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His mother didn’t light up.

She frowned.

“Oh, no, I don’t intend to move back to the ranch. I like being a little bit closer to town.”

He felt like he’d been sucker punched. “Really?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Your father loved that ranch. But it was never the life for me. It was only mine because he was there. And when he wasn’t...”

“I thought you... I thought you wanted it back.”

She smiled at him and he felt all of five years old.

“Youwanted it back. And I’m very glad for you that you have it. But I’m doing well here. That isn’t to say that Lydia might not want to move out there with you. But honestly, I didn’t know that was something you wanted.”

“I just thought we would...”

He thought they would go back to the way things were. Like it would fix something. He would buy that ranch and it would set to rights things that had been torn asunder, starting with the death of his father.

Like it would fix him.

And it wouldn’t. He was just walking over the same ground, but with entirely different footsteps, and he was just kind of a fucking idiot.

“Sorry,” he said. “I realize that I’m not thinking clearly about this. I guess I thought that everything would go back to being the way it was. But it can’t.” He looked around the space. This was a different house, but the furniture was the same. And the hole his father had left behind was the same as well. “He’s not here. And he isn’t going to be here even if I get everything set up at the house just the way it was. I’m sorry.”

She reached out and put her hand over his. “There is a space that your father left behind, and nothing is ever going to fill it. But it’s not entirely empty. Because the love that he had for all of us is still there. I don’t mean to sound cliché, but he is with us. And everything we do. He’s in you. I see him in your face and the way you hold yourself. You’ve grown so much. You’ve changed so much. You remind me more of him now than you ever have.”

He was truly taken aback by that.

He didn’t think it could possibly be true. His dad hadn’t been the life of the party, that was true. He was kind of a taciturn old cowboy. A product of both his upbringing and his generation.

Not the quickest with a smile, but that made those smiles worth something.

“I’d like for that to be true,” he said. “But I think I’m trying to fix something that maybe isn’t fixable.” And he meant that to cover more things than his mother even knew.

“Sometimes you can’t repair. Sometimes you have to get something new. I know your dad was opposed to that when it came to trucks and household appliances. But for this kind of thing, it is true. You’re planning on doing something new with the ranch. That’s a start. You can make a whole different life. That’s what we have to do. I get to live where I want, in a nice little house that’s easy for me to keep up. I would trade it all to have your dad back. I would. But I don’t have that choice. So that means I will take what I do have. And that is this little house. My life is closer to town. Mychoices. The fact that I don’t have to consult with another person to do what I want during the day. Not that your father controlled me, he didn’t. But when you’re in a relationship, you always have to consult that other person. You know how that is.”

A partnership. Ideally. It was strange how all that had fallen apart. Had he and Cass really ever been a partnership?

And was he really the one to blame?

He shook that thought off. “Yeah. I do.”

“Sorry. I know it’s probably not a happy memory for you right now. Marriage. I am grateful for that. That mine always will be.”

“Mine is a happy memory the way anything in my past is. There were good things. I just don’t want it anymore.”

And that, he realized, was very true. He didn’t want it anymore, and he had seen it this whole time as a flaw. That his changing had shattered his world.

But he’d changed. So why be hard on himself?

Maybe because it was the only way he knew how to be.

Push, push, push. On to glory.

For whatever the hell it was.

For whatever it all meant.