The Rancher's Redemption

“Jeez, son, your face is sour enough to curdle milk. Can’t you even try and be happy for us?”

“Happy for what?” Adam asked levelly. “That you’re getting on okay? That you’ve forgiven her? That’s great.” He turned to Leanne. “Good for you.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?” His dad wasn’t letting things go tonight.

“I said I’m glad that Leanne got what she wanted.”

“What do you think I want, Adam?” Leanne asked quietly.

“Forgiveness?” Adam shrugged. “How the hell would I know?”

“The only person doing the forgiveness around here is Leanne.” His dad interrupted him. “I treated her like shit.”

Adam noticed all his siblings were now nodding, and that Kaiden was giving him the universal throat-cutting gesture to shut up now. But he was tired of deception. Tired of all of it.

“I saw you, Leanne.” Adam leaned forward and stared directly into his mother’s eyes. “In town. Meeting that guy.”

“What are you talking about?” Jeff demanded. “What guy?”

Leanne didn’t look away. “I assume you’re talking about before I left the first time?”

“Yeah. I saw you kiss, hug, and cry all over him.”

“And what did you do about that, Adam?” she asked softly.

“I . . . left a note in our mailbox telling Dad everything. The next day he threw you out.”

The silence around the table was now deafening

“That was you?” His dad was now looking at him, a frown on his face.

“Yeah.” Adam shifted in his seat. “I thought you should know. I was too scared to tell you to your face.”

“Why didn’t you ask me about it?” Leanne asked.

“I was already mad at you for fighting with Dad. But I thought he was the bad guy, and then I saw you with that man, and I guess I felt betrayed,” Adam replied.

“Did you think I was having an affair and that was why Jeff threw me out?” Leanne asked. “That it was because of you?”

Adam could only nod as his throat closed up with anguish like he was a teenager again, and being forced to relive the whole thing.

“That was my brother, Patrick, Adam. You’d never met him because he and your dad didn’t get along. He’d come to see me because he was in San Francisco, and he knew I was close to giving up,” Leanne said gently. “Jeff threw me out because we had one too many arguments. That time I let him because I knew Patrick was in town, and that he would help me. I wanted to give your father a shock.”

Adam turned to his father for confirmation and found him nodding along.

“I thought the note was from one of the town’s busybodies. I threw it in the trash. Your mom’s right. It had nothing to do with why she finally left that day.”

Adam slowly stood up and walked out, aware that a cornerstone of his beliefs was nothing but hot air. His guilt about precipitating his mother’s departure was fake. His fear of her returning and never acknowledging that she’d been having an affair on the side was built on a complete misunderstanding of the facts. One he could’ve easily cleared up if he’d had the guts to talk to his mother at the time.

He stopped moving.

His anger with her . . . anger that had spilled out to encompass Lizzie was completely unwarranted.

He walked out to the barn, let himself into Spot’s stall, and buried his face against the horse’s neck. He inhaled the warm, peppery scent of the gelding’s skin and closed his eyes.

Nothing was right in his world. All he wanted to do was find Lizzie, tell her what had happened, and let her comfort him. Not that she would want to see him. He’d called her a liar and she’d walked away from him.

Adam got the grooming tools from the tack room, his attention straying to the drawing of Spot that Roman had given him he’d put up on the wall. He reached up and traced the three figures in the picture who were holding hands and smiling.

He’d ruined that relationship, too.

He took his time grooming Spot, the task soothing his mind even as his already-tired body protested each movement. Apart from the occasional sounds of horses moving in their stalls, or the rustling of smaller critters and birds in the hay and bedding the barn was quiet.