Christmas At Cade Ranch. Karen Rock

      “She told Mrs. Penn she couldn’t keep bringing in paper for me anymore. She sounded angry.”

      Sofia bit her lip. School supplies. Another thing she struggled to provide. “Honey, sometimes grown-ups just have bad days. I know she likes you.”

      “What’s that say?” Javi pointed at the marker, switching subjects with the whiplash speed of a child.

      “I’ve read it to you twice, honey.”

      “Please,” he wheedled, and she sighed. Where was Joy? Their bus departed in twenty minutes. She’d breathe easier once she put this part of the world, this part of herself, in the rearview mirror for good.

      “That’s a J,” Sofia began.

      Javi traced the first letter at the top of the plaque. “Like me.”

      “Right.” Jesse’s siblings’ names all began with J and he’d wanted to follow the tradition with Javi.

      “What’s this say?”

      “‘Jesse Andrew Cade. Beloved son and brother.’”

      In the distance, a lone cardinal perched in a skeletal maple, bright as a leftover leaf. A gray-haired woman approached, wearing navy shoes and carrying a matching purse. A sensible-looking gray wool coat fell past her knees. Joy?

      Sofia turned away, her heart picking up speed.

      “Cade like me!”

      She felt her smile falter. “And that says, ‘Free spirit. Roam in peace.’”

      Free spirit. Yes. That’d been Jesse. The quality that had attracted her and made her believe in a better life, a better her.

      “I’m hugging Daddy goodbye.” Javi rolled back on his stomach and curved his arms around the plaque. Then he leaped to his feet and slipped a hand in hers. His lone, left-sided dimple, the only trait that resembled Jesse, appeared when he smiled up at her. “How many brothers did Daddy have?”

      “Four,” someone replied softly behind them.

      Sofia whirled and came face-to-face with the gray-haired woman she’d spied. Her pale pink lips lifted slightly in an uncertain smile and a gust blew strands of her neatly clipped bob across her thin face. It was relatively unlined and pretty in an understated way, her age younger than her hair color suggested. Wire-framed lenses magnified the hazel eyes that darted between Javi and Sofia. That color...the light yellow-green surrounded by a ring of brown. She’d seen it only once before...

      Her heart beat a fast tap.

      “Did you know my daddy?” Javi skidded to a stop in front of the stranger and gaped up at her.

      “I’m his mother,” came her quiet, tremulous voice. She pulled her purse closer to her body and her wool coat sleeve rode up to reveal an elastic-wrap bandage crisscrossing her left wrist. “And you must be...?”

      “Javi!”

      Joy swayed and her face paled. Concern shoved caution aside. Sofia swept an arm around the woman’s waist and guided her to a bench beneath a cluster of towering pines. “Thank you,” Joy murmured once she sat. “Now. Come closer, dear.”

      She crooked a finger, and Javi clambered up on the bench beside her. His short legs dangled, scuffed sneakers kicking the air.

      “Are you my grandma?” His left-sided dimple appeared in a quick smile.

      Joy gasped. “Yes.”

      “You don’t look so old.”

      Despite the tense moment, Sofia held in a short laugh. Joy’s warm eyes met hers. “Well. I appreciate that. And how old are you?”

      He held up four fingers, and Sofia shook her head. Red stained his cheeks as he peeled up one more digit.

      “And do you go to school?”

      He nodded. “Yesterday my teacher had a party for me. She brought in cupcakes, and they were free.”

      “Javi goes to—went to—preschool in Albuquerque,” Sofia interjected.

      “Education is important.”

      Javi scrunched his face.

      “Yes,” Sofia agreed, feeling like a hypocrite. How she wished she’d gotten her diploma. Without it, the label High School Dropout followed her wherever she went, like an invisible capital F sewn to her clothes. At least she would not fail at being a good mother, the one and only thing she was proud of.

      “I have to go to a new school and make new friends.” Javi nibbled on his thumbnail, then dropped it at Sofia’s head shake.

      “Are you excited about that?”

      “What if they call me Free Lunch like back home?”

      Joy blinked. “Excuse me?”

      “Oh. It’s just something kids say,” Sofia said quickly, hating how a few children had picked on Javi for his secondhand clothes and the card he used instead of money in the cafeteria. Someday she’d give him everything that other kids had so no one would ever make fun of him again. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

      “Yes, it does,” Javi insisted through hands covering his face. “It means we’re poor trash. Least that’s what Timmy Rice says.”

      “That’s a mean thing to say,” Joy insisted, indignant. “It’s better to have no money than no heart.”

      Javi peeked up through his fingers. “Is that true?”

      “I swear.”

      “A lady at a desk called me a waste of space. Is that true?”

      “Absolutely not,” declared Joy, her voice firm.

      Javi threw his arms around her. “I like you.”

      Joy smiled, blinking fast. Her trembling hand passed over his hair. “I like you, too, honey. A lot.”

      He angled his head to peer up at her. “How come?”

      “Because you’re a Cade, and Cades always stick together.”

      “Mama says the Cades ride on top of mountains and don’t ever fall off. Their hats touch the clouds. Right, Mama?”

      Sofia dropped her eyes at Joy’s surprised look. Okay. Maybe she’d exaggerated a bit about Jesse’s family, but she’d wanted Javi to believe he came from good people...strong men and women...a family he could be proud of, unlike her.

      “That’s right, Javi.” Time to change the subject. “Joy, I’m not sure if you ever mentioned how you found us...?”

      Joy produced a cell phone with a familiar rodeo buckle cover. Jesse’s phone.

      “The police returned this to us a couple years ago, but I didn’t... I couldn’t bring myself to look through it. Not until recently. Then I saw this.”

      She flipped the phone around to show a picture of Sofia in a hospital bed, a newborn Javi in her arms. Jesse grinned as he crouched beside them. The name Cade was scrawled in big letters on the empty baby pen nearby.

      “That’s me!” Javi exclaimed.

      “Yes. Yes, it is.”

      “Mama said I cried a lot. Is that why Daddy left?”

      “Honey!” Sofia exclaimed. Out of the mouths of babes. Javi had been a colicky baby. True, she had worried at one point that taking care of a demanding baby had driven Jesse back to drugs, but she knew that was not the case at all.

      “Mama said he got sick.”

      Joy nodded. “Yes. She has the right of it.” She cleared her throat. “Javi, would you find me some holly berries?” She pointed to a patch of bushes beyond the pine bunch. “Celtics believed they were