Chapter Eight
My headlights slice through the Wyoming night as I wind my way out of town. The road from the Belicourt curves along the base of the Tetons, and the starry sky lights the way.
It’s late. Later than I planned.
But that seems to be the story of my life lately. Always in a hurry to get somewhere. The next workday. The next meeting. The next event.
The dashboard clock reads nine o’clock as I head toward Moose.
The drive is only about thirty-five minutes if the roads are clear, and tonight, they are.
No tourists slowing things down, no Elk Crossing signs flashing warnings, just the hum of the engine and the endless stretch of asphalt beneath my tires.
Normally, I’d go straight home.
Instead, I take the turnoff leading toward the outskirts, where Wildhaven borders Moose.
Toward the Silver Spur Ranch.
Toward my grandfather.
The gravel driveway crunches under my tires as I pull in, the familiar sound echoing in the quiet night. The place looks exactly the same as it always does—and somehow, it’s worse every time I see it.
The ranch used to feel alive. Now it feels like a shell.
The main house sits in the center of the property.
It’s a two-story farmhouse, painted a barn red, the color softened by time and sun.
The wood siding is showing its age. The weathered look giving it an authentic ranch character.
A steep gabled roof crowns the center portion of the house, with the adjoining sections topped with a rusted silvery metal roof reflecting the moonlight.
Stretching across the front is a deep wraparound porch, supported by sturdy wooden lodgepole pine posts.
The porch is my favorite part of the house.
It’s the place where our family used to gather after a long day.
Memories of sitting with Grandma snapping green beans in the rocking chair, quiet conversations over morning coffee, and piles of muddy boots kicked off by the door flood me.
Warm golden light glows from the windows and porch lamps, spilling out into the front and giving the illusion of a joy-filled, inviting home—and once upon a time, it was, with the front yard trimmed neat and flower beds blooming under my grandmother’s careful watch.
Now the grass grows wild.
The barns lean a little more each year, and the bunkhouses sit dark and empty, windows staring out like hollow eyes.
The cattle are gone. I had them sold off years ago. The pastures that once held hundreds of head are nothing but overgrown fields of sage and tall grass.
All that remains now is this house.
And the man inside it.
I grab the paper bag from the passenger seat, the smell of gravy and country-fried steak filling the cab of my Escalade. My grandfather’s favorite meal from the hotel kitchen.
It’s still lukewarm.
I climb out and head toward the porch, the wooden boards creaking under my feet the same way they did when I was a kid, running up these steps two at a time.
Funny how some sounds never change.
I push open the front door without knocking.
“Granddad?” I call.
He doesn’t answer, so I follow the glow of the television screen into the living room, where I find him.
Josiah Rayburn sits in his old recliner, the same one he’s had for as long as I can remember. One of my grandmother’s hand-knitted blankets is draped across his lap—deep red and white yarn, faded with age but still unmistakably hers.
He’s watching some black-and-white Western.
The volume is loud enough to rattle the windows.
“Evenin’, Porter,” he says without turning his head.
I grin. “I see your hearing’s not that bad after all.”
He glances over with a grin, and the instant he sees me, his whole face lights up.
“I could smell the steak,” he says.
I step inside, setting the bag on the coffee table. “I thought you might be hungry.”
His eyes drop to the bag. “You thought right.”
I pull the containers out one by one—country-fried steak, mashed potatoes drowning in gravy, buttered green beans, and six biscuits.
“Joyce make it?”
Joyce is one of the chefs at the Belicourt’s Summit Grill. Country-fried steak is not on the regular menu, but on Mondays, she always prepares a couple of plates just for us.
“Yep. She made it fresh, just for you.”
He chuckles. “That fancy place, feeding an old rancher like me.”
I grab the tray table from beside the couch and set it up in front of him.
We eat like we always do—right here in the living room, watching whatever he happens to have on TV.
I dig into my own container as he cuts into the steak.
He takes one bite and closes his eyes. “Lord have mercy,” he says. “Tastes just like Della’s.”
Della Rayburn was my mother’s mother, after whom she was named, and Josiah’s wife. They were married for nearly fifty-five years before she passed away seven years ago.
“That good, huh?”
“Almost.”
We eat for a while in comfortable silence.
It’s strange how quiet this house is now.
When I was growing up, it was never like this. There was always noise and chaos—cowboys coming and going at all hours of the day, boots stomping through the mudroom, my grandmother singing in the kitchen while she cooked meals big enough to feed the ranch’s army of hands.
Now the place feels too big. Too empty.
Finally, I lean back on the couch. “How are you doing, Granddad?”
“Still kickin’.”
“How’s the knee?”
He grumbles, “Old and achy.”
“Doctor say anything new?”
“Same thing he’s been sayin’. He wants to replace the dang thing in a few months.”
I nod. I already knew that. I spoke to Dr. Bradley after his appointment this afternoon.
“You gonna listen to him this time?” I ask.
“I reckon I ain’t got much choice. Teetering around on that cane is getting difficult. It’s surgery or a wheelchair at this point.”
It’s a relief to hear. The old man is proud and stubborn, and he doesn’t really like or trust doctors. Not since, according to him, they let his Della die.
