“Yeah, sure.” Charlie accepted his second drink gratefully.
“The point is to do your best,” John said. “That’s all any of us can do. Sounds simple, but it’s not. It’s the most important thing in the world. That’s what I think, anyway. Give your all, and you’ll die without regrets. So, the next question is this: if you want to be a good partner, what do you think that is?”
“I wish I knew.” Charlie sipped his drink and thought. “I don’t even know if she wants me in her life, but I’d like to be in hers. She’s trying to take all the pressure off me. That much is obvious. But maybe I want to carry a little weight. That’s how you get stronger, isn’t it? By carrying a little weight from time to time. What makes a good partner?” He paused and considered it. Of all the partnerships he’d witnessed in his life, and that included business partners, work partners, and romantic partners, the one he’d seen the most of was that of his parents.
What memories he had of his parents when his mother was alive seemed like happy ones. His father had changed so much when his mother passed away. All at once, the good partner was gone, and the one who benefited most from that partnership was left to fall apart.
Charlie loved his father, but he couldn’t deny the man had his faults. He had not dealt well with the loss. His personality had changed so significantly that Charlie had felt like he needed to get to know his own father all over again. After a time, the wounds closed over a bit, and his father was able to live a normallife and raise his son the best he could. But there was no denying something huge had been lost. They were traveling in a damaged vessel, the two of them. Without Charlie’s mother, life became a weary fight for survival, where all the glimmers of hope had dimmed and all the happy moments faded back into the past.
“I suppose,” Charlie began, staring down at his drink again, “the best partner I ever knew was my mother. She helped my father to become the best version of himself somehow. I missed her after she was gone, but you know, I missed him, too. Some part of him died when she did. And I never saw it again.”
“Well, Charlie Greene.” John cocked his head and smiled a kind smile. “I do believe this is the most sentimental I’ve ever seen you.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Charlie joked.
“I won’t, but why not? Being sentimental isn’t weakness. Takes a strong heart to love anyone that much. You risk losing them when you love them. You risk that wound. Your father was a strong man. And your mother was a strong woman. Together, I’d wager, they raised a strong and sentimental son. So, if your mother was the best partner you’ve ever known, you only have one question left to answer.”
Charlie looked up from the bar top to meet John’s eyes. The bar owner was older than him by a couple of decades, at least. He had more life under his belt, more experiences to draw from. If Charlie had learned one thing from living in God’s country, it was to not discount the advice of his elders. “What’s that?” he asked.
“You’ve got to ask yourself, if your mother were in your shoes, what would she do?”
That last piece of advice gave Charlie a jolt. He hadn’t even thought about what his mother would have done in this situation. His instinct was to look to his father for the model of a good man to build on. But why?
Why hadn’t he even considered drawing from the wisdom of his mother? The second he really considered it, he knew exactly what to do. All his confusion on the matter washed away when he looked at it from this completely different angle. This wasn’t about avoiding or taking on responsibility. That was the wrong question entirely. This was aboutloveand whether he wanted to avoid or embrace it. And if it was his mother’s wisdom he was drawing from, the answer to what he needed to do and how exactly he needed to do it was crystal clear.
CHAPTER 24
ANNA
Anna was packing up to leave Denson Oaks when the phone call came in. She had finished filming reshoots in town, and she’d decided not to be present for those on the ranch. The place just had too many memories for her, and she felt like Charlie was finally amiable enough to deal with the crew without a go-between.
She picked up her phone without checking who it was. Very few people bothered to call rather than text these days, and one of them was her boss. So, she just assumed she’d be hearing the fast-talking voice of Olivia on the other end of the line, probably asking for one last favor, which Anna would probably say yes to. After today, though, she’d be working to find a new career, one that kept her in one place so she could utilize daycare and still see her child every day. She wanted to give her baby the kind of life she’d never had, one where they had roots in one place, a home for the kid to return to whenever they struck out on their own.
But it wasn’t her boss’s voice on the other end of the line. Instead, she heard Charlie’s low and comforting tones, and allher muscles relaxed at once. She sat on the foot of the bed. “Hey, Charlie. What do you need?”
“I’d like to see you one more time before you go,” he said. “On the ranch. There’s something I need your help with.”
She fell back onto the bed, predicting her own exhaustion. “What is it, Charlie? I thought you liked the crew now. You all had an understanding, right? What do you need me for?”
He grumbled, “I can’t tell you what I need you for until you come out here and see it.”
This sounded like a loose end, and leaving those dangling never ended well for Anna. Whether she wanted to or not, she realized, this was going to have to be something she took care of before she left town. “All right. When would you like me there?”
“As soon as you can get here,” he said. “This is important.”
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Give me an hour, and I’ll be there.”
She hung up and finished packing. There was no point in holding on to the room. She was determined to leave Denson Oaks tonight. She had a lot to take care of, not least of which was finding a small town to settle down in—location scouting for her own future. It couldn’t be Denson Oaks. That was for sure. Denson Oaks belonged to Charlie, as far as Anna was concerned, and she wasn’t going to invade it. That was the least she could do for him after everything.
She checked out of the hotel and, on the way out of town, grabbed a coffee from the local café that Paris and Sam had introduced her to. Then, she made the trip to Charlie’s ranch. She wasn’t nervous at all. She knew she’d done the right thing,and she knew she could handle whatever dispute may have occurred between the film crew and Charlie.
Surprisingly, the ranch felt emptier than usual when she showed up. There was no film crew there at all. Had Charlie sent them away already? Was he really that upset? She knocked on the door, and no one answered. She checked the barn and found it empty. She finally texted Charlie to ask,Where are you?
He responded,At the tree. You know the one.
She did. He would have meant the tree that was his mother’s sacred spot. Of course she knew where it was and had no trouble taking the walk to it—nor did she mind at all. It was a peaceful walk, and a little peace before the storm was welcome. It gave her time to think, to go over various possible scenarios and plan how she would approach each one. She probably shouldn’t have bothered, though. There was no chance she could predict what scenario she was about to walk into.
Charlie was sitting under the tree with his hat tipped forward and his legs crossed. It looked like he was napping, but she knew he wasn’t. That stillness he exuded was normal, just the way he existed, and it gave her the kind of comfort she had no idea she even needed. That was something Charlie always did for her. He put a spotlight on how stressed she’d been by removing that same stress and showing her what her life could look like without it.
