The Real Thing Read online

  Praise for

  The Real Thing

  “Forkner’s writing shines with wit and wisdom in this beautiful story of love and family that will have you laughing one minute and crying the next. The Real Thing is guaranteed to steal your heart.”

  ~Kim Boykin, Author of A Peach of a Pair

  “An endearing, modern tale about Cowboys, Rodeo Queens, and above all – the simple truth that love is both messy and healing – and worth coming back for again and again. One of my favorite reads of the year!”

  ~Amy Impellizzeri, Author of Lemongrass Hope

  “Brimming with genuine honesty, The Real Thing takes a heartfelt look at second marriages and blended families. You’ll cheer for Forkner’s characters, who are poignantly sincere and refreshingly determined, as they confront a series of challenges that test their resolve and redefine the meaning of family. A story filled with warmth and empathy – once you begin reading, you won’t want to put it down!”

  ~Marin Thomas, Author of The Promise of Forgiveness

  “An emotional and heart-rending story filled with humor, humanity, and hope. Tina Ann Forkner’s writing is as hard to resist as an ice cream cone on a hot summer day!”

  ~Susan Sands, Author of Again Alabama

  “Brimming with vibrant, lovable characters, Forkner makes magic with her powerful story of a new bride challenged with finding her place in a family saddled with a difficult past. Amanda is everything I look for in a narrator: feisty, irreverent, and all heart—and Forkner’s rich descriptions and flawless dialog will have you cheering through your tears, and sure you have rodeo dirt to dust off your feet. Poignant and tender, The Real Thing is above all a deeply-felt novel of hope and faith, and the undisputed power of love to unite hearts when life gets messy.”

  ~Erika Marks, Author of The Guest House

  “With The Real Thing, Tina Ann Forkner gives us loving families with troubled histories and an imperfect, adorable heroine who can handle it all. This book teaches profound truths: love, parenthood, and marriage aren’t supposed to be perfect, and it’s the imperfections in life that can bring us the most joy. An enchanting, heartfelt book.”

  ~Katie Rose Guest Pryal, Author of Entanglement

  “A heartwarming—and heart wrenching—story of moving on, The Real Thing deftly explores stepfamilies and Alzheimer’s disease with plenty of intrigue and a healthy helping of romance. Tina Ann Forkner weaves a tale of love, loss, overcoming fears and, best of all, discovering what it really means to be a cowgirl.”

  ~Kristy Woodson Harvey, Author of Dear Carolina and Lies and Other Acts of Love

  “The Real Thing rings true to its name. Tina Ann Forkner delivers with her latest beautifully nuanced rodeo-enlivened read. Unexpected twists lassoed me and pulled me deep into the plot. I had to know if Keith and Manda’s love would endure the secrets that threatened to sever their bond. Forkner is skilled with creating realistic characters you can’t help but root for. The Real Thing is a powerful, thought-provoking not-to-be-missed story!”

  ~Wendy Paine Miller, Author of The Short & Sincere Life of Ellory James

  The Real Thing

  A Novel

  Tina Ann Forkner

  The Real Thing

  Copyright © 2016 Tina Ann Forkner

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-943963-86-7

  For Jake, Hannah, and Dawson

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise for The Real Thing

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dear Reader

  Book Club Discussion Questions

  About Waking Up Joy

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost I want to thank my readers for sharing your kind thoughts and for being so enthusiastic about my stories. I couldn’t be an author without you.

  Albert Forkner, I love you. I couldn’t do this without your support. To our amazing children Jake Forkner, Hannah Linde, and Dawson Forkner: the love we have for each of you is boundless and never limited by the word “step.” Thanks to my parents Dennis and Barbara Gray, who in their 50th year of marriage, are modeling for our children that love can still be done the old-fashioned way.

  My gratitude goes to the Tall Poppy Writers for welcoming me into your fold. Your friendship, support, and wisdom have become invaluable to me. I am humbled to be among such talented and accomplished writers. Also, thank you to WF Connections. I appreciate the support and creative energy our wonderful group provides.

  Special thanks to real cowgirl Georgeann Wearin, cowgirl poet, former rodeo queen, and the wife of a champion saddle bronc rider. Your advice about horses, fashion, and rodeo details proved invaluable. Thank you to Dakota and Joce Forkner for inviting us to their real western wedding where I borrowed a few of the wedding decorations. And thanks to 2011 Miss Southern New Mexico State Fair Rodeo Queen Caitlynn Roy for inspiring Queen Adri, and to Dardi Roy for her friendship, faith, and teaching me how to ride Lizzie, who became Peyton’s horse in the novel.

  Many thanks to Troy Rumpf, Dameione Cameron, and Morris House Bistro, an exceptional restaurant serving mouth-watering Southern food located in Cheyenne, Wyoming, for giving me permission to create a sister restaurant in one of my fictional Tennessee towns. You know you are my favorite.

