Page 43 of The Rancher Who Swore Off Love
Thomas held up both palms and backed toward the porch. “Sure thing, boss. You just go on choppin’ wood in the sun while your wife sleeps in a ditch somewhere. Real solid plan.”
The screen door banged shut behind him.
He’d been wrong. He knew it the way you knew a bone was broken before the doctor told you. Grace loved his family. She loved Miriam. And somewhere in the mess of it, somewhere hehadn’t been brave enough to look straight at, she might have been starting to warm up to him, too. And he’d sent her away.
Logan swung the axe.
***
Pa cooked supper.
That alone should’ve served as punishment enough for whatever sins Logan had committed, because Rafe Foster’s culinary skills began and ended with boiling water, and he even managed to scorch it somehow. The kitchen filled with a smell that sat somewhere between burnt cornmeal and wet saddle leather, and the pot on the stove held a gray substance Pa called stew, but which bore a closer resemblance to wallpaper paste.
The four of them sat around the table.
Logan in his chair. Pa at the head. Mason on the left, Thomas on the right. Grace’s chair between Mason and the dresser-drawer sat empty, and the drawer itself did too, and those two vacant spots punched holes in the room that no amount of gray stew could fill.
Nobody spoke for the first five minutes.
Mason pushed his spoon through the bowl and lifted it. The stew clung to the metal in a glob that defied gravity for a full second before dropping back with a sound like a boot pulling free of mud.
“Pa,” Mason set the spoon down. “What’d you put in this?”
“Beef. Potatoes. Onion. Salt.”
“In what order?”
“All at once.”
Thomas closed his eyes.
Logan picked up his spoon and put it back down.
His stomach had cinched itself shut about three hours ago and showed no signs of opening. Not because of the stew—though it had provided ample reason on its own—but because, every time he lifted the spoon, the motion pulled his gaze past the empty chair to the hook by the door, where Grace’s apron still hung.
She’s out there right now.
Out there,meaning somewhere between here and town, with no money, no provisions, a baby who needed milk every four hours, her brother—whom Logan had known for approximately ninety seconds before putting him in the dirt—and whatever that threadbare rucksack held, which couldn’t amount to much based on the size of it.
Colorado nights dropped below freezing this time of year once the sun went down. Even in spring. The altitude did something to the air that turned warm afternoons into bitter dark in the span of an hour, and Grace had come from sea level inNew Yorkand still got dizzy from the thin air after three weeks.
He shoved his bowl to the center of the table.
“I ain’t hungry.”
Pa looked up from his own untouched stew. “Eat.”
“I said I ain’t—”
“And I said, ‘Eat.’ A man who won’t feed himself ain’t fit to make decisions about nothin’ else.”
Logan pulled the bowl back and forced a spoonful down. The stew tasted the way the kitchen smelled, and he swallowed it without chewing because chewing would only prolong the experience.
Mason cleared his throat. “Got somethin’ for you.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, creased and soft from handling. He set it on the table and slid it across to Logan.
Logan picked it up. Unfolded it.
