“There’s getting to be a lot in the way of wine. It’s just turning into one of those places that is a magnet for all kinds of people, and that changes the surroundings. It was boring when I was a kid. Pretty, sure, but boring.”
She laughed. “I bet.”
“The population has more than tripled. It’s become a popular place for people looking to make a new life. It’s not too far from Portland, and it’s a lot smaller than Bend.”
“Where is that?”
“About an hour south. It’s gotten to be like… a hundred thousand people that live there. It’s busy. Talk about growth explosion. Fun, and tons of stuff to do. Close to skiing, but busy. So, if you want a little bit of a slower pace, this is the place. But you still have to match the energy.”
“It has to be bougie?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
She would have been amused to hear him say that word. But of course, he didn’t.
She smiled, just to herself.
“This belonged to your dad, and it was a cattle ranch then, too?”
“Yes. Though he didn’t have very ethical ranching practices. Maximum profit, not maximum health for the animals, or their meat. That never sat right with me.”
“So… You lived in the same town with your dad, but you didn’t know him, and he had this giant ranch and…”
“Yeah. He didn’t have much to do with us. He would send my mom money on occasion.”
“Why didn’t she take him to court?”
“Because. She loved him.” He said the word like it tasted bad.
“Oh.”
“She always thought that if she played by his rules, if she did exactly what he wanted her to do, eventually, he would want to be with her. But of course, he didn’t. Because there was no way for her to play by the rules. There was nothing. Nothing that she could do. Because he didn’t actually want her. What he liked was having her on the hook. A woman who was desperate for his attention. But he didn’t care about us at all.”
“But he left the ranch to you,” she said.
“I’ll never really understand that one.” He paused. Like, there was something else he wanted to say, but also didn’t want to say. “He asked to see me. Before he died. Said that he had no real heirs. But he wanted the legacy to live on. He wanted the ranch to live on in his name.”
“And you changed it.”
“I changed it. Because fuck him. Honestly.”
“Well. Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I knew my dad. But I don’t know if I was any better off for it. Deadbeats can live in the same house as you.”
“I’m sure of it,” he said. He said heavily. “Don’t think that my mom didn’t love us. She did.”
“When did you lose her?”
“Before Dad, which honestly makes me so angry. I would’ve loved to have known her when she wasn’t holding out hope for him. But she was. All the way until the end. On dialysis and still thinking that he was going to come for hersomeday. And no matter that I was the one who was there with her, I wasn’t him. I…”
He stopped talking, as if he realized that he had just said way too much. Revealed a bit too much of himself, but she understood. And she felt… empathy. Her own parents had just been neglectful. Her mom had left eventually, and her dad had had a steady stream of different girlfriends. He was interested in that, not in her. But she wasn’t like Cody. She hadn’t been there for her dad. She hadn’t taken care of him when he had liver failure because he’d spent too many years drinking all his feelings away.
She had left. Because she had needed to make her own life, had been desperate for it.
She’d left home at eighteen, and she hadn’t looked back.
She had adopted Aiden’s family as her own.
And had let hers fall by the wayside.
