14
By the end of the first week, Talia had stopped pretending Stanley Ranch was just a location.
It was a living thing.
It breathed before sunrise. It stretched through the day on dust, coffee, orders, repairs, horses, children, meals, arguments, laughter, and the steady rhythm of work that seemed to start before she opened her eyes and continue long after she wanted to close them.
And Gordon Windgate was woven into more of it than he seemed to understand.
He was everywhere.
Not loudly. Never loudly.
He moved from one task to another with that quiet, deliberate focus of his.
Mucking stalls, fixing hinges, checking water troughs, hauling feed, tightening rails, repairing equipment, answering questions, listening to Eli, taking instructions from Earl, ducking Elise’s fussing, letting Malik steal his hat, and somehow making himself useful in every corner of the ranch without ever acting like he expected thanks.
Talia had followed him every day for nearly a week.
At first, she had tried to think of it as shadowing a source.
Now she knew better.
It was more like being pulled into orbit.
Every day, they tossed questions back and forth.
One for one. His past for hers. His truth for hers.
His silence for hers when neither of them had an answer ready.
Some questions came while he worked. Some while they walked between jobs.
Some while he drove them from one end of the ranch to another in a truck that smelled like leather, dust, and sun-warmed metal.
He answered more than she expected.
So did she.
That was the problem.
Now it was late, the women’s bunkhouse dim and quiet around her. Lisa, Cassi, and Ruby were asleep or pretending to be. Talia sat cross-legged on her bunk, laptop open, notes spread across the blanket. The glow of the screen lit her hands as she tried to organize everything she had learned.
Names.
Dates.
Fragments.
Connections.
Lana Cross.
Bettie Windgate.
Paul Windgate.
Gordon Cross becoming Gordon Windgate.
A boy loved by one woman, claimed by a name he had not asked for, and sheltered by another woman who had every reason to reject him.
Talia stared at the blinking cursor and found herself drifting back to that afternoon.
Gordon had been working on the engine of a tractor that had been giving everyone trouble.
The thing sat beside one of the equipment sheds like a stubborn beast refusing to die or cooperate.
Its hood was up, tools spread neatly on a cloth nearby.
Gordon leaned over the engine with both hands braced inside, his shirt damp at the back from heat and work.
Talia had sat on an overturned bucket a few feet away, notebook balanced on her knee.
“You said your mother’s name was Lana,” she had said.
Gordon had reached for a wrench without looking. “Lana Cross.”
“You talk about her like she was good.”
“She was.”
“But complicated.”
“Most people are.”
“That sounds like something you say when you don’t want to explain.”
He had glanced at her then. “It is.”
Talia had waited.
He sighed and turned back to the engine. “She loved me. That much I know. She made sure I understood right from wrong, even when her own life didn’t fit neatly inside the rules she taught.”
“Because of Paul.”
“Yes.”
“Did she know he would never choose her fully?”
Gordon tightened something beneath the hood. “I think she knew. I also think knowing doesn’t always save people from wanting.”
The answer had settled strangely between them.
Talia had written it down.
Knowing doesn’t always save people from wanting.
Gordon wiped one hand on a rag. “She taught me morals. Kindness too. Not soft kindness. Practical kindness. Help someone if they need help. Don’t shame people for being poor. Don’t take what isn’t yours. Don’t lie unless someone’s safety depends on it.”
His mouth had twisted slightly.
“She would not have approved of how you came here.”
Talia had looked down at her notebook. “I know.”
“She would have fed you anyway.”
That had made her look up.
He had already gone back to the engine.
“Did you know why Paul took you in after she died?” she asked.
Gordon had gone still.
Not long.
Just long enough for her to know the question had hit a deeper place.
“I thought it was because I was his son,” he said.
“And now?”
“Now I know better.”
The tractor clicked as he shifted something with the wrench.
“Paul took me in because Bettie insisted.”
Talia’s pen paused. “His wife?”
“Yes. Bettie Windgate.”
“She wanted you in the house?”
Gordon gave a low breath, almost a laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Wanted is a strong word.”
“What would you call it?”
“Insisted is better.”
He had straightened then, wiping both hands slowly on the rag. His face was thoughtful, but closed in that way he got when memory came with too many sharp edges.
“Bettie had every reason to hate me,” he said. “I was proof her husband had betrayed her. Proof he had another life, another woman, another child. She had sons of her own. A home of her own. A position. Pride. Pain. And then there I was.”
Talia watched him carefully.
