Free Heartstrings by Sara Walter Ellwood Page A

the swing hanging from the porch rafters, pouring out their frustration over their troubled young lives.
    Abby.
    Since his two run-ins with her over the weekend, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He looked to the east. Her three-hundred-acre ranch bordered the Double K. Next to her was the Circle R. After the accident, which took her mother’s life and left her father wheelchair-bound, Seth’s father had offered to buy Crawford Creek. But Charlie Crawford had refused to sell because thirteen-year-old Abby wouldn’t hear of it. She had always loved that place.
    He was glad she got the ranch back as part of her divorce settlement. The Ritters hadn’t deserved the ranch any more than John Kendall had.
    He parked beside Judge Ritter’s pickup in front of the detached garage.
    Stopping at the front door, he took a deep breath and pulled the hat from his head. When he couldn’t stall any longer, he rang the doorbell. A moment later, Johanna opened the door.
    She smiled and moved back, allowing him entry. “I wondered if you were going to show up.”
    He stepped past her into the entry and checked his watch. “You told me ten o’clock. It’s ten o’clock. I’d call that being right on time.” He leaned toward her and kissed her cheek. “But I’d bet my record deal if the old man was here, he’d be hoping I wouldn’t show up.”
    Johanna stiffened and stepped away with a disapproving frown puckering her brow. “Seth Christopher, that is no way to talk about your dead father. God rest his soul.”
    He shrugged and looked around the entry. A curved oak staircase wound up to the second floor. The morning sun blazed through the windows and glared off the faded floral wallpaper.
    With a sigh, he shifted his hat from one hand to the other. “Maybe not. But I can’t help but feel that way. He ran me off with a shotgun when I came home after getting my record deal. Made it pretty clear he hated me.”
    She wrapped her arm around his waist and started moving toward the study. Outside the door, she stopped and met his gaze. “Seth, John loved you. I know he hurt you, and I’ll never fully forgive him for the way he treated you. But there are things involved that he never quite resolved in his own head.”
    Snorting, he looked down at his hat. “He wondered if I was really his kid because Mom cheated on him the same time she got pregnant.”
    She sucked in a breath. “How do you know about that?”
    “So, it’s true?” He snapped his narrowed gaze to lock on hers. “I thought maybe it was a dream. I overheard Mom and Dad fighting the night before she died, but I sometimes don’t know what’s real and what I’ve imagined since then.”
    Johanna tightened her hold on him and stared up at him with eyes swimming in tears. One slipped past and rolled down her pale, finely lined cheek. “Yes, there was a time right before she died, he wondered because he found out Suzie had been with someone else.”
    “Who was he?”
    She looked away and closed her eyes. Another tear slipped past.
    “Jesus.” Clarity jolted through him. “She was with someone you cared about?”
    Opening her eyes, she nodded. “Yes. My husband. But you don’t belong to Buck Tomlin.”
    He couldn’t have been more shocked than if a bull had mauled him right here in the house. Johanna had been married to the fiddle player in his grandfather’s band–his mother’s band?
    She squeezed him in her one-armed hug as he swallowed hard. “You have to understand, Suzie never wanted to live here. Your grandfather insisted she marry John when he found out she was pregnant.”
    “When did Dad find out about her and Buck?”
    She glanced at the back of her left hand. Was she imagining her wedding band? “The day before she died. John found a letter Buck had written in answer to one she’d sent to him just days before her wedding. She wanted him to come forward and claim you as his baby so she could get out of marrying John. But he refused because