  Thank you to author Lisa Samson. It is a great honor that you left your fingerprints on this novel in its early stages. Other book people to thank are Meghan Farrell, Lindsey Stover, Lee Hyat, Danielle Rayner, Jane Porter, Wendy Paine Miller, Amy Sue Nathan, and editor Sinclair Sawhney.

  Thank you to my sister Cheri Kaufman who believed in this story from day one when it was a completely different book and for welcoming me into her home many times for more than a decade, enabling me to fall in love with Tennessee. Thanks for believing in me.

  Thanks to friends & fam who remind me that I have a life outside of fiction: Dardi Roy, Anne Berry, Rene Hinkle, Jennifer Rife, Laura Whitmore, Dana McIlvane, Jessica Will, Kim Giffin, Denise Garcia, Troy and Laura Gray, Marjie Smith, and the ladies and veracious readers of P.E.O.Chapter AD Cheyenne. Thank you to Lori Townsend and Barbara Gray for giving up their personal time to provide such a close read of the manuscript. I appreciate you both!

  I’m sure I have missed someone, so many thanks to all of my friends a
nd family. You bless me. All glory goes to Him.

  “Then we began to ride. My soul

  Smooth’d itself out, a long cramp’d scroll

  Freshening and fluttering in the wind.”

  Robert Browning,

  The Last Ride Together

  Chapter One

  I stopped right in the middle of the wedding march, just as the rich tones of a string quartet arched into the magnolia trees. The cellist, whose black western hat sat lopsided on her head, stretched a note so long and low it beckoned me forward through the sea of expectant faces, but I didn’t budge. A smarter bride might have ignored a problem with a drooping slip peeking below her hem and simply thrown herself into the waiting arms of her cowboy groom and considered herself lucky, but not me. Nope, I was as frozen as Alaska despite the warm Tennessee breeze playing with the wedding veil attached to my white cowgirl hat with the pearl band.

  Around me, a sea of cowboy hats swiveled in my direction. I hoped nobody would get a good look at my face beneath the sepia lace and tulle, or at the bit of ratty lace hanging from my slip. They would’ve seen regret, which I’m sure would’ve been taken the wrong way. Marrying Keith Black, I assure you, was not a regret, but he might regret a bride who wore an intimate garment from a previous marriage at her wedding, if he knew.

  Of course, he didn’t know about the slip, but I did, and the weight of the slippery silk was beginning to feel like heavy, scratchy wool beneath my lightweight dress. As the music played, I tried to think what to do. My dress was thin and I didn’t have a replacement slip handy, of course. Why would I? Plus, I couldn’t very well take it off right then and there – could I?

  Maybe I could. The cellist drew her bow across the strings, but I stood still, watching the treetops swirl and wave, goodbye it seemed, near the roof of Daddy’s big old plantation-style farmhouse. Even the trees thought the slip should go. A sense of nostalgia for my childhood home filled me and for a moment I wondered how I could ever leave this place that had healed me more than once. And to live on a horse ranch where the ne’er-do-well ex-wife’s memory is still papered on the walls in an array of lavender and purple patterns.

  My groom cleared his throat, jostling me back into the moment. I took a baby step. Maybe the slip didn’t matter. Keith had been part of my healing, too, and all I ever wanted since I’d laid eyes on him was to know him, to love him, and, yes, to marry him. I’d known right away, and he had, too, even though I still had doubts about his children accepting me. I know it’s natural for them to push me away, but every time I’d tried to remove something of their runaway mother’s from the ranch house that was now mine, too, they’d complained. Especially Peyton, my beautiful, brooding, about-to-be stepdaughter.

  That’s the problem with second marriages. Just like with the reclaimed objects and furniture my sister and I sell down at The Southern Pair, there are always memories attached that don’t let go, even when the objects shift to a new person. I’ve seen it time and time again when a person thinks they’re done with a certain bad memory, only to have it creep back up when they look at an object they once thought they had no attachment to – or realize they’re getting married for the second time and wearing the slip from their first wedding day. Thank goodness I was at least wearing a dress made from my mother’s, and she’d been my daddy’s only love.

  Memories can easily fool you into thinking things aren’t really over, and when the memories are good, like with my dress, it’s nice. Nostalgia is the best feeling because it brings to mind a memory of what we used to enjoy, perhaps making bread with our grandmother if it’s a pan, or hunting with a father if it’s a pair of trophy antlers, or the hug of a mother who left you too soon, like mine did. But, sometimes, I’ll spy someone walking among the shelves of The Southern Pair and they’ll spot something, maybe an old doll or coffee cup, pick it up, and their face crumples a little from the pain of finding it. Sometimes, I wonder about the tears that well in their eyes. I never ask about the memories dancing, or tramping, through their minds, although sometimes people tell me.

  I didn’t have to ask Keith, my groom, why he always frowned when he walked along the papered walls of his ranch house and why he avoided looking inside the gilded frames that hung heavy on either side, or why, conversely, those same halls made Peyton, my soon-to-be stepdaughter, smile. Of course, Keith couldn’t take down the pictures even if he wanted to, since Peyton insisted they stay up. And, trust me, he tried. It turned out badly. With a frustrated apology, he had told me the pictures of his ex-wife had to stay. And just like that, the thought of those pictures made me step backward instead of toward Keith. He cast me a worried look and even the musicians held their bravado a few beats longer, probably giving me time to find my brain. Too bad it didn’t work.

  Call me crazy, but I couldn’t do it, not yet. I had to get rid of that slip and the clinging memory of my first wedding and subsequent failed marriage. Keith deserved my whole heart. He might not have known it, but a piece of my broken heart was attached to that darn slip.

  So, being the kind of woman who knows what happens when sad memories become attached to an object, I did what I had to do. I smiled an apology at my worried groom who stood handsome in his western tuxedo beside the preacher. He knew me already, so what I did next shocked everyone, except him. I blamed it on the past, and knew he would, too, but he would think it was because of his.

  Don’t we all blame our pasts?

  The past gets a bad rap, but if we can think more about the good times, they make us better. I blinked away an unfortunate memory of my ex-husband standing beside a different preacher at a different wedding several years earlier. Sadly, at the moment, the clingy slip was out of place on a day that should be all about good times. So you see, it wasn’t just Keith’s past slinking into our wedding day. It was mine, too.

  One thing I’ve learned from years of buying and reselling items at The Southern Pair, or even finding a new happier nail color for a broken-hearted woman, no matter how much we want to get rid of our ex-lovers, ex-troubles, and ex-hurts, they find ways to creep back into our lives. How could I wear that cursed slip in our moment of joy? I looked up at the trees, wishing I could float up into their branches to hide like I had when I was a girl.

  The black leather-vested violinists intoned a fiddler’s melody that once again forced me back into the moment. It teased the toes of my ivory stitched cowgirl boots, ruffling the lacy garter I’d slipped over one ankle, and I swayed forward a step and back again. Keith’s smile faltered.

  Oh, Lordy, help me.

  It was all up to the viola now. It had one more chance, but its sweet accompaniment failed. Unable to look at my groom, I let go of Daddy’s arm, gently extracting myself even as he drew me closer to his side.

  “Mandy?”

  “Daddy, I—” I couldn’t even whisper the words.

  I tried avoiding his eyes, but their wrinkle-framed worry snagged on my conscience. Turning away, I locked eyes with my groom.

  Oh, heavens to Betsy. How did I ever get lucky enough to have a man who looked like a rodeo cowboy who’d just strutted out of a rodeo arena? And he more than looked the part—that’s exactly what he was. Sounds like a good movie doesn’t it? But it’s true. I was about to marry a famous bronco rider, the only man I’d ever met who could handle me, and well, let’s just say a personality that some people call colorful. Not that I could help it one bit.

  Keith wrinkled his brows as I turned in my wedding march, gave me a warning look. By then, he was already used to my flare for the dramatic, but I am who I am. When I sense a problem, I need to fix it right away, and I had to fix something before this wedding could go on. I think that’s why I opened The Southern Pair with my sister. Plenty of problems could be fixed immediately, even if only temporarily, with the selling or the purchasing of a discarded object.

  “Manda,” Keith whispered, his voice inviting, but his eyes somewhat aggravated.

  After that, I didn’t dare look at my twin
sister, Marta, who’d be worried about the little frozen bride and groom still holding hands back in the barn. Only a half hour ago, she’d had the bakers set the sculpture on top of our western wedding cake right in the center of a white and burlap draped table. Rows of tables bedecked with matching cloths and turquoise-dyed Mason jars lined the barn, along with burlap napkin rings and floating candles. Marta had warned the preacher that the wedding must end at a certain time, or else the sculpture would be dripping down the sides of the cake.

  The preacher glanced at me, then sent a frightened look toward Marta.

  I’ll just explain it to them later.

  I smiled an apology, handed my bouquet to a surprised guest with a mumbled excuse even I couldn’t understand, and fled in the midst of the processional. A warm breeze picked up, as if to spur me on my way. I headed toward the orchard and couldn’t disappear fast enough through the rows of leafy fruit trees that showered their carmine-colored petals all over my lacy veil. I just knew they were cheering my quick retreat, and, in response, I yanked the skirt of my dress all the way up to my hips and ran full-on, high-heeled cowgirl boots and all. I wondered if this was what it was like to be one of the Quarter horses Keith raised at his ranch. Some days I sat on the back deck and watched them gallop across the pasture, their flanks shining, sinewy muscles flexing, their heads reaching for that invisible point ahead. I didn’t like riding them, though. I was an orchard farmer’s daughter, not a horsewoman. I’d always been afraid of horses.

  Heaven only knows what my bronco-riding fiancé saw in me. He liked to tease that it was because I was his pretty, young thing, my being six years younger than his thirty-seven, and I teased that I liked older men, but sometimes I felt like I was the one who’d snagged the bigger prize, hardly believing such a great-looking, talented, and smart man would want to marry me. And did I mention famous? Not that it mattered when it came to my falling in love with him, but he did just happen to be a famous saddle-bronc riding cowboy.