Chapter 5 #2
Losing Lyle shattered our family. But losing our mom finished what was left.
Not immediately… Death took its time. But I think part of her started dying the night Lyle did.
After that, everything in our house became quieter.
Sadder. Almost like grief moved in and made itself comfortable at the dinner table.
Dad threw himself into work—even more than he already did—and Mom started watching us too closely, like she was terrified one of us would disappear if she blinked.
Nobody ever said it outright, but after Lyle died and I moved away, something significant and irreparable changed between me and my parents.
But how could it not? If I had been where I was supposed to be that night, my little brother probably would still be here today, and things would be a whole lot different.
A whole lot better. Less dysfunctional and broken.
They never blamed me—at least not out loud—but things definitely changed.
Mom tried too hard to act normal afterward.
It’s like she thought if we pretended hard enough, maybe we could survive it.
Dad stopped talking about that night entirely.
He shut down. And with time, he stopped checking in with me as much.
They all did. Except for Truett. He never gave up on me, and he never let me give up on myself.
“You there?” Truett asks softly.
“Yeah.”
“Did you hear me?”
I swallow thickly. “Yeah. I heard you.”
“Will you come back?”
The question hangs heavily between us, even more so when I don’t respond right away. I don’t know how to explain to my brother that every mile between me and that town has always felt necessary for survival.
Going home means remembering things I do my best to avoid thinking about most days.
The fence line. The gate that should’ve never been open.
The blood. The ambulance. My mother crying in the laundry room when she thought nobody could hear her.
My father looking at me afterward, not with anger—that would’ve been easier—but with heartbreak that swallowed his features.
Like every time he looked at me, he saw what was missing.
Like I was a reminder of what he lost. What our family lost.
“I don’t know,” I finally say.
Truett exhales slowly, and I don’t have to see him to know there’s disappointment written all over his face. “Okay.” That’s it. No pushing. No argument. No raised voice. “I gotta get back to Dad. I’ll send an update once I know more.”
The line disconnects, and I stand here, staring down at my phone long after the screen goes dark. My head is a mess, and the knot in my chest is making it hard to take a full breath.
“You look like shit,” Nate says from behind me a little while later when I’m back under the hood of the pickup truck.
My heart lurches to my throat, and I’m surprised I don’t whack my head with how much it startles me. “Jesus Christ,” I hiss under my breath before wiping my hands on a rag and spinning around. “I thought you left for lunch.”
He chuckles, handing me a folded brown paper bag. “I did. Just got back. Got you a burger and a soda.”
I take it from him, even though I don’t have an appetite. “Thanks.”
“Your dad?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Bad?”
I nod once, swallowing roughly.
Nate searches my face for a moment before speaking. “You should probably go.”
I release a heavy sigh. “I can’t leave the garage. It’s too much to put on you.”
“Don’t use work as an excuse. Things will be fine here while you’re gone. You need to be with your family right now.”
My jaw pops from how hard I’m biting down. “You don’t get it,” I murmur, my voice rough.
Nate leans against the toolbox beside me, his eyes full of concern. “So, explain it to me, then.”
I shake my head immediately, then reach into the bag and pull out the burger, just so I have something to do with my hands.
I can’t explain it, at least not fully. How do you explain carrying guilt so long it starts feeling like part of you?
Staring across the shop, one of the mechanics is arguing with a customer near the front desk while another rolls a truck onto the lift.
This place makes sense to me; you find what’s broken and you fix it.
Cars are simple, but people aren’t. And family definitely isn’t.
“My mom used to wait up for me when I visited,” I say before I can stop myself.
Nate stays quiet, so I continue. “She’d pretend she wasn’t doing it.
She’d sit at the kitchen table reading some book she wasn’t actually paying attention to and just…
wait. And every single time I left again, she’d hug me like she thought it might be the last one. ”
The memory crashes into me harder than expected. Maybe a part of her knew that eventually I’d leave for good if I stayed away long enough.
“She ever ask why you stopped coming home?”
After I graduated high school, I’d visit semi-regularly. By that time, I’d been through enough therapy that I felt okay going home, but as time went on, it became too much.
I shake my head. “No.”
Nobody did.
Well, except for Truett. He’s always been the exception.
The only one stubborn enough to call me out on it.
Not cruelly, but honestly. He’s the only one who refused to give up on me.
Dad acted like it was normal, while Mom pretended not to notice.
Over time, my absence became this giant, unspoken thing sitting in the middle of every conversation nobody wanted to acknowledge.
As if on cue, my phone buzzes again, and I already know it’s him.
Truett: Doctor wants us discussing long-term options.
My stomach drops. Another text comes through before I have a chance to respond.
Truett: I really need you here, Ches.
I stare at the words until they blur. Until the tip of my nose stings and my throat aches.
I need you here. Three words capable of wrecking me completely, because despite everything—the distance, the years, the silence—I’ve always known the truth…
If Truett ever asked me to come back—actually, truly asked—I’d do it.
Right now, I hate that about myself.
I hate that there’s a part of me that never really left at all.
Glancing up at Nate, the look on his face says everything. “The shop’ll survive without you for a while.”
I laugh weakly. “You trying to get rid of me?”
“Obviously,” he teases.
That pulls a real smile out of me, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came because the weight in my chest is still there.
My dad’s getting worse, my brother is drowning, and the ranch is barely surviving.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, Jasper Smith is waiting for an answer I still don’t know how to give.
“You know you’ll always have a place here,” Nate says. “Me and this garage will be here when you get back. But I think it’s time to go back home, make things right, and save your family’s ranch.”
I look down at my phone one last time, then finally type out the message I never expected to send.
Me: I’m coming home.