Mindset Read Free Page B

and you were always talking about your brothers, Jake and Josh, but I don’t remember you talking much about Cade.   Which brother is he?”
     
    “Cade’s not technically my brother, although he’s been part of the family since I was about twelve or so.  He was eighteen when my Granddad hired him to do odd jobs around the ranch.  He’d had it pretty rough, I think.  His mother was an alcoholic, had a lot of boyfriends and all.  When he was around ten or twelve, one of them shot and killed her, and he was put into foster care.  I’ve never heard him mention his father. 
     
    In any case, school had just let out, and my brothers and I were at the ranch to spend part of the summer like we usually did while my parents took a nice long vacation.  By then, my mom had stopped modeling, and traveled with my dad when he went out of town for business in the corporate world.  We looked forward to it every year.  We got away from the city and helped take care of the animals and got to ride horses and go camping.  We loved it.  Cade showed up one day and told Granddad he’d just finished high school and was looking for a job.  Granddad hired him on the spot.  When he found out he’d been exited from the foster care system and didn’t have a place to stay, he asked him to move into what used to be the bunk house.  Cade didn’t want to at first, but Granddad said he’d been wanting to fix it up for awhile but hadn’t had the time to work on it.  He struck a deal with Cade and said he wouldn’t charge him any rent, if he did the work on it, and Cade agreed.” 
     
    “He was close to my brothers’ ages, but he was streetwise where my brothers were more sheltered like I was.  He was so quiet, but he seemed kind of angry.  I was such a pest.  I would want to tag along with him while he did whatever work he had to do for the day, and he’d tell me to get lost.  My feelings would get hurt, and I’d run off, but I’d always come back the next day, only to get shooed away again.  He was my first real crush.  He was over six feet tall with all that black wavy hair of his.  He had these gorgeous deep blue eyes, and man could he wear jeans.   I never gave up trying to get him to notice me, but he was definitely not impressed, much less interested in a skinny, gangly girl so much younger than he was.  I even told him about a secret place that my dad and I found when we’d been riding, just the two of us, the year before.   We came across this little watering hole, complete with its own mini waterfall, towards the back of a canyon.  It had prickly pear cactus blooming around it, and desert wildflowers, and it was so pretty.  I offered to take him there, but he said he was too busy.” 
     
    “About six weeks went by, and we were getting ready to head back home to Dallas when we got the call telling us about the car accident that killed my parents.  None of us could believe it at first.  But then my grandmother and my brothers started crying.   I just started yelling at everyone, telling them it was a mistake, that my parents were not dead.  I ran outside and climbed up on one of the horses and rode off into the desert.  After a couple of hours, everyone started to get worried when I didn’t come back home.  They started looking for me everywhere they could think of that I might go, but nobody could find me.”
     
    The sun was starting to go down when Cade finally found that canyon I told him about.  I was just sitting there, not quite ready to face the reality of being an orphan.  Cade got off his horse and just came over and sat there with me, not saying anything.  After awhile, I asked him if the sheriff had called back to tell us he’d made a mistake.  He said no, that he’d come by the ranch after I took off to fill in the blanks on how it had all happened.  Drunk driver he said.  I took a deep breath a few minutes later and asked him if he thought it was true.  He told me he