Chapter 3
three
He crunched down on the candy, the last sweet bit giving way to the chocolate center. In prison, they hadn’t allowed Tootsie Pops. Too much potential for making weapons out of the sticks, they said. Six years without his vice had made him appreciate them more now.
He needed sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. Not with Jo in the cabin out back, close enough to feel like a pulse against his skin.
So… distraction was the next best thing.
The scraggly pine tree was still where he’d left it in the barn earlier that day.
He grabbed his coat off the hook by the door and shoved his feet into his boots without bothering with the laces.
Outside, the night air bit at his lungs.
The snow had stopped, but the cold had deepened, turning everything brittle.
The stars above were so clear they looked like ice crystals suspended in black glass.
The barn door groaned open, hinges complaining about the cold.
Inside was only marginally warmer, but at least the wind couldn’t reach him.
He flipped on the single bare bulb hanging from the rafters.
There wasn’t much in here yet. A few tools, some scavenged lumber, the tractor he’d bought used from a rancher down in Sula. And the tree.
He’d picked it up on impulse. A seven-foot Douglas fir, one side flattened from growing too close to a fence, the other sparse enough that he could count the branch clusters. It wasn’t much of a Christmas tree, but it was better than nothing.
Back in the main house, Walker dragged the tree through the door and stood it up in the corner of the living room where it would be most visible from the kitchen and the front door.
He found a five-gallon bucket, filled it with rocks from outside, and wedged the trunk into it. Not pretty, but it would hold.
The box of decorations had come from Wilder Way Antiques in town.
Mismatched glass balls, a few strands of lights that might or might not work, and a mess of tinsel that looked like it had been stored in someone’s basement since the Reagan administration.
It was probably stupid to put up a tree when Christmas was two days away.
He tested the lights. Half the strand worked; the other half was dead. Story of his life, really. He wrapped the functional part around the tree’s better side, then stepped back. It looks… sad. He hadn’t decorated a tree since Stella was seven years old.
The memory hit him with unexpected force—Stella standing on a kitchen chair in their old apartment, her small hands carefully placing a paper star she’d made at school on the highest branch she could reach. “Daddy, is it straight?” she’d asked, her face scrunched with concentration.
“Perfect, Stell-Bell,” he’d told her, even though it was tilting to one side. She’d beamed at him, gap-toothed and radiant.
They’d had a tradition: one new ornament every year. Something that represented what she was into that Christmas. A tiny ballet slipper when she was six. A plastic horse the year she was obsessed with riding lessons. A miniature book when she started reading chapter books on her own.
Walker rubbed a hand over his face. The stubble rasped against his palm.
Stella would be twenty now, all grown up.
Did she still put up a Christmas tree with her mother?
Did she still hang those childhood ornaments, or had they been relegated to a box in some storage unit, along with any memories of him?
He picked up a faded glass ball, red with gold flecks embedded in the surface.
Why was he even doing this? It wasn’t like Boone was some kid who’d wake up Christmas morning looking for presents. The man was approaching thirty, with a criminal record and a mother who didn’t recognize him half the time. What the hell was a Christmas tree going to do for him?
But Walker kept at it, hanging the glass ornaments one by one, spacing them as best he could to hide the tree’s worst gaps.
The truth was, it wasn’t really about Boone. Johanna would probably say it was about proving something to himself. That this place could be more than a halfway house or a work camp. That it could be a home.
He unwrapped a small wooden ornament, a hand-carved horse with a broken leg. Someone had glued it back on, not quite straight, and it reminded him of his daughter. His eyes stung as he hung it near the top where it would catch the light.
The floorboards creaked behind him, and he turned to find Johanna standing in the kitchen doorway, her hair loose around her shoulders, snowflakes melting in the dark strands.
She wore a thick sweater and jacket over what looked like pajama pants, her feet in wool socks.
Her cheeks were flushed, either from sleep or the cold.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.
“Never can.”
She nodded, looking past him to the half-decorated tree. “That’s like Charlie Brown’s tree.”
He stepped back from the tree and studied it. “It’s not that bad.”
