“Are you serious? The three of you did that?”
I think through it and nod. “Except for the electrical, yeah. And that old barn…yeesh. It was so gross. They’d more or less abandoned it after the tornado and then weather and woodland creatures—plus bats—got inside.”
He lifts his brow. “Tornado?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you know that’s how the ranch got its name?”
“Oh,” he says, shaking his head, “I didn’t realize…I thought the name was because of the Star Wars or the Star Trek or whatever.”
“Well, yes, that too. But next time you go into the main house, look for the picture over the umbrellas. Renée wrote something to commemorate the occasion. It was their very first day, and Wy says Renée was big-out-to-here pregnant with Trip,” I say, miming a rounded belly with my hands. “And they had to take cover in the ground storage under what’s now the stallion barn. After the tornado passed, they came out and found that everything had been flattened. Well, except for the barn, probably because all those trees shielded it.”
He whistles under his breath. “Que hiciste ellos?”What did they do?
I rub my hand along my jaw. “They dipped into Renée’s trust fund and rebuilt from the ground up. Wyatt wanted to keep it simple, but Renée had a vision for what the ranch could be. She made him rebuild with a grander future in mind, and she was right.”
“That must have been scary for them.”
I tilt my hand back and forth. “Honestly, with those two, it was all about focus and execution. Problem, solution, now go. I think they sometimes enjoyed a good problem. Gave ‘em something to work on together.”
“I bet that was stinky.”
“You have no idea. All of the hay and animal waste in there did not improve over time. It was the worst kind of science experiment. Just…awful.”
“And yet, it seems like a happy memory for you.”
I grin. “It was. You've got to understand the force of nature that was Renée Goodnight. We were all miserable, but she had avision. She knew what this place could be, what it should look like, and we all just had to push through the shitty part. And I immediately understood how Wyatt, a software engineer, would set aside his entire career for this woman. She wasamazing. And God, she had the filthiest mouth.”
Laughter sorta bubbles out of me from the memory, and Joaquin gifts me with a broad grin.
“I knew she was special because of the way Sparrow always talked about her. They had a special friendship, those two.”
I smile, remembering how they would walk around the property, heads tilted together, talking about the future. As desperately in love with her as I was, I knew that wasn't Sparrow’s angle. With her, he'd found a friend at a soul level, and her loss was profound.
I blink away tears when I think about how much closer he and I got as we grieved her together, even if he never knew the real depths of my grief.
“I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Joaquin says, putting his arm around me.
God, he feels so good. Too good. As I step away, I explain, “It's okay. You know, I haven't been able to talk about her since she passed. I don’t think I’ve even said her name since then, but it feels good to talk about her with you. Something about you just reminds me of her. So, uh, thank you.”
I turn and dash away the tears, then continue to chat with Joaquin about my favorite person in the world.
“Anyway, it was like three days of slopping out the grossest filth in that goddamn barn. But it turned out to be really good for the soil, which is why it’s so lush around the bunkhouse. And she knew that because, of course, she’d Googled it or something.”
“Silver lining,” she’d said, teasing me as I tilled the earth with the putrid ghosts of hay bales and bat shit.
I return my attention to Joaquin. “But once we got the place cleaned and sanitized, Wy and I could finally see what she saw. She could see beyond the filth, which I think was part of her magic. So then it became thisthing, where we decided that we were just going to make it work, and we’d only call in help if we truly needed it.”
“Sounds like you had a good time.”
“What we had was a blast. And we were so proud of ourselves because we didn't need much help,” I say, realizing that at some point, Wyatt, Renée, and I becamewe, at least pertaining to the ranch. “Wyatt drafted the interior based on what she'd said and identified what we needed in the way of load-bearing supports, and I gotta say he was spot on. The inspector from the county was super impressed.”
“And yet it all feels so organic,” Joaquin says as we make our way back up to the stallion barn.
“Well, that was Renée's aesthetic. Do you like the flooring upstairs? All that old wood?”
Joaquin nods. “I love walking on that wood. Feels sogrounding.”
“Well, good, because I spent the better part of two weeks sanding down every goddamn splinter. I tell you, I was cursing her under my breath, but I did it without hesitation because it was Renée.”
