"We can drop the pleasantries," the Doc said, surprising both Sam and I with his gruffness. "There's business to attend to, now more than I thought and not much time to attend to it. Take a seat Sam."
Sam sat down beside me and gave me a look, like I was somehow complicit in the Doc's change in behaviour. I suppose I was, but didn't want to let on to him especially, what this was all about. Turns out the Doc would do that for me.
"I was going to come and tell you like I said, but now's you're here and now that Sam's here too, we may as well take care of all of this at once."
I looked slowly from one man to the other, not sure of where this was going or what the good Doc had in store for me, exactly.
"Take care of what?" I asked slowly.
"Gracey, I promised your Pappy on the day he died that no matter what I'd take care of you till the day you wed. Well, I'm a man of my word, always have been and I will be until the good Lord decides it's time for me to go. I'm not leaving this earth knowing that I didn't do right by your Pa. I done my best to try to let you live out there on your lonesome, like you said you wanted. I done my best to help you run that ranch but Grace, that operation's just too big for a single man or woman. Not to mention that when I go, the title to that land can't be willed to you, you know that as well as I. And now, with this robbery..."
"Robbery?" The Sheriff's voice interrupted the Doc in mid-sentence as he looked up at the man with wide eyes. The Doc let out a sigh.
"You may as well know Sam, I suppose you would have found out soon enough. Someone up and robbed the ranch up there, left Grace a with pretty nasty bruise on her noggin'." The Doc shot me a scowl, "Lucky that nothing happened beyond that," he said, furrowing his brow. Truth of the matter was, I knew that he was right.
"Horse thieves?" Sam asked in a low voice. The Doc just shook his head.
"They took everything, Sam," the Doc explained.
Sam slowly levelled his gaze at me, holding me with his steely-eyed stare. Sent another shiver up my back before he spoke.
"Everything?" he asked, his voice still low.
"What they didn't take, they broke. They left Destiny," I replied, finally looking away and realizing that the whole thing had come off sounding and looking much more casual than I'd intended. The two men sat in silence for a few moments, staring at me and filling the room with a quiet displeasure at what must have seemed my flippant manner.
"You get a look at 'em? Had to be more than one to make off with that kind of haul," Sam grumbled. I shook my head.
"I was snuffed out like a candle for the whole thing," I said, trying to sound more serious and meeting his stare. He was the one to look away first this time. The Doc didn't wait long for us to sit in silence before going on.
"You can give Sam all the details later. You'll have plenty of time. Gracey, I'm passing over care of you to Sam. By that, I mean that he's to marry you and you're to be his wife."
There aren't many days in a person's life where time stops three times in a row. Well, time stopped for a third time that day and my heart stopped with it. I stared at the Doc with my wide eyes, a fiery anger clutching at my throat. I'd always hated Sam Spencer, most everyone did. Him and my daddy had never gotten along and he was always looking for ways to make trouble, not just for us but for lots of folk. Daddy always suspected he was after our land in one way or another. Steered clear of him for the most part, but I'd overheard one too many conversation between him and the Doc on just that subject to take this news lying down.
"Doc," I began, my voice now far colder than it had been when I'd first arrived, "I don't know why things are working out this way, by whose plan all this came to be..." I levelled my gaze at him, held him in my cold, hard stare to make sure he understood how serious I was when I said what I was about to say, "but I will never marry this man. For as long as I'm alive, that will never happen."
I felt Sam's stare descend upon me, more than I saw it, my own still watching Doc for his reaction. But he didn't stare back. He didn't try to win by will. He just shook his head and rubbed his hands together, then ran another finger along his moustache before going on.
"Gracey, here are your choices. You can marry Sam and keep the land in the family. Should you have children, the land will go to them and your Pappy's wishes'll be honoured, the way they should be. The other choice, is that I die someday and in the will that I've prepared which Sam here has come to witness, I leave the land to him because you and I both know well enough that you can't own it yourself. Now the choice is yours. I want to do what's right by your Pa and I suspect you will too, once you've had some time to consider all this."
An awkward, pregnant silence filled the room as I gazed through the good Doc, out past the walls of his house and up into the foothills where everything inside the ranch house lay in pieces. My mind got lost, floating somewhere between the Doc's house and the tree underneath which my daddy was buried and
