“You good to go for your vacation, Jordan?”
He’d almost forgotten that he’d told the asshole that he wanted a couple days to go visit an old pal who’d just come home from overseas. Jordan blinked and understood the question had been asked kindly and that Peyton was waiting for an answer.
“Yeah. I’m heading out as soon as I get home and get changed.”
“Enjoy yourself. We’ll see you next Monday, then.” Peyton headed out and didn’t even look back.
Jordan grunted. It took a few moments for him to get the feeling of rage to settle down. He really did have a better target for his anger than a dickwad like Peyton Smith.
It took him only a half-hour to get home. By the time he’d showered, changed, and packed his gear, the sun was cresting the horizon. Thanks to the info Arnie had given him, he knew exactly where he was going. He didn’t have much information about the place his ex had landed, except it was a small town not far from the Hill Country. A small town probably meant a bunch of good ol’ boys, guys he’d likely be able to con if he had to. After all, the bitch had been his wife. Anyone saw him with her would probably look the other way. But he’d study the situation, first.
Jordan pulled into a truck stop at the edge of the city and grabbed a few packs of beef jerky, some peanuts, chips, and a couple of bottles of water. That was the last thing he’d had to get, rations. He had everything else he needed—to get the job done.
He’d get the lay of the land, and if it was as small town and as isolated as Arnie said, he’d hole up somewhere during the day and do some searching around at night. There might be a bar someplace close. He could check it out, check out the people. Gather intel. It would be just like being back in the army. He knew what to do because Uncle Sam had trained him and trained him well. And when Arnie showed up, he’d share his intel, and then together they’d figure the next step.
He got back behind the wheel of his aging Ford and turned the key. As he left Dallas behind, and headed south-west, he began to get himself into the headspace he’d need to be.
First, he’d do recon, and then he’d met with his bud and make his final plans.
Chapter Thirteen
Jason had never visited the grave of his great-grandparents before today. In point of fact, it had never even occurred to him to do so, and wasn’t that just…wrong, somehow? He wouldn’t cut himself any slack about it, either. Sure, this was his first visit to Lusty. But he’d been here about three weeks now and coming here hadn’t even really been on his radar, until today.
The truth was he should have made an effort to come to Lusty when he first heard of the place, after his brothers had married Bailey and settled in this small town.
The family cemetery was Jason’s second stop of the day. He’d just spent a couple of hours at the museum with Aunt Anna. He’d listened as she’d related the story of the founding of Lusty. Anna Jessop’s narration had brought his ancestors to life. She should, he thought, be a writer. Or a teacher.
Anna Jessop had answered all his questions and had even told him anecdotes from bygone days—some taken, she confided, from the personal journals of Sara Carmichael Benedict and Amanda Jessop Kendall, the matriarchs of the family. But some of them had been told to her by Grandma Kate.
Jason had known that Grandma Kate was in her nineties, but he hadn’t understood that she’d actually known both of those first grandmothers, Sara and Amanda.
Known them? Hell, to hear Aunt Anna tell it, they’d more or less arranged for a young Major Kate Wesley, U. S. Army Nursing Corps, to come here so that their grandsons, recently repatriated pursuit pilots, who’d been serving with the RAF at the beginning of World War Two, could marry her. I’ll bet that Sara Carmichael Benedict and Amanda Jessop-Kendall knew all about setting goals and having a plan to get things done. And they hadn’t neglected family, either.
That had been a disturbing, yet whimsical thought. Jason smiled as he studied the headstone of his great-grandparents—James and Jacob Benedict and their wife, Rosie O’Toole Benedict. He frowned as he studied the dates. Generally—at least from what he’d seen so far—the women outlasted the men in his family. He calculated the years. Great-Grandmother Rosie had been barely sixty-five when she’d passed.
He knew the names of their other children now, thanks to Aunt Anna, and so he looked for their graves. Of course, his grandfather had been laid to rest in New York, and he knew that Edward, the youngest, had been buried in Normandy, at the American cemetery there. He’d known, because his father had mentioned, that one of his father’s brothers had made his life and died in Montana and the other two had stayed overseas after the war. Now he understood the impact of that reality.
Here lay his great-grandparents, for all intents and purposes, alone. Jason wasn’t certain what that….desertion had done to them, emotionally. But this epiphany, this now heart-knowledge, sure as hell was affecting him. Jason focused on the name, Rosie O’Toole Benedict. He thought of his mother, of how she would be if he and the rest of her children were never to go home again.
Jason felt heartbroken for a woman whose name he hadn’t known until today.
Those weren’t the days of rapid transport or easy communication. He supposed his great-grandmother might have heard from her sons and grandsons via phone calls or letters. And maybe, they might have visited a couple of times.
God, I hope they at least did that.
Benches had been set at various places throughout this very well-kept cemetery. It feels more like a
