Page 25 of The Prodigal Brother Returns

They weren’t done with this conversion, but Blake cut Nathan a break and silently followed his brother. When Nathan stopped at the bedside, he offered, “Let me help.”

“I can do it.” Nathan shrugged him off.

Blake tried not to be offended, remembering the early days when he was determined to stop drinking. It hadn’t been easy. He was as cranky as a bear. Just like Nathan. He stood back and let his brother have his way.

It was slow going. Nathan was perched on the side of the bed and stuck. Blake felt stupid standing by, watching his brother struggle when it would be simple enough to help him into the bed. He was about to assist the stubborn man the rest of the way into bed when Timmy came in and went to his side. “I’ll help you, Uncle Nathan.”

Nathan’s face was wrinkled in pain. His eyes cleared as he looked from Timmy to Blake and back again. “Thank you, Timmy. If I could just lean on your shoulder—”

Blake held his breath. Timmy was tall for twelve, but was he strong enough to hold a grown man’s weight? Timmy stretched to his full height as Nathan leaned on him, then managed to scoot into bed.

Leaning against the pillow, he gave Timmy a pained, crooked smile. “Would you mind putting my foot on the bed? I seem to have left it on the floor.”

Blake remembered that smile from when they were boys, looking for frogs at the pond. Nathan always found one first, grinning as he held the wiggly amphibians high.

Timmy giggled and did as Nathan asked. The look on his young face turned serious as he concentrated on lifting his uncle’s foot to the bed.

“Good job, Timmy.” Malorie slipped around Blake. She was smiling. He’d caught a whiff of wildflowers that he’d come to associate with her, so he knew she’d come with Timmy and was watching. “You two boys head out now. I’ll finish getting Nathan situated.”

She might get his brother comfortable by straightening his blankets and giving him pain meds, but Blake wasn’t done with the obstinate man yet. “I’m not giving up on the idea of riding lessons. Give it some thought, Nathan. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion. If we get enough takers, it would at least be the start of bringing the ranch back from the brink.”

When Nathan didn’t answer, Blake gestured for Timmy to come with him. Once they were on the porch and heading to the pasture, they could see Andee and Reece standing on the lower rung of the fence, giving the mares a scratch. Duke was further away, ignoring the twins.

Blake laid a gentle hand on Timmy’s shoulder. He needed a haircut. Badly. “You did a good job back there. I could tell Uncle Nathan appreciated your help.”

“I like him.” Timmy slipped his hands in his pockets, imitating Blake. “And Uncle Jonas.”

For the first time in a long, long time, Blake could say, “I like them too.”

It was true. If he understood what Nathan was inferring, he wanted to keep the ranch just as it was when their parents were alive. Blake understood. Those were good days, and with the way things had turned out, they only brought the best good memories.

The only problem was, time marched on and things changed. They couldn’t count on the money from the trust that wouldn’t be available for seven years. If they wanted to keep the ranch, they had to make improvements now that would bring in new income. Twelve weeks, if it took Nathan that long to heal, was long enough to come up with and test a few ideas and hopefully see positive results.

It might be that he and Timmy would have to stay the whole summer. And the truth was, he couldn’t go back to Sedona until the Triple L was out of the woods. The only way to make that happen was to be right here, working side by side with his brothers.

They stopped near Andee and Reece. Blake asked Timmy, “How would you feel about staying here all summer, even after Uncle Nathan gets better, instead of going back to Sedona right away?”

“That would be okay, I guess.” Timmy frowned as he climbed up on the fence beside the twins. He really didn’t like change.

Blake leaned on the fence next to Timmy.

“I would miss Franklin—” His best friend. Timmy went quiet, then said, “Maybe, if it was okay, we could live here forever.”

Suddenly, Blake was thinking the same thing, though he didn’t see how they could. Not with Nathan hardly speaking to him most of the time and Timmy needing the comfort of his routines and the therapists he was familiar with. “That’s something we’ll have to talk about later.”

Timmy twisted to look at Blake. He would have tumbled off the fence if Blake hadn’t stopped the boy’s fall just in time. “Can Franklin come visit?”

Flashes of aTimmystory started to form in Blake’s mind. It was about time.

“We’ll have to ask his mom,” Blake said gently, bumping Timmy’s shoulder. “We’ll figure something out, okay?”

Reece jumped down and kicked at a tuft of grass. “I wish we could live here.”

Blake wished Malorie and her kids would be there all summer too.

Maybe if he could convince his brothers to start an end-of-summer or fall camp for neurodivergent kids—kids like Timmy, who were somewhere on the autism spectrum—they would need a nurse, but professional staff cost a lot, and it was a very big ask for a ranch that was already deep in the hole. So not this year or next year, but maybe the year after that, when the Triple L was on more solid footing. He would need Jonas’s and Nathan’s approval and all hands on deck.

She was so good with the twins and Timmy. He could see her in his mind’s eye watching over a small group (the first year) of kids. If she wasn’t working elsewhere during that future summer.

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