Page 72 of Love Wells Kept

Dad tips his face toward the sky and blows out a breath before speaking. “I want all three of you to know I’m sorry. I never should have left the way I did…. It’s a shitty excuse, but I guess I didn’t know how else to deal with…” His lips press firmly together and his hands gesture something that says everything he can’t. Even after all this time, he can’t find the strength to talk about his wife dying.

Denny clears his throat. “I get it, Dad. Losing the person you love does fucked-up things to your head.”

Our dad sniffs, burying the emotion deep enough his tears never crest and fall. “It’s a pain I hope none of you have to face until after you’ve lived long, happy lives.”

My mind wanders to Kate. The raw, honest pain in her voice and the way my words hurt her time and time again. If I had died, would she be sitting here years from now, still unable to talk about me? I think so.

The silence that follows is deafening. I imagine my brothers are thinking about their wives, too. What it might feel like to lose them. I lost mine…in a roundabout way. She’s still here, the only one holding on to our shared history, doing everything she can to ensure we get those long, happy lives we vowed to have. And I’ve been playing fast and loose with her heart.

Denny lets out a sigh and tips his head back toward the sky. “Man, it is way too peaceful out here. What the hell are we doing working our lives away on the ranch?”

“Paying our bills, feeding our families, putting roofs over our heads, that sort of thing,” Austin mutters.

Denny huffs. “Maybe I could become a fisherman instead. Sit here every day, sell what I catch…”

“You gotta be able to catch something first,” Dad points out.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” I say with a smirk. “He caught some pretty good Z’s earlier.”

That gets Dad and Austin laughing under their breath. Denny shakes his head, hooking a thumb in my direction. “Big talk coming from a guy who was asleep for almost a full week straight.”

I shake my head. “That was medical hibernation, not sleep.”

Denny cackles. “Having a baby means my sleep’s medically required, too. I’ll get Blair to write me a doctor’s note that says so.”

We lapse into quiet again, fishing lines dragging lazy paths across the lake’s surface. The silence isn’t so awkward or tense or sad this time.

Then Denny breaks it like he always does. “Hey…not to get all serious or anything, but it’s good to have you back, man.”

I squint at a dragonfly flitting an inch above the water. “It’s good to be back.”

Dad glances over. “You doing okay with everything?”

“Yeah…kind of…getting there,” I say. “Kate and I are…well, I’m trying to figure it out. She’s holding everything together, which is more than I deserve. I keep waiting for her to get tired of being patient with me.”

“She won’t.” Austin stares out at the water. His typically deep voice somehow finds an even lower pitch. “She’s always the one holding it together. The ranch would’ve been fucked after Mom died if Kate wasn’t there.”

“If she loved you enough to stick around during that, she’s not leaving now.” Denny’s toe repeatedly taps the edge of the dock.

“Yeah…I said some stuff last night that I shouldn’t have, so I don’t know if that’s true anymore.”

“That was a stupid choice.” Dad calls it like it is. I can’t disagree. He’s right. So damn right. “But marriage is a lot of messing up, saying you’re sorry, and showing up the next day anyway. Sounds like you got some apologizing to do now.”

The red bobber attached to my lure spins and dips below a small wave created by a family of ducks swimming past. My guts twist. Dad’s right. I need to make this up to Kate.

“If I wanted to take Kate somewhere, do you guys have any suggestions?”

“Like for the night?” Austin asks.

“Not necessarily, just…somewhere that’s more than a quick dinner date, y’know?”

Denny taps the soles of his boots against the boards underneath him. “You’re probably not cleared to go riding yet, hey? I’d say the weather’s only getting warmer, you could pack a picnic and go out for the day.”

I shake my head. “Horseback riding is out.”

I don’t tell them I doubt I’ll remember how to ride, if and when I climb into the saddle again. Given what a burden I feel like while still in recovery, I’ve been actively avoiding thinking about what my life will look like once my head has fully healed. My role on the ranch has long been training horses, and I don’t imagine I’ll relearn decades of horsemanship quick enough to be useful to the ranch in the way I was.

“Cecily and I spent a few days at some hot springs a few hours from here for our honeymoon,” Austin says. “They have these fancy-ass rental cabins. I tried telling her we could sleep in one of the cabins at the ranch instead, but she wasn’t having it.”