Tears welled, sudden and hot, burning a path down my cheeks. I’d spent my whole life carrying the quiet ache of thinking we’dbeen forgotten, that my mother and I were the shame he never wanted to see again.
But he remembered. All of it. Every missed moment, every silent thought, poured onto these pages.
A framed photo caught my eye on the bookshelf behind me. My mother, maybe ten or eleven, riding a pony in a Christmas parade, red ribbons in her braids. I reached for it with shaking hands. Her smile was mine.
I curled onto the old leather chair by the fireplace and let the silence press in. My chest ached—not with grief, exactly, but something more tangled. Like a door cracked open to a room I never knew existed, filled with untold stories and forgotten love.
***
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I made peppermint tea and stood by the frosted window, watching the snow gather along the fence posts. I wrote in my journal, my pen skimming across the paper in jerky loops.
What am I even doing here? Was I just prolonging the inevitable? What would she say if she saw me—flailing through frozen mud and stubborn livestock and hopelessly tangled string lights? Would she laugh at my pathetic attempts? Or, somehow, would she be proud?
I fell asleep sometime after one, the tea cold at my elbow.
My dream was strange and sweet. I stood in a pasture that glowed like a postcard—sunset spilling gold over the hills. My mother stood in the distance, wearing a denim jacket and red mittens, her hands cupped around her mouth as she called to me, her voice a faint, sweet echo on the wind. I ran to her, my legs heavy, but the ground stretched endlessly before me, her shape growing smaller and more distant with each desperate step. I shouted, tears blurring her image. She didn’t hear me. And then snow began to fall, thick and sudden, a silent white curtain hiding everything, even her, from my view.
I woke up with tears on my cheeks.
The house was quiet. I wandered into the kitchen, desperate for something warm. As the coffee brewed, I heard a voice—low, rough. Max.
He was in the mudroom. The door was mostly shut, but I could hear him.
“…not sure we have another option. The repair costs alone…”
A pause.
“No, she doesn’t know yet. I’m not dropping it on her while she’s hanging lights and baking cookies.”
Another pause.
“Yeah. I could sell off the trailer and the spare plow. Maybe the second water tank. It’d buy us time. But not much.”
My stomach tightened, a cold knot of dread. “She deserves better than watching this place fall apart,” Max’s voice, rough with emotion, reached me through the crack.
The silence after that cut deep, a heavy, unspoken burden. I stepped back, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
My hand brushed the cold counter, steadying myself as if the floor had tilted. I didn’t know what stung more—his quiet willingness to sell off pieces of this place he loved so much, or the crushing realization that he was doing it to protect me.
I turned and walked quietly back down the hall, the old boards creaking underfoot like whispers.
The ranch wasn’t just his burden anymore. It had never been just his. And maybe, deep down, it was meant to be mine all along.
Chapter 10 - Small Town Storm
Max
The wind had a bite to it that morning, sharp enough to sting the skin straight through a flannel shirt and burrow into your bones. I tugged my collar up against it as I stepped out onto the porch, coffee in hand, watching the fresh snow a dull, deceptive gold.
It should’ve been beautiful. Peaceful. But my stomach was tight with worry, a cold, hard knot that had become a familiar companion.
The numbers didn’t add up—no matter how I crunched them. Repairs. Feed costs. Equipment. And now a roof that might not survive the next hard snow.
I hadn’t told Ella yet how much worse it was than she knew. Partly because I didn’t want to add more weight to her shoulders. Partly because saying it out loud made it real.
I finished the last sip of coffee, then ducked back inside to grab my gloves and scarf. Duke padded after me, his tail swishing lazily against the floorboards, utterly unburdened, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. I envied him for that profound simplicity.
