Page 5 of The Lonely Road

To Wíitsin, grandmother in Ute, Pearl wasn’t a legend. She was proof. And the fact that Pearl’s grandmother was also named Delia and had raised her just underscored the point in her book.

Wíitsin had more faith in me than I ever had in myself—that I could climb any mountain I set my heart to.

Since she passed, I’ve felt the absence of that like a missing floorboard, which you don’t notice until you step the wrong way. And Griffin didn’t help. What he did didn’t just end a relationship—it took a sledgehammer to my ability to trust people I thought I knew.

But sitting here with these women, whom I met at Wild Coffee one ordinary morning a week after I moved, I can feel something I’d stopped expecting to find again outside of Ignacio: the warmth of people who are simply and quietly in your corner.

“Well, I don’t know about being better than all of them,” I say. “Some of those guys are pretty good.”

“Yeah, but you’re Mac’s protégé.” Aria grins. “So you must be the best.”

I came to Wildflower Canyon because of two men.

Jack McCready, known to everyone here as Mac, part lawyer to half the ranchers in this valley and a full-time cowboy at heart. And Elder Nokoni Red Clay, who had known my grandmother for forty years and understood, without my having to explain it, what it would mean for me to use my skills in a place worth fighting for.

I had already accepted a job in Chicago when Mac called. My heart wasn’t in it, but survival has its own logic, and I had told myself that leaving Colorado was practical, not permanent. I love these mountains. They’re in my blood. But Aspen had become a place I needed to escape, and Chicago felt like a clean break.

Then Mac told me he was winding down—that he wanted someone to take over. The wills, the community work, the water and land rights cases that nobody else in this valley had the expertise to handle. At first, I said no. I didn’t think I was ready to be on my own, to carry all of it without a firm behind me.

Elder Nokoni asked me the crucial, life-changing question: “What would your Wíitsin want for you?”

So, I agreed to have a conversation with Mac about it. I made no promises.

I am so glad he used emotional blackmail to get me here, because it was the best decision I ever made. I didn’t know work could feel like this—like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

Though when I first saw Mac’s office on Main Street, I was certain I wouldn’t take over his business.

The office smelled of old paper, better bourbon, and the dust of a disused place. He’d never used the office himself—Lulu, his niece, had handled the filing there until she left for university in California.

“Well, this is yours now.”

My gaze swept the room. “Mac, I haven’t said yes to anything.”

“You will.”

I rolled my eyes. “And what do you mean by mine?”

“I mean, I’m giving it to you. That’s your first task, by the way—write the contract for it, will you?”

I arched an eyebrow.

He grinned. “I own the building. I’m selling it to you.”

I raised both my eyebrows. The man had some gall. He wanted me to take over his business and pay for it….

“I don’t want any of this, Mac. I agreed to talk to you because Elder Nokoni⁠—”

“Let’s say ten dollars,” he cuts me off.

That stopped me in my tracks. “What?” I croaked.

The building was in the ass-end of nowhere, but it sat right on Main Street, two doors down from the diner and across from the feed store. People spent their whole lives waiting for a piece of property like that to come up for sale, and when it did, it didn’t go for ten dollars.

“Fine. Fine.” He raised both hands, palms out. “Five dollars.”

“Mac, you can’t just…give this away?”

“Why the fuck not?”