Chapter Nineteen
After his late-night conversation with Blake, Brett wanted to make sure that their dad gave their mom’s ring to his younger brother instead of holding on to it for him. So after tending to the cattle the next morning, he made the drive into Willow Creek.
He found his dad alone in the building that had once been a cigar shop.
Maci must have been working from home after her late night with his brother.
Well, his dad wasn’t completely alone; Smokey, the kitten, lay upside down on his desk, her eyes rolled back in her head with just a touch of the green showing.
He chuckled. “Someone’s asleep on the job already,” he said.
His dad rubbed the little furry belly that faced him. “Yeah, she had a wild night shredding the toilet paper roll, so she had to take a nap,” he said. Then he pointed at Brett. “Looks like you had a wild night, too, son.”
Brett chuckled. “I wasn’t shredding a toilet paper roll.”
“That’s good,” Bob said with a smile that quickly slid away again. “Looks like you weren’t sleeping, though.”
“You look a little tired yourself,” Brett replied with concern. He suspected that it wasn’t just the kitten’s antics that had kept his father awake.
Bob yawned and nodded. “Yes, I’m getting old.”
Brett shook his head. “No, Dad. You’re not old. Now, Grandpa…”
Bob laughed. “Don’t let him hear you say that. Even though we just celebrated his eighty-first birthday, he doesn’t seem a day older to me than he ever did.”
“He was always Old Man Lemmon,” Brett said, recalling his childhood in Willow Creek.
“Thanks to Sadie,” Bob said.
“Thanks to Sadie is why he doesn’t seem to be aging,” Brett said. “They seem really happy.” So was it possible to survive loss and mend a broken heart enough that it could love again?
Obviously, it had been possible for Lem and Sadie. But his dad looked every bit as lonely and tired as he had since his wife had died. Then he petted the kitten again and a smile curved his lips. “Yeah, they are very happy,” Bob agreed. “And I’m happy for them.”
“What about you?” Brett asked.
Bob tensed. “What do you mean?”
“Are you happy, Dad?”
Bob’s head bobbed in a quick, almost nervous nod. “Of course. Of course, I am.”
“Really?” Brett was skeptical.
“Yeah, I have a beautiful new granddaughter,” he said. “And a new daughter-in-law, and soon I will have a wonderful son-in-law, too. All of the family, really, is doing so well.”
“That’s the family,” Brett pointed out. “What about you?”
Bob’s face flushed with color, and he narrowed his eyes as he stared across his desk at Brett. “What’s going on with you? With all these questions?”
Brett sighed. “I just worry about you,” he admitted. “You’ve been so sad since Mom died.”
His dad nodded. “Yes, I have been. But it’s getting better. It actually has really helped being back in Willow Creek and getting close to my family again.”
“We would have never stopped being close if you had let us know what was going on with Mom,” Brett said.
“I know that,” Bob said. “But to tell you about her illness…” He sighed. “It wasn’t my decision to make.”
“So you would have reached out had Mom let you?”
Bob sighed now. “I’m not blaming your mother. And I actually don’t know what I would have done then. Now… I think a little differently.”
“If you knew how it would end, would you have done it all over again?”
Bob’s forehead furrowed with confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“Falling for Mom, only to lose her like you did, would you do it over again if you’d known?”
Bob shuddered. “Losing her was hard. But I would still do it even if just to have you and your brothers and sister.”
Not for the love? That was a question that Brett couldn’t bring himself to ask; it was too personal, even for a child to ask a parent.
“You’re in a strange mood today,” Bob said. “Did you drive all the way into town to ask me all these philosophical questions?”
Brett chuckled. “No. I didn’t even know I would ask them.” But he couldn’t help wondering what his dad thought now of marriage and loss. Of the risk…
“So why did you make the trip?”
“I came to talk to you about Mom’s engagement ring.”
Bob gasped, his dark eyes going wide. “You want her ring? I didn’t even know you were seeing anyone.”
“I’m not.” But the woman he saw every time he closed his eyes popped into his mind again. Trish with her soft curls, her beautiful eyes and face.
“Then why do you want the ring?”
“I don’t want it,” Brett said. “I want you to know that you can give it to Blake—that he’s going to ask you for it.”
“Oh…” Bob nodded. “That makes sense.”
“More sense than me ever needing that ring,” he muttered.
“What? Why do you think that?”
Brett shrugged. “Marriage isn’t for me.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve seen too much suffering because of it,” he admitted. “You, Grandpa, Frank Dempsey…” He shook his head. “It’s just not worth it.”
Bob frowned. “I don’t agree.”
“Because of us, of me and my siblings, you feel the need to say that,” Brett said, and he was only partially teasing now.
“Love is scary,” Bob said. “It’s hard. But if you ever let yourself fall for someone, you would realize that it’s worth it.”
A sudden yearning in his chest, in his heart, took Brett by surprise.
But he shook his head. “No. Not for me.” Once again Trish popped into his mind.
“And it’s not fear. I made the decision long ago to focus only on the ranch.
Ranching is hard work, long hours, and I don’t want to split my time between it and a family.
And I don’t want my brothers’ relationships to suffer for the ranch.
So when Blake asks, you can give him the ring. ”
“You’re sure?” Bob asked. “You are the oldest, and your mother said before she passed that it should go to you.”
His mother had never really known him very well.
She hadn’t understood how hard it had been on him to move away from Willow Creek to the big city.
She’d never understood how badly he’d wanted to move back west. And she certainly hadn’t realized that he wasn’t the one who would carry on whatever family tradition she might have been hoping to start.
“I’m sure,” he said.
But in his head, along with the image of Trish, he heard a familiar voice whispering, “Liar…” But that voice wasn’t hers; it was his.
* * *
Trish wasn’t sure exactly why she’d chosen today to visit the cemetery, but she stood now at her father’s gravesite, staring down at the tombstone that Maci had chosen for him: Beloved father, uncle, friend and rancher.
Father had come first. Was that Maci’s choice? Or had it been yet another of his last wishes that, as executor of his estate, she had carried out for him?
Trish would have thought that he would put rancher first. Because of her mother’s lie, she’d believed that he’d put the ranch before her. But now she knew the truth.
“Ah, Dad, I am so very sorry,” she murmured.
“If I could have come to see you while you were in the hospital, I would have. But I was so afraid I was going to lose these babies if I did. I want to bring your grandchildren into the world, and I figured you would want that, too. I’ll raise them on the ranch like I wish I had been raised full-time. ”
The only way she could ensure that they were raised full-time in any one place was to have them on her own. No shared custody with anyone.
Maybe that was why she’d chosen today to visit his grave, after she and Brett had kissed on the hayride wagon. She’d needed to remind herself of how much her dad had suffered, of how much he’d lost when he’d divorced and only been granted limited visitation with her.
He’d nearly lost the ranch, too. He would have lost it had Brett Lemmon not helped rescue it just as he kept rescuing her. She’d gone over the books herself, so she knew that was a fact, not just Maci, Frankie and his brothers singing Brett’s praises.
He had sacrificed so much to keep the ranch going, and he’d vowed to always put it first in his life, before love and marriage and children. It might matter even more to him than it did to her. But like her, the other heirs cared about the Four Corners, too.
“You did the right thing, Dad, with your will,” she said. While her lawyer probably still doubted it, Trish had no more doubts, except that maybe the others deserved their share more than she did. “I will respect your wishes.”
In order to do that she had to make sure that she didn’t mess up the partnership she shared with Brett and the others. She had to make sure that it didn’t get awkward and weird because of her attraction to the bachelor cowboy.
She couldn’t kiss him again. And she had to keep her distance from him. Maybe she was mourning that decision almost as much as she was mourning her father.
“I miss you so much, Daddy,” she whispered, her throat burning with the sobs that were threatening to bubble up and out. Some tears slipped down her cheeks.
Then an arm slid around her shoulders and a tissue was pressed into her hand. Blinded by the tears, she hadn’t seen him walk up to join her, but she felt Brett in every tingly nerve ending.
“How do you always know?” she murmured.
“What?”
How did he always know when she needed him?
But she couldn’t ask him that question because then she would be admitting that she needed him. And she didn’t want to admit that, even to herself.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I swear I’m not stalking you. I came into town to talk to my dad, and any time that I come into Willow Creek, I stop by here to talk to Frank, too.”
“Of course you do.” Because he was good and loyal and kind. And it wasn’t fair, not to her heart that was fighting so hard to keep him out.
“I was surprised to see you here,” he said.
She sniffed back the tears that kept trailing down her face. “Because I’m a horrible daughter and you didn’t think I even knew where his gravesite was?”
His arm around her gave her a gentle squeeze. “No, Trish.”
“I had to ask Frankie,” she admitted. “I am a horrible daughter.”