Page 6 of Rancher's Return

She’d never forget the day she’d confronted him in the middle of town, screaming at him, blaming him for her brother’s choices. Something she realized now hadn’t been fair. Her brother had been a ticking time bomb back then.

She’d been looking for something—anything—to make herself feel better. Older guys had made her feel validated. The attention she’d gotten from them had been a temporary bandage. And then she’d gotten pregnant.

She’d realized she needed her parents. She’d realized she needed to actually heal some things inside herself instead of simply trying to make herself feel better for a moment. She’d gotten good therapy. She’d started to live intentionally, instead of in a reactionary way.

Thankfully, she and Lily had a really open line of communication.

Their life had been a good one. It’s just that it was changing.

Today’s grocery haul was intense, as it always was. Her meal prep business had grown exponentially in the last couple of years. She had started making food as a means of supporting herself and Lily when Lily had been small, and now she was doing weekly meals for so many families in town she could hardly keep up.

But it was great. She got to do something she was good at, at home, in her modest house’s certified kitchen, and make a decent living at it.

“Lily!” She said her daughter’s name again.

There was still no answer.

She set the grocery bags on the counter and started up the stairs. She texted Lily on her way up, to see if she could get her attention that way. Odds were, she was sitting in her room with her earbuds on, but she most definitely had her phone, and she had her read receipts on, so Marigold always knew when Lily had seen a text from her.

No reading.

She frowned. She knocked twice on her daughter’s bedroom door, and then pushed it open without waiting for a response. She was greeted by a flurry of movement. By Lily practically doing a dive roll off the bed, and a boy Marigold had never seen before in her life standing up quickly and pulling his shirt into place.

“What the... What the hell is going on?” she said.

And somewhere in the back of her mind was a calm, rational,healedvoice that said she needed to react calmly so Lily would talk to her. That she needed to be rational, so her daughter wouldn’t be shamed. So she would know Marigold wasn’t angry,just concerned.

That voice was far in the distance, and Marigold was somewhere else entirely.

That calm, still voice had no hope in hell of winning.

In general, Marigold fancied herself somewhere between crystals and Jesus. A little bit woo woo, a little bit traditional. But right now, she was straight into fire and brimstone, do not pass the rose quartz, do not collect spiritual enlightenment.

“Who is this?”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Lily said, in the grand tradition of every teenager who had ever been caught doing stupid shit. But Marigold knew, sheknew, that it was always what it looked like.

She’d had the positive pregnancy test at sixteen to prove it.

“Oh please, don’t treat me like I’m an idiot,” she said, and found that was what actually bothered her the most.

“I’m not. It’s just it’s not like... We were just...”

The boy was looking at Marigold with the appropriate amount of fear, so there was that at least. He was a boy she had never seen before, tall and exactly the kind of handsome tailor-made to get nice girls like Lillian into trouble.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Colton,” he said.

Colton. Of course his name would be Colton.

Colton sounded exactly like the kind of boy who would get you pregnant and disappear off to college, leaving you to deal with the consequences.

Her own Colton was actually named Christopher. Same dude, different font.

“Well, Colton, we are going to go have a talk with your parents.”

“Mom!” Lily looked horrified.

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