“We’re going in again tomorrow. Want to come?” Rob said to RJ that evening.
“What, so I can watch Jamie break a collar-bone?”
“Don’t be so hard on him.”
“Says the man who’s been down on his rodeo riding for about eight years,” RJ jeered on a mutter he fully intended Rob to hear.
Rob took a deep breath and said something he knew he probably wouldn’t manage to say to Jamie himself. “It’s been good for him. It’s settled him. I honestly didn’t think any of his plans to send money home would pan out, but… yeah… maybe I was wrong.”
“What about me?” Rob said with some aggression. “Am I settled?”
“You’ve always been settled. It’s your bad moods you need to work on, son.”
“Thanks, Dad,” RJ drawled.
“Come into town with us tomorrow,” he repeated.
“Nah, I’ll get on with stacking that hay.”
“We can get the hay done in the morning, if we start early enough.”
“Why do you want me to go?”
“Because you’re like your mom, too much of a stay-at-home. You need to get out more. And she’d like it if you came.”
“For her, then, not for Jamie.”
“That’ll have to do, I guess!”
They left the subject alone, and Rob wondered if it was his own fault that RJ was so surly at times. Maybe he should have pushed his elder son away, out into the world, forced him to deal with his shyness, but hell, he’d needed the extra pair of hands so much, here on the ranch. He hired on help at different times during the year. There were always a couple of people working for him. But hired help wasn’t the same as someone who had a stake in the place.
So maybe he’d done the wrong thing by RJ. He ought to talk to Melinda about that, see what she thought. She beat herself up so much about being vague and disorganized, but she helped him more than she knew, in certain areas.