Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Sedona
I grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles ache. The sedan hums over the gravel, tires kicking up little clouds of dust that hang in the air like grit in my lungs.
My stomach flips, and I swear it’s not entirely from the smell of the pasture. My chest heaves, tense with adrenaline and anger and frustration so tight I can’t separate one from the other.
I pull onto the shoulder, tires crunching over dirt, and throw the car into park. The engine hums steady beneath my hands. I lean forward, pressing my forehead to the wheel, and that’s when it hits me.
I shove the door open before I heave, bile burning the back of my throat. I throw up into the grass.
I can’t stop the tremor that rattles through my hands and my jaw.
I sit back, taking a shaky breath, fingers brushing against the wheel. My eyes sting, and I drag a hand down my face.
I’m angry. Angry at the town for needing me like this, angry at myself for showing up when I didn’t want to, angry at Cole for being the last straw.
Angry at the office, dusty and half-empty, the clutter of paperwork and everything my father left behind. I’ve been staring at that office all morning, thinking I could clean it, sell it, and disappear.
I could vanish, leave the past and everyone in it. I should.
Tex’s call shattered that thought like a bullet through glass. My father’s place, this town, the Carson ranch—everybody relying on me because of what Dad built, because of what I inherited without asking.
I didn’t even pause to weigh the cost of showing up. I just drove, adrenaline first, common sense a whisper behind me.
I lean my head back against the headrest and close my eyes, trying not to let the tide of emotion swallow me. I’m tired, so damn tired.
Tired of being the daughter everyone needs, tired of being pulled into fights I never wanted, tired of being in a town that seems to bend me into something I’m not supposed to be.
And yet… even with every fiber of me screaming to leave, a part of me nudges, reminding me.
If I hadn’t gotten here, if I hadn’t known what to do, the Carsons could have lost more than a few animals. Copper Creek wouldn’t have survived this disaster alone.
I press my palms to the wheel, inhale through my teeth. I taste the bile, the dirt, the sweat from the heat of the day.
I can’t stay too long, but I can’t leave. I shouldn’t. And the realization hits me: it isn’t about me. It’s about the people and the animals relying on me.
It’s about the legacy of a man who made this town what it is, and how fast it can crumble without someone standing there to catch it.
The office. Cole. The town. The mess. I think about everything I want to run from, everything I’ve been dragging around in my chest, and I feel it clawing at me, pressing into my ribs.
I could pack up the office, the files, and drive until the horizon swallows me, and no one would even notice for days. The freedom is a pulse I want to reach for, the pull of the open road tempting as a siren.
In New York, I have a different life. I have a job I love. I have my friends.
In New York, there’s no Billy. No one hates me there.
The engine turns over with a groan, and I put the sedan in drive, tires crunching over the gravel as I pull away from Copper Creek Ranch—away from the stench of sickness and the ghost of Billy’s cold stare.
The road unfurls before me, a gray ribbon cutting through the green of the valley, but all I can see in my mind is the bloated body of a cow, the panic in Tex’s eyes, the sheer, unadulterated loathing rolling off Billy in waves.
He hates me. The thought isn’t a new one, but seeing it confirmed, feeling it in the air between us like a physical force, is a different kind of pain.
It’s a sharp, clean slice, straight through the scar tissue I’d built up over the years. I saved his herd, and he looked at me like I was a snake he’d found in his boot.
I press the accelerator, the landscape blurring into patches of pine and pasture. Every fence post, every rolling hill, is a memory I don’t want.
The drive home is short, but it feels endless, each mile a countdown to a confrontation with a ghost.
I pull into the driveway, killing the engine. The silence that rushes in is deafening. The house sits there, a tired, familiar structure with peeling white paint and a porch swing that still lists slightly to the left, just as it always has.
It’s Dad’s house. Not my house. Never my house.
His voice comes to me, thin and reedy over the phone line, static crackling between New York and Prairie Pine. It’s one of the last times we spoke.
“Sedona,” he says, using that soft tone that always turns me into a little girl again. But something is off. The edges of his voice are worn down. Frayed.
“Dad? You okay? You sound tired.” I’m standing in my tiny Manhattan apartment, staring at a brick wall, feeling a million miles away from home.
He makes a sound that is half laugh, half sigh. “Just… the town, you know. Things are changing. People are leaving. The young ones, they all want to run.” He pauses, and I hear him breathing. Shallow. Uneven. “I miss you, kiddo. The clinic feels empty without you.”
My chest tightens. “I’m happy here, Dad. You know that. My work—”
“I know,” he cuts in, but there is no fight left in his voice. Just something hollow. “I just worry. About you. About me. About this place. Feels like I’m holding onto sand and it’s all just slipping through my fingers.”
I want to reach through the phone. I want to shake him. I want to tell him to fight harder, to be the strong, unbreakable man I have built my whole life around.
But I don’t.
Instead, I change the subject. I ask about the new colt that was born last week, and he lets me. We talk for another ten minutes about nothing at all, while everything that matters sits between us.
He sounds so small.
And I do nothing.
After the call, I hang up and go back to my life.
Now he’s gone. The sand has slipped through his fingers, and I’m left here, standing in the empty space where he used to be. There’s nothing for me in this town. Only ghosts and the man who hates me for leaving them.
A hot tear tracks a path down my cheek, and I angrily wipe it away with the back of my hand. I’m not going to cry. Not here. Not for him.
A soft knock on the driver’s side window makes me jump. I turn, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Clara’s face is peering in, her brow furrowed with concern. I unlock the door with a fumble, the mechanism clicking open in the quiet afternoon.
She pulls the door open and crouches beside me, bringing her face level with mine. “Sedona? Honey, are you okay?”
A sob rips out of my throat, raw and painful.
“No,” I choke out, shaking my head. “I’m not okay.
” The words tumble out in a torrent of guilt and shame.
“I feel so guilty, Clara. I missed his memorial. At The Dusty Boot. I just… I couldn’t go in there.
I sat in the car like a coward while everyone else…
God, what kind of daughter does that? It’s horrible. ”
Her hand is warm on my shoulder. “It’s not horrible, Sedona. You’re grieving.”
“I’m not just grieving,” I ramble on, the words spilling out faster than I can stop them. “I just came from the Carson ranch. Their cattle… Tex called, and it was a disaster. They were dying, Clara. I had to… I had to do things…”
I shudder, the image of a bloated cow’s stomach flashing behind my eyes.
“And Billy was there. He barely looked at me. He hates me. I can feel it. It’s like this… this wall of ice. And the whole town probably knows by now. They know I left. They know I abandoned my dad, and now I’m back, and they all hate me. I can feel them watching me, judging me.”
Clara’s expression softens with a sympathy so profound it almost hurts to look at. She reaches out with her free hand, gently wiping at the tears I didn’t even realize were still streaming down my cheeks.
“Shhh. Breathe. Nobody hates you.”
“They do,” I insist, my voice a pathetic whisper.
She lets me cry for another moment, her hand a comforting presence. Then she asks the question that slices through everything, simple and direct.
“We’re not going back to New York, are we?”
I look at her, at my best friend who dropped everything to come here with me, and I can’t lie. Not to her.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, the admission feeling like a defeat. “I really don’t know.”
Clara nods, as if that’s the answer she expected. She stands up, holding a hand out to me. “Come on. Let’s go inside. You can’t make a decision sitting here.”
I let her pull me to my feet. My legs feel unsteady, like they might give out. I follow her up the porch steps and into the house.
The first thing I notice is the floor. It’s clean. The piles of mail and old newspapers that had been accumulating on the entryway table are gone, stacked into neat piles.
The dust that had coated some of the surfaces has been wiped away. It still smells like my dad, like old books and his specific brand of coffee, but underneath it is the scent of lemon cleaner.
“Wow,” I say, my voice hoarse. “You… you cleaned.”
Clara shrugs, a faint blush on her cheeks. “I had to do something. Just to keep busy, you know? It was either this or start reorganizing your father’s office, and I thought that might be crossing a line.”
I nod, my throat too tight to speak. Her small act of kindness is more overwhelming than the cattle crisis, more painful than Billy’s hatred.
I sink onto the couch, the worn cushions familiar against my back.
“Where’s Cole?” I ask, the question feeling distant, like it belongs to another person, another life.
Clara pauses, her back to me as she fusses with a pillow on the armchair.
“Oh. He left,” she says, her voice a little too casual. “Got another call from the office. Said it couldn’t wait. He was sorry to go, but he had to get back to the city.”