Once they’d exhausted the mundane stuff, there was nothing to do but get down to the real issue. Settle things, one way or another, and move on, as friends or not.

Reba’s name hadn’t come up right away. She was the live hand grenade, ready to explode, at their feet.

Then Eli’s face had split into a wide grin, and he’d said, as near as Cord remembered, “It took me a while to work it out in my head, but I figure the person I’m really pissed off at is myself.”

Nobody needed clarification; he was referring to the night the shit had hit the fan, when they’d all shown up at that end-of-school party and run smack into the hard truth.

Eli had gone on. “Look, we screwed up. Royally—all of us. We fell for the same girl. It happens. Punches were thrown. But maybe knocking each other around was as close as we could get to pounding on ourselves. Did you ever think of that? That we did the best we could, with the precious little we knew?”

“Seems to me,” J.P. had mused, “that we should’ve blamed Reba.” He’d paused. “Especially since we talked about everything in those days. There weren’t any secrets between us. So why didn’t we talk about her?”

“I’ve wondered that myself,” Cord had admitted. “Reba played us for fools, no question, but the fact is, we let her do it. On some level, we knew exactly what the deal was.”

“What are we?” J.P. had demanded. “Stupid?”

“Well,” Eli had drawled, “yeah.”

“Not to mention horny,” J.P. had said.

They’d all laughed then, and that was when the mending began, like a broken bone knitting itself back together, into a stronger whole.

The process of rebuilding had been gradual but steady. After that Christmas party (and the subsequent drinks at the Hollisters’), they’d kept in touch, met up when time and circumstances allowed. Eventually, the breach had closed forever, and that was a damn good thing, considering all that had yet to unfold.

A day would come—hell, more than one—when they’d need each other more than ever.

Cord didn’t want to think about those things now, hard as it was to avoid them with Reba’s double sitting right there, sharing their table. He didn’t want to spend any more time recalling the past. Even the toughest cowboy had his limits, and this current matter was enough to handle for the moment.

He made a conscious shift back to the present.

Thankfully, he hadn’t missed much.

The girl had eaten her fill, which was plenty for such a small person.

She sat up very straight, wiped her mouth and hands with a paper napkin, crumpled it and asked brightly, “Where were we?”

Where indeed? Cord thought.

“You were telling us that Reba was your mother,” Eli said evenly.