I’ll never forgive your mother for what she did, leaving like that. I loved her, more than I have ever admitted to, nor did I get the chance to make her an honest woman. Why she left, I can understand. I was a fool, young and stupid, taking her for granted, not understanding what she needed to live out here and be a rancher’s wife. I shouldn’t have stepped out on her, either. But I did, and I paid the ultimate price. I lost you.
I should have told your brothers about you long before, and I regret that too. I have many regrets as I face the end of my life. You are my biggest.
If you need to go back to the life you have, do it. The will was intended to bring you here, show you what you were meant to be. To apologize for not fighting harder to keep you here, where you should have grown up.
Give the place back to your brother Tanner. He loves this ranch as much as I do, and I know he’s likely angry at me for the burden I forced on him when his mother died, then when I dismissed that loyalty by leaving the ranch to you. In the files in that safe is a legal document nullifying the will, if you choose to.
But I hope that you will love this place as I have and stay, be part of the family you should have had. I’d like to think you’ll take after me and feel connected to the land as I do, because it is part of you. Always has been.
I didn’t know you, son, but I loved you from the moment you were born and I held you in my arms. I only wish I’d had the guts to tell you in person.
Your father,
Brett
Jake wiped his wet cheeks and looked up from the letter in his hands. He was sitting in his father’s chair, in the war room, the best place he could think of to read it, in the spot where it was likely written. He looked at the picture from the safe, which he’d put back together and propped on the desk earlier in the evening.
A picture of him, on Dolly, with his father, right before he turned three.
“Holy shit, Dad,” he murmured into the empty room, and looked back down at the letter. A letter that answered so many questions but gave him just as many new ones.
He opened the file folder in front of him and carefully pulled out the papers. Sifting through them, he found the documents his father had mentioned immediately.
They reverted ownership, pending Jake and Tanner’s signatures, with a space for a lawyer to notarize them. Not Brady, just Tanner. With that omission, it was obvious that Brett knew Brady wasn’t his son, and Jake wondered if he could amend that after the fact, because there was no way he wasn’t including Brady.
There was also a stipulation that Peony was to stay at the ranch as long as she was able and be cared for by whomever was running the place.
“Well, old man, I won’t kick her out, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he remarked, and scanned the document further in case there was anything else he needed to make note of. The corner of an insurance policy peeked out of a yellowed folder markedPeony, and he set that to one side. No mention of that in the legal documents at all, so he’d need to do some research. It was a lot to wade through, and he would need some help deciphering it all.
Frank was going to have kittens. All the work he’d done to find a way around the will, and the solution was right here all along.
“Damn it, Dad, why couldn’t you just have been straightforward?” he said, and dropped his head into his hands, scanning the papers again. His eyes drooped after a few more minutes of scrutiny, and he looked at his phone. It was well past midnight. He needed sleep, and he needed to get his head straight because tomorrow was going to be a big day.
This letter and the paperwork was his ticket home. Back to New York, back to his old life. He could wash his hands of this place, and it would be an odd, strange tale to tell around the table at parties. But as he folded the files up and set them on the desk in a neat pile, it hit him.
Thiswashome.
He sucked in a breath, the declaration in his mind crystal clear as he looked around the dusty office, the last refuge of a man he’d never met, who’d given him something priceless that Jake could never thank him for. If he could, he had absolutely no idea what he’d say, but maybe that didn’t matter.
More internal debate on that felt like entirely too much effort, because right now, bed was calling, and he was too emotionally drained to think about it anymore.
He stood up, stretching, and dragged himself out of the study, down the hall, and into his room. The urge to fold himself up in bed with Liz was strong, but it was really late, and because she was up early for work, he didn’t want to disrupt her sleep, even though she’d told him to. He also didn’t want to end up talking all damned night and be wrecked for tomorrow.
He shucked his jeans and shirt onto the floor and climbed into bed without turning the light on, too tired to brush his teeth or do anything remotely domesticated.
Instead of the normal chilly sheets, his bed was warm, the bedding pushed onto his side. He reached under the piled up covers and found a soft, seminaked body curled up on the other side.
Liz. He reached back behind him and switched on the bedside lamp.
She was asleep, curled in a ball, his mother’s crocheted blanket in her arms, her face buried in it, wearing nothing but one of his old New York boxing gym T-shirts and bright-blue underwear with a horseshoe on each butt cheek. She’d been crying, her nose red, her eyes puffy from it. He slid a hand over her hip, and she stiffened.
“Liz,” he whispered, glad for her presence and worried all in the same breath. “Liz. It’s okay.”
She sleepily opened her eyes, and with a tiny whimper threw her arms around him. This was not the no-nonsense woman who could stare down anything in her path. Something in Brett’s letter to her must have cracked her right open, otherwise she’d be at her place, asleep. He wrestled the blanket out from between them and pulled her closer, holding her as she curled into him.
“Hey,” he whispered as gently as he could. “Sleep. We can talk in the morning.”
She sniffled and raised her mouth to his, the need in her gesture shaky and frantic. He relented, kissing her back, trying his best to absorb her distress, sliding his hands over her to soothe her. She was hurting, and he hated the way it made him feel.
