I stood there, staring at the closed door.
I didn’t love him.
But I was still the one left holding it together.
I went to the Roberts’ house first. I stood on their porch longer than necessary, rehearsing words that all sounded thin and useless in my head, before knocking anyway. Evan’s mom answered. I apologized. She called him down, and I said I was sorry for what he’d been put through, sorry it had happened at all, sorry it had happened in public. Standing there owning something I hadn’t done but still knowing it was mine to carry was freaking impossible.
After that, I walked down to the mercantile and did it again. Same apology, different faces. Every eye in the place went to me, then away. Pity first, edged with suspicion. Like they were wondering whether this was the part where I promised it wouldn’t happen again, or the part where it did.
By the time I left, my chest hurt with the effort of holding myself together.
I couldn’t put it off any longer after that. I needed to talk to Doc Alvarez.
Doc didn’t sugarcoat it. He never had. He told me Dad needed a higher level of care, regular check-ins at the very least, and that the real issue wasn’t logistics but authority. Without a medical power of attorney—a health care proxy, whatever name you put on it—I couldn’t make decisions for him, couldn’t give instructions, couldn’t step in when things went wrong.
He didn’t hold back, telling me straight that Dad’smental capacity was deteriorating and that it wouldn’t be a straight line. There would be good days and bad days, but the overall direction was clear.
He slid leaflets across the desk—emergency in-home care, short-term respite—and said he could arrange something temporary if I needed it, but that I had to get a lawyer and proper advice if I wanted any control at all.
What stuck wasn’t the paperwork or the inevitability of decline, but the fact he was telling me this in the first place, crossing a professional line only because he knew my family and knew this town.
I nodded once. Hard. There was nothing else left to do.
I called and managed to grab an appointment with Joseph Buckler, local lawyer, in two hours; his secretary—someone I’d gone to school with—took the call as if she’d been expecting it, the way people do in small towns when they already know the situation, or at least enough of it.
That left me with time I didn’t want, and there was no point heading back home, so I ended up at the Laughing Fork Diner. Same booths as when I was a kid, same vinyl seats. I slid into a booth by the window and stared out at the street, counting the minutes until I could sit across from a lawyer and start turning responsibility into something official that could help.
My head was full of potential numbers and options I didn’t want—care costs, legal fees, timelines—and one ugly, tempting thought I hadn’t been able to shake since I left Doc’s office.
If I sold my share of the ranch, I’d have money. Enough to set up proper care for Dad. Enough to step away and letprofessionals handle him. I wouldn’t have to be involved with the old man at all anymore.
The thought scared me almost as much as it steadied me. I’d be destroying other lives, the men and women who worked for Snow Creek, the town that would suffer if there was development on their doorstep, for my own selfish reasons.
Cathy appeared at my elbow before I could decide whether to bolt. She took one look at my face and didn’t ask questions.
“Coffee and the breakfast sandwich, please.”
Cathy leaned one hip against the table and kept her voice low. “How are things out at Snow Creek?” she asked.
I lifted my eyes long enough to meet hers and gave a careful nod. “Busy, ma’am,” I said. Polite and hoping for no follow-up.
She studied me for half a second longer, then nodded. “I’ll have that right out for you, Jesse.”
God, my head hurt.
And it didn’t get much better at the lawyer’s office when Joseph started talking about competence—whether Dad was still capable of understanding what he was agreeing to, and how narrow that line could be. He said medical advice wasn’t clean or decisive; everything was conditional, dependent on assessments and timing, and whether doctors were willing to put their names to it.
There was no immediate legal fix, no piece of paper that could solve anything fast enough. Until something formal could be decided, the responsibility defaulted back to me. Out of my own pocket. I’d have to hire someone to look inon him, manage the worst of it, keep him safe. At least for now.
Money meant choices, but selling meant I might end up losing everything—all for a man who’d spent his life hating me.
And the worst part was knowing I might still do it and regret it for the rest of my life.
Chapter 17
Lucas
Aweek had passed since the hallway incident. Since the shouting. Since the grave visit. Jesse and I stayed out of each other’s way. It wasn’t discussed or agreed on—it just happened. He disappeared before I came down in the mornings and reappeared only after dark. I adjusted my hours without meaning to, borrowing the truck to work my way from the ranch house in wider circles each time, losing myself in plans and figures, inventories and projections, anything that kept my hands busy and my thoughts contained. We passed like ghosts sometimes, distant shapes at opposite ends of a corridor or yard, neither of us slowing, neither of us looking.
