Page 44 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
The handwriting ran small and careful, with the letters pressed hard enough to leave grooves in the paper, the way someone wrote when they bore down on every word because each one cost them something.
Grace’s letter.
Logan read it twice.
Then he folded the letter along its original creases and pressed his thumb over the center fold, where the paper had gone soft from being opened and closed too many times.
“We got thirty-two responses to that ad.” Mason leaned forward. “Thirty-two women. Some of ’em claimed to be real pretty. Some had money. One gal’s father offered to throw in forty head of cattle as a dowry.”
Thomas clicked his tongue. “Forty head, Logan.”
“And we picked Grace.” Mason tapped the table. “Thomas and I read every letter, and we picked her. Not because of what she could do for us. Because of what she said about family. Because she wrote that letter like she meant every word down to theink stains, and you could tell she’d gone over it half a dozen times makin’ sure she got it right.”
Logan stared at the folded paper in his hands.
“She loves this family, Logan.” Mason leaned forward. “Lord knows why, but she does.”
“And you sent her packin’.” Thomas raised his chin. “Told her she ranked somewhere between the hired help and a piece of furniture and thendaredher to walk.”
“I—”
“No. No excuses. That woman’s got more spine than any three men in this county, and you backed her into a corner where stayin’ meant agreein’ she don’t matter.”
The clock ticked.
Pa set his spoon down and pushed his chair back from the table. The legs scraped the floor, and he braced both hands on the armrests and looked at Logan with those eyes that had gone flinty over the years, worn down to something harder than the original material, the way river rock smoothed into iron.
“Your mother, God rest her, walked out on me once.”
All three brothers turned.
“Packed a bag and went to her sister’s in Gunnison for a whole week. You boys don’t remember on account of Logan bein’ only four and the rest of you weren’t born yet. I’d said somethin’ bull-headed, same as you did this mornin’. Told her my word ran final under my own roof.”
Logan breathed faster.
“She looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Rafe Foster, a roof ain’t a home unless the people under it got a voice, and I will not raise my children in a house where mine don’t count.’” Pa worked his jaw under that mustache. “Longest week of my whole life. I rode to Gunnison with my hat in my hand, and Ibeggedthat woman to come back.”
“Pa—”
“Don’tPame, boy.” Rafe pointed one thick finger at him. “You got your mother’s stubbornness and my pride, and Lord help you, that’s a combination that’ll burn a man’s life down around his ears if he don’t get a handle on it.”
Logan pressed both palms flat on the table. The letter sat between his hands, and Grace’s handwriting bled through the thin paper in reverse, all those careful letters showing backward through the page.
I will not just keep your house. I will make it a home.
And she had.
She’d walked into a house full of men who’d locked themselves away from the world, and she’d cracked every window open.
He unfolded the letter one more time.
Read the last line.
I would give anything to belong to a family again.
And he’d told her she could leave.
Logan pressed the heels of both hands against his eyes until the pressure bloomed white. He missed her. God help him, he missed her. The house didn’t smell right without her cooking in it. The baby wouldn’t stop crying for anyone else. And he kept catching himself listening for her footsteps in the hall like a man who’d lost something he didn’t have the right to grieve.
