But the truth was, he didn’t need weather to explain his mood. He’d been carrying something heavier than snow for days.
The ranch house came into view at the bend, and Charlie slowed the wagon a little. Yeah, he knew what was coming. There were just some things you didn’t want to rush. Homecomings. Apologies. The feeling that you’d made the wrong decision in the only moment that mattered…
Charlie brought the wagon to a halt in front of the house. “I’ll help ya unload, boss, then take care of the wagon.
“Thanks, Charlie, I’m much obliged.” Braxton’s breath rose in clouds as the porch boards creaked under his boots as he climbed the steps.
Inside, the air wrapped him in warmth and the scent of pine. Coffee, too. Something sweet was baking. Ma must be baking cookies for the ranch’s Christmas Eve gathering.
Ma looked up from the kitchen table when he entered. “There you are.” She smiled and brushed some loose wisps of graying hair out of her eyes. She was a tall woman, thin, but strong.
“Yes, ma’am.” Braxton had set his luggage just inside the door. Charlie would bring in the rest and start putting things under the tree.
He removed his gloves and set them on the table, then shrugged out of his coat. He stood an extra second, as if waiting for a command he could obey. His mother’s eyes stayed on him, calm and patient, but they didn’t miss anything. They never had. She reached for a cup of coffee, took a sip, and watched him.
She didn’t ask how the drive went or if he’d eaten. Nor did she ask why he looked like he’d spent the last week chewing on gravel. Instead, she said, “Come sit.”
He did, because when his mother told him to sit, it was usually because she planned on pulling a truth out of him the way a doctor pulled a splinter from a man’s hand. Carefully. Cleanly. And with no tolerance for nonsense.
Braxton reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the small velvet box. He didn’t set it down and instead stared at it like it might bite. When did, he placed it on the table between them.
Ma’s gaze lowered. She didn’t touch the box right away, either. “Is that…” she began.
“It is,” he said.
She exhaled, slow and lifted the lid.
The ring caught the lamplight. It was modest, no unnecessary flourish. Just a band and a stone for a woman who didn’t need everything about her to sparkle for her to be worth something.
Ma’s mouth softened at the corners for the briefest moment, then firmed again. “And why,” she asked quietly, “is it still here?”
Braxton swallowed. His throat tight. “Because I didn’t give it to her.”
Ma closed the box like she might bruise the air if she moved too hard. “I gathered that much.”
Braxton stared at the table’s worn grain, at the tiny marks from years of meals and elbows propped during hard talks. “I told myself it was the honorable thing,” he said. “That a rancher ought not to make promises he couldn’t keep.”
Her brows lifted. “And?”
“And it wasn’t honorable.” The words came out rough. “It was fear.”
Ma’s gaze didn’t flinch. “Fear of what?”
Braxton’s fingers curled, then uncurled. His hands, the same that could haul a calf out of a ditch and fix a fence in a blizzard, didn’t know what to do with confession. “Fear of being refused,” he said. “And of wanting something and finding out I wasn’t worthy of it.”
Ma’s expression shifted, but not to pity. Never that. This was something like understanding.
“Braxton…” When she spoke his name like that, it carried every year she’d spent raising him to be a man who did what was right even when it hurt. “Sometimes a man will call it duty because duty sounds clean. Fear doesn’t.”
He let out a breath. “Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded once, satisfied that at least he could look truth in the face now, even if he didn’t like what it had to say. Ma reached across the table and rested her hand over his, warm and steady. “You loved her,” she said.
Braxton didn’t answer immediately. Not because it wasn’t true, but because saying it out loud made it real in a way that frightened him all over again. “I…” He tried once, then stopped. He cleared his throat. “I do.”
Her fingers squeezed. “Then why did you let her go? Why didn’t you bring her home?”
Because I thought she deserved quiet and I am all sharp edges. Because I thought she wanted a life without chaos and I bring storms with me. Because I saw her sitting with a book and heard her laughter in my head and I thought, If I touch that, I’ll ruin it.
