Page 73 of Wild Sanctuary

He sets them down the way he’s done eight times a year for two decades. Green cloth-bound, brass-cornered, Bill’s old system.

The fact that Wyatt keeps it going says everything about who he is and what his values are.

“Twenty years of house calls. Do accountants usually do that?”

“Good ones do.” He smiles, unhurried. “Besides, these aren’t just numbers to me. They’re this family’s livelihood. Felt wrong to reduce that to an attachment in an email.”

I smile softly. “Sounds like something my dad would’ve said.”

Marcus straightens at that. “Now that reminds me. I have something here for you.”

He reaches into the leather satchel at his side and produces a manila folder, worn at the corners, the kind that’s been handled many times. He sets it on the desk in front of me.

“Your dad and Bill used to share this office at times, whenever Tom needed a desk and a quiet hour. He left a few things here over the years. When they both passed, I was helping sort through some of the ranch files for storage and found this tucked in the bottom drawer. Figured it was Tom’s.” He taps the folder gently. “I kept it, thinkin’ you’d come back someday. Took you long enough.”

His eyes are kind when he says it. Not an accusation. Just the gentle observation of a man who’s been waiting.

I open the folder with hands that aren’t quite steady.

It’s not much. A photograph of Dad and Bill leaning against a fence post, both of them laughing at something outside the frame, young enough that it takes me a moment to recognize them. A hand-drawn map of the north pasture boundary. A picture of me smiling, the first summer I spent at the ranch.

And an unopened envelope addressed to me in his chicken scratch, never sent.

I press my fingers flat against the envelope but don’t open it. Not yet.

“Thank you.” My voice comes out smaller than I intend. “I didn’t know he kept things here.”

“He loved this ranch like it was his own.” Marcus settles into the chair across the desk, easy and unhurried. “Talked about you constantly, you know. He even carried a map of Denver in his wallet. Folded up, worn through at the creases from opening it so many times. Said it helped him feel less far away.”

I press my lips together and look at the window. At the mountains. At anything that isn’t Marcus’s kind face.

“I didn’t know that,” I manage.

“That was Tom. Kept the big things close and quiet.” He chuckles softly. “Wyatt picked that up from him, I think. Two peas in a pod, those two. Drove everyone around them absolutely mad.”

He says it fondly, like it’s just an observation about men he’s known for years, even as it settles heavily into my chest.

We talk for the better part of an hour and our conversation feeds my soul. He tells me stories I haven’t heard before, like how Dad drove fifteen miles in a blizzard to bring food to an elderly rancher nobody else had thought to check on. And how Dad spent an entire Sunday teaching Colt to drive a stick shift with the patience of a saint while Bill and Wyatt watched from the fence pretending not to laugh.

Small, ordinary stories about a man living his ordinary life, and every one of them lands like a gift I didn’t know I needed.

When he finally stands to leave, he squeezes my shoulder the way my father used to.

“You look like him, you know. Around the eyes.” He picks up his satchel. “He’d be so proud of you, Daisy.”

He says it simply, like it’s just a fact, before walking over the threshold.

I wait until his footsteps fade down the hall. Then I look at the envelope.

My name is on the front in his handwriting with the date in the corner, two months before he died.

For just a second, the journalist in me wonders if this is it. The thread. The thing he was trying to tell someone before he ran out of time.

I open it, and freeze.

It’s a simple birthday card, the gas station kind. He must have bought it early and tucked it away to post closer to the date. But he never got the chance.

I bite my lip as I open it very slowly, my eyes reading each word carefully, embracing this one last, unexpected moment with my father.