Chapter 20
In Wichita, my parents are waiting just outside security, their familiar faces a balm I didn’t realize I was desperate for. The second my mother pulls me into her arms, the dam inside me breaks. Loud, ugly, gasping sobs tear out of me before I can even think about stopping them.
“Hey, now,” Mom murmurs, kissing the top of my head like she used to when I was little. “It can't be that bad.”
I cling to her tighter, the scent of her perfume wrapping around me like a memory, and somehow manage to choke out, “I've just missed you both so much.” I pull back enough to give them a shaky, watery smile, wiping at my face with trembling fingers.
“I was telling someone about Opal, and I guess it just made me really homesick.”
Dad’s face softens, his eyes crinkling with that same patient kindness he’s always shown me.
“Want to visit her?” he asks gently.
I shake my head, fresh tears stinging my eyes. “Not yet. I just want to go home and rest.”
Mom wraps her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me tight against her side.
“We can do that,” she says. “Let's get you home.”
And for the first time in days, I let myself breathe. Because even if everything else is falling apart, this is still real. Still mine. Still home.
I wake up in the soft quiet of my childhood bedroom.
The same one I shared with Opal. The morning light slants through the curtains in golden stripes, painting everything in a warm, familiar glow.
The room is frozen in time. Mom, bless her, never took down the posters we tacked to the walls, or the photo boards covered in snapshots of sunburned summers, high school dances, and the messy, beautiful chaos of two girls growing up side by side.
I sit up slowly, letting my eyes roam across every little piece of the past. It hurts in that sweet, aching way nostalgia always does. Tears rise fast and hot, stinging as they slip down my cheeks.
“Opal,” I whisper into the stillness. “What would you do?”
But I already know.
Opal, fearless and loud and never one to shrink from a fight, would have stormed back to Broken Heart Creek.
She would’ve shoved Liam up against the emotional wall he’s been hiding behind, laid it all out with brutal clarity.
Given him a choice. And if he chose wrong, she would’ve walked away without flinching, chin high and fire in her eyes.
I’m not her, so there’s no way I can do that. But I think I might be learning how to be brave in my own way.
Just not yet.
I find Mom and Dad in the kitchen, exactly where I knew they’d be.
Dad’s half-hidden behind the newspaper, glasses perched on his nose.
Mom’s sipping her coffee, a crossword puzzle spread out in front of her, pen tapping thoughtfully at the edge of the table.
It’s the same scene I saw growing up. The only difference is they have more greys in their hair.
I pause in the doorway, taking it in. The peace. The steadiness. The quiet love. It fills something hollow in my chest.
Mom looks up first and smiles. “Morning, hun. Feeling better?”
“I am.” I slide into the seat across from them, folding my hands on the table. “Actually, I have a job interview. With a ranch outside of Wichita.”
Dad sets the paper down, his face lighting up. “That’s wonderful news, kiddo. It’ll be great to have you close again.”
But Mom just watches me, her gaze soft and sharp all at once.
“I thought you loved it out there,” she says gently.
“I do,” I admit. “Or did. There’s just no more room for me to grow out there.”
She hums, that quiet, knowing sound only mothers can make—part acceptance, part question, part intuition. But she doesn’t press. She just nods and goes back to her puzzle.
“Do you mind if I borrow one of the cars to drive out to the ranch?”
Dad waves a hand. “Go ahead. We’re being lazy today. Take whichever one starts first.”
I change into my ranch attire and head out just before eight.
The drive to the ranch is long and flat, the Kansas sky wide open above me.
Wheat fields blur past, golden and endless.
I crack the window, letting the warm wind mess up my hair and whisper through the silence that’s been hanging around my shoulders since the airport.
I don’t know what I’m chasing exactly. But I know I can’t stay still.
The ranch comes into view after a dusty turnoff.
Wooden fencing stretched across acres of pasture, thick-bodied cattle grazing lazily beneath the early sun.
A metal gate creaks as I push through, my tires crunching gravel as I pull up to a modest, weatherworn house.
It isn’t much, but it breathes like home.
A woman steps off the porch, wiping her hands on her jeans. Mid-fifties, strong and sun-browned, she walks like someone who’s never wasted time on things that don’t matter.
“You Olive?” she calls out.
“That’s me,” I say, climbing out and offering my hand.
She shakes it firmly. “I’m Connie. I run this place, more or less. You ready to work, or are you just here to kick tires and waste my time?”
