“Well, if that’s all there is…you don’t have to stay. I can watch her, and I’ll let you know if anything changes.” His words said one thing, but his body language was telling me something else. I could tell he was worried about the young horse and how she would fare.

I shook my head. “No, I want to stay here with her. This is her first, and sometimes that can be tricky, especially since she’s so young and it’s coming early. Of course, it might not be early at all, and you know as well as I do there’s some variation on that. All we can do is watch and wait for her to deliver and hope for the best for the foal.”

A rumble of thunder echoed through the open end of the stable, and I looked outside to find that things had gone pretty dark, nothing but blue-gray shadows and the wind blowing through the trees outside. A storm was rolling in and was likely already here, and I had no idea exactly how bumpy our night was going to get.

“Nasty out there,” he said.

I nodded. “I think we’re in for a pretty bad storm.”

“Well, if it comes to it we can run to the cellar from here pretty easily.”

I sighed. All that this night needed was a tornado.

Alex pulled up a pair of 5-gallon buckets for us to sit on and I was grateful for even the uncomfortable seat after a long day vaccinating cattle. We were quiet for a while and didn’t know where to start if we were going to speak to each other at all. It had been months now of avoiding each other, pretending nothing happened and attempting to move on with our lives. Other than seeing Alex in town and when I came out to the ranch for regular checkups, there had not been much contact between the two of us. A part of me was missing him, but I knew that as long as things were at their current status, nothing could happen between us. No matter how much my body ached for it to be differently.

We watched the horse laboring in silence, and I got up occasionally to check her and make sure things were progressing at the speed that they needed to. She didn’t appear to be in any distress, and that’s what I was watching for—a sign that her little body wasn’t able to push the foal out on her own. That was the biggest risk here and one that I had worried about from the moment, I found the horse was pregnant, but I thought she was healthy enough that it wouldn’t be a life threatening issue for either Pineapple or her baby.

“I need to tell you something,” Alex said as I came to sit down again. “I know about your dad.”

I looked at him with surprise plainly showing on my face. “What do you mean? What do you know?”

He shrugged. “I cornered Lorna, and I asked her to tell me what was up. What the thing was that brought you back here. I knew that you wouldn’t just turn up out of the blue for know good reason. You never had any intention of coming back to this town, so why would you show up to take over this practice? I knew something else had brought you back to Ashland.”

I swallowed and took a breath. “What did Lorna tell you?” I didn’t want it to be everything. I didn’t want Alex to know just how bad it was and what a desperate situation my father was in. There was no need for him to show me pity now.

“Everything. That he’s sick and it’s his heart and that there isn’t really anything, they can do about it.”

I nodded, a little stunned hearing him say the words out loud. “Yeah.”

Alex reached for my hand and grabbed it, squeezing it gently.

“I want you to know that you aren’t alone. This isn’t something you have to handle on your own. You h

ave people that love you and can help you and whatever you need I would be ready to give it to you if you’d just ask.”

“You know I won’t do that,” I said as I looked at his hand holding mine.

“I do know. That’s why I decided to take some things into my own hands.”

He let go of my hand and got up, going over to one of the shelving areas and pulled something from a file folder, bringing it over and putting it in my hands.

“It’s the title to your land. It’s yours. I had it put back in your name, just so there is no mess when you go trying to settle things after…after your dad…”

I looked at him, my eyes wide and mouth gaping open. “You did…what exactly?”

“I got your land back. I’m giving it back to you. It was taken from your dad, and I feel like it’s the least that I can do, giving it back.”

“But how, I thought it was so much more complicated than that?” I knew that it wasn’t as simple as him just giving me the land. It belonged to his father, not to him, and it wasn’t his to give.

“I bought it.”

I reached for his arm and grabbed his shoulder, steadying myself where I sat on the bucket.

“No, Alex…you can’t.”

He shrugged. “Already did. It was the right thing to do, Maddy. I don’t want you or your sister going without. You and Lucy both deserve to have something that belonged to your father. It’s not fair the way things went down, and I wanted to do whatever was within my power to make them right again. My dad wasn’t ever going to do it for you; I’m sorry to say. I hope you’ll be able to forgive him someday, but I understand if it’s too much to ask. He doesn’t deserve it as far as I am concerned. I do hope that you’ll be able to look past things enough to speak to me again though.”

Without really thinking, I leaned over and hugged Alex, pulling him close and wrapping my arms around him tightly.

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