“It’s worse,” she said, but there was a soft smile playing at her lips. She moved closer, arms crossed against the chill. “Why are you decorating a tree at two in the morning?”
He shrugged, turning back to the box of ornaments. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Most things do at two a.m. Mind if I help?”
He motioned to the box of decorations. “Have at it.”
Johanna picked up a tarnished silver bell and turned it in her fingers. The small ping as she flicked it echoed in the quiet room. “I used to love decorating the tree as a kid. My mom had these ancient glass ornaments from Germany. I wasn’t allowed to touch them until I was twelve.”
Of all the ways he’d imagined this night going, Johanna voluntarily spending time with him hadn’t been anywhere on his list.
They worked in silence for a while, each taking ornaments from the box and finding places on the tree. The quiet between them was comfortable in a way Walker hadn’t expected. They’d always had that, even in the worst times. The ability to be silent together without it feeling wrong.
“My brothers used to fight over who got to put the star on top,” Johanna said finally. “Mom had to start a rotation system.”
Walker glanced at her. “We never had a real tree. Army brat, you know. We moved too much. Dad brought home a plastic one when I was seven. Same one every year after that.”
“I remember you telling me that.” She hung a red glass ball near the middle of the tree. “But you never said if you liked Christmas or not.”
Walker thought about it. “Liked it fine. Just never saw the point of making a big deal out of it.”
“And now?” she asked, gesturing at the tree.
He didn’t have a good answer for that. He reached for another ornament, an ancient snowman with a carrot nose worn down to a nub. The weight of everything unsaid between them settled over the room, heavier than the silence had been.
Johanna moved to the side of the tree that faced the wall, adjusting ornaments there even though no one would see them. Her back was to him now. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back here,” she said quietly.
Walker’s hand stilled on the branch he was fixing. “To Montana?”
“To you.”
The word landed between them like a stone dropped in still water. Walker waited for the ripples to settle before he spoke. “I didn’t think you would, either.”
“So why did you call again?” She turned to face him, an ornament dangling from her hand. “After I turned you down the first time?”
“I told you. Boone needs help.”
She set the ornament down carefully. “There are other therapists, Walker.”
He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. The lights on the tree blurred slightly, green smudges in his vision. “None that would understand what this place is trying to be.”
“And what’s that?”
“A second chance.” The words came out rougher than he intended. “For men who’ve been told they don’t deserve one.”
Johanna was quiet for a long moment.
When she spoke again, her voice was careful, measured. “Why did you really start this place, Walker?”
He knew what she was asking. Not about Boone, not about the ranch itself, but about the deeper motivation. The thing that had driven him out here, away from everything familiar, to start over with nothing but a run-down property and a mountain of regret.
He considered lying. It would be easier. But he’d never lied to her before, and he wasn’t going to start now. “Because I couldn’t save him. Your husband.” His voice caught on the last word. “And I needed to save someone.”
Johanna inhaled sharply. Her eyes filled, but the tears didn’t fall. “That’s not fair,” she whispered. “You’re not responsible for what happened to Nick.”
“Aren’t I?” The guilt that Walker had carried for five years rose in his chest, familiar and sharp. “If I hadn’t been in the picture, maybe he wouldn’t have—”
“Don’t.” Johanna’s voice was tight. “Don’t you dare take that on yourself. You know that’s not how it works.”
Walker shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how it works. It matters what happened.”
She was crying now, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. “I blamed myself for years,” she admitted. “For leaving him, for meeting you. As if those things caused what happened.”
“Jo—”
“No, let me finish.” She wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “I left him long before he died. I left him, and then I met you, and then he—” Her voice broke. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t my fault.”
Walker felt something crack inside his chest. The walls he’d built around this particular pain started to give way. “I never should’ve touched you. You were my therapist, you’re ten years younger, you were married—”
“Stop.” She took a step closer and reached out, her fingertips just brushing his arm. “I wasn’t your therapist when we got involved. You transferred to Dr. Nelson. We did everything right.”
“Except we didn’t.” He stepped back, away from her touch. “We hurt someone. A good man.”