Page 43 of Our Sweet Destiny
Chapter Twenty-Five
WEDNESDAY MORNING ON the Braden ranch arrived under a cloud of worry and avoidance. Rex hated lying to anyone, much less his family, and when he arrived home Wednesday morning, after the glorious night with Jade, Treat was waiting for him at the kitchen table with a cocky grin and a shake of his head.
“What’s that for?” Rex challenged him.
“You tell me,” Treat answered, taking a sip of his coffee.
“Dad around?” Rex wasn’t intent on dodging the question so much as finding out if his father was in earshot.
Treat nodded toward the barn. “He’s with Hope. I’m worried about him. He’s back to arguing with the wind.”
“Mom.”
“Right. He’s back to arguing with Mom. I don’t want him to end up in the hospital again.” Treat handed Rex a to-go cup of coffee.
“Thanks.” He sat at the table and wrapped his hands around the tall cup, staring at the table rather than his brother, concentrating on how to tell Treat what was going on.
“What’s around your neck?”
He reached up and touched the necklace.Shoot.He’d forgotten to tuck it beneath his T-shirt. He did that now and let out a long breath.
“Dance of two lovers.” He held Treat’s wide-eyed gaze.
“How?” Treat drew his eyebrows together.
“Mom’s favorite, right? How many times had she told us about her and Dad being created in the image of the lovers? I always thought it was a load of crap, you know, just a…a fantasy or whatever.”
“Not following you here, Rex. So you went out and had that made?” Treat asked.
He shook his head. “I wish it were that simple. We went into Allure, into the Village, to a shop called Jewels of the Past.”
“The one with that loony, albeit sweet, woman?” Treat asked with a smile.
“That’s the one. Turns out she’s not so loony. When she saw us, she said she had just the thing for us, and she came out with the necklace.”
“So? She saw two lovers and made an assumption, grabbed a necklace. That might even make her more loony.” Treat stretched his long, jeans-clad legs out to the side with a stretch.
“Dance of two lovers, Treat. Do you really think anyone other than our family knows about that? She said she got them from Mom. Well, she said Adriana, a girl she’d known in high school.” He shook his head. “You gotta admit, there’s something weird there. I mean, she had no clue who we were, and before I got there, man, all sorts of weird stuff went on in my head.” He ran his hand through his hair and felt his jaw begin to twitch.
“I gotta admit, that’s a bit spooky. Good stuff or bad stuff?”
“Good, but it got me thinking about Dad talking to Mom. Before we got to the shop, as we were just walking along, not really talking or anything, I got this overwhelming feeling of…”
Treat’s eyes flew open wide. “That happened to me, too, with Max. I know what you’re going to say, that suddenly you felt like you loved her, that you knew that every second you were apart was going to kill you.” He shot to his feet. “I never thought I’d see the day that my cold brother fell in love.”
“Shut up and sit down. Yes, it was all of those things. So what do you think about all this Mom stuff? Is it a crock or what? Are we fabricating what we think we need? I’m so confused.”
Treat sat back down, his legs bumping up and down. Rex wanted to take his brother’s exuberance over his finally falling in love and toss it out the window until he figured all this stuff out.
“I never told you this, but when Dad had that heart episode, it was because of me. I put two and two together. He kept fighting with Mom, or whatever, whoever he talks to out there by the barn, and he made a few comments to me about Mom wanting me to fix things with Max and even give her the ring. So, who knows? Maybe we aren’t giving Dad enough credit.”
Rex stood and paced. “Great, so now our lives are being led by our dead mother? You know how strange that sounds, right?”
Treat shrugged. “I don’t know what I believe, but I know Dad believes it, so what’s the harm in letting him—unless it gets him so riled up that it lands him back in the hospital again.”
Rex crossed his arms. “I think he knows about Jade. He said Mom wanted him to tell me something, but he wasn’t going to do it. Instead, he pointed at me. You know how he does that death stare? He said,You be careful where you tread, son, in that voice that used to send us running for the hills.”
Treat checked his watch. “We gotta get moving. The Tates are coming to pick up Brownie today.”
