Rustic Hearts

Braxton

Princess Sophia never came down to di

Then, Sophia snubbed them.

We all sat around the table that they had prepared outside with the fancy linens. Lights strung up in the tree limbs, eating our fancy feast and looking at each other like assholes, everyone melancholy and no one saying anything.

This afternoon, when she finally graced us with her presence at lunch, the woman barely ate a thing and was rude when Elle tried to talk to her about New York City.

Elle’s face fell, and I had to take my sandwich to the porch to eat before I put Miss Haughty Ass in her place. I promised Doreen I’d be nice. I’m a man of my word, but I’m afraid if I have to spend too much time with her, it will be a promise I break. No one treats my sister like she’s beneath them.

After lunch, Emmett and I head to the stables and set to cleaning the horse stalls and filling them with fresh hay. Aunt Madeline has a new class of youngsters coming in the morning to start riding lessons.

“What do you think of our Sophie?” he asks once we are working.

I wipe the sweat from my brow and let out a sneer. “Not much, to tell you the truth. Seems to me like a spoiled brat who likes to walk around, making assumptions and judging everyone.”

He cuts his eyes to me. “I don’t know about all that. I think it was probably a bit jarring for her to be back after all these years, seeing how much things have changed around here.”

“Right. Nothing ever changes around here,” I tease him.

“You’re right, but I bet it didn’t look that way to her.”

Maybe not. Still doesn’t give her the right to come to our home and stomp all over our hospitality.

“She sure grew up to be a beautiful woman. Of course, she always was a pretty little thing. Even when she was just a tomboy in overalls with wild blonde curls, bare feet, and dirty hands and knees,” he muses.

“Can’t imagine her getting her hands dirty now.”

And I can’t. She might break a nail or something.

“Now, who’s making assumptions?” He gives me a disappointed look.

“Just sayin’, with those fancy clothes and that superior attitude, no way she would fit in here.”

“She’s got Lancaster blood flowing through her veins. That means, she’s tethered to this land. Those clothes and shoes of hers don’t change that. She has a rustic heart beating in her chest, just like we do.”

I release an amused breath. “Right.”

“What exactly is it about her that irritates you so much, Brax?”

It’s a fair question. Why does she bother me so much?

“She came here with a chip on her shoulder and an agenda.”

“She came here because her grandmother passed, and she wants to pay her respects.”

“Yeah, that’s the excuse, not the real reason. If she gave two shits about Gram, she would’ve visited her while she was still alive.”

“The roads from here to New York City run both ways, son, and lest we forget, she was a child when her parents divorced. It wasn’t her responsibility to come to us. We failed her. All of us.”

He gets a far-off look in his eyes like he is revisiting somewhere in the past that I’m not privy to.

“Whatever. She’s an adult now, and she has been for a while. She has a parent alive and well here, and she acts like he doesn’t exist. She’d rather be up in the big city with her rich stepdaddy than slumming it here, which suits me just fine. Just don’t come here, riding into town like a damn princess, expecting everyone to bow at your feet, and stick your nose in the air to my aunts and sister, who have been nothing but kind and welcoming to you.”

He stops and leans against his pitchfork as he gives me a steely look. “She was a daddy’s girl. Loved him with all she had. She lost him and everything she ever knew without warning. She comes here and sees that everything about her home has changed and that everyone has a happy life that she’s not a part of. How would you feel, walking into that?”

“Appreciative. That’s how I’d feel.”

“Son, you lost your mother and father. It was tragic and painful. But you grew up, knowing they loved you and that they didn’t leave you on purpose. Sophie lost her daddy too, but unlike your parents, he had a choice. He made that choice, and for whatever reason, he didn’t choose her. He chose to walk away. Not because he didn’t want to be a father or couldn’t be a father because he took you and Elle in and raised you. It was because he didn’t want her. That’s what it looks like to her anyway. It has to cut deep.”

I take a minute to let his words set in and try to imagine if our parents had chosen to leave us. How much worse the pain would have been, being left on purpose.

“That doesn’t sound like Jefferson.”

I can’t reconcile that the man I know, the man who raised me and taught me how to be a man, would walk away from his responsibility to his own flesh and blood that way. Something doesn’t add up.

“No, it doesn’t, and there’s more to the story.” He shares no further.

“Is he going to tell her what that is?”

“I sure hope so. He should have done it a long time ago. That brokenhearted girl hiding behind all that makeup and those fancy clothes deserves an explanation. It’s been long enough. That’s why Doreen arranged for her to come here because he was never going to face it if he wasn’t pushed. Time to set the skeletons out of the closet.”

He thrusts his fork in the pile and picks up another batch of hay. Then, he adds, “Would be awfully kind of you to cut her some slack while she’s here.”

“I’ll try, Em.”

“That’s my boy.”

“I said, try.”

He shoots me a sideways smile. Between him asking and Aunt Doreen making me promise, I think my best line of defense is to avoid Miss Lancaster until she hightails it back to where she came from.

The sooner, the better.