Free Parker by Maddie James

daily
chores and at every meal.
    I’m still there kissing you good night and
drinking a cup of coffee with you in the morning. I’m here, with
you, at home.
    Any decisions I have made regarding my last
will and testament were made with all of these thoughts in
mind.
    Your loving husband and father, James
McKenna
     
    Liz stopped speaking and lowered the letter.
Her eyes downcast, she stared at a spot on the table in front of
her. Parker watched her from the opposite end, noticing her shaking
hands. She was suffering along with the rest of them.
Simultaneously, he took in the sniffles and soft sobs from everyone
else around him.
    We’re all suffering.
    It was a solemn moment. The silence was
warranted. One by one, James McKenna’s children got up and drifted
off—except for Parker. Liz finally looked up and said, “I’ll leave
this letter on the table for anyone who wants to read it
again.”
    Parker would, later. His father’s voice
resonated in those words, and that was nearly his undoing. The past
few days had been so busy he had not stopped long enough to let the
grief catch up and take hold.
    Well, it had now. With full force.
    His chest ached with a heaviness he’d only
felt once before—when his mother died.
    Now, he wasn’t worried so much about what
happened with the ranch. He was worried more about how they all
were going to go on living, without the one man in their lives who
had meant everything.
    And he figured Liz was thinking the same
thing.
    Slowly, he got up and rounded the table. He
approached Liz’s side and reached for her hand.
    She looked up, tears spilling over her lower
lids. “I’m not sure how I can go on without him,” she
whispered.
    Parker grasped her hand and pulled her to her
feet. He faced her and looked into her eyes, knowing that this was
his moment of resolution. Whatever words were in his father’s will
didn’t really matter so much anymore. “We have each other, Liz.
We’re family. All of us. And whatever Dad wanted, we’ll do with his
blessing.”
    He hugged her then, and her arms went around
his neck. Liz’s body shook as she cried, and Parker held her until
she stilled, quieted. Finally, she pulled back and looked up to
him.
    “Thank you, Parker,” she said. “I am so
relieved. I have felt so lost the past couple of weeks. I just
didn’t know….”
    He gripped her hands tighter. “Shh, Liz.
We’re family. We’re McKennas. You, Brody, Murphy, all of us. And
there is no stronger bond than that. As long as we have each other,
we can get through anything.”
    Liz sobbed a little again and squeezed his
hands back, glancing to the floor between them. Finally, she looked
up and said, “You’re just like him, you know? I may need to lean on
you once in a while.”
    He nodded. “I was just thinking that I may
need to lean on you.”

Chapter Eight
     
    Tuesday morning
     
    “OMG. Reba, you are Bekah from Bekah’s
Cottage ?”
    Reba chuckled at Callie’s reaction. Ever
since Callie had called Sunday morning, Reba wondered how she was
going to enlist Callie’s help without actually revealing who she
was. Now that a couple of days had passed it wasn’t a big deal that
Callie knew, or that anyone around here knew, for that matter. When
her Bekah’s Cottage food blog first took off a couple of
years ago, Reba made the decision to be anonymous. Back then, she
used avatars and manipulated stock art to represent her in
pictures, and she just hadn’t stopped. There was a reason for doing
that, however. She had wanted—no needed—her work life and her
private life to remain very separate.
    That fact had been especially important when
Jack was dying and she needed to fall back on Bekah as her escape
from reality. She’d never discussed her personal life on her blog,
or that Jack had cancer. Not once had she posted anything about her
trials, tribulations, and daily struggles. Not that she didn’t
think others could benefit from knowing what she was going through,
but