Epilogue
DAISY
Four Weeks Later
The cemetery gates are propped open when we pull up. I squint against the afternoon sun as I climb out of the truck with flowers in my arms. I’ve brought pink peonies as big as my fist, and end of season deep purple irises I cut from Jessamine’s bed by the south fence.
Bringing the bouquet to my nose, I inhale the combination of sweet and woody fragrances from the blooms as Wyatt comes around the front of the cab, his hand finding the small of my back.
“Ready?”
“No.” I glance up at him as I bump my shoulder into his arm. “Let’s go anyway.”
We’re ten feet up the path when his phone rings.
He pulls it out of his back pocket, and I see the screen at the same time he does.
Sheriff’s Office.
His jaw clenches.
“You take it.” I look toward the path that leads to my dad’s plot before shifting my gaze back to Wyatt. “I need to do this part on my own anyway.”
He shakes his head, his phone still ringing in his hand. “Daisy, I—”
“I mean it.” I reach out, my head tilting to one side as I brush the back of my fingers across his cheekbone. “Take the call, Wyatt.”
And after a beat, he nods once and steps away, swiping to answer. “Hartley speakin’.”
He gives me his back as he retreats toward the truck, and I continue on down the path, my eyes landing slowly on Dad’s final resting place.
The granite headstone is simple, with his name and two dates beneath, and not nearly enough time between them. A young cottonwood stands directly behind it, leaves catching the breeze in soft, dry whispers.
I crouch and lay the peonies and irises across the base of the stone, the deep pink and purple settling into the grass the way I hoped they would, before sitting back on my heels.
“Hi, Dad.”
The cottonwood rustles above me, and the sound is the closest thing to company I’m going to get out here.
“I should have come sooner. I know. You don’t have to say it.”
The wind shifts, and a strand of hair lifts off my shoulder. I tuck it behind my ear as a frown forms on my brow.
“But I couldn’t just show up with nothing in my hands. You didn’t raise me to bring you wildflowers and a sad little speech and call it a visit.”
I run my thumb along the carved edge of the T in his name.
“I have something for you now.”
The words come out on the barest whisper as the weight of that sinks in.
I did what I came here to do.
A sound that’s half a laugh, half a sob slips out of me before I can stop it, because I was right.
I was right.
And you don’t get to be right about your father’s murder without it tasting sweet and rotten in the same breath.
“Dad.” I’m smiling, but there are tears tracking down my cheeks, and my heart feels like it might beat out of my chest. “Dad, I got him.”
I press my palm flat against the granite.
“I got him.” Softer this time, and I inhale through my nose, holding it for a beat before blowing out through my mouth.
“The whole thing, every dirty piece of it, the shell companies, the bank accounts, the call that kept Wyatt back that morning. All of it. Marcus Donnelly is going to rot in prison for the rest of his natural life.”
The smile breaks halfway through and I have to drop my chin and breathe.
Because the worst part is, I only got to do this because he didn’t.
“We should have done this together. Instead I cracked it alone, because the man who killed you made sure I had to.”
And there’s no version of this where I get to feel just one thing about it.
I’m proud. I’m proud, Dad. And I’m broken all the way down to my soul that you had to die to make me the woman who could finish it.
I press the heel of my hand to my mouth for a long moment, then drop it as the cottonwood moves above me.
“I keep waiting for the missing-you to ease up now that I’m here, and it’s doing the opposite. I miss you more, Dad. Not less. But it’s better, somehow.” I frown, shaking my head. “I don’t know how to explain that.”
Then I rub my thumb against my fingertips, fidgeting because it’s that or break apart.
“You’d say it’s supposed to hurt more. That the ache is just proof I came to the right place.” I huff a small breath through my nose. “You always had a line ready, didn’t you?”
The wind pulls at the petals of the peonies and I reach out to settle them.
“I want you to know something.” My voice has dropped now. “I felt you in that kitchen. When Marcus was leaving.”
I blink hard against the warmth gathering at the corners of my eyes.
“I had no plan. He was walking out, Stan had a gun on me, and my brain just… stopped. And then I heard you. ‘Keep him here. Keep him talkin’. Wyatt is comin’, angel.’ Plain as if you were standing behind my chair. I’d swear it on a stack of bibles in any courtroom in this country.”
