Josey turned to Pepper, who was reaching for her cane. “I do apologize. I’m afraid I enjoyed your wonderful tub longer than I’d meant to. That is such a beautiful bathroom. I especially like the black-and-white tiles.”
Pepper seemed startled. “Enid put you in the room at the end of the south wing?” She quickly waved the question away. “Of course she would. Never mind.”
Grabbing her cane, she followed her daughter down the hallway. Josey noted that Pepper Winchester was more feeble than she let on. Maybe she really was dying. Or maybe just upset.
“I knew it,” Josey whispered to Jack, as they followed Pepper at a distance toward the dining room. “That room must have been your grandmother’s and grandfather’s. Wouldn’t Enid know that putting us in there would upset your grandmother?”
“I would bet on it,” he said.
Josey followed his gaze to where Enid stood in the kitchen doorway, looking like the cat who ate the canary. “She must have shared that room with your grandfather. I wonder why she moved out of it?”
Jack chuckled and slowed, lowering his voice as they neared the dining room. “I doubt it was for sentimental reasons. My mother told me that according to Winchester lore, Pepper didn’t shed a tear when my grandfather rode off and was never seen again. She just went on running the ranch as if Call Winchester had never existed—until her youngest son Trace vanished.”
DINNER WAS A torturous affair. Jack had known it wouldn’t be easy returning to the ranch, but he hadn’t anticipated the wellspring of emotions it brought to the surface. As he sat at the dining room table, he half expected to see his mother through the open kitchen doorway.
It was at that scarred kitchen table that he and his mother had eaten with the Winchester grandchildren and the staff. In the old days, he’d been told, Pepper and Call had eaten alone in the dining room while their young children had eaten in the kitchen.
But Call had been gone when his mother came to work here, and Pepper had eaten with her then-grown children in the dining room. When Trace was home, his mother had heard Pepper laughing. After Trace eloped with that woman in town and moved in with her, the laughter stopped. Jack’s mother said she often didn’t hear a peep out of the dining room the entire meal with Pepper and her other children.
“The animosity was so thick in the air you could choke on it,” his mother had told him. “Mrs. Winchester took to having her meals in her room.”
“Well, Mother, when are you planning to tell us what is really going on?” Virginia demanded now, slicing through the tense silence that had fallen around the table. She sat on her mother’s right, Jack and Josey across from her. Her face was flushed; she’d clearly drunk too much wine. Most of dinner she’d complained under her breath about Enid’s cooking.
Jack had hardly tasted his meal. He’d pushed his food around his plate, lost in the past. Josey had seemed to have no such problem. She’d eaten as if she hadn’t had a meal for sometime. He wondered how long it had been.
Pepper had also seemed starved, cleaning her plate with a gusto that didn’t go unnoticed. For a dying woman, she had a healthy appetite. Almost everyone commented on it, including Enid when she’d cleared away the dishes before bringing in dessert.
“Well, Mother?” Virginia repeated her demand.
Enid had stopped in midmotion and looked at Pepper, as if as anxious as any of them to hear why the family had been invited back to the ranch.
“Isn’t it possible that I wanted my family around me after receiving such horrible news about your brother?” Pepper asked, motioning for Enid to put down the cake and leave the room.
Virginia scoffed at the idea. “After twenty-seven years you suddenly remembered that you had other family?”
“Does it matter what brought us together?” Jack spoke up. “We’re here now. I assume some of the others will be arriving, as well?” he asked his grandmother.
She gave him a small smile. “A few have responded to my invitation. I knew it would be too much to have everyone here at the same time, so the others will be coming later.”
“Well, I know for a fact that my brother Brand isn’t coming,” Virginia said unkindly. “He’s made it perfectly clear he couldn’t care less about you or your money.” She poured herself the last of the red wine, splashing some onto the white tablecloth. “In fact, he said he wouldn’t come back here even if someone held a gun to his head.”
“How nice of you to point that out,” Pepper said.
Enid had left, but returned with a serving knife, and saw the mess Virginia had made. She set the knife beside the cake and began to complain under her breath about how overworked she already was without having to remove wine stains from the linens.
“That will be enough,” Pepper said to the cook-housekeeper. “Please close the kitchen door on your way out.”
Enid gave her a dirty look, but left the room, slamming the door behind her. But Jack saw through the gap under the door that Enid had stopped just on the other side and was now hovering there, listening.
“I only mention Brand to point out that not everyone is so forgiving as I am,” Virginia said. She glanced at her mother, tears welling in her eyes. “You hurt us all, Mother. Some of us are trying our best to forgive and forget.”
“Let’s not get maudlin. You’re too old, Virginia, to keep blaming me for the way your life turned out.”
“Am I? Who do you blame, Mother?”
A gasp came from behind the kitchen door.
Pepper ignored both the gasp and her daughter’s question as she began to dish up the cake. “I’ve always been fond of lemon.
