Page 2 of The Prodigal Brother Returns

“I haven’t spoken to or heard from either of you in sixteen years. And if I remember correctly, when you kicked me off the ranch, you told me never to return. And now you want me to drop everything and come save your asses?”

He wasn’t looking for an apology. Blake readily admitted he’d earned what he’d gotten.

“Come on, Blake. You’ve done nothing with your life—”

Blake’s jaw clenched. “Nothing?”

“I’ve checked in on you from time to time over the years and from what I’ve been able to discover, you didn’t stay in one place long. You haven’t gotten any kind of job that pays decent money. Just the occasional odd jobs. Stop being a screwup. Come home. The ranch needs you.”

That just went to show how uninformed Jonas was. Those jobs, mostly tour guide excursions, good sales figures from his books, and what Tina made as a special ed teacher, had kept them afloat and helped them buy and pay off this house. And those tour guide jobs—it turned out he was good at them—and book sales would continue to keep him and Timmy going. If he could just come up with the next story.

So, notwe need you.Justthe ranch needs you.

Bull hockey! Timmy needed him more, end of story. His detail-oriented brother hadn’t dug deep enough. He only knew about the years when Blake had tried to drown the memories when they got too heavy and then moved on. He didn’t know about the day he finally looked in the mirror, found a scruffy stranger looking back, and said,enough. He didn’t know that his homeless brother had done everything in his power to get rid of that scared, screwed-up kid. Or about Tina, and Timmy, and the Timmy novels, and how they had changed his life. Or that he was a widower now with responsibilities of his own to take care of.

Jonas didn’t know all that was left on his crooked road to recovery, sweetly sponsored by Tina, who’d given him the motivation to keep going, was to make amends with his brothers. She would want him to make the most of this moment. Suddenly, with the beauty of the red rock towering across the landscape pushing at him, ironically enough, perhaps itwastime.

Blake ran a hand through his hair. There was a raging river under their bridge. “I don’t think so, Jonas,” he said, too tired now to think it all through and come up with a workable plan. “You don’t want me there, and I don’t need anything from you.” Not for himself. Not for Timmy. And not to prop up the money he earned from theTimmybooks.

“You’ll get a steady salary while you’re here, but first there’s something else you need to know.” For the first time in his life, Blake heard defeat in Jonas’s voice. “The ranch is failing financially. You always helped Mom with the ledgers. I’d like you to take a look at them while you’re here. Nathan’s done the best he could, but it’s going to take all of us to breathe life back into the place. If we can’t, we’re going to lose all that we have left of Mom and Dad.”

That managed to put Blake’s anger on pause. He went silent for a long minute. Things must be bad for Jonas to swallow his pride and reach out and ask for help from the brother he’d ordered off the ranch and then mostly forgot existed.

“Blake?”

“Does Nathan know you’ve called me?” He pressed the phone closer to his ear.

This time it was Jonas who drew out the silence. “No.”

For whatever reason, standing at the window, seeing Tina’s beloved red rocks, and hearing that the Lohmen boys were about to lose their parents’ legacy, that did it for Blake. He said with an edge, “I have to close up the house first, but I’ll be there tomorrow night.”

Not giving his brother time to acknowledge his concession, Blake hung up. Sixteen years ago, they’d all been too young to cope with the loss of their parents—their dad when Blake was fifteen, then their mom when he was seventeen. But they were grown men now, and Tina was right. He couldn’t let them make all the rules.

*

The next day,before he turned onto the road that would take him to the Triple L, Blake stopped in Strawberry Hill, population 1,008—more than when he’d left sixteen years ago—for a bathroom break and to corral the resolve he needed to take on the role of the prodigal brother coming home. Especially since returning wasn’t his idea.

The town looked the same as when he’d left. Maybe a little more worn around the edges. It didn’t feel the same, though. When he was a kid, his parents would bring him and his brothers into town every Saturday for an ice cream cone at Sally’s. Even Main Street, which ran through the center of town, seemed quieter, a little deserted.

The Triple L was a short twenty-minute drive east toward the jagged mountains hovering in the distance. When he crossed over the cattle guard onto Lohmen land, it was another ten minutes before he parked in front of the main ranch house.

The place was just as he remembered. Board and batten still painted the warm brown his mother had picked out. Two stories with a wide veranda. There was a new barn he didn’t remember off to the side that matched the house. Chasing each other in the fenced pasture fronting the house were three of the Colorado Ranger horses that had been his father’s passion.

So, Nathan had maintained their dad’s passion, a point in his brother’s favor, which made Blake breathe easier. Maybe this reunion wouldn’t be so disastrous after all. And just maybe the ranch wasn’t in as much trouble as Jonas had suggested.

Blake thought the ranch was so cool when he was a kid. And honestly, he had to admit, he still did. He pulled in all the reawakening feelings and locked them away. He would only be here as long as it took Nathan to heal. As stubborn as his brother was, it might not be that long.

He knocked on the door—it didn’t feel right, just barging in as if he hadn’t been gone for so many years. The door popped off the latch and eased open. Following the sound of his brothers’ voices past the living room and, finally, into the dining room just off from the kitchen, he found Jonas standing over the hospital bed where Nathan lay. The blankets were rumpled, as if he’d tried to crawl over the rail that kept him from falling out. Jonas was holding him down by the shoulders.

So, not much had changed. Blake kept his distance, making his presence known by asking over his brothers’ loud argument. “What are you guys doing?”

Nathan pointed a shaking finger at Blake. “Get out of my house!” he yelled, the words slightly slurred. He fought to climb out of the bed, but Jonas pushed harder on his shoulders.

Despite his injury, Nathan was strong. Jonas glared at Blake. “Help me!”

He got on the opposite side of the bed and grabbed Nathan’s arm. “Your house? I don’t think so, brother.” Blake couldn’t help poking at the man who, ever since their dad died, only spoke to him when he was angry, or at present, doped up with pain meds.

“Not helping,” Jonas ground out.

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