Chapter Twenty-One
Runa
It was exactly how I remembered it.
But also changed.
The three-story log-cabin-style home I’d grown up in had been large. This place was massive. My grandfather had clearly added on over the years.
For what, I had no idea.
“Damn,” York said, looking over at me.
“It’s bigger than it used to be.”
“Very rustic,” York said as I stuck the key in the lock and pushed the heavy wooden door open.
It was an expansive space full of windows, exposed wood walls, and giant brick fireplaces.
Like with Gary’s office, there was no shortage of western art, head mounts, and leather, but there were warmer touches to soften the masculine vibe of the place—warm, aged copper cabinet pulls, lush rugs, and large indoor plants.
All of them still alive. And the house itself was spotless.
So someone was clearly still around to keep the place up.
I think Greg might have mentioned something about how the will had stipulations for the home and ranch staff, but it was all too blurry to remember clearly.
“Mama! Look!” Denny called, making me jump and walk over to where she was standing at the doors to the back porch.
“What, munchkin?”
“Over there!”
Sure enough, far in the distance, three bison were grazing beyond the fence of the ranch.
“How many acres is this?” York asked.
“Twenty-five-hundred.”
“Damn. Over there, is that the cattle?” he asked, gesturing toward the left.
“Yeah.” But the herd looked much smaller than it had once been. I guess there was no need to go through the usual yearly breeding program, if the money from the ranch now came from minerals.
“Can we go see them?” Denny asked.
“Sure,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.
“How about I take you out there to look at them?” York asked. “So Mommy can have a few minutes to walk around the house.”
“Okay!”
“Do I need to worry about any… you know?” he asked, glancing up at the heads on the wall.
“There’s a fence to keep most things out. It butts up to the cattle fence.”
“Alright then. We’ll be back then,” he said as Denny set down all her toys but one. “You okay?” he whispered to me.
Not remotely.
But I nodded anyway.
I hadn’t expected to feel so nostalgic, being back.
As I walked through the familiar house—and its new additions—I was overwhelmed with the onslaught of memories and the emotions tied to them.
Christmas mornings with the warm twinkle lights and multicolored presents under the tree.
Then three days later, getting dragged away from that tree to get whipped for breaking my new bike by riding it down a hill he’d warned me not to go down.
The scarred dining table where I’d enjoyed many lovely Thanksgiving dinners. But also where I’d been slapped hard for back-talking my grandfather about my curfew.
Touring all the old spaces was the epitome of bittersweet.
And I couldn’t help but let myself wonder what (if anything) might have been different if I returned as an adult.
Would he have been kinder? With the way Greg said he gushed about Denali, would he have treated her with the gentleness all kids deserve?
I made my way up the back steps and down the hall to my own bedroom.
It was a time capsule.
All my old posters were on the wall. My couple of stuffed animals from my childhood were on the bed. My clothes were in the closets.
I took my time in there, letting the memories surface, feeling them, then releasing.
It was as I was exiting that I saw the door across the hall ajar.
It’d always been a guest room.
But the bright pink color had my curiosity piqued.
Moving across, I pushed the door open… and walked into a little girl’s bedroom.
It was bubblegum sweet with the pink walls, the white curtains with little pink and yellow flowers, the pink and yellow bedspread on the four-poster bed.
There was a small white table with a pile of coloring books, crayons, and markers. Near that was a bookshelf with books. A toy chest was closed and I imagined there would be toys to be found in there.
On the wall over the bed were big white letters.
D-E-N-A-L-I.
Tears pricked my eyes as I walked over toward the bed.
I reached for the framed picture on the nightstand to find me looking down at myself. I was sitting on a park bench at a park near my apartment in Philly, holding a blanket-wrapped newborn Denali.
Tears pricked my eyes.
And it was just a moment before they were pouring.
That was where York found me sometime later, coming in and crouching before me.
Reaching out, he grabbed my legs and squeezed.
“This was sweet.”
“Yeah,” I said between cries.
“She will love this.”
I nodded, pressing my heels to my eyes to try to stop the flow.
“It’s okay to grieve, babe. Your loss. Denali’s loss. Your conflicted feelings about it all.”
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to his.
“He wanted to meet her so much.”
He’d known about her for years. I imagined this room had once been a nursery, but had evolved as she got older.
“He was having me followed.”
I reached for the picture, holding it out to him as I sniffled.
“The fuck?”
“Greg told me, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of Denny. He told me he kept an eye. I think… I think those guys… I think they were hired by my grandfather.”
“To kill you?”
