Her mind raced with memories of the arguments she and Zack had in the few years they were married. How many times had he accused her of not understanding him? Now she knew he’d been right. At the time, she’d agreed that she didn’t, but what she meant was she didn’t understand his ambivalence to her when he was deployed.
“He was so different when he was on leave. He would relax. We would have fun. That’s who I thought he was.”
“And you were wrong?”
She nodded her head. “Very wrong.”
Jace pulled into Helena a little after five. Since his parents were still in Monument, he decided to stop and get takeout Italian food. Once his belly was full of homemade pasta and a couple of glasses of Chianti, he fell into bed and slept for twelve hours.
When he woke, late the next morning, he called the ranch manager, Yance, and asked him to come up to the house when he had a break in his day.
Jace hoped Yance would tell him everything was under control, after which, he’d fall back into bed and sleep for another twelve hours, guilt-free.
Two days later, Jace felt as though he’d finally caught up on sleep. Since they bought the ranch, his focus had been on operations, and then on the rough stock start-up.
He hadn’t spent much time in his house other than to eat and sleep. Even when he injured his leg, he kept active and spent most of his time outdoors. He walked from room to room, taking a longer look at the shape it was in. He pulled up a corner of the carpet in the main room and discovered hardwood floors underneath. Three hours later, the carpet from the first floor of the house was in a pile outside.
When he pulled it up, he found tracks at each of the entryways to the living room. He went out to the barn, returned with a crowbar, and removed the molding around the wide doorway. Under it, he found two pocket doors. The wood of the doors matched that of the floor. And apart from where the carpet had been tacked to the wood, the floors were in good shape. It wouldn’t take much to repair and refinish them.
There were two staircases in the house, a narrow one in the back, and a larger, grander one near the front door.
Jace climbed the stairs to the landing and studied the wood on the wall. It wasn’t drywall. It looked more like shiplap.
Starting at the lower corner, he used the crowbar to loosen one of the boards. He could see there was something underneath. Little by little, he loosened and removed the boards. When he finished, he stood back and studied the five foot wide by eight foot tall stained glass window that the shiplap had covered.
Four circles, like something you would see looking through a kaleidoscope, overlapped slightly in the middle of the window. The focal point, though, was the silhouette of a woman, which overlapped the kaleidoscope circles. The starkness of it was so dramatic against the bold primary colors used in the patterns of the circles, it almost looked three-dimensional.
The window had been boarded over on the outside of the house too. If it was warm enough the next morning, he’d remove those boards as well.
With the dawn of the next couple of days, Jace discovered more hidden gems built into his house. He asked Yance if he knew much about its history, and why so much of the beautiful craftsmanship had been hidden away, but he said he had no idea.
His parents called to say they’d decided to stay in Monument through Christmas, given Jace was at the ranch and Yance had everything under control.
Billy called to check in, as did Tucker. Both wanted to know if he had changed his mind about coming south for Christmas.
“Have you heard from her?” Tucker asked.
“Not a word. Has Blythe?”
“Nope. She told me to ask you. I think her folks are gettin’ worried.”
“If she’s in Idaho, she isn’t alone.”
“What’s the story with this Red character?”
Jace told Tucker how Red had taken Bree under his wing. If Billy was right and something big had happened, at least she had Red to lean on.
Instead of dwelling on his relationship with Bree, Jace filled his day with more projects on the old house. He decided it would be better to paint the downstairs walls before refinishing the hard wood flooring. He also wanted to replace the linoleum in the kitchen. While he was at the hardware store in Helena, he picked out tile for both the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom.
“Back again?” asked the woman behind the counter. “You must have some big project goin’. Third time I’ve seen you this week. Don’t think we’ve met otherwise.”
Jace reached across the counter to shake her outstretched hand. “My name’s Jace Rice, ma’am. My parents and I bought the Beiman Ranch.”
“My, oh, my. Folks have been wonderin’ when we’d catch sight of the cowboy who took over that place. Your parents have been to town. In fact, I invited your mama to join our bunko group.”
“That was real nice of you,” Jace smiled at the woman who had introduced herself as Vi.
“We haven’t seen much of your parents lately. Everything okay with them?”