Chapter 2 Sarah
Sarah
Ifinally saw Cade Mercer for the first time since I returned to Wildflower Canyon.
I saw him and his daughter.
I knew who she was as soon as she approached me.
Her face dances in my head as I drive home. She’s innocent and chatty. I can still hear her tiny voice asking about Bluebell, her big blue eyes watching me like I had all the answers in the world.
“My name is Evangelina Mercer, but everyone calls me Evie. What’s your name?”
“Sarah. But everyone calls me Doctor K.”
Her eyes go wide. “Are you a doctor?”
“I’m a veterinarian.”
“A who?”
“An animal doctor. Bluebell’s walking funny. I think she hurt her leg, so I’m here to make it better.”
The little girl is beautiful. She looks like Cade.
She’s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, along with the cutest pair of cowboy boots. A part of me had thought it would break my heart to see a child he made with someone else. But all I saw was a part of Cade.
I fell in love with her, instantly, as I had with her father.
I pull up to the house and stare at my father’s house…now mine.
The porch light is out…or rather still out.
I haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet. It’s high up, and I need a ladder and tools because of how it’s set up. I asked Hank, the electrician, and he said he “wouldn’t be helpin’ people like me.”
So, the porch light will stay out until I have the time to buy a freaking ladder and toolbox or find Daddy’s in that garage that’s filled to the gills.
I walk up the stairs and let out a weary breath.
The sag in the front steps will also stay put.
The construction crews in town are old school. They hang up the second I tell them who I am.
Ask me to stitch up a skittish gelding in a thunderstorm or tube a colicky mare at two a.m.—no problem. But fixing wood and nails? That’s beyond me.
But it’ll be fine.
The house has strong, stubborn bones—a lot like the man who left it to me.
Jack McCready, lawyer slash cowboy, Mac to everyone in the canyon, had warned me about the reception I was likely to receive if I stayed in Wildflower Canyon when he explained Daddy’s will to me and gave me the letter he left me.
“Landon Mercer is still one of the most popular congressmen in Colorado, Sarah. You will win no popularity contests against him.”
But I stayed anyway, because this is my home, and more importantly, because I am done hiding.
Landon ran out a scared nineteen-year-old girl. I’m not that girl anymore.
I’m not broken because my father and Cade turned their backs on me.
Whispers don’t bother me.
I am a grown woman now.
Strong. Stubborn. Maybe too much like my father.
I’m going to expose Landon. It won’t give me back the years he stole, but it will take his future. That’s a fair enough trade.
The people of Wildflower Canyon County may have ignored a girl’s cry for help a decade ago. But they will never vote for a proven rapist. Even if the law can’t touch him, the truth still could. It’s a long shot, I know, but I have to do this or live with the regret of letting fear rule me.
I unlock the front door.
I don’t leave it open the way Daddy used to.
The people of Wildflower Canyon have turned mean, meaner than I remember. I’ve already had to replace my tires after someone slashed them—and I had to pay extra to haul a mechanic in from outside of town.
It didn’t break me. It won’t.
Aunt Gemma, who rescued me, became my home after I left Wildflower Canyon and left me everything in her will, enough that I can walk away from work altogether if I want to.
But I don’t.
I love being a vet, and I’m grateful for people like Aria and Mav, who stand by me without hesitation. They don’t know much about the old scandal, but Elena does. She was blunt the first time we met, reading the discomfort on my face while I braced for her to turn away like everyone else had.
“Can’t stand politicians. And it’s 2025, darlin’. You say he assaulted you, I believe that the sumbitch did.”
I appreciate the sentiment, but I doubt the good people of Wildflower Canyon will believe their golden boy capable of the crime I accused him of—even in the year of our Lord, 2025.
Why would they, when my own father didn’t?
I step into the house, where the air is cool, and set my keys down on the kitchen counter. The same counter where my father once stood, his jaw set like granite.
“Don’t lie to me, Sarah.”
“I’m not lying, Daddy. He—”
“You’d been drinking. Landon said you came on to him.”
“That’s not what happened! He—”
“How could you do that to Cade? With his own brother?”
Tears stream down my face. “Daddy, I love Cade, I’d never—”
“Enough!”
The sound of his hand slamming the table still echoes in my head, sharp as a gunshot. I flinch now, in the present.