The cottonwood is moving steadily now, leaves catching the light.
“So I did what you said. I sat across the table from the man who killed you and I let him tell me how he did it, because you told me Wyatt was on his way. And he was.”
I sniff once, hard, then swallow past the lump in my throat.
“You saved my life, Dad. From wherever you are. You saved me.”
Silent tears stream down my cheeks, landing on the grass beneath me. The leaves of the cottonwood rustle and whisper above me while the sun beams down until, after a moment, I drag the back of my wrist across my cheek.
The corner of my mouth tugs upward despite the wet on my face. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you something else, and I think the easiest way is to just say it.”
I draw a breath.
“I’m not going home. Not to Denver. There isn’t anything there for me, and there’s everything here. I’m staying at Glacier Ridge.”
Then I pause before finishing. “With Wyatt. He’s been clearing out half his office for me all week, putting a second desk by the window.” I huff a laugh. “Says he wants me where he can see me when he’s meant to be doing the books.”
I tilt my head at the granite, my eyes tracing his name slowly, almost daring him to react.
“And before you start, I am twenty-six years old, kneeling in a cemetery, telling my dead father about my love life. The least you can do is pretend to be surprised.”
I shake my head, smiling through the tears.
“You’re insufferable, you really are.”
Behind me, gravel shifts under boots I’d know anywhere, and I scrub the palms of my hands down my face before I look up to find Wyatt at my left shoulder with his hat in his hands. He’s not looking at the headstone. He’s looking at me.
“What’d he say?”
His jaw works once. “He’s solid on Marcus. Solid on Stan. Your recording of their confession will hold up. That’s trial-ready. Both of them are looking at the rest of their lives behind bars.”
The weight that’s been on my chest this last month suddenly feels a whole lot lighter as I nod. “Good.”
“Mm.” Wyatt grunts then, without preamble, “But Silas walks.”
I push slowly to my feet, the earth beneath me suddenly feeling more than a little unsteady.
“What?”
I stare at him blankly, waiting for his words to make sense.
“The minutes where Silas is mentioned are gone.” Wyatt’s voice has gone flat. “Doyle says the file came back patchy when the techs pulled it off your phone.”
“What the hell—”
“The embezzlement and murder confessions are clear as day. But his arrangement with Marcus, paying him to force ranchers out, every second that ties Silas Blackwood to any crimes. None of that audio survived.”
I stare at him, blink once before frowning deeply. “The murder confessions held?”
“Mm-hm.”
“And the Silas pieces didn’t.” It’s a statement, not a question.
“That’s what he said.”
A long beat passes between us.
“Wyatt, Silas’s involvement was woven throughout the whole conversation. Almost right from the beginning.”
He sighs. “I know.”
“Which means the only parts that could bury Silas just… what? Disappeared?”
“That’s what he said.”
The cottonwood is moving above us, but all I can hear is the sound of my pulse in my ears.
I look down at the peonies and the irises across the base of my father’s stone, willing my heart to slow to a slower pace. I don’t have proof. I have a feeling, and that feeling is making my stomach churn.
“Doyle’s kicking the financial side up to the AG in Helena.” Wyatt’s hat turns once in his hands. “Said it might take years.”
“Years?”
“Mm.”
“Or never.”
“Mm-hm.”
I look at him and just voice the question I know we’re both thinking. “How clean is Doyle?”
His eyes hold mine. “I’ve known him my whole life. I’d have said clean.”
“And now?”
He exhales heavily through his nose, frustration clear on his face. “Now I’m askin’ the same goddamn question.”
The words linger in the space between us as the sun beams down from overhead.
There’s a version of this where I drive home and let it eat me alive. Where I pour a glass of wine, call Glen, and tell him the story I came back to chase has slipped through my fingers.
There’s a version of this where Silas Blackwood wins.
That version is not happening.
I crouch back down before I can think about it.
“Marcus and Stan will get what they deserve, but Silas Blackwood walks. If you were listening just now, you’ll know the local sheriff’s office had what resembles a tragic accident with my recording.”
I huff a dark laugh and shake my head.
