I can’t leave you alone.
So he’d left me with Jake.
It was a comfort and a curse to have him as my partner—he knew what he was doing and how to run the farm, that much was true. But I had a pretty good feeling that companionship was out of the question.
He’d left me with Jake. But Jake didn’t want to be left with me.
I swiped at my tears, reading the letter again, then once more. The farm had been left in our charge, and his final wish was that we take care of it.
So I’d make sure we did. I owed him that.
I owed him more than that.
This was my chance to prove myself, to right my wrong in leaving. Jake had accused me of avoiding coming home, and in so many ways, I had. I thought I had time when I didn’t. I hadn’t been ready to come back, but that shouldn’t have mattered.
All I had now was my purpose.
Determination filled me up like sunlight in a bottle—light and bright and warm. It was purpose I’d found.
And that seemed to make all the difference in the world.
I popped off the bed like a jack-in-the-box, ready to unpack and settle in. But then I remembered Jake hadn’t brought my bags up, and I’d flown right past them in my fury. So with my chin up and my back straight, I trotted down the stairs, hoping Kit could help me up. But she was nowhere to be found, and I wasn’t willing to leave the safety of the house—I didn’t know where Jake was, and the last thing I wanted him to know was that I needed help. So I stood there in front of those suitcases and gave myself a pep talk before grabbing one, hoisting it with all my strength, and propping it on my leg to ease a little weight as I struggled toward my room.
Up the stairs I went, huffing and puffing and trying not to scuff the walls. By the time I reached the top, my fingers burned and slackened. Another three stairs, and I might have gone tumbling down to the landing, which would have been an unmitigated disaster. I couldn’t exactly save the farm with two broken legs.
There was no way I’d be able to get the second one upstairs, so I prayed when I opened it that it was the one with the things I needed. And when I unzipped that glorious suitcase, my prayers were answered.
I unpacked my clothes and toiletries and my blessed rain boots. They’d been a silly purchase, honestly. The likelihood of me using them in New York were slim to none—I might have been laughed out of Manhattan if someone had spotted me on the subway in pink rainboots. The only place I’d ever wear them was here. But I saw them in a shop window in April a few years ago and stopped dead. I’d had to have them, even if just to stand up under the coat hooks for looks.
But their time had finally come.
The old dresser drawers groaned and hung, its handmade pieces uneven and warped from years of use.
It was a far cry from the slick IKEA drawers that lasted a grand total of one year before coming apart at the seams.
Reverse culture shock was what it was. Once upon a time, this had been my whole world. But now I had New York to compare it to.
I found I preferred it here. When I was sixteen, Pop and my aunt Annette decided that New York would provide more opportunity than Maravillo, population: tiny. I didn’t want to go at the time, but when I got to Manhattan, I fell in love like most people did. For the first time since my mom died, I had a surrogate mother in Annette, someone to guide me into womanhood.
I loved the city still, but here? Well, here was home. Here there was quiet. Space. It was slower, easier in so many ways. More real estate than I’d seen in one place in some time, enough to be a little disorienting, like swimming in open water.
Don’t get me wrong—I’d loved living with Annette too. I loved my job, and I loved my life. Over the years, I’d convinced myself that New York was home, but the second I’d set foot on the ground in front of the big house, I knew that wasn’t true. This was my home, and it always would be, no matter how many years I spent away or how many miles stood between us. The decision to quit my job and move here had been simple and easy. For that, at least, I was grateful.
Jake would love to see me leave, and I’d hate to give him the satisfaction.
“Tell me I can’t milk a cow,” I muttered as I pulled on jeans and buttoned up a blue plaid shirt. “Oh, I’ll milk a cow,” I said to my boots, shoving in one foot, then the other. “I’m gonna milk her so good, she’s gonna need a smoke when it’s over.”
I stood, checking my reflection. I looked like a proper farm girl, except for my hair, which was as unruly as ever. So I slipped my fingers into my locks, humming tunelessly as they wound a French braid to keep the tresses contained while I did exactly what Jake said I couldn’t.
Nothing motivated me quite like being underestimated.
Down the stairs I bounded and out the front door. Golden sunlight cut through the branches of the oaks shading the drive and house, dappling the ground along with the breeze. That breeze was one I’d missed—the crisp California air, touched with a nip, even in the thick of summer.
I wound around the porch and toward the old barn. The meadow rolled on past the fence and up a hill dotted with heifers and calves out to graze. We’d provided local dairy since the late 1800s, our stock growing over the years to over a thousand heads of cattle. The big barns stretched off in the distance, all built to allow plenty of space for our herds with long and regular access to pastures.
We were part of the foundation of the town before the Pattons came along. They were cattle ranchers, known for rustling, thought themselves above the law. Legend went, they’d stolen Brent cattle and drove them to Wyoming, and when they came back, the Brents were waiting for them. In the scuffle, one of the Brent boys was shot by a Patton, and the elder Brent had the elder Patton arrested and hanged. With the law watching them, the Patton heirs decided ranching wouldn’t be lucrative enough. So they went into dairy, and they went in big, their number one goal seeming to be to put our farm under.
It was a miracle our farm had survived. But the feud never ended, passed down generation to generation, ad infinitum. My grandfather and the late Billy Patton had been at it since birth. James Patton and my father had nearly beaten each other to death over my mother.
I didn’t know where Chase Patton landed.
When I was nine years old and didn’t have a single friend, Chase was the one who sat next to me at lunch. He played with me at recess and told me he liked my red hair when the other kids teased me for it. He was my first friend in a time when I needed a friend. Until his father found out. And then he came to school, pushed me off a swing in front of his other friends, and sneered down at me as I lay crying in the dirt that I was a dirty, fire-crotch Brent.
I didn’t even know what it meant, only that it hurt brutally.
Pop did. James sported a black eye for a week as a result.
But I always believed Chase was only doing what he’d been told, not what he wanted. Quietly, he’d shown me kindness. Silently, he’d protected me more than once from ridicule from the girls and worse from a few of the guys.
And I couldn’t ever understand how the old feud still had teeth.
The old barn had been opened up to let the sunshine in, and I passed the threshold filled with sentimentality. The smell of hay and ancient wood, of livestock and barley. The horses nickered in their stalls when I passed, the wide floor covered in hay, and in the back corner with a mouthful of cud was Alice.