“That’s true.”
He takes another bite, chewing slow.
“You worry too much, Porter,” he says.
“Someone has to.”
“You got enough on your plate, running that place.”
That place.
He means the Belicourt.
The place the Garrison family has run for three generations.
The place my father used to manage before he stepped down to run for one of Wyoming’s state senate seats. Leaving the responsibility sitting squarely on my shoulders.
“I can worry about more than one thing,” I tell him.
“Well, stop. I can worry about myself.”
“I’ll get right on that.”
He chuckles.
Then we fall quiet again.
I glance around the room. The furniture remains the same.
The photographs on the wall are the same.
One shows him and Grandma standing in front of a massive herd of cattle sometime in the ’70s, both of them younger than I am now.
Another is of my mother sitting on a horse as a teenager.
And there’s one of me when I was about six years old, grinning wide, my front teeth missing, holding a fishing pole.
Grandma took that one. She used to take pictures of everything.
Now they’re all that’s left of the life they built.
I clear my throat.
“You ever think about selling the place?”
The words hang in the air like a thundercloud. It’s the same question I’ve asked him the last seven years.
He doesn’t look at me.
Just keeps eating.
“You bring that up every time you come here,” he says.
“Because it makes sense.”
He snorts. “For who?”
“For you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re eighty-one and living in a house with stairs you can barely climb.”
“I still climb ’em.”
“For now.”
He sets his fork down slowly. “I ain’t leaving this house.”
Stubborn.
“This is our home,” he says.
“I know.”
“Your grandmother died here, and I mean to take my last breath right here too. So, stop asking.”
I soften a little.
“It’s just walls, Granddad. You carry her with you, no matter where you lay your head.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“My house in Moose is five minutes from downtown,” I say carefully. “Everything’s close. Grocery store. Pharmacy. Hospital.”
He waves a hand. “I don’t need all that.”
“You might.”
“I’ve got Martha.”
Martha is the housekeeper I pay to keep around. She cooks, cleans, and drives him to appointments. But she’s not here at night. And that’s the part that keeps me up sometimes.
“Granddad—”
“No.”
“Just hear me out, please.”
“I said no.”
I sigh. “Okay, fine. Don’t sell. You can die out here alone, you stubborn ass.”
“That’s right,” he quips.
“But we’ve got to make some changes,” I say.
He eyes me suspiciously. “What kind of changes?”
I nod toward the staircase. “You can’t keep climbing those.”
“I’ve been climbing them for sixty years.”
“And you’re about to have a knee replacement.”
He grumbles under his breath.
“I’ve got an idea.”
“I don’t like your ideas,” he mutters.
“You might like this one.”
He cuts his eyes to me and waits.
“The dining room,” I say.
“What about it?”
“You don’t need it anymore. You eat all your meals in that recliner. We can convert it into a bedroom.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “I don’t think so.”
“Listen—”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t have to use the stairs anymore.”
“I like my bedroom. Thank you very much.”
“I know you do and …”
“End of discussion.”
I lean back, crossing my arms. “What if we moved your bed downstairs?”
That gets his attention.
He frowns. “What?”
“Your bed. The one you and Grandma shared.”
His eyes flicker, and for a beat, he doesn’t say anything.
“You’d bring it down here?” he asks quietly.
“Of course.”
“That bed’s heavy. I carved the headboard for your grandmother myself as a wedding present.”
“I’ll get a crew to come move it. They’ll be real careful.”
He studies me. “They’d set it up in the dining room? What about the table? It’s an antique, you know.”
“I’ll have them wrap it good and store it. And they’ll bring down the rest of your furniture and set everything up exactly like your bedroom upstairs.”
He looks toward the hallway. Then toward the staircase and back at me.
“That way, you wouldn’t have to climb the stairs every night,” I say gently. “Especially after surgery. I can have a nurse and physical therapist come out here instead of sending you to a rehab facility for recovery.”
Silence stretches between us while he considers it.
Finally, he sighs. “You’re a stubborn son of a gun.”
“Runs in the family.”
Another long pause.
Then he nods once. “All right.”
I blink. “All right?”
“I’ll move to the dining room,” he grumbles.
Relief floods through me.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because if the crew you hire puts so much as a scratch on your grandmother’s bed, I’ll get my shotgun after ’em.”
I grin. “Deal.”
He picks up his fork again.
“You’ll need to move the china cabinet too,” he mutters.
“Easy enough.”
“And tell them not to chip your grandmother’s china.”
Those dishes haven’t left their shelves since the Christmas before she died.
“Got it.”
“And the chandelier might be too low for a bedroom.”
“I’ll have an electrician come adjust it.”
He studies me thoughtfully.
“Should probably replace it with something more practical. But don’t get rid of it. It’ll need to go back up once I’m in the ground.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
He shakes his head slowly. “Your grandmother wouldn’t like that you worry so much.”
My chest tightens. “Someone had to take over for her.”
He takes another bite of steak.
Then smiles.
“You should bring dinner by again tomorrow.”
I laugh. “We’ll see.”
But the truth is …
I probably will.