Rachel Gibson
Truly Madly Yours
© 1999
With love to my mother and father, Al and Mary Reed. Late at night when my mind is quiet, I can still remember the scent of my mother’s skin and the texture of my father’s spiky crewcut, and I know that I have been blessed.
Prologue
The red glow from a space heater touched the creases and folds of Henry Shaw’s face, while the nicker of his beloved Appaloosas called to him on the warm spring breeze. He plugged an old eight-track cassette into its player, and the deep, whiskey-rough voice of Johnny Cash filled the small tack shed. Before Johnny had found religion, he’d been one kick-ass carouser. A man’s man, and Henry liked that. Then Johnny had found Jesus and June and his career had gone to hell in a hand basket. Life didn’t always go according to plan. God and women and disease had a way of interfering. Henry hated anything that interfered with his plans.
He hated not being in control.
He poured himself a bourbon and looked out the small window above his work bench. The setting sun hung just above Shaw Mountain, named after Henry’s ancestors who’d settled the rich valley below. Sharp gray shadows sliced across the valley toward Lake Mary, named for Henry’s great-great-grandmother, Mary Shaw.
More than Henry hated God and disease and not being in control, he hated friggin‘ doctors. They poked and prodded until they found something wrong, and none of them had ever said a damn thing he’d wanted to hear. Each time he’d tried to prove them wrong, but in the end he never had.
Henry splashed linseed oil on some old cotton rags and set them in a cardboard box. He’d always planned to have a passel of grandchildren by now, but he didn’t have a one. He was the last Shaw. The last in a long line of an old and respected family. The Shaws were nearly extinct, and it ate a hole in his gut. There was no one to carry his blood after he was gone… no one except Nick.