15
On Sunday morning, Gordon woke before the sun.
That was normal.
His body had learned the ranch’s rhythm better than his mind ever had.
Before daylight, before voices carried across the yard, before the main house filled with the smell of breakfast and the clatter of people moving through another day, Gordon was usually up, washed, dressed, and halfway through his first task.
He liked those quiet hours.
They asked nothing from him but work.
This morning, he had a quick breakfast in the kitchen, alone at the end of the long table with coffee, eggs, toast, and two strips of bacon Elise had placed in front of him with a look that dared him to argue.
He had not argued.
A man learned.
He was finishing his coffee, already thinking about the storage building behind the east barn.
Feed supplements had gotten mixed with general stock, and three separate people had complained about losing time looking for supplies that should have been labeled better.
Gordon had decided to reorganize the whole thing before breakfast traffic got heavy.
He had just reached for his plate when Luke and Edye walked into the kitchen.
That was not unusual.
Luke was often up early. Edye too. The ranch did not wait until polite hours to need decisions.
But Nia and Malik were not with them.
That was unusual.
Gordon glanced toward the hall, expecting to hear Malik’s little feet or Nia’s voice asking a question nobody had time to answer before coffee.
Nothing.
Luke came to the table and placed both hands on the back of the chair across from Gordon.
Edye stood beside him, smiling.
Gordon’s stomach tightened.
He looked from one to the other. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Luke said.
Edye’s smile widened. “Good morning, Gordon.”
Something was up.
Gordon had spent too many years watching people enter rooms with news in their faces not to recognize it. Good news. Bad news. Complicated news. It did not matter. It changed the air.
Luke nodded toward Gordon’s plate. “Come by the office when you’re finished eating.”
Gordon set his mug down. “Yes, sir.”
Luke’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You don’t have to sound like you’re being summoned for sentencing.”
“Am I?”
Edye laughed softly.
Luke’s mouth twitched. “No.”
That helped.
A little.
Edye leaned up and kissed Luke’s cheek. “I’ll see you later.”
Luke looked at her, and for a second his face softened in that way it only ever did for her.
“Later,” he said.
Edye crossed to the counter, grabbed a mug, and filled it with coffee while Luke headed toward the office wing.
Gordon watched him go.
Then he looked back at Edye.
She was still smiling.
That made him more suspicious.
She came to the table and sat near him, wrapping both hands around her mug. “How are things going with Talia?”
Gordon looked down at his plate.
Of course.
He should have known she would ask. Edye had the patience of a woman who let answers reveal themselves, but she always asked eventually.
“It’s easier than I thought it would be,” he said.
“The interview?”
“Telling the story.” He reached for his coffee, then set it down without drinking. “Talia’s easy to talk to.”
Edye’s expression shifted, softening around the edges. “Is she?”
He nodded.
That was dangerous to admit, but true.
“She listens,” he said. “Not just for what she wants to use. She listens like she’s trying to understand what sits under the answer.”
“Good reporters do that.”
“She’s more than that.”
Edye lifted her brows slightly.
Gordon realized what he had said and looked away.
Not because he wanted to take it back.
Because he did not.
“I’ve learned a few things about her too,” he said.
“Like what?”
He took a breath.
“That we’re alike in some ways. Not in the details. But in the feeling.” He looked toward the window over the sink, where the first edge of morning light was beginning to touch the yard. “Adrift. Still trying to figure out where we fit in the world.”
Edye watched him quietly.
“She grew up with people who were supposed to love her but weren’t really there. I grew up with people who were there but didn’t want me.” He gave a faint, humorless smile. “Different roads. Same kind of loneliness.”
Edye’s eyes softened.
He did not want pity, but somehow from Edye it never felt like pity. It felt like she had made room for what he said and was careful not to crowd it.
“I don’t think she came here intending to write something ugly,” Gordon said.
Edye did not respond right away.
“Do you trust that?” she asked.
“I believe it.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“I know.”
He looked back at her. “She’s compassionate.”
Edye’s fingers moved lightly against her coffee mug.
“And I think she’s in the wrong profession,” he added.
That surprised her. “Why?”
Gordon leaned back in his chair, thinking through what had become clearer to him as the week passed.
“She thinks she’s following in her parents’ footsteps.
In a way, she is. Journalism. Chasing stories.
Proving herself with facts and angles and whatever her boss thinks is worth printing.
” He shook his head. “But when she talks about people, what I see in her is a storyteller. Not a fact-checking, boring journalist.”
