Chapter 18
Reno called at six-fifteen Tuesday morning.
Dillon was in the middle of performing a C-section on a cow when his phone buzzed, so the call went to voicemail.
By the time he had Cal Hendricks’s calf wobbling toward its mother and himself scrubbed as clean as possible after performing major emergency surgery on a large animal, the sun was up and he had two more missed calls from his brother and a text that read, PICK UP, YOU TURNIP.
He climbed into his truck, blasted the heater on his blue-cold hands, and called his brother back. “You’re up early.”
“Up late. Drove back to Montana from Spokane last night and didn’t get to my motel till three.
“Why didn’t you come to my place? The guest room’s yours any time and you have a key.”
“Because I needed to be in court in Apple Pie Creek at 8 a.m. and I didn’t feel like driving all the way around the lake before dawn on three hours’ of sleep.”
“Court? Fern’s will? Everything okay with Tessa?”
“Yes, court. Yes, Fern’s will. As for how Tessa’s doing, call her and find out for yourself, you moron.”
Dillon huffed. It was shocking how annoying brothers could still be after all these years. “Can you at least tell me if there are any developments in the oil company’s case against Fern’s will?”
“I can.”
Dillon huffed again. “Well, tell me, then.”
“The judge dismissed Stillwater Basin Energy’s challenge in its entirety. With prejudice.”
Dillon went still. “They’re done?”
“They’re completely, comprehensively, you-can-stick-a-fork-in-them done.
It was a slam dunk. Handwriting expert testified for exactly three minutes.
The judge took twenty seconds to rule, which is how long it took him to move aside the case documents and find his gavel.
Stillwater Basin is going to have to find someone else to bully. ”
“Reno, that’s—”
He didn’t have a word for it. Wonderful wasn’t right.
A relief wasn’t right. The fury he’d been carrying about the forged letter was not going to sit down quietly just because a judge took twenty seconds throwing out a case built on a forgery.
Some part of him still wanted to put Craig Westerfeld in a pasture full of rank bulls. “Congratulations. And thank you.”
“Mm.” A long, borderline theatrical pause. “Anyway, somebody needs to tell Tessa, I tried to call her just now but got no answer.”
Dillon’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t talked to Tessa in ten days.
“Which brings me,” Reno continued, “to the second item on the agenda. Are you sitting down?”
“I’m in a truck.”
“Driving?”
“Not yet.”
“Close enough. Tessa called Judith. Told her no. No to Whitmore, no to the money, no to moving back east, no to all of it. Side note: Tessa’s trust fund has in excess of a hundred million dollars in it. And she thumbed her nose at every penny.”
Dillon’s entire body sagged and he dropped his forehead against the steering wheel.
“You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Figured you ought to know.”
“Thanks.” Even he heard the rawness in his voice.
“Third and final agenda item, I’m at the Valentine Clinic.
Hank called a buddy of his here who’s a knee specialist and the guy’s fitting me in today for an exam.
My knee’s been acting up ever since I twisted it again.
Hank thinks it needs surgery. If that’s the case, are you gonna mind me shacking up at your place for a few weeks while I heal and rehab it? ”
“Of course I don’t mind. But I expect you’re looking at months of recovery, not weeks.”
“You know us Steele men. We refuse to stay down for long.”
“Do what your doctor says, bro. Give it the time it needs to heal properly or it won’t ever be right. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Reno made a rude comment about what Dillon could do with that remark, and they ribbed each other for a few moments. Then Reno asked seriously, “Do you want me to tell Tessa about the dismissal?”
Dillon closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. If she was staying in Cobbler Cove, he was going to have to face her sometime. No sense putting it off any longer. “No. I’ll do it.”
“Don’t call her. She deserves to have someone there to support her and celebrate with her.”
“Yeah, fair.”
A pause, then Reno said quietly, “She did this for herself, Dill. Her decision wasn’t about you. Whatever you’ve been waiting on her to prove, she just proved it. The life she has right now is the one she wants.”
Yes, but would she want it in a year? Five years? Twenty years?
Reno was speaking again, “—and if you don’t get your butt off the bench and get back into the game in the next forty-eight hours, you’re going to lose her, even though she’ll be right here.”
The line clicked dead.
Dillon sat in Cal Hendricks’s driveway, the heater slowly warming up his hands, the morning sun rising higher in the sky.
