Page 91 of Rancher's Return

“Your childhood,” she said.

He thought about his mother. “I mean, I... I don’t really want to.”

“That’s the problem, Colton. If you don’t turn over the rocks inside your soul and start looking for the scorpions underneath, they’re just going to bite you when you don’t expect them to.”

“What am I supposed to do with that metaphor?” he asked.

“What’s the thing that scares you most?”

“Finding out my mom is dead.”

“Maybe you need to find out,” Luna said softly.

“But I... I want to be happy. I want to...pretend. I...”

“But it’s keeping you from being happy. Obviously. It is so clear that you’re in love with Lily. So whatever you have to do to fix this for yourself, you need to do it.”

“How?”

Luna sighed. “Well, I work in mental health. I can see if she’s passed through the system.”

“Are you allowed to do that?” he asked.

“For family? Yes.”

Luna disappeared and returned a few moments later. “She’s in a mental health facility and care home downtown.” She sat slowly and handed him a stack of papers. “She has some health issues, Colton. She requires a bit of care.”

He nodded. “Oh. Well. Yeah, I mean she...she had it really hard.”

“I think you did too.”

He nodded. Yeah. It had been a hard road. But a good one too, eventually. But this...this felt like hope. Hard-won hope.

He was ready to go see his mom. He was ready to hope.

It was insanely snowy outside and the traffic was nuts. He got in his truck and drove to downtown Portland. It was dark, icy. Cold. When he pulled up to the institutional-looking place and saw the lights shining through the windows, he knew a strange sense of trepidation. Was his mother really here? Was it really that easy?

You have not because you ask not.

That old saying resonated somewhere down inside of him, and he thought of Lily, his mother, all these things he had wanted that he...hadn’t reached out for.

Hadn’t asked for.

That was the problem with living without hope. You didn’t reach for the things you wanted most. You didn’t go after what you wanted best and most dearly.

He had limited himself. All this time.

Maybe hope was the answer.

Hope for strange miracles and for a life that worked out, even though he’d been through so much that hurt.

He parked against the curb and got out of his truck, his boots sinking down into the snow.

And hope was what drove him inside.

He walked up to the front desk. “I’m here to see Olivia Sheldon.”

“We only allow family to visit.”