“Great. You’ll handle it?”
His dad nodded.
Two days later, Bree ventured into the dining hall for breakfast. She hadn’t since Jace left, but morning and night, there had been a knock on her door. When she answered, there was a tray of the morning or evening meal, waiting on the table on the cabin porch. She never saw who delivered it but knew it was Red.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully when she walked into the dining room.
“Good morning. Mind if I join you?”
“Nothin’ I’d like better.”
“Headin’ out to do some fishin’ today. Wouldn’t mind some company.”
“I’d like that.”
Red eyed her plate and raised his eyebrows.
“I’m okay, Red,” she answered without him asking. “You’ve kept me well-fed the past couple days.”
“Let’s get out on the water and work up an appetite, then.”
He took her to a spot they hadn’t been before, and their hours fell back into the rhythm of their earlier days.
Hank hired the ranch manager, and then he and Jace made arrangements to go to Crested Butte.
His mother was going with them, but on their way, she wanted them to take her to Monument. She planned to stay there while Jace and his dad made the rest of the trip.
7
“What would you think about me staying on here a while longer?” Bree asked Red when they returned to the ranch for dinner.
“I figured you were going to.”
“Why, Red? Are you some kind of shaman?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. But I’ve been where you are, more than once in my life.”
From the first day he had breakfast with her, Bree felt as though she’d been destined to meet Red, that they’d been brought together for a reason.
He hadn’t been at the ranch the week she and Zack were here, and she was glad he’d never met her late husband. She wouldn’t have felt as comfortable talking about Zack with him if he had.
“I don’t think you’re ready to go home yet.”
“See? How do you know? Seriously, Red, what makes you say I’m not ready?”
“You haven’t done what you came here to do.”
“What is that? What am I here to do? Because, I have to admit, I can’t figure it out. I know what I wanted to do while I was here, but now I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t something I can force. It has to happen on its own.”
“Then, I’d say you’re gettin’ closer than you think.”
As frustrated as she was with him for talking in riddles, if she was honest, she understood more than she was willing to admit. Wouldn’t it have been neat and tidy if she’d simply been able to go to the places she and Zack had been together, cry her heart out, and then move right into the acceptance phase of grief? She knew better.
Early on, Bree had faced the denial phase. Both in denying it happened, and then by denying herself the time and space she needed to grieve.
Coming to the ranch had been about isolation. She’d hoped, by being so, she would be able to push herself through the remaining phases. Maybe that was the problem—she was spending too much time intellectualizing her grief, rather than allowing herself to feel it.
“I have to stop thinking about it so much,” she said, not sure if Red was still listening to her.