Edye smiled. “Boring?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, but I may quote you later.”
“Please don’t.”
Her smile deepened.
Gordon looked at the table. “I think she should be a novelist.”
Edye went still, then gave a soft laugh, almost under her breath. “That is quite a thought.”
“She notices too much to only report it. And she feels more than she wants to admit. I don’t think facts are enough for her. I think she wants meaning.”
Edye studied him with a look that made him wonder if he had revealed more about himself than Talia.
Probably.
Then she asked, “What about you?”
Gordon looked up. “Me?”
“Yes. Is ranching what you see for your life?”
The question should have been simple.
It was not.
A year ago, he would have given her some answer about being useful wherever Luke needed him. Six months ago, he might have said he was grateful for the work and left it there. Even last month, he would have avoided saying anything too rooted, too claiming.
But this morning, with the kitchen quiet, Edye watching him kindly, and Talia’s questions still moving around inside him, Gordon knew the answer.
He smiled.
Really smiled.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
Edye’s face lit.
Gordon almost looked away from it, but he held still.
“I’d like to be like Dwight,” he said. “Not exactly like him. But the way he knows the horses. Every one of them. What they need. What they’ll do. What they won’t do. Their habits. Their history. He understands them.”
“And you want that?”
“I do.” Gordon’s smile faded into something more serious. “I want to work with the horses. Learn them properly. Not just help when I’m assigned. I’d like to apprentice under Dwight, if he’d have me. Eventually, maybe learn breeding from Travis. The bloodlines. The planning. The care of it.”
Edye’s expression turned thoughtful and pleased all at once. “Maybe you need to tell Luke and Dwight that.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“Good. Then they can stop shuffling you around everywhere and allow you to become a horse whisperer.”
Gordon huffed a laugh. “I’m not sure horses need me whispering at them.”
“Maybe not. But you need to know where you belong.”
The words settled into him.
He looked down at his empty plate.
Then he stood and picked it up. “I just might take your advice.”
“You should. It’s excellent advice.”
“Modest too.”
“I learned from Luke.”
He laughed softly and carried his dishes to the sink.
After washing his plate, fork, and mug, he dried them and put them away. Edye watched him with that gentle smile still on her face, like she knew something he did not.
He was beginning to suspect everyone on this ranch knew something he did not.
It was becoming a pattern.
Gordon left the kitchen and headed down the hall toward Luke’s office. The door was open, but he knocked on the frame anyway.
Luke looked up from his computer. “Come in. Sit down.”
Gordon stepped inside and sat in the chair across from the desk.
Luke held up one finger, finishing whatever he was typing. The faint click of the keyboard filled the room. Gordon waited, hands resting on his thighs.
He should have been more nervous.
Strangely, he was not.
Luke hit a final key, leaned back, and turned fully toward him.
Before Luke could speak, Gordon did.
“I know what I want to do on the ranch.”
Luke’s brows lifted.
Gordon pushed on before the courage could leave him.
“And before I say it, I want to thank you for giving me the flexibility to figure it out. You could have put me in one place and left me there. You didn’t.
You let me work where I was needed. Let me learn different parts of the ranch. I appreciate that.”
Luke’s face softened, though only slightly. With Luke, slightly meant plenty.
“What do you want to do?” he asked.
“I want to be Dwight’s apprentice,” Gordon said. “If he’ll take me. I want to focus on the horses. Learn them the way he does. Eventually, I’d like to learn breeding from Travis too.”
Luke sat still.
Gordon forced himself not to fill the silence.
Finally, Luke smiled.
Not big.
Not easy.
But real.
“That’s going to be hard work.”
“I know.”
“Long hours.”
“I know.”
“Dwight won’t baby you.”
“I don’t want him to.”
“Travis won’t either.”
“Good.”
Luke nodded slowly. “You’ve shown me you can handle hard work.”
Gordon exhaled, though he had not realized he was holding his breath.
“It’s taken you a while to find your footing here,” Luke said. “That’s not criticism.”
Gordon nodded.
“But now that you have,” Luke continued, “Edye and I will support you fully.”
The words hit with more force than Gordon expected.
Fully.
Not temporarily.
Not cautiously.
Fully.
His throat tightened. “Thank you.”
Luke stood. “Good. Now come with me.”
Gordon blinked. “Where?”
“Edye and I have a gift for you.”
That was the last thing Gordon expected him to say.
“A gift?”
Luke came around the desk. “You heard me.”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I didn’t ask what you needed.”