I look out across the land our father left us, the land we've been tending and building on and protecting in our different wayssince he put it in our hands. I feel him in it the way I always feel him in it when the work is honest and the family is whole.
"Both," I say. "He would have said both."
Nobody argues with that.
The celebration happens the way McCallister celebrations always happen.
The family does it organically and without announcement. The house is full and the kitchen is loud and someone has found the good whiskey that Brooks keeps for occasions that earn it.
Summer brings food, the kind that appears in quantities suggesting she started cooking before anyone officially decided there was something to celebrate.
Addie comes with Luke carrying two pies and the particular quiet warmth she brings into every room she walks into.
Quinn arrives still carrying the satisfied expression she's been wearing since she made the call on Dusty two nights ago and shows no signs of putting it away anytime soon.
Riley is in the kitchen when they arrive, and I watch the women find each other the way they do now, the easy way of people who have been through something together.
Hadley is in the middle of all of it within approximately thirty seconds.
That's her natural habitat, and the McCallister women receive her there. Summer pulls her up onto the counter to help with something that doesn't require help. Addie produces a spare apron from somewhere that swamps Hadley completely and delights her absolutely.
Quinn crouches down to Hadley's level. "I heard you were very brave," she says.
Hadley considers this seriously. "I wasn't scared," she says. "Jace came."
The kitchen goes slightly quieter at that.
I feel it from across the room, the weight of those three words landing in the particular way that simple true things land when a child says them without understanding the full size of what they're saying.
Wade claps me on the shoulder hard enough to mean something. Brooks raises his glass slightly in my direction. Luke just looks at me with that steady gaze that sees more than he says and nods once.
We eat on the porch. All of us, plates balanced and chairs pulled from inside and the porch swing doing more work than it was designed for. The evening settles around us warm and easy.
The conversation moving the way it does when people are genuinely glad to be in the same place. Just the simple pleasure of a hard thing finished and a family whole on the other side of it.
Brooks tells the story of the financial records the way Brooks tells stories, precise and understated, which somehow makes it funnier than it would be with embellishment.
Wade tells his version of catching Colt in the arena, which is considerably less understated and improves slightly with each telling.
Luke says very little.
He doesn't need to.
The stars come out slow over the ranch.
I sit on the porch rail with my whiskey and look at the people spread across my porch and feel the fullness of it, this family, this land, this life.
Riley finds her way to my side sometime after dark, her shoulder against mine, her voice low enough that it's just for me. "This is what it's always like?"
"More or less," I tell her.
She's quiet for a moment, looking out at the ranch in the dark. "I could get used to this," she says.
I look down at her.
"That's the plan," I answer.
Everyone leaves around ten.
