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It seemed like it should be, in a way. Like you lived on for the person who came before.
Especially when they had been so utterly good.
“Yes. The legacy. It’s really important to me.”
She had been trying to project utter confidence to Fia, to find some way to bring herself up to equal footing with the more beautiful, much more elegant, woman. And instead, she had found herself drowning in doubt.
Great. That had backfired spectacularly.
They kept going, and she noticed when the first, very fluffy, full-looking cloud rolled in. They were white at first, and then there were more with rims of gray around the edges. The swollen undersides dark, as if they had been brushed with charcoal, fading upward into a paler white still.
“I think that rain might be coming sooner rather than later,” she said.
“We just need to get to the top. Then we can have lunch,” Lachlan said.
They pressed on, and when they arrived at the top of the ridge, the reward was obvious. The dark cloud still had the sun spilling through gaps in that woven mist, pouring it down into the valley below, highlighting the trees in the fields, a glorious golden green that almost glowed. There were vineyards and rows of corn, the different fields bisected by roads. You could make out the shape of cows grazing down there, and the little tiny main street of Pyrite Falls, which looked out of time and place from all the way up here.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“I told you,” he said.
They dismounted, the horses standing by, well trained and docile, used primarily for the equine therapy and therefore not really flight risks.
Lachlan took blankets from saddlebags on the horses, and Fia gathered up the two picnic baskets that her horse had been carrying. They sat down at the edge of the ridge, looking down at the view below.
Lachlan was sitting next to Fia, a big gap between them and where Charity sat next to Byron. Couples.
Charity looked across the space to Lachlan and he offered her a smile.
She looked away, opening up the basket and digging inside. “This looks beautiful,” Charity said, taking out a sandwich wrapped in cellophane.
“Thank you,” Fia said, looking pleased. “I think I’m going to sell all of this kind of thing in the farm store. I’m getting really excited about it. We’re closer and closer to actually having the building in a reasonable state. And definitely closer to figuring out the logistics of the permits on the roads.”
“It really is such a complicated business,” Byron said. “Arranging all of that. When we opened the clinic in Virginia, it was a new construction, and the bureaucracy was a bit stunning.”
She laughed. “Yes. Definitely stunning bureaucracy. But here it’s more been trying to arrange things with other ranchers. A little bit bracing. But it’s fine. We’ve got it more or less sorted out. I’m not terribly worried.”
“That’s good,” Lachlan said.
She ate her turkey sandwich and enjoyed it far more than she would even like to admit. It had cream cheese and cranberry sauce and was on a croissant, and was so good she wanted to weep. Then there were little mini pies filled with tart berries that made her want to moan with pleasure. But of course, she wouldn’t let herself. A compliment was one thing, but she didn’t need to go falling all over herself over the other woman’s food. Charity herself made very good cookies, and if she had brought some, everyone would’ve liked those just as much.
They wouldn’t have. Your basic chocolate chip cookie is not this incredible pie, and you know it.
No.
Charity was a chocolate chip cookie. Fia was a beautiful pie.
Maybe that was a terrible and ridiculous metaphor, and she didn’t know why she was marinating on it, or why she felt quite so keenly. Only that she did. And it was really annoying.
They had just finished the last bite of their pie when a fat raindrop fell from the swollen clouds.
“Dammit,” Lachlan said. “We might’ve overstayed our welcome.”
“I did tell you,” Charity grumbled.
“Well, was the view worth it or not?”
“You know it was. But now we’re going to have to ride back in the rain.”
