Chapter One
Wyatt Larrabee was proof that you could go home.
His sister, Kristen, was most definitely not.
Especially as she sat through her brother’s wedding with trust issues fully intact.
Kristen remained in disbelief that Wyatt, the older brother who’d been so adamant he’d never return to Legacy Canyon, was planning to live here permanently with his bride.
Yet here he was, holding hands with his beloved as they listened to the minister. If it wasn’t for his wedding, Kristen wouldn’t even be visiting Texas. At times even Chicago wasn’t far enough from her mother’s condemnation, and when she learned the news about Kristen’s own life imploding?
Which was why Kristen hadn’t yet told her.
Besides, who wanted to spoil things for everyone else?
Weddings represented love and promise and joy.
Hope that the future would be light and bright, that it would be sunshine and roses and good memories.
No one wanted to know about the persistent melancholy that accompanied dying dreams. Not even her, and she was the one living it.
Admittedly, she’d once loved weddings. Had had one herself.
Mr. and Mrs. Montauk. Now she’d returned to her maiden name because those vows she’d exchanged had been a lie, as big as the one she’d told her family when she’d said Roy couldn’t attend today’s ceremony because of a work commitment.
She’d tell everyone later that two weeks ago Roy had become her ex-husband, in a legal process that had taken over half a year. Roy’s absence last Christmas had raised enough eyebrows, and truth be told, that holiday had marked the official beginning of the end of her marriage.
But this weekend, no one needed to know that Kristen’s husband had cheated. Whatever she’d been thinking when she’d been that starry-eyed, naive girl standing at the altar, it hadn’t been that she’d picked the wrong man. The only good thing that had come out of the union was her daughter.
Wrong choices—story of Kristen’s life. She might’ve been a vet working in a thriving practice, but her staid, boring existence meant she fit the cliché of being the girl whose life had peaked in high school.
It was pathetic, really, and little consolation that her therapist had told her these feelings were normal following a trauma such as divorce.
Kristen tried to concentrate on what the minister was saying.
Of course she was thrilled brother had found “the one.” However, the love radiating between the couple as they waited to say their I do’s on the family ranch left no doubt in Kristen’s mind that she’d made a critical error eight years ago when she’d married Roy.
It was further proof that happy endings were for other people, like Wyatt and Madi.
The bride and groom laughed as they each lifted one of the seventeen-month-old twins Wyatt had adopted and held them close as they said their vows.
A shiver ran through Kristen, and she gave herself a mental shake.
She was happy for Wyatt. She was, even if his overflowing joy created a sense of longing for what she’d lost—the dreams she’d had for her own marriage were as dead as flowers after a long drought.
Her therapist had said these woe is me doldrums might happen from time to time and that such feelings were normal, but Kristen struggled to accept that.
Her entire life she’d been raised to higher standards.
Larrabees overcame. They excelled. They succeeded.
They rose to the top. They lived up to their last name.
Or, in the words of her father, they certainly didn’t wallow.
They didn’t fail. They most definitely didn’t get divorced.
She shifted her hands, twisting the tissue she held.
She would overcome this life setback. She’d give herself grace and forgiveness, practice the steps her therapist recommended.
She could do it. She came from a line of tough ranchers who’d faced far worse than a messy divorce.
Like Sisyphus rolling the stone up the hill, over and over, she would dig into the store of her resilience.
She would not let the glaring failure of her own marriage interfere with Wyatt and Madi’s weekend or ruin the happiness that emanated from the couple.
She would survive and move forward, as she always did, one step at a time, no matter how agonizing it was.
And until then, she’d become an excellent actress.
“How much longer, Mommy?” Her five-year-old daughter tugged gently on the lacy, elbow-length sleeve of Kristen’s “fancy” blue-and-silver Komarov dress. Kate had just missed the deadline for kindergarten, so she was still in pre-K.
“Not too long. Shh,” Kristen replied, watching as Madi and Wyatt finished their vows with sons Ethan and Noah held tight.
“No need to shush her.” Kristen’s grandfather leaned over to give his great-granddaughter a warm smile. “Look how well she’s behaved.”