I blink, then smile. “I’m ready to work.”
“Good. Come on, then.”
She doesn’t waste a second. We walk along the perimeter fence toward the sorting pens while she rattles off questions. Have I worked with cattle? Know the difference between a bred heifer and an open one? Can I vaccinate, tag, brand, assist a breech birth if it comes to it?
“Yes,” I answer. “All of it.”
“Where’d you learn?” she asks, glancing at me sideways.
“Worked at a ranch out west the last few years.”
“You leaving a good job, or a bad man?” she asks bluntly.
I huff a dry laugh. “Maybe both.”
Connie nods like she’s heard that answer a hundred times and it never surprises her.
We stop near the chute, where a pair of ranch hands are guiding bawling calves into the alley.
The smell of manure, dust, and sun-warmed metal fills the air, and for the first time in weeks, I feel steady. Not whole. But grounded.
Connie eyes the men, then turns back to me. “I need someone who doesn’t flinch when shit gets messy. Someone who shows up before dawn and doesn’t complain if a cow needs pulling in the middle of the damn night.”
“I don’t flinch,” I tell her.
“I also need someone that can help me elevate this ranch to the next level.”
“I can do that, too.”
She looks at me for a long beat. “Good. The job’s yours if you want it.”
Something in my chest cracks open. I nod. “I want it.”
“You can start Monday. That give you enough time to settle your life?”
I swallow hard, then smile. “I think this is me settling it.”
We shake hands, her grip strong, no-nonsense, but there’s something solid in it.
Like a promise that this won’t be easy, but it’ll be real.
She leads me across the yard, boots crunching gravel, past the equipment shed and a row of rusted stock trailers, then up a narrow set of stairs on the side of the garage.
“This is yours,” she says, unlocking the door to a small apartment above. “It ain’t fancy, but it’s clean, and the AC works most of the time. Should be all right for the workweek. Too far to drive back and forth every day, anyhow.”
I step inside, and for a moment, I forget how to breathe.
It’s small. A kitchenette, a couch, a bed tucked under the eaves.
The furniture doesn’t match, and the yellow curtains are a little faded.
But it’s warm. Peaceful. And most importantly, it’s mine.
No shared silence. No tension curling under the covers.
No pretending someone wants to stay when they’ve already let go.
Just four walls and a door that locks behind me.
“I love it,” I say softly, my fingers brushing the edge of the windowsill.
Connie smiles, and it’s the first time I see the steel behind her ease. “Welcome to Connie’s Ranching Company, Olive.”
And just like that, I feel the tiniest flicker of something I thought I’d lost somewhere back in Broken Heart Creek.
Belonging.
After I leave the ranch, I drive in silence. No music. Just the hum of the road beneath me and the ache building in my chest like a storm gathering strength.
The cemetery is quiet, the wind stirring the grass in soft waves as I walk the familiar path toward our family plot.
My boots crunch over gravel, then soften against the earth.
My breath catches when I see it. The row of gravestones.
Our grandparents, the space reserved for Mom and Dad someday, and then hers. Opal’s.
It still doesn’t feel real. Sometimes I think it never will. This place… it held the past and a future that was stolen too soon. It was never supposed to be for me and Opal. Not for a long time, at least.
I sit on the bench Dad built with his own hands, the wood smoothed by weather and years. It faces the stones like it was meant to hold all the words we never got to say.
“Hi, Sis,” I whisper, my voice catching. “I’ve missed you.”
Tears blur the edges of everything—sky, grass, the sharp lines of her name carved into marble.
“I got the job,” I say, trying to smile through it. “It’s a cattle ranch. Real work. Real people. Connie runs it. She’s tough as nails. You’d like her. She doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
I let out a shaky breath, eyes fixed on her name. “I wish you were here. I wish I could hear you yell at me for letting things get so bad with Liam. Or laugh when I told you I ran like hell instead of fighting for him.”
A breeze stirs the leaves overhead.
“But I’m trying, Opal. I really am. I don’t know what comes next, but for the first time in a long time I’m choosing me.” I lean back, tilting my head to the sky, letting the tears fall freely now. “You were the brave one. But maybe I’m finally learning.”
The wind picks up, lifting strands of my hair across my face, and for a second, I swear I can feel her nearby. Not in the way that breaks me. In the way that helps me breathe.