they’ll need to come and help your mother with the arrangements.”

“I called Laredo.”

“So, pretty much he’ll take care of the rest,” Jesse said with a sigh. “Good.”

Cal touched her face. She loved the way his fingertips felt against her skin. There was something so gentle about him. And that was pretty damn cool considering he was one of the roughest living men of her acquaintance.

He kissed her forehead. “Why is that good?”

“Because I want to leave. I need food. And I need to get out of here,” she told him quietly.

Jesse heard a noise behind her in the hallway. The door of the family waiting room opened. From the corner of her eye, Jesse could see Avery Hernandez leaning into the hallway. She was gesturing to Cal.

“Calvin, I need you to come and stay with me.” Avery’s face was streaked with tears. Her big blue eyes were made even more enormous by the drops glistening on her lashes. She looked like a television rendering of a grieving widow. There was absolutely nothing genuine in the way she appeared, and yet she looked good.

Jesse could feel the hesitation in Cal. She knew he was very fond of her, but this was his mother they were talking about. His father had just died, and now his mother was requesting that her eldest child come to her side.

Jesse stepped away from Cal. She swiped at her own face and took a deep breath. “Go on,” Jesse urged Cal. “She wants you near until Laredo gets here with Met. That’s always how it will be.”

“All right.” He didn’t look convinced.

The expression of triumph in Avery Hernandez’s eyes burned Jesse in ways that she could not grasp. This woman had been her mother figure for a good portion of her life. Did she really feel this much animosity toward Jesse now after all these years? Why? What was this really about?

“Cal, please?” There was a plaintive note in Avery’s voice. The quaver was almost contrived. How could this woman be acting like this when her husband had just passed away?

Jesse hadn’t liked Joe Hernandez that much. But she’d had respect for him as a rancher and a strange kind of appreciation for him as a provider and a father because she had lived under his roof for years. It seemed so odd that he could just be gone with nothing further than a doctor’s pronouncement that he’d suffered a massive heart attack.

“I’ll be downstairs,” Jesse told Cal. “I’m going to look for the cafeteria.”

“I’ll be right behind you.” Cal called the words after Jesse, but she didn’t look back.

She didn’t want to see him turn away from her and turn toward his mother. This whole thing was just messed up. Jesse was not Joe Hernandez’s biological child. There was nothing short of hard evidence that would make her believe otherwise. So, why was Avery behaving the way that she was? What did she have to gain from it?

“Jesse!”

As she got close to the elevator, she realized that Cisco and his younger brother Met were already striding down the hallway. Cisco was waving emphatically at her. Jesse continued to head toward the elevator, meeting them almost right in front of the doors as they were still hovering open.

Jesse quickly stepped inside the elevator. Cisco frowned and stuck his hand out to prevent it from closing. “What’s wrong? Why are you leaving? We got Cal’s text about Dad, but we were already on our way here to spell Mom so she could go home and get a decent night’s sleep.”

“Your mother doesn’t want me around,” Jesse said coolly. Then she shrugged. Her gaze wandered toward Met. Of anyone, Met should know exactly why Jesse was no longer welcome in the family circle. “It’s all right. We all know that Avery Hernandez is not a huge fan of my parents. Apparently, in her grief, she’s decided that she just can’t handle my being around.”

“That isn’t fair, Jess,” Met told her quietly. His normally jovial expression was somber. “You know it’s not the way the rest of us feel.”

“That’s all right.” Jesse took a deep breath. Then she forced herself to smile at Met. “Now that her favorite golden boy is here, maybe she’ll let Cal off the hook. He’s my ride and I’m really ready to go home.”

Cisco and Met nodded. The two of them looked awfully calm for having just gotten the news of their father’s death. Neither man was shedding a tear. They didn’t even look bothered. Jesse remembered crying her eyes out when she’d been told her parents had died in an accident. She’d been eleven at the time, but she didn’t feel like there would be any difference between how she had felt then and how she would feel now.

To that end, she tilted her head to one side and gave the brothers a very thorough once-over. “Are you two all right? That must have been a horrible shock about your dad. I’m really sorry it’s ended so suddenly for him.”

Cisco pursed his lips and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Dad wasn’t a warm and friendly guy, Jesse. You knew that. He beat the tar out of us if we stepped out of line, and he’s made the business end of the ranch hell on earth in the last few years. He’s a mean drunk who’s been holding a grudge against Paul Weatherby and the Flying W for no earthly reason that we can think of. I’m sad he’s dead. But I’ll be honest with you. There’s a bit of relief in there as well, and I’m not ashamed to say it.”

“Me neither,” Met muttered. “You think my mother’s acting crazy? Well, she is. But who drove her crazy? Answer me that.” Met’s face turned hard. “I’ll tell you who drove her crazy. It was Joe Hernandez. And sometimes in life we reap what we sow. It’s just too bad for my father that he’s been sowing so much bullshit for so much time.”

The two men nodded to Jesse before letting the elevator doors slide shut. The silence was deep except for the low hum of the elevator sinking to the lower levels of the hospital. Jesse listening to the whirring of the motor and wondered when the entire Hernandez family would stop reaping what Joe Hernandez had sown.