She hadn’t realized then that being alone after she left him would mean she would die alone one day, or fall down the stairs and injure herself, as Deanna said she would, or end up in assisted living. She hadn’t known or cared that it meant she would live alone for seventeen years after him, and wake up every day, except for rare, occasional nights, with half the bed unused, that no one would ask how her day was, or make her laugh at small stupid things, or make the future seem less frightening, and no one would want to know what her dreams were. Not wanting another serious man in her life meant that she would grow old alone, and already was, with no one to share her life with and make the remaining years as meaningful as the earlier ones had been.
She had thought leaving him meant making her own rules, doing what she wanted without considering someone else, and living in a city that was familiar to her. But it