“Have faith—”
“Luke, look,” his father said sharply, and suddenly came to his feet. He was an inch shorter than Luke, but just as broad. “I don’t like that I had to borrow money against the ranch. I don’t like that Grant died and left me in a bind. But the fact is, I got the money I needed for Leo,” he said, pointing to the front room, where they could both hear Leo shouting at his game characters. “That’s what matters. Leo’s problem ain’t going away, either. He’s not getting better, he’s getting worse, and the ranch… the ranch takes a lot of work.”
Luke glanced at the doorway and hoped to hell Leo wasn’t hearing this. “I get it,” he said low. “Hell if I know how you do it all, Dad. But Leo isn’t always going to be here. Homecoming Ranch is his home—not this place. More than that, it’s your home—you’ve lived there all your life! So did your parents, and their parents. Ranching is what you do. What are you going to do when you don’t have Leo anymore?”
Luke’s father clenched his jaw. He put his hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed it. “It’s time you faced the fact that things have changed for us. And what’s done is done. Now, I’ve got to give Leo his medicine.” He turned away, stepped to the counter next to the fridge where three rows of dark brown pill bottles were lined up. A chart was taped to the front of the fridge, which his father consulted.
What about me? Luke thought. What about his life at the ranch, his memories, his hopes for it? He felt the hard kernel of resentment sprouting in him—resentment at how life had turned out for his family, all of it. “It’s not done,” he said tightly, but his father ignored him.
SIX
In a village where flannel ruled and elkhorns seemed to be mandatory décor, Jackson Crane looked as fresh and as Hollywood as he had the first time Madeline had met him. She’d found his office easy enough in this postage stamp of civilization that was Pine River. It was a low gray building that looked like a bomb shelter.
Jackson—who did not have a receptionist, Madeline noted—showed her into his office. He had a gunmetal gray desk, a squeaky office chair. On the wall behind him was a calendar with the picture of a man gleefully kissing a big fish, and the 18th of the month had been circled with a fat red marker. Below the calendar was a montage of pictures of Jackson Crane. He was skiing, or wearing a big hat and riding a horse, or grinning at the camera from behind goggles on a snowmobile. But what Madeline found odd about the pictures was that Jackson was the only person in them.
This man was an enigma to Madeline. He was a personable guy; he’d greeted her warmly, shaking her hand earnestly. “So glad you made it,” he said, as he moved some papers around on his desk, obviously seeking something. “I don’t have much time before my next appointment, but I wanted to get you the particulars of our meeting.”
“I thought this was our meeting,” Madeline said as he thrust a file folder into her hands.
“This?” he asked, his eyes widening slightly with surprise. “No, no, I asked you to come here so I could give you some basic information. We’ll be meeting this afternoon at the ranch. We’re on for three.” He suddenly smiled. “You’ll be meeting your sisters!”
A shudder of trepidation ran through Madeline. Of course she knew she would be meeting her sisters, but with it suddenly so concrete, Madeline did not feel prepared. She needed more warning than this, she needed time to mentally gear up. She felt like something was missing, like a flowchart, dossiers, pictures, something. “Just like that?” she blurted. “I fly out here and meet them just like that?”
Jackson chuckled until he realized she wasn’t kidding. “Sorry—did you have something else in mind?”
No, Madeline didn’t have anything else in mind. She just needed time to prepare, she always needed time to prepare. Meeting new people was never easy for her, and for two new sisters, she needed to collect herself, to tamp down unnecessary feelings about how these “sisters” had had a father, and she hadn’t, that sort of thing. She assumed that they had been the recipients of the fatherly love that she’d been denied, that the reason she had never heard from him was because he’d been completely satisfied with his other two daughters.
“In the file I gave you is a copy of your father’s last will and testament, as well as some information about the ranch,” he said, and began to recite some statistics that flew over Madeline’s normally tidy and organized head. “I’ve included a map.” He looked at her curiously when Madeline didn’t speak. “So we’ll see you there at three to go over the details.” He stood. “Okay?”