Page 21 of The Mountain Echoes
The ranch house is massive—nearly eight bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and too many hallways that I know like the back of my hand.
The house was smaller in my grandfather’s days, but Papa expanded during Longhorn’s heyday, when cattle prices were good and Papa had reason to believe the future would stretch on forever.
Back when the name Longhorn Ranch meant something in Wildflower Canyon.
I love this sprawling house, even if Mama hated it—thought it was too big, too quiet, too untenable. She couldn’t stand how barren everything around it was, just mountains and forest, no curated views, no boutiques within walking distance.
What she hated is precisely what I love. She couldn’t bear that it was a forty-minute drive to Main Street, like civilization was an inconvenience.
That’s why she bought herself a pied-à-terre in Aspen. Which is where Celine and Hudson, Nadine tells me, spend most of their time.
It’s a sleek, glass-wrapped unit on the top floor of a luxury building tucked just off East Cooper Avenue, where fine dining, designer shops, art galleries, and imported French linen are within easy reach.
It’s fancy, overlooking Wagner Park on one side and has a straight sightline to Aspen Mountain on the other. It’s airy and modern, all white stone, polished oak floors, and abstract art that never meant anything to me.
Mama hosted parties there, hobnobbed with the rich and famous in Aspen. She spent more and more time in Aspen in the later years, drifting farther from Papa and the ranch and me, like she was trying to rewrite her life in curated square footage.
Celine, for all practical purposes, lives there, probably sipping expensive wine like Mama used to on the rooftop terrace, pretending she’s above the land that raised her.
The ranch house is the antithesis of the Aspen apartment.
Here it’s all stone and timber, with wraparound porches and a roof that’s been patched more times than anyone can count.
It sits heavy on the land, proud.
Celine and I used to have our rooms close by, which is now referred to as theguestwing. Yeah, the house has freakingwings.
She and Hudson have Mama’s old suite on the other side of the house, because Mama set it up to look like a Parisian apartment inappropriately in the middle of Colorado.
I doubt Celine changed it much. Our mother’s rooms were her favorite. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything, but Celine was.
As a child that hurt. As an adult…fuck, it still hurts.
I remember how her suite smelled—lavender from Provence, Chanel No. 5 lingering in the drapes, and that soft, powdery scent from the pink box she kept on her vanity, the one with gold script and a little puff inside. The room was adorned with delicate wallpaper, antique mirrors, and silk curtains that didn’t belong anywhere near a ranch.
It felt like stepping into another country. One I didn’t have a passport for.
I take the stairs down to the kitchen and stop by the closed door to Papa’s office. His bedroom is tucked behind the office. I remember what it looks like.Heavy furniture, thick rugs, and a worn leather chair in the corner where he used to read the livestock reports.
I wonder if it still smells like tobacco and cedar.
I put my hand on the doorknob for a long moment and then decide I’ll go in when I have my bearings, which I don’t right now.
I’m still fragile.
Nadine looks at me when I come into the kitchen. “What on earth are you wearing, girl?”
I look down at my dark blue floral maxi skirt. She can’t see the blouse because I’m wearing her cardigan. “I came straight from a wedding in Napa Valley, Nadine. I got no clothes.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll ask Tomas to bring down some of your things from the attic so you can at least dress like a normal human bein’ instead of….”
“Instead of?” I pour myself a coffee and take a seat at the large dining table that sits in the middle of the kitchen, where the ranch hands were served when I was growing up.
Mama refused to enter the kitchen wheretheyate, so the cook served the family meals in the formal dining room.
Nadine used to take care of the house and help the cook, but after cook left—retired and wanted the sun and beach in Florida—she became cook, housekeeper, farmhand…everything Papa needed her to be.
Mama had died by then, or she’d have had a fit seeing Nadine run her house like a general—coffee always hot, cornbread on standby, and lard in thepantry.
