“I can’t believe you guys sold everything when he retired.”
“Well, we didn’t need it,” Tuck said. “And I never would have predicted this.”
Bobbie Jo wrapped her arms around him and leaned into his side. “Me either,” she said. “I’m really sorry, Tucker.”
“Hey, you have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “They’re your parents, and we have to love and honor them, and if that means giving them a place to live, then that’s what it means.”
“I’m going to make sure they know that they need to find jobs and look for a place of their own,” she said.
Tucker nodded, his throat tight. Bobbie Jo’s parents were in their early sixties, and he wasn’t even sure what employable skills they had. He knew he could take care of everyone on this farm for the rest of their lives, because he had been abundantly blessed simply by being born with the last name Hammond.
“Maybe your daddy can work around here,” he said, making a mental note to call his father and thank him for the bounteous blessings in his life.
“He’d probably love it,” Bobbie Jo said. “There are tons of schools here, so something will come up, right?”
“I’m sure,” he reassured her, though he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t really know.
Sometimes, Tuck just wanted life to go back to normal. As he stood there and listened to Tarr laugh about something Jentzen had said, and watched Alex point to something on a piece of paper they’d wrangled up to start designing their tarp roof, Tucker realized that thiswasnormal.
Every day was different in a normal life, every day brought challenges, and every day had the potential to bring joy too.
He turned as more tires crunching over gravel met his ears, and he wasn’t surprised to see Briar pulling up in her SUV, nor that Tarr immediately abandoned the design-fest happening on the patio and went to greet her. Tarr never talked much about the women he dated, but he’d already told Tucker that he’d kissed Briar. So it wasn’t that shocking to watch him jog the last few steps to her, wrap her in his arms, and lean down and kiss her right on the mouth.
“They’re so cute together,” Bobbie Jo whispered. “I really hope she can handle him.”
“Are you kidding?” Tuck whispered back. “It’shimwho has to learn how to handleher.” He looked at his wife, and she searched his face just as hard as he did hers.
“This is what people said about us, isn’t it?” she asked, her smile growing and growing.
Tuck laughed and wrapped her up fully in his arms. “I’m sure they did.”
Now, if he could just survive her parents moving in with them tomorrow, Tucker was sure the Lord would stop surprisinghim with big challenges he needed to solve in a short amount of time.
Please, Dear God,he prayed as he stepped back from Bobbie Jo and went to see what Briar had made to welcome Alex to the farm.No more surprises for a while, okay?
twenty-four
Tarr tipped his head back and drained the last of his peach-almond punch, Tuck’s grandmother’s recipe. The atmosphere in the mansion carried a more upbeat and festive vibe than Tarr had thought it might.
Of course, it was New Year’s Eve, but Tucker and Bobbie Jo had been unusually stressed since learning of Bobbie Jo’s parents’ financial issues and then moving them into the second-story suite less than a week later.
Tarr had seen his best friend stressed before, worried about things, and struggling through his own thoughts to arrive at what he thought was best, but nothing like this. Tarr actually missed the way he and Tuck used to go get breakfast at two in the morning and talk through everything troubling them.
But the truth was, Tucker didn’t need Tarr for that anymore. He had Bobbie Jo, and though Tarr knew that life shifted and changed and that Tuck absolutely should be confiding in his wife and not his best friend, he still felt like he’d lost something important to him.
The Hanks had moved in on Wednesday, only an hour ahead of the cold front and snowstorm that had been swirling over the Denver area since. Snow removal, keeping the horses fed, andspending time with Briar took all of Tarr’s time and energy, and living alone in the RV—while exactly what he wanted—had left him feeling lonelier than ever.
None of it made sense, because he found himself surrounded by a fun, loving group of people at this very moment, and he had a new neighbor on the south side of the arena in Alex Monterro. The man was probably pushing thirty, but he’d only turned pro last year. He’d gone to college and actually worked as an accountant for the NPR before finally deciding to throw his hat into the ring and ride professionally.
Jentzen hadn’t had time to construct anything like a pavilion roof yet, and so he and Alex had been shoveling the snow off their pallets and putting down salt. Tarr had grown tired of it quickly, and as a New Year’s present for himself, he’d purchased heat mats that he could plug in, and they stayed warm all the time. They’d melt the snow and ice and leave him a path from the parking area to his RV’s front steps; he’d covered those with an awning that extended out from the vehicle.
Jentzen had worked some sort of magic with the wood-burning stove, and there’d been no more smoke issues. And with the space heater in the bedroom with a thermostat on it, Tarr always came home and had somewhere warm to be. He didn’t dare leave a fire burning while he wasn’t home, and he put his space heater at sixty-five, hoping that it wouldn’t spark all day long and cause a fire.
Being so close to the arena helped, and some of his anxiety propelled him outside regularly, just to check on the trailers to make sure they were still standing. After all, the last thing he needed was his house going up in flames and taking Tuck’s arena with it.
“You must be thinking about something,” Briar said, and Tarr looked down to meet her eyes.
“I’m sorry. Was someone talking to me?”
