Jace was indeed surprised when he walked in, but it had nothing to do with the food.
“Welcome,” said the pretty woman with the long red hair. “Is this your first visit to our winery?”
Jace turned and looked at her, tried to smile, but was too stunned to be polite. He walked over to a painting hanging nearby, on one of the walls. He didn’t need to look at the tag next to it or the signature; he’d recognize Tucker’s work anywhere.
“This is Jace Rice,” he heard Lyric say.
Tucker’s work filled all the walls of the main room of the winery. He wandered from painting to painting, taking it all in. It was new work, and it was good.
The disparity in the images his brother painted startled him. He recognized the Black Forest area in both the paintings he’d done before and after the fire that had consumed fourteen thousand acres and burned over five hundred homes and other structures to the ground.
“There’s more in the other room,” the woman said to him. “I take it you haven’t seen your brother’s new work.”
“No, ma’am,” he murmured. He hoped she didn’t think he was being rude, but he was dumbfounded. He could barely breathe, let alone talk.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” Lyric followed behind him but let him set the pace.
“It’s incredible.”
As he rounded the corner into the other room, there was a painting on the far wall that made him stop in his tracks. The image depicted on the canvas was of two men fishing. The view was of their backs, but even so, Jace could tell the men were relaxed, companionable. Between them, a baby boy played in the sand.
“It’s you,” Lyric whispered.
Without her saying so, Jace would’ve known it. Regardless of not being able to see their faces, it was clear to him that the men in the painting were him and his brother.
“And that is most definitely Cochran in the middle.”
Jace’s eyes filled with tears. Cochran. He could have guessed, but he wouldn’t have known. He still hadn’t seen the boy in person.
“What do you think it means?” Lyric asked.
Jace didn’t answer. The question was rhetorical. It meant Tucker missed him. It meant that, in his mind’s eye, Tucker could see the three of them—him, his brother, and his son—fishing together.
Jace slowly made his way around the second room, taking in each of the images. Tuck had done a series of horses, and Jace recognized the land in the background. It was Billy’s ranch.
“There’s one more you should see. It’s in the cellar, which is a private room,” said the lady.
She took them through a hallway and down a stairwell made of stone.
“This was once the Monument jail,” she told him. “Although I don’t think the accommodations were as nice then as they are now.”
The walls of the room, like the stairwell, were stone. There was an indentation in the southern wall, and bars on what, once, might have been a window.
On the back wall, Jace saw the piece she’d brought him here to see. It was of a rider on the back of a bronc.
“I recognized you from this painting,” the woman said. She was right; it was him. There was enough detail for him to know the setting. It was Cheyenne, Wyoming, last July. He’d ridden well there, placed first in fact.
“He was there,” Lyric whispered.
“How do you know?”
“I was with him.”
He looked into her eyes. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“He made me promise not to tell you then.”
“I could’ve sold this painting ten times or more, but he refuses to let it go,” murmured the woman. “I need to get back upstairs, but take your time.”