Chapter 8 - The Ranch Remembered
Wyatt kept his sons away from most of it.
Not from the truth.
From the noise.
At breakfast one morning, Owen asked, “Was Brielle evil?”
Wyatt put down his coffee.
Children ask impossible questions while eating cereal.
“No.”
Eli looked up.
“She lied.”
“Yes.”
“And tried to steal the ranch.”
“Yes.”
“And ruined cake.”
“Yes.”
Owen frowned.
“So not evil?”
Wyatt thought of Mason.
Of Brielle crying beside the driveway.
Of Hannah’s table covered in someone else’s party.
“People can do very wrong things without being monsters every minute.”
Owen considered that.
“That’s annoying.”
Wyatt almost laughed.
“Yes.”
Eli asked, “Do we forgive her?”
“Not right now.”
“When?”
“When forgiveness doesn’t make us stupid.”
Owen smiled faintly.
“That sounds like Aunt Mara.”
“It does.”
“It was Mara,” Eli said.
“She said it by the truck.”
Wyatt shook his head.
Of course Eli had heard.
Children hear everything except instructions about socks.
The ranch changed after the birthday.
Not visually much.
Wyatt removed the floral arch.
Took down the string lights.
Had the barn locks replaced.
Installed a gate camera.
Filed signs properly with the county.
Practical things.
But emotionally, the land felt claimed again.
Not because paper said so.
Because the boys had watched him defend it.
Owen started helping more with fence checks.
Not out of anxiety.
Out of pride.
Eli asked to plant sunflowers by the barn “so it doesn’t remember the fancy flowers.”
They planted six.
Three lived.
Enough.
One afternoon, Wyatt found Owen in the tack room holding Mason’s old riding gloves.
His son looked guilty.
“I was just looking.”
Wyatt leaned against the doorway.
“That’s okay.”
“Did Uncle Mason want the ranch?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
Wyatt paused.
“Yes. But not always the way I have it now.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I wanted it with your mom.”
Owen looked down.
“Oh.”
Wyatt stepped inside.
“I’m still glad it’s ours.”
“Even without her?”
His throat tightened.
“Yes. Because she was part of making it ours.”
Owen touched the gloves.
“Was Uncle Mason bad for signing it away?”
“No. He wanted a different life.”
“Was Brielle bad for wanting his part?”
“She was wrong for pretending he still had one.”
Owen nodded slowly.
“I don’t want to be like her.”
“You won’t be.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you asked that.”
The boy accepted this with the fragile seriousness of twelve.
Then placed Mason’s gloves back.
Brielle wrote one letter six months later.
Wyatt almost gave it to Mara unopened.
Then read it on the porch after the boys went to bed.
Wyatt,
I have been ordered by my attorney not to write emotional letters, so this is probably a bad idea.
I am sorry for what I did on the ranch. I am sorry I used Mason’s name and Hannah’s table and your sons’ home to make myself feel less erased.
I did love Mason. That part was real. But I also loved what being near your family made me feel entitled to, and I did not want to admit the difference.
I am working on restitution. I don’t expect you to forgive me.
Brielle
Wyatt read it twice.
Then folded it.
He did not feel better.
But the letter did not insult him.
May you like
That mattered.
He stored it in the ranch office, not with legal documents, but in a drawer where complicated things waited.