“So you’re going to love what I’m about to say next.”
The cottonwood has stopped rustling, and the cemetery has gone still and silent.
“You used to tell me the truth had a way of surfacing if you gave it enough time.”
My fingertip finds the dash between his dates, the small carved line that holds his whole life on it.
“Well, surface it has, Dad. Most of it, anyway. The rest of it—Silas Blackwood and his dirty deeds—I’ll surface them myself.”
My hand presses flat to the granite again.
The wind moves the cottonwood again, longer this time, like a held breath letting go.
“I don’t quit a story, Dad. You taught me that.”
Wyatt steps closer, and then he’s lowering himself down beside me, the brim of his hat in one hand and the other settling flat against the small of my back. His knee brushes mine in the grass.
He doesn’t speak right away. Just looks at the granite. The peonies. My dad’s name carved into stone two feet from his face.
When he does speak, his voice is rough at the edges in a way I haven’t heard before.
“Tom.”
That’s all he gives him for a long beat.
His hand on my back hasn’t moved. I can feel the breath he’s gathering through it.
“Three years I’ve been comin’ here. Mostly to see Dad. Mostly with something on my chest I couldn’t say at the house.” He swallows. “I haven’t been able to say this part to you. Not once. Till now.”
The cottonwood is quiet above us.
“You should be the one standin’ here, Tom. Not me.”
His hand tightens once against my back.
“I know what Marcus did. I know he kept me back from that truck deliberately. I’ve thought on that, and most days I can carry it. What I can’t carry is the version where you’re not standin’ here with your daughter where you’re supposed to be.”
I stop breathing.
“She lost three years of you. Three years where you should’ve been at her shoulder. Sunday dinners. Bad jokes. Rides up the ridge.”
A long breath in. A long breath out.
“You told me somethin’ that Christmas, Tom. Said she wasn’t a girl to date. That she’s the girl a man marries. Said she needed to chase those big city dreams, and not to be the thing that stopped her.”
The cottonwood shifts in the breeze above us.
“I held that to the letter, Tom, these last six years.”
Six years that I read as rejection.
His hand curls in against my hip.
“She’s twenty-six now. Done the chasin’ you knew she’d do, and came home under her own steam. I’m not the thing stoppin’ her. Never was gonna be.”
My eyes flood without permission as I tug my bottom lip between my teeth.
“What I can do is be the man who’s here. The one she counts on when the next thing comes. I don’t deserve the seat you’d be sittin’ in. But I’ll fill it the best I’m able, every day she lets me.”
His thumb moves once against the curve of my hip.
“That’s my word, Tom. To you and to her. Both of you, now.”
The cottonwood stirs once, slow and full.
“Miss you.”
Those two words say everything.
I have not breathed or blinked. When I make myself look at him, his eyes are glassy but clear, and I see for the first time what he has been carrying.
Not for himself.
For me.
I press my forehead against his shoulder for one breath, gathering myself, and then I push to my feet and hold a hand out to him.
He takes it and stands. His hat goes back on his head with one practiced motion, and then both his arms come around me, and I tip my chin up to find him.
The afternoon sun cuts across his face as his thumb brushes my jaw with a feather-light touch.
“I want it on the record,” he says quietly. “In front of Tom. Right here on this ground.”
My heart stalls inside my chest. “What?”
“That I’m yours, Daisy.”
His thumb brushes my jaw again.
“Plain as I can put it. I’m yours. And I wanted your dad to hear me say it before another minute of my life went by.”
The tears come hot and fast and I don’t fight them.
“Wyatt Hartley, you picked one hell of a place to propose.”
The corner of his mouth pulls as he murmurs low in his chest, “That wasn’t a proposal.”
I quirk a brow as a smile lifts my lips. “No?”
“Daisy-girl, when I propose, you’ll know.”
He bends his head and presses his mouth to my forehead, slow, and holds it there long enough that I feel my pulse settle against his lips. When he straightens, his hand finds the back of my neck. Then he tips his forehead against mine as I close my eyes.
Three years ago I stood at this same graveside and couldn’t feel a thing.
Now, I feel everything.
And my dad, from wherever he is, finds me with the words he never got to send.
Bigger than the sky, angel.
* * *