Page 1 of The Prodigal Brother Returns

Chapter One

Blake Lohmen wasa wreck. It had been a long drive to Colorado and back to Sedona, but how could he say no to Timmy when the twelve-year-old wanted to go to Camp Elwood, a two-week summer camp for neurodivergent kids, so badly? Two weeks was a good test to see how they both would do with Timmy being gone for that long.

As he dropped his travel bag on the bench in the entry, he took a tired breath. It was good to be home in the house where he and Tina had made a home for her brother while they worked hard with therapists to give him as normal a life as they could. Before she’d died two years earlier, he’d made a promise to his wife that he had to keep, no matter what it took. All right, two promises, but the second one hadn’t made it to the top of his list and would still have to wait.

Ensuring Timmy lived his best life was much more important than any relationship he didn’t have with his brothers. So, he’d made the eight-and-a-half-hour drive, one way, to fulfill the kid’s first request to go to camp on his own.

He would do anything for the kid. So long as Timmy was happy, Blake was pretty much on board.

It’d taken him a long time to get his grief and temper under control, even with Tina’s support. He would not go back to being the angry, defensive man he was before Tina and Timmy had come into his life. Not as long as the kid needed him.

Leaving his bag where he’d dropped it, Blake went to the kitchen to start the coffee machine and make a sandwich. While he kept his hands busy, he ignored the fact that he’d come closer to the Triple L than he’d been in sixteen years. After he’d gotten Timmy settled at the camp, he’d started back in the early hours that morning, not stopping for much more than gas and to get something he could eat in the Willys Jeep he’d rebuilt as part of what Tina had dubbed his road to recovery.

The route to and from Talamasa had taken him within twenty miles of Strawberry Ridge and the horse ranch his parents had built together. And where he’d pulled a stunt that could never be forgiven. Not by him and not by his brothers. He passed the exit to Strawberry Ridge without slowing down.

Sitting at the table with the ham sandwich and the cup of coffee he’d made, he glanced at the small kitchen that was all Tina’s doing. She’d loved everything southwest. The house reminded him so much of his dear departed wife. So much so that he couldn’t think of changing a thing.

God, he missed her. And not just because, from the day they’d met, she’d been his cheerleader. It was lonely without her here to laugh with and to make sure he was wearing clean socks. When he was working on the nextTimmy, the Superherobook, it was easy to forget things like doing his laundry or cooking dinner on the days when it was his turn.

His sole agenda while Timmy was gone for the next ten days was to come up with a good plot line—which was eluding him—for the next book in the ongoing series. With Timmy’s livelihood in jeopardy and the money for his therapists that Tina had left running out, he was determined he and Timmy weren’t going to end up homeless because he had to sell this house to make ends meet. What he needed was to secure Timmy’s future with royalties from his next book.

Taking the sandwich and coffee with him, Blake went to his office and booted up his laptop. There was nothing like the present to get started. If he could just come up with a working title that inspired a middle-grade story.Timmy, the Superhero and the...

It’d always been so easy to write the next book. This one was like banging his head against the wall.

His cell rang. Blake glanced at the number and debated blocking the caller. He hadn’t gotten a call from that number in sixteen years.

Finally, he picked up. “This is a surprise, Jonas.” It wasn’t easy to keep his tone civil.

“Hello, little brother.” Jonas had always been better at holding on to his temper, except for that last day when he and Nathan had kicked him off the Triple L.

Back then, big brother had been in law school. Blake, seething at being sent away from his home, but knowing he more than deserved his brothers’ anger, spent the next years taking any job his GED and growing up on the horse ranch would get him.

“I haven’t heard from you since Mom’s funeral.” Blake couldn’t have hidden his contempt, even if he wanted to. “Why are you calling now?”

“You need to come home. Nathan’s had an accident.” Jonas never was one to pull his punches and from the unbending note in his voice, he wasn’t about to start now.

Closing his laptop, Blake leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “What happened?”

“He was bucked off his new stallion and fractured his pelvis.”

Blake closed his eyes. Then, unable to sit still any longer, he stood and went to the kitchen. Hand on his hip, he paced back and forth from one end of Tina’s favorite room to the other. “How bad is it?”

The last time he’d seen his brothers was after they’d laid their mom to rest, and he’d wrapped their dad’s prized truck around the big oak in the back pasture. Nathan wouldn’t even speak to him. When Jonas ordered him off the ranch, Blake had been angry and hurt, and still half-drunk.

But he wasn’t that immature seventeen-year-old kid anymore.

“Bad enough that according to the doctor, he has to be on complete bed rest for at least two or three days, and off work for eight-to-twelve weeks.”

Blake stopped pacing and stared at the red rock formations he could see through the kitchen window. He took a breath meant to calm him down, but filling his lungs did nothing of the sort. “I’m sorry Nathan’s hurt, but what does this have to do with me?”

“I need you to come home and take over running the ranch.” Blunt and to the point as always, Jonas didn’t encourage further discussion on the subject of whether Blake could refuse to go back to the Triple L.

Tina had always said what was on her mind too. He loved that about her. Until the end, she’d stuck to her guns. She didn’t saywhen you canorwhen the time was right, he should reach out to his brothers. She’d just said gently,Do it, because if he didn’t, he would never forgive his seventeen-year-old self.

Blake wasn’t ready. Jonas just assumed he would set aside the life he’d made and come running when big brother called. The audacity of it resurrected the old anger.

Jonas had always thought he had all the answers. Well, not this time.

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