“She was never warm toward me,” he continued. “She didn’t hug me. Didn’t fuss over me. Didn’t pretend I was the same as Beau and Logan to her.”
“That must have hurt.”
“It did.” He shrugged, but the movement lacked conviction. “But she made sure I had food. Clothes. A roof. She made sure I went to school. If Beau and Logan went too far where she could see it, she stopped them.”
Talia’s throat tightened. “And you appreciated that?”
“I did.”
The answer had come without hesitation.
That had made her sadder than if he had cursed Bettie’s name.
“She never loved you,” Talia said softly.
“No.”
“But you’re grateful.”
His eyes met hers then.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she could have sent me away.”
Talia had no response.
Gordon looked back at the tractor, jaw tight. “I never understood why she did it. Not really. Maybe pride. Maybe religion. Maybe punishment for Paul. Maybe she thought a child shouldn’t pay for adult sin.”
He bent back over the engine.
“But she gave me shelter when the man responsible for me barely wanted to look at me. There’s no telling how I might have turned out otherwise.”
Talia remembered how the heat had pressed around them.
How the tractor engine smelled of oil and metal.
How Gordon’s words had made something in her chest ache.
Because he had been unwanted by his father, yet taken in by a woman who had never seen him before and still decided he should have a home.
Not a warm home.
Not an easy one.
But a home.
That was the shape of his gratitude.
And it made her want to reach for him in a way that frightened her.
Instead, she had asked another question.
“What did Bettie call you?”
Gordon had smiled faintly, but it hurt to look at.
“Gordon.”
“Not son?”
“No.”
“Not Gordon Cross?”
“Never after Paul changed my name.”
“Did you resent that?”
“My name?”
“Yes.”
He had taken a long time to answer.
“I resented losing the last thing that still belonged to my mother.”
Talia had written that down slowly.
Then Gordon had looked at her. “My turn.”
She had braced herself.
He had asked, “Where does your sister live?”
The question had thrown her because it was so simple.
Or seemed simple.
Talia had clicked her pen, then clicked it again. “I don’t know.”
Gordon’s brows drew together. “You don’t know?”
“No.”
“You said her name is Serena.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know where she lives?”
“I get pictures by text. Sometimes she looks like she’s in Arizona. Sometimes Florida. Once, I think Portugal. Maybe Brazil. She sends a photo with a little caption like, ‘Still alive,’ or, ‘You’d hate it here,’ or, ‘Don’t worry.’”
“Do you worry?”
Talia had laughed once, short and sharp. “All the time.”
Gordon had set the wrench down.
She wished he had not. It made him look as if he was really listening, and that always made her say more than she meant to.
“She pops into my life when it suits her,” Talia said. “Then disappears when it doesn’t. She hates questions. Hates being managed. Hates when I sound like Grandma.”
“Do you?”
“Sound like her?”
“Yes.”
Talia had stared at the dusty ground. “Probably.”
“And your parents?”
The question had come gently.
That almost made it worse.
Talia should have given the clean version. Dead father. Dead mother. Raised by grandmother. Sad, but handled.
Instead, the truth had slipped out in pieces.
“My father was killed while on assignment overseas when I was in my early twenties.”
Gordon had not interrupted.
“My mother died during Covid.”
His face changed then. Not pity. Not exactly. Something quieter.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
She had looked out across the equipment yard, where a ranch hand drove by in a utility vehicle and lifted a hand to Gordon. Gordon nodded back, but his attention stayed on her.
“That must have been hard,” he said.
“It was.”
She swallowed.
“But not the way people assume. I grieved them. Of course I did. They were my parents. But I never really knew them.”
That had been the first crack.
She felt it even now, sitting on her bunk with the laptop glowing.
She had told him things she never told people.
“They were gone all the time,” she had said.
“Chasing stories. Wars, disasters, political unrest, places with names that sounded important when people said them at dinner parties. They sent gifts sometimes. Called when they could. Came home between assignments like visitors everyone was supposed to admire.”
Gordon’s voice had been low. “And you were with your grandmother.”
“Yes.”
“Was she loving?”
Talia had looked at him then, warning in her eyes.
He did not take it back.
He waited.
“No,” she said finally. “Not really.”
Gordon had gone quiet.
“She kept us alive,” Talia continued. “Fed us. Got us to school. Made sure we had clean clothes and rules. She wasn’t cruel. Not in the way people write about cruelty.”
“But?”
“No hugs. No bedtime stories. No sweet nicknames. No sitting on the edge of the bed asking if we were sad. No soft place to land.”
She had tried to smile.
It had not worked.