His heart seized, and he brought his hands to his head. What was happening? Should he follow? Should he offer to go with them? He had no idea what to do.
His father rested his hand on Bullet’s shoulder and squeezed.
“I don’t know what to do, Dad,” he whispered.
“Let her go, Bullet.”
Let her go? No. He couldn’t let her go. Not ever.
Bullet shook his father’s hand away and sped out of the restaurant in time to see Tristan climb into the back seat of Ben’s SUV.
“Wait!” he yelled as Liv climbed in after her.
He ran over and held the door open. “Tell me what I can do.”
“We’ll call you as soon as we know something. I promise.”
Bullet stepped back and let them drive away.
Tristan went wherever Liv led her, in a daze every step of the way. When she encouraged her to close her eyes and rest, once they were on the plane, Tristan nodded but couldn’t keep her eyes closed. Whenever she did, all she could see was her mother, and the way she looked the last time she saw her, before she died in the car accident. Was the reason she kept seeing her mother because she was there to take her father to heaven?
“Have you heard anything?” Lyric asked when she saw Bullet looking out the kitchen window at the sunrise. She’d stayed up with him most of the night, waiting for word, until she finally drifted off to sleep on the couch. He hadn’t slept at all.
“Not yet.”
He thought about calling, or texting, or driving to the airport and getting on the next plane to New York. But he didn’t do any of those things. He just waited.
1972
Bill had been premature in asking Clancy to be his best man, but four years later, it was finally happening. Tomorrow afternoon he and Dottie would be man and wife.
Dottie insisted they wait to marry until after they’d both graduated from college. As it turned out, they didn’t have much choice.
She started out at Western State even though Bill was going to school in Colorado Springs. Two years later, Dottie was awarded a scholarship, and was able to transfer to Colorado College, the prestigious liberal arts institution. It wasn’t far from where Bill attended the Engineering School at University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
Unfortunately, Bill transferred to Colorado State College in Fort Collins right before Dottie found out about her scholarship.
He’d been approached by the school, which was Clancy’s alma mater. They offered him a spot in the College of Agricultural Sciences, and his own scholarship, as a rider for the CSU College Rodeo Team. They competed from March to May, which didn’t take much time away from his academics.
When he gave up rodeo after he graduated from high school, he turned to the only other thing he knew and loved—ranching. Now he’d be able to do both.
As part of his degree, Bill studied Agricultural Economics, Animal Sciences, and Soil and Crop Sciences. With all he was learning, he and Clancy could modernize the operation in Black Forest and work the land to its maximum potential while, at the same time, preserving its natural resources.
Right before he and Dottie graduated, Clancy finished the construction on the three-story ranch house he’d designed for Jane and him to live in.
Bill’s younger sister had married her high school sweetheart the previous summer, and the two made their home in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he’d gotten a management job with what was known as the “Daddy of ’em All” in the rodeo world, Cheyenne Frontier Days.
Clancy and Jane gave Bill and Dottie the original ranch house, which had belonged to Russ Snyder, as a combined wedding and college graduation gift.
The house didn’t look much like it had when Bill first saw it all those years ago. Clancy had added a front porch that spanned the entire front of the house, along with bricking over the original wood siding. “Gets damn cold out here, on the prairie,” he’d said when he talked to Bill’s mama about it.
Over the course of the last four years, Clancy had either remodeled or repainted every room of the house. Bill lived in it and helped with the work the first two years he was at UCCS. That was when the major renovations had been done. It didn’t have to be spoken between them; Bill understood, as well as Clancy did, that they were eradicating all signs of the former owner.
Apart from what little Bill remembered of the time before his daddy got ill, he’d never seen his mama as happy as she was with Clancy. He remembered what Clancy told him years before, about women trying to tame him. He didn’t seem much different now than he was then, just happier. And he didn’t seem to miss the attention he’d gotten at the dude ranch from all the ladies. The only lady he seemed to care about was Bill’s mama.
The day of Bill and Dottie’s wedding was what was known as a “Bluebird Colorado Day.” The sun shone brightly, the sky was blue as a bluebird, and the only clouds they saw were soft, white, billowy ones that gently drifted overhead.
Bill and Clancy had constructed a gazebo near the new house, and they both had an unobstructed view of Pikes Peak, the fourteen-thousand-foot mountain that defined the Colorado Springs area.