Tessa said no.
To everything.
To a gigantic trust fund. To a music academy for Makayla. To her mother. To that whole world and the fancy life she’d left behind.
Lexi’s voice tried to surface. He waited for the line that had been ruining his life for three years — you have nothing left inside you — and it came. But it was faint. Worn. Like a song he’d played so many times he could no longer remember why he ever liked it.
And this time, as she whispered to him, he didn’t hear Truth with a capital T. He only heard one woman’s bitter parting shot meant to cause maximum damage. And oh, had it ever.
For three long years she’d managed to shut him down, lock him in a spiral of self-loathing and self-doubt. And he’d let her do it. Heck, he’d done it to himself.
In a moment of clarity, he realized he’d been punishing himself all this time for failing Lexi.
Yes, he’d let her down. But no, he hadn’t misled her about the kind of life she would have as a country vet’s wife.
He’d never been anyone other than himself from the day they met.
She’d known exactly who she was marrying.
Another realization struck him with the force of a revelation. Lexi’d thought she could change him.
As he looked back now with that in mind, he saw how she’d tried the whole time they were married to make him into the man she’d wanted him to be.
Was he wrong for not letting her succeed? After all, he was the first to admit he had a stubborn streak a mile wide.
He sat there a while longer, thinking hard about it.
At the end of the day, he wasn’t sorry that he hadn’t changed for her. He took helping animals and other people seriously. He believed in his work. Believed in his principles. His biggest mistake had been not realizing Lexi’s values and beliefs were so very different from his.
They’d been doomed from the start to fail as a couple. They’d both been too young and na?ve to see it back then, but looking back now, it was crystal clear.
And with that final realization came a measure of peace. Neither of them were bad people. They were just different. Her parting shot to him hadn’t been born out of cruelty at all. She just didn’t understand him any more than he’d understood her.
And with that, her voice finally, at long last, fell silent in his head.
He started the truck.
He had appointments all morning at the clinic.
Bonnie Watson’s puppy finally getting a clean bill of health for his ear infection.
A cat that emphatically did not want its annual wellness check and vaccinations.
The Hendricks calf again, who had decided not to nurse and required a phone consultation.
It was all routine. The work calmed his hands and his mind.
At eleven, Hank walked in carrying two coffees from Rose’s. He set one on Dillon’s desk. He drank his own, watching Dillon, saying nothing.
Dillon drank the coffee. It was strong and bitter, exactly the way he liked it. Hank had remembered. Sometimes brothers could surprise a man.
His phone buzzed with an incoming text. He picked it up half hoping and half dreading it would be Tessa.
It was Makayla.
A photo, taken in her bedroom mirror. An eleven-year-old girl in a floor-length navy skirt and a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, hair in a French braid she had clearly done herself, holding her violin against her shoulder.
She was smiling at the camera with the careful, controlled smile he recognized as her performance face — the one she used around adults she wasn’t sure of yet and must also use at violin recitals.
Below the photo: Talent show is tomorrow. Are you still coming?
He stared at the screen until it dimmed.
His hand was not steady when he typed back.
Wouldn’t miss it.
A beat. Then: Promise?
Promise.
The little dots of her typing appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Finally:
Mom doesn’t know I asked you. Don’t tell her. I want you to surprise her.
He read it three times.
Makayla was running her own diplomatic gambit. She’d noticed her mother was hurting. She was inviting him for both of them, without consulting Tessa, because she wanted her family back together.
An image of the picture she’d drawn that still hung on his refrigerator popped into his mind. The three of them sitting in rocking chairs on Fern’s porch. That was the family she wanted.
He’d bought her jeans and pink boots, learned to French-braid her hair, attended a tea party in a purple tiara, taught her to ride a horse, then gave her a horse, and listened to her sing harmony to country songs in his truck.
He’d done all of that and somehow believed that, if he stopped showing up, he could go back to having no responsibility to her.
That was, he registered with a kind of belated hilarity, a lie. A massive, full-color, Sunday-funnies lie.
He’d been her dad in every way that mattered for weeks.
The only question was whether he was going to keep being her dad in the way she deserved, which meant showing up at her talent show tomorrow without making her wonder for one second whether he’d come.
He texted back: Mum’s the word. Save me a seat.
Her reply came in under five seconds: