“These can be preserved, too, can’t they? Michaela asked.
“Jordan has a friend who does that,” Grandma Kate said. “It can be put into a glass case and hermetically sealed.”
“Then I could set it out, put it on display. It would be a way to honor him, wouldn’t it?”
“It would, indeed.”
“I’ll ask Jordan and if he’s willing, I’ll give it to him before he leaves today,” Michaela said.
“I like that you want to see to things as soon as possible,” Grandma Kate said.
Michaela grinned and gave voice to the words that came to mind. “As Momma used to say, I know the names of the days of the week, and someday isn’t one of them.”
“I’ll have to remember that one,” Grandma Kate said.
“Words I live by, unless there’s a reason not to,” she said.
Michaela uncovered the small jewelry box her mom cherished, though she didn’t think there was a precious gem in the bunch.
In the box lay a brooch, a piece she remembered well. About the size of silver dollar, it was gold in color and had imitation pearls in the shape of a star. She blinked back tears. “I can’t believe she kept it!”
“From you?” Kate asked.
“Yes. I bought this for her one Christmas, with money I’d made helping after school.” She set it back inside the box. As she set the box on the table to take to her bedroom, something in the trunk caught her eye. Michaela picked up one of the three stacks of letters that were in a corner in the bottom. Wrapped with a bit of faded red ribbon, there were no envelopes. But she recognized her father’s handwriting.
“Love letters?” There were a lot of them, and they appeared to be in chronological order. “I don’t understand. Dad didn’t ever go anywhere—well, not after he came back from Vietnam, and these were written after that.”
“So, he wrote them while he was here, going to bed each night with your mother, sitting across the breakfast table, day by day.”
Grandma Kate’s words settled gently in her heart. “I…I never saw tenderness from him, particularly. I left for college when I was eighteen and never came back to live until Jake called me to tell me he was ill.”
A handkerchief filled her wavery vision. Michaela accepted it from Grandma Kate. She took a moment to clear her vision. “It gives me such a sense of joy to think that there was another side to him and that he would take the time to write love letters to my mom. I’ll have to read these. I think I’ll set them in Daniel’s box, and when I feel up to it—and when I have a good supply of tissues—I’ll read them.”
“That sounds like a plan. Now, I don’t know what kind of records are in that box marked ‘Farm Business,’ but while my husbands ran our ranch, I took care of the paperwork. So I might be able to help you.”
“I don’t have any idea what’s in there, either, but I definitely welcome your help.”
Much later, she was sitting in her dining room after inspecting the wonderful job everyone had done on the house. Michaela told Lewis and Randy about the discoveries she’d made that day—and not just the emotional ones. She’d been right in that, after her brother died, Harold Powell had scaled back his operation considerably. After her mother passed, he’d stopped altogether. He sold off the rest of his cattle and taken a lower price on his last crop of corn, because the rancher who bought it had had to harvest the crop himself.
“This is good information,” Randy said. He and Lewis had finished scanning the documents she’d handed them. “We now know the last year the tractor worked was 2013. We’ll want to have it looked at by a mechanic before we try to start it.”
“Oh, speaking of that,” Michaela pulled over one more item that she’d kept out to show them.
“The owner’s manual for the tractor! Perfect.” Lewis grinned. “This really helps. Your father bought it in 2000. Likely no warranty left, but this is golden.”
“I also discovered that, the last few years, Jake was helping Dad with his taxes and keeping track of his bills.” She looked at the guys. “I don’t think I understood just how good of a friend he’d been to Dad.”
“Well,” Lewis said, “that’s how Kendalls do things.”
“It is,” Randy agreed. “But of course that’s the Benedict way, as well.”
Michaela smiled. She’d heard those mottos on more than one occasion. “Jessops are like that, too, I’ve heard.”
Both men smiled in response to her quip.
“When you’re ready to think about going forward, farming, ranching, whatever, we’ll have some additional information for you.” Lewis met her gaze and held it. “Do you trust us, baby girl, to do that for you? To talk to those in the families who are working the land and to get up to speed on the breeds of cattle that do the best, as well as the feed crops and grasses that work?”
Here they were, at her dining room table, looking ahead to an evening with Randy and Lewis’s family. She’d told them everything she’d learned during her amazing time with Grandma Kate.
She had shared her body with them and found she really wanted to share oh, so much more. She looked from one to the other then tilted her head to the side. She hadn’t planned to be the first one to say it and certainly hadn’t thought she’d say it yet. The words, it seemed, had a mind of their own and came out, soft yet clear, and they rang with the truth.
“Of course, I trust you. I love you. I love you both.”
Chapter Sixteen
Michaela hadn’t known what to expect as a response to her unplanned and somewhat bald declaration of love.
Her heart overflowed when Lewis’s eyes teared, when he slid his chair back and then plucked her right