Minus the occasional crushing of tulle beneath her fingers, Kristen had to agree Kate wasn’t fidgeting too much. Her daughter had been the center of attention when she’d come down the aisle dropping a mixture of pink-and-white rose petals.
Madi had insisted that the flower girl be included in the hair and makeup, so Kate was as dolled up and pretty as a pageant queen.
When she’d seen Kate, Kristen’s mother had squealed and made a fuss in a way she’d never done for her own daughter, mostly because Kristen had been more into the ranch animals than playing dress-up.
She didn’t like gymnastics or cheerleading either, and she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, as the old saying went, much less dance.
But ask her to spay or neuter a cat or deliver puppies or figure out why a bird was molting, and she was your girl.
Being back on the ranch postdivorce threatened to unearth other resentments she’d buried deep.
Her therapist said Kristen liked to avoid her problems. Marrying Roy had kept her from having to return to Legacy Canyon once she’d graduated.
She’d even tried to save her marriage after the first time he’d cheated instead of walking away.
Her grandfather gave her hand a squeeze. “Glad you’re sittin’ by me,” he whispered.
“Me, too.” Kristen pretended the tears that prickled and threatened to make her mascara run were caused by her happiness for Wyatt and Madi.
Instead, the sensation of the skeletal bones of her grandfather’s fingers beneath hers created a fear that she was adrift, flailing, and would continue to be a disappointment to her family, especially after she finally found the guts to tell them that she’d divorced Roy.
Worse, her grandfather fought cancer daily, which proved that fate was unfair and cruel.
Why had the universe given cancer to the best man there was?
She returned his gentle squeeze and wished she’d visited sooner.
Her grandfather had always been her buoy in the storm, but she couldn’t bur den him with her erratic emotions or her news.
Not when he was frailer than he’d been at Christmas, a secret he’d kept from her.
Their weekly video calls hadn’t shown that his weight had fallen below one hundred and thirty pounds.
He was a mere shell of the larger-than-life, six-foot-six man of her childhood.
He’d told the family last January the cancer had made its return, which was one reason Madi and Wyatt had married seven months after realizing they were soulmates.
Her grandfather had begun a new treatment, but no one knew exactly how much time he had left, and if he knew, he wasn’t saying.
The ceremony ended, and after the requisite photographs—at least Roy wouldn’t be in those—Kristen took her spot at the family table during the reception.
“Got someone I want to you to meet,” her grandfather said once the dinner service finished and the speeches ended. He’d insisted Kristen sit next to him as she was the one family member he never saw in person. “I think you’ll like him. You’d have met him already if you’d visited more often.”
His simple statement of fact held no condemnation, just sadness. Kristen didn’t have an excuse, so she didn’t offer one, just an apology. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I miss you is all.”
“Same.” She wiped back tears Roy would have blamed on hormones rather than legitimize her feelings.
In hindsight, maybe she should have come home rather than marry Roy.
But back then, she’d been in love. Moving to Chicago also kept her far from her mother, who’d not wanted her to be a vet or move from Texas.
“Penny for your thoughts,” her grandfather said.
“Just thinking of the ranch and how it’s strange that Wyatt’s back.”
She used to be able to say that Wyatt was also an outlier for not living on the ranch, but once he’d adopted the boys, Wyatt had forsaken Denver.
After Madi had met Wyatt, she’d left Boston for good.
Together they’d built a house on ten acres of land deeded for their use from the Larrabee Ranch Trust. With over one hundred thousand acres, the working cattle ranch still had plenty of space, especially since her grandfather had his own plot of land with twenty thousand acres, acres not in the family trust but his personal one, a point of contention between her grandfather and Kristen’s dad.
“I don’t think the ranch really leaves you,” her grandfather said.
“Maybe not,” Kristen murmured, for it was easier to agree than wonder if he was correct.
Long ago, she’d vowed to run the ranch, until her father had told her ranching was “men’s work.
” Being a veterinarian was as close to animals as she was going to get, and suburban Chicago and her postage stamp–sized yard was as different from the wide, open skies of Texas as one could get.