How na?ve I was. I thought the truth mattered, that if I said it enough times, someone—at least Cade and my father—would believe me.
No one did.
Not Cade, who looked at me with disgust after Landon spun his tale about how I’d hit on him more than once. Cade stood by him. He was my first, my only for a long time—and he believed my rapist when he said I wanted it.
Not my so-called friends, who seemed almost gleeful that Cade and I were over.
Hell, he even married Jeanine—one from that same friend circle.
She’s gone now, died in a car accident. The way Mrs. Lowell told it—Daddy’s old housekeeper, who moved two towns over but still keeps in touch—Jeanine was driving drunk that night.
It’s hard to hate a dead woman. Harder still when she left behind a little girl, who’ll never know her mother.
Not the deputy sheriff, either, who looked me in the eye and told me to stop causing trouble. They didn’t send me to a hospital. Didn’t do a rape kit. Didn’t do any of those things that Law & Order: SVU makes you believe cops do.
No one believed me.
So I left.
I had to. If I’d stayed, I wouldn’t have survived—not just the vitriol that came my way, but the way my own mind twisted under it. The way the shame settled on me like a second skin that took years and years and years to shed.
There was a night in California, in my aunt’s guest room, when I almost didn’t wake up. After that, the court ordered counseling. I went. I didn’t get better.
Then, there was another night when….
But this time I talked during therapy. I learned how to put one foot in front of the other again.
As I grew up, I dated a few men, kept them at arm’s length, and convinced myself that was enough.
I was going through life as a vet, working with ranchers in California’s Central Valley, when Mac called.
He told me Daddy was gone, but he’d left me his house and his practice. He said there was a letter. I flew to Aspen the day after.
Mac gave me the letter when he walked me through the will a day after the funeral. He left me alone in his office at his ranch, where he conducted his legal business with a comforting squeeze of his hand on my shoulder.
Sarah,
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. There are things I should have said to you years ago, but I was too stubborn…and too much of a coward.
I know the truth now. About what happened. About what was done to you. And I know you told me the truth all those years ago.
You came to me for protection, for comfort, for love, and I turned you away.
I called you a liar.
I sided with someone who didn’t deserve my trust, and I let my pride be more important than my own daughter.
I can’t explain to you why I was so ready to believe the worst of you. All I can tell you is that I was wrong. So wrong it shames me to write the words.
I’ve replayed that day in my mind more times than I can count.
Every time, I wish I could go back, take your hands in mine, and tell you that I would stand with you, fight with you, take care of you. But wishes don’t change the truth: I failed you when you needed me most.
I can’t give you back those years. I can’t take away the hurt or the loneliness. But I can give you this—the clinic, the house, everything I built. It’s yours. Not because I think it makes up for what I did, but because you’ve earned more than I ever gave you.
I don’t expect your forgiveness. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if you gave it to me because I don’t deserve it.
But I want you to know that I am sorry, from the deepest part of me. Sorry for not protecting you. Sorry for not believing you. Sorry for every mile you had to put between us just to survive.
You are stronger than I ever was and know that I love you, even though I let you down and am not worthy enough to say those words.
— Dad
P.S. I understand that you will want to sell everything and move on. But I hope that you’ll come back and claim your home. I know how much you love Wildflower Canyon and how it broke your heart to leave. But no matter what you do, know that this time, I stand with you.
I’ve read that letter a million times.
Every time, I smooth out the creases like it might somehow make the words mean more.
I want it to. God, I want it to.
But even I can’t deny the truth—the apology came far too late. He let his pride win, and in doing so, he let me down in the worst way possible. Worse than that day ten years ago because now he knew the truth and still did nothing. Instead, he hid behind a will, behind paper and ink, and death.
Maybe I was doing the same thing by coming here, letting pride win over common sense and mental health by not selling it all and pocketing the money I don’t need.
On the darkest days, I don’t remember what the hell I’m doing back in Wildflower Canyon, back in the house where my life splintered apart.
But when I’m clear-headed, I know why I’m here.
For the clinic, yes. But I can be a vet anywhere.
I’m here because I want justice. I want the truth to come out. I want the people who turned their backs on me to see me standing tall. I want them to know that I survived, that I’m thriving.
And in some deep, dangerous place I don’t like to look at too closely, I know I want Cade Mercer to finally believe me over his brother and understand his betrayal.
Get It On !