Sid took a moment to read through the documentation and then looked up at me with a huge smile. It felt good to see him approving of my plan. I had drawn it up so hastily that I hadn’t been totally sure that Sid would approve.
“This is good. This is really good.”
“I’ll send a guy out your way this week to get things started. Does that sound all right to you?”
“Can I tell Sarah?”
“Let’s just keep this between the two of us for now. If that’s all right with you?”
“It’s all right for right now, but eventually she’s going to find out,” Sid said reluctantly.
“I know. I’m going to come out there next month after I get all the loose ends figured out here. I’ll visit with her about it all. Deal?”
“That’s a deal, son; I look forward to it.”
It was nice to see Sid’s enthusiasm for my idea and it was great to see him too. We ended up spending the whole afternoon talking about the ranch and what had been going on there since I had left. He told me about Buckjoy and how much he thought the horse missed me. Sid told me about Meredith and her projects about the farm and he even updated me a little bit on Sarah. It was a great afternoon, and by the time we said our goodbyes, I was more excited than ever for the plans I had ahead of me.
Chapter Sixteen
Sarah
“Mom, you don’t think he’s having an affair, do you?” I asked my mother when I realized my father had left the ranch again for the whole day.
“No, darling, he’s not having an affair.”
“For the last four weeks he’s been taking off for hours at a time without any explanation at all. You can’t tell me you’re not a little suspicious of this?”
“Honey, I trust your father and he says he’s working. So why don’t you try trusting him, too? Are you heading out to take some more photos today?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I was thinking about going out to the old barn and trying some photos from there at sunset.”
“That sounds great, honey; just let me know so I don’t worry,” my mother said as she walked toward the main house.
It frustrated me that she wasn’t more concerned about my father. He was acting strange and I knew it. I was happy that they had sold the property to the north of the river and my mom was shopping around for a new RV for them to start taking some time off. It was an exciting time for them and I certainly didn’t want to put a damper on it by thinking such horrible things about my father.
The fact of the matter was that he was gone a lot. My father was working away from the farm more than he had been at the farm lately and that was totally unusual. He had refused to tell me what the final price had been on the land sale, but I knew it was more than he had hoped for. His excitement over the sale and insistence that my mother choose whatever RV she wanted was a tell-tale sign that he had gotten a lot of money.
When I asked who had purchased the land he insisted that it was some corporation and he didn’t really know who it was. It didn’t matter to me who he had sold it to, but the secrecy was driving me nuts. Something was going on with my father and I wished he would just tell me what it was.
I went into the horse barn and fed the horses some apples and checked on them to see how they were all doing. It was my favorite place to be and no matter how much work I had going on for the day, I always had to stop by and see them.
“Buckjoy, how you doing, baby boy?” I said as I stroked his face.
He hadn’t been as full of life as he was when Garrett was there, but I tried to take him out for rides every now and then. I knew he missed Garrett, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“You know, sooner or later you’re going to have to get over him; he just wasn’t the right one for you.”
“How do you know?” I heard a man’s voice say from behind me.
My heart flipped with excitement as I turned around and saw Garrett, or Malcolm, standing right there in front of me. I wanted to run over to him and wrap my arms around him, but I stopped myself. The man standing in front of me wasn’t the same person I knew and I wasn’t about to show him how excited I was.
“Well, the man he’s missing just up and left without even saying goodbye to him. He lied and pretended to be someone that he wasn’t. That’s how we know he’s not the right one.”
“What if that man wasn’t allowed to tell the truth? What if he wanted to but it would have made life dangerous for Buckjoy?”
“Malcolm? That’s your name, right?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Yes.”