Page 17 of Things Left Unsaid

Worse still, wants me to behis.

“That’s why I insisted on him for you.”

I choke out, “I guess I should be honored!”

“In my day, he’d have been a prize.”

I need to puke.

My stomach twists and churns as I’m dragged back to that horrible night—the penultimate time I saw Colton in the flesh.

We’d gotten word that my eldest brother, Walker, was PKIA in Afghanistan.

That was why I ran to the Seven Cs.

I needed to escape.

The stables were a solace, not because of the horses but the boy who’d been my friend. Yet, as I crossed onto Korhonen land, I’d recognized those rolling clouds that represented a massive storm and had been relieved to find shelter.

My eyes close as I recall how the storm came in a few hours too late. How the lightning made everything worse for the fire that wrought devastation on the Seven Cs.

Shuddering at the memory of the horses screaming as they burned alive, I bite off, “Walker should be here. This is his ranch. You should never have let him enlist!”

Her sigh is loaded with fatigue. This argument is ancient. One that’s still filtered with grief. It might be unfair of me, but what’s fair about a loss that’ll haunt this family for a lifetime?

“I let you go too, didn’t I? Permitted that foolishness which earned you some paltry accreditation as a paralegal.

“All you do is help criminals evade justice. Walker was fighting for our country.” She pins me with a scorn-filled glare, one that’s full of outrage. “His was an honorable path. Yours shames the family! But then, that’s what you do best, hypocrite.

“Here’s your chance to right the wrongs of the past, but you’re too damn stubborn to see the opportunity I’m giving you?—”

Unable to stand the sound of her voice, the same old diatribe I’ve heard thousands of times during phone calls I never want to take, I tune her out and focus on the bank statements in my hand.

Here is fact. No emotion. No manipulation.

Numbers don’t lie, and these prove that the ranch is so far in the red, it’s practically exsanguinated.

“Are you listening to me?” she yells, iron-bitch mode fully engaged because I mentioned Walker—her favorite.

And yet, when I look at her next, she’s not the sameGrand-mèreI knew growing up.

Maybe I’m wrong about her act and can only discern what a childhood’s indoctrination demands I see, butGrand-mèrelooks old.

It could be the stark lighting from the window...

No.

She’s frailer than I’d like. Her shoulders not as straight as they once were.

Her face is more lined than the last time I was guilt-tripped into coming home for Thanksgiving too.

Her clothes sit more loosely on her frame.

Ninety-two years of grief and life and misery and stress are a burden I can tell, for the first time, she’s struggling to carry.

It’s a notion that amplifies the churning in my gut.

She’s too old to be fighting like this. To be worrying about her land, her home—her family’s future.

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