As his boots hit the wooden floor, he gave a little stamp, testing the strength. It had held up well, and he turned in a circle, looking around himself. He was high enough that he could see through some patchy trees toward the grass where the horses grazed and Jane sat on the blanket, the toddlers both with heads on her lap. He paused, looking at how the sun made her dark hair shine in glossy waves. She was looking down at her children, and there was something in her posture that made his heart soften.
When he sold this piece of land, it would benefit her, and that made this worth it. She needed more support. Josh was gone... It wasn’t like Colt had a family looking to him, nor would he ever. And he wondered if he could do a little more for her than simply buy her out for the cattle.
Not that she’d let him, he realized. Who was he fooling? Just because the sight of her made him feel things he shouldn’t didn’t mean she felt the same.
He turned his attention back to the tree house and rummaged around until he came up with a metal box he recognized. He pried it open and sorted through a collection of a few baseball cards, some polished rocks, an old report card that Josh hadn’t wanted to show to his parents...
Colt smiled, his eyes misting.
“Back when our biggest problem was bad grades,” he muttered to himself. That was one thing they had in common—neither of them had been great in school.
Underneath the report card was a set of dog tags, and he pulled them out. He couldn’t remember where Josh had stumbled across these. A secondhand store, maybe? But he’d brought them up to the tree house, and they’d talked about becoming soldiers. For Colt it was just make believe. For Josh, it had been more.
At the very bottom of the box was another piece of paper, and Colt didn’t recognize it until he’d unfolded it completely.
“The Good Cowboy.”
It was a piece he’d had to memorize for church one year, and he’d been a nervous wreck. He hated speaking in front of people, and he’d brought that page up here to practice with his cousin.
It was a rewriting of the twenty-third psalm, describing God as the Good Cowboy instead of the Good Shepherd. It just made more sense to folks out here who raised cattle. God was like a cowboy who went after that lost calf, who shot wolves who tried to attack them, who led the cattle to the lushest valleys where they could graze undisturbed. God was the Good Cowboy who sang lonesome ballads at night, a gun over his knee and his watchful eye ever on the herd. He still remembered a few lines from it—that was how hard he’d memorized this old piece.
Colt straightened and looked through the trees again in time to see Jane looking around. He waved, and she spotted him then stood up, shading her eyes. The girls both seemed to be resting. They were both on their sides, their legs tangled together, but still.
She waved again, and he looked down at the box in his hands. She might want some of these trinkets. Maybe they’d mean something to her.
Jane saw Colt disappear from view, and she stood there on the blanket, waiting. After a couple of minutes she turned back to the girls again.
They’d both fallen asleep, but not too deeply. They might not sleep for long, but they’d be more cooperative with full stomachs and some rest.
A rustle in the trees drew her gaze, and she saw Colt coming out. He took his hat off and slapped it against his thigh as he approached, walking with the easy confidence of a man used to working outdoors. He held something under one arm that she couldn’t quite make out.
“They’re sleeping, are they?” he said when he came up.
“For a little bit. Trust me. This will make everything easier.”
“I believe you.” He smiled and those warm, dark eyes met hers for a beat.
“What’s that?” She looked down at the box in his hands.
“Just a few of our treasures from back in the day.” He opened it and passed her a piece of paper. “That’s Josh’s report card.”
She scanned the grades—two Cs, a D and an F. “He hid it, then?” she asked with a small smile.
“Yep. He knew his dad would be mad.”
Jane looked toward the trees again. This had been where her husband had grown up. She’d seen a handful of pictures from his childhood that his cousins had posted online—kids standing together, squinting into summer sunlight in front of giant bales of hay or at a birthday party wearing party hats and holding cupcakes... He’d always just been a kid in a group, but out here, it was different. This was the place that meant so much to him, that he wouldn’t really talk about besides saying that treehouse was their masterpiece...
But she couldn’t go see it yet—not until the girls were awake.
“You want to sit down?” he asked, and he nodded toward a fallen tree a couple of yards off. It was close enough to the sleeping toddlers that she could keep an eye on them, but their voices wouldn’t disturb them.
“Sure.” She followed him over, and they sat down, side by side in the cool of the shade. She could feel the warmth of his leg close to hers, and she was grateful for it as a cooling breeze picked up and made her shiver. She looked toward the girls, who seemed comfortable in the warm sunlight.
“Can I see it?” she asked, nodding toward the box.
Colt hesitated for a second, then he passed it to her. It would be his personal memories, too, she realized. She sifted through