“No. To get pictures like this,” I said, waving at it.
York’s brows pinched. “Is it possible there were different sets of guys?”
“No. No, I saw them too often to be mistaken. The guys who were apparently just taking pictures of me in Philly are the same ones that tried to kill me for the past couple of years.”
York moved to sit on the bed beside me.
“Who is in line beneath you to inherit?”
Greg’s words sloshed around in my mind.
“No one. Denali. Then no one.”
“Hm.”
“Yeah.” I sucked in a steady breath. “Where’s Denny?”
“Set her up in the library. There were a bunch of those kid encyclopedias. She’s very excited about the mammals, sea creatures, and reptile ones. Should keep her busy for a little bit. I told her just to call us if she needs us. Don’t want her getting lost.”
“Thanks. I don’t want her seeing me cry in here. This should be special for her, no matter how complicated my feelings are about being here. And about my grandfather in general.”
“No matter what went down, I feel like it says something that he did this for her. And that he left everything for the two of you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I kind of regret not getting back in touch. I was going to, you know.”
“Were you?”
“I was desperate enough to head out this way. That’s why I was in Montana. I was trying to talk myself into traveling down here. After the attack, I just fled.”
“Timeline-wise, babe, I don’t think you would have caught your grandfather before he passed anyway.”
“No, you’re right.” I exhaled hard. “I’ll just have to work through that regret, I guess.”
“I’m here anytime you want to talk about it.”
I leaned my head into his arm, then felt it slide around me before he leaned down to press a kiss to my temple.
“I know,” I agreed.
“So, what now?” he asked.
That was a good question.
“Um. I don’t know. I guess we could stay here tonight. Gary said he would be ready for me anytime. I can hopefully get my mind together by tomorrow.”
“Or the next day. We’re not in a big rush. Though, I would feel better if I had a weapon around here.”
“For the animals?”
“For anything.”
“I have a gun in my room.”
“You have a gun in your adolescent bedroom?”
“Yeah. There’s a massive gun safe hidden behind a cabinet, too. You can have your choice.”
“Well, then, I see no reason for us not to settle in for a few days. Let you get your head on right. Feel whatever you have to feel. Make the decisions you need to. Then we can go from there.”
“Mommy? Daddy?”
Denny’s voice had that slight worried edge, making both of us jump up and move toward the door.
“Let’s save this for later,” I said, meaning the bedroom.
We kind of drifted through the rest of the day, checking out the house, the grounds, eating leftovers from the diner for dinner, then showing Denny her special bedroom.
I answered about a million questions about the grandfather she never got to meet, about why she hadn’t met him, about what it was like to grow up on the ranch.
Eventually, she exhausted herself playing with her new toys and had us put her to bed in her new bedroom, but we had to agree to sleep in my old bedroom across the hall.
After she was asleep, I took York to the gun safe and watched his jaw go slack as he turned to face me.
“Was your grandfather some secret drug dealer? The fuck he need this many guns for?”
“I know. It’s crazy. But it was his favorite thing to treat himself to.”
He chose a gun and a waist holster to wear under his shirt around the house.
Then, after locking down the house for the night, we finally dropped onto the couch with cups of steaming instant coffee.
“The gun safe was impressive. The food storage was fucking insane.”
He wasn’t wrong about that.
My grandfather wasn’t paranoid, per se. But he liked being prepared.
Which meant there was a whole temperature-controlled room full of freeze dried and vacuum-sealed food stores that would basically be good for the next thirty years.
That was where we’d managed to find some instant coffee, sugar, and freeze-dried milk.
I’d also taken out a tin of buttermilk pancake mix, maple syrup, and freeze-dried strawberries to make a somewhat serviceable breakfast in the morning.
“Yeah, we got shipments a few times a year to add to it. There are whole freeze dried meals, meats, veg, fruit, you name it. We could survive the apocalypse here. Though, the end times without fresh coffee doesn’t feel worth it,” I said, wrinkling my nose at my instant coffee.
“Denali is gonna get a kick out of the freeze-dried candy.”
“Yeah. She’s been so good about all this.”
“A plane full of toys, chicken tenders and fries for lunch and dinner, bison, cattle, and a new room full of goodies? She’s having a blast.”
That was true.
This was heavy for me.
For her, she had a lot of fun new experiences.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked.
“Actually,” I said, putting my mug down, then taking his and setting it aside, “the last thing I want to do is talk.”
I moved over to straddle him, wrapping my arms around his neck as his went around my waist, holding me close.
“Sounds good to me,” he said before my lips claimed his.