Carolyn knew part of the reason Kimi had offered was because Carolyn had taken care of their mother the last year of her life. While Carson hadn’t agreed with Carolyn’s insistence on keeping Clara West’s dire diagnosis from her children, he’d honored the request—only after having words with Eli that forced him to hire part-time health care to alleviate the stress on Carolyn.
“What’re you thinkin’ about, Caro?”
She looked at her sister. “Mom dying. Then getting pregnant with Cord and how lucky we are that neither of us inherited her health problems. And I’m thankful that our husbands have always had our backs when it comes to the West/McKay family crap.”
“True. I’m glad that Dad didn’t ignore his McKay grandkids.”
“I think he did enjoy spending time with our boys.” Carson had told her many times to wash her hands of her father. But after having her own children, she’d come to understand how far a parent would go to protect those children. Like most men of his generation, her father’s communication skills were lacking; he just expected his word to be law with no discussion. She remembered one time her Aunt Hulda had told her that Eli West didn’t act out of maliciousness, just ignorance. That didn’t explain away his behavior, but it’d allowed Carolyn to forgive him and move on from the past.
“If it wasn’t for Harland, Darren, Marshall and Stuart’s wives agreeing with us the feud was stupid, I doubt our kids would know theirs at all,” Kimi said.
Carolyn smiled. “That’s because men act like the cock of the walk but women rule the roost.” Her smile dried and sorrow washed over her. “Harland…was such a hard man. I hated that Dag couldn’t be himself for fear of his father’s reaction. Especially when Thomas and Susan were so accepting when Sebastian told them he was gay. Dag’s was such a senseless death.” She closed her eyes. God had been looking out for Colton. She said a prayer of thanks every day in the last year that her son had gotten the help he’d needed and he hadn’t ended up like Dag. If not for Kade…
Kimi squeezed her hand. “I know. I’m thankful too. Colt will be all right. They say the first year is the hardest.”
“I get that. It’s hard that he’s had to isolate himself from his family to keep the sobriety. But whatever works for him, right?”
“Right.” Kimi sighed. “So damn many secrets in this family.”
Carolyn shook her finger at her sister. “And quite a few that I wish you wouldn’t have told me.”
“So you’ve said. That’s because I trust you and I kept them both for a long time. Think of my burden.”
“I get that Jed loved you because you reminded him so much of Mom. But do you think he told you the truth about what happened to Jonas and Silas McKay because of our West lineage?”
Kimi jammed a hand through her hair. “Yes. I just wish I hadn’t promised Jed not to tell McKay descendants the truth.”
“I hated all the questions Keely asked when she did that genealogy paper and I had to lie to her and hide all Dinah McKay’s journals up in the attic. Carson knew something was up.”
“Well, our grandfather Zachariah West had a valid reason for his hatred toward the McKays: Silas McKay killed his brother Ezekiel and basically got away with it. Maybe it was self defense, but when Silas fled instead of letting a judge decide his fate…it sure made him look guilty,” Kimi said.
“It didn’t help that Jonas McKay paid Zachariah for the land he’d ‘won’ in the poker match—a few months after his twin escaped from jail. It did look like blood money.”
“My opinion is Zachariah shouldn’t have accepted the money. But he did and he agreed to keep his mouth shut about it. So like I said, his hatred of Jonas McKay was understandable, but Zachariah wasn’t innocent either. In fact, he helped perpetrate the continuing hatred between the Wests and McKays—without telling anyone why the families were enemies.”
Carolyn drummed her pen on the table. “It’s sad the McKays and the Wests were just sucked into that mindset. When I first started dating Carson? Even my mother didn’t know the issue between the McKays and Wests. At least that first generation. And I did not appreciate when Mom finally told me that she did sneak around with Jed McKay for a month or so when she was dating our father. So yeah, Jed McKay deserved to get his ass kicked by Dad because we both know if the boot had been on the other foot and Eli West had been sneaking around with Jed McKay’s girl? Jed would’ve come out swinging.”