And he wasn’t really cut out to be a winner, was he?
He pulled his key ring out of his pocket. Popped the top off his beer and lifted it to his mouth. He was just washing away the grit, he told himself.
More like trying to drown the failure.
Liam suppressed a growl.
Did he really want to be the kind of man who drank to forget things? Who took weather personally and always thought the world was out to get him?
He’d lost Tory, and that hurt—a lot. That didn’t mean his life was over. Or that anything would improve if he got drunk.
Noah was watching him. “We might have to cull the herd early.”
Liam watched the pitiful stream in silence for a minute. Fought against the urge to hunch his shoulders, wallow in the pain of it all, drink down the damn beer he held in one long gulp and fetch another.
He wasn’t a quitter, no matter what anyone thought. He was done with that.
“I’m not leaving.”
Noah gave him a questioning look.
“I won’t leave,” Liam repeated. “I don’t care if we lose everything. This is Turner land, and this is where I intend to live out my days. No matter what.” He tipped the beer bottle upside down and let the liquid inside run out onto the parched ground.
“I’m with you,” Noah said. “Let’s figure out how to turn this around.”
“There you are.”
Tory looked up from making a snack in the kitchen of Thorn Hill to see Lance standing in the doorway in his work clothes, dusty and tracking mud.
“Want a slice of cheese?” Tory asked, offering him a chunk. “I made some toast to go with it.”
“Toast and cheese? Didn’t Mom ever teach you to cook?”
“I’m sure she tried.”
Lance grunted. “You paid more attention to what Dad was doing, if memory serves. Always more inclined to be a rancher than a ranch wife.”
“That was a long time ago.” Tory nibbled her cheese and tried to ignore the memories that stirred in the back of her mind.
“Hopefully not too long. I could use some help. Are you up for a ride?”
“Sure.” She hurried to finish her snack and put things away again. When they’d saddled their horses and ridden out to one of the pastures, they followed along the fence until they came to a post that was sagging low enough to let out the cattle.
She wondered what Steel was doing today. It had been a long time since he’d been back to the house. Had he harvested that damn crop yet? She’d been afraid to go see.
Lance dismounted, and she followed suit, then put on the pair of gloves he offered her. “Remember how to do this?”
“No,” she admitted, but in the end it wasn’t too hard. Lance did all the difficult parts, like pulling out the post, digging a better hole and setting it up again. She was simply an extra pair of hands to hold things, steady them and whatever else it took.
There was something familiar to all of this. Breathing in the scent of sunbaked earth. Feeling the tiniest breeze across her skin to relieve the unrelenting heat. Bending to a job with a family member by her side, knowing it was their hard work that would get things done.
Lance was right; when she was a child she’d followed her father around, wanting to be a part of everything he did. She’d loved being in the barn when he oiled the saddles. Loved trying to help him muck out the horse stalls. Loved everything about the ranch and the work her father did here.
It had hurt so badly when he’d been taken away—
“Tory?” Lance said uncertainly. “Everything okay?”
A tear slid down her cheek. She couldn’t lift a hand to wipe it away; she was holding a loop of wire Lance would need in a minute.
“No.” She tried to scrub her cheek against her shoulder, but more tears came. “It’s just—I miss… Dad.” She struggled to find the words. “I miss—everything. You know?”
Lance set down his tools, took the wire from her arms and wrapped her in a hug.
“Yeah, I know. I miss him, too.”
Tory almost squirmed away, but instead she gave in. When was the last time Lance had hugged her? When they were kids?
Despite her best efforts to block them, memories spilled into her mind. Ones she hadn’t allowed herself to think of in years.
Goofing around with her siblings. Riding horses. Doing chores. Sharing family dinners.
It hadn’t all been bad. Not by a long shot. And it had all been ripped away in an instant the day Dale was arrested. She hadn’t seen him after that—not even once. He hadn’t wanted her to visit him in jail. She didn’t know how she’d have gotten back to Chance Creek from Idaho to do so.
“He died alone.” Her voice cracked. Tory tried to steady it. “All of us left him.” It killed her to know that, no matter what Dale had done.
“Not Steel,” Lance said. “He came back to see Dad a few times.”
Tory pulled back. Blinked. “Steel visited Dad?”
“Yeah. Didn’t you know?”
She shook her head. Another one of Steel’s mysteries. “I didn’t visit him.” Had her father thought she’d abandoned him? “I didn’t write. I didn’t do anything.”
“He didn’t want you to. He wanted us to start a new life,” Lance said.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s what I would want in his shoes.” Lance was silent a moment. “Dad wasn’t a bad guy, Tory. He was just… lacking in whatever it is that stops us from making mistakes. The things he did weren’t malicious. They were just dumb.”
“Running guns over the border seems more than dumb.”
“Yeah, I know. I can’t quite reconcile that, either.”
“I loved him.” Fresh tears started to her eyes. “He was just Dad to me.”
“I loved him, too. The thing to remember is that he loved us just as much. More, even. But he made his choices, Tory. None of what he did is our fault. Now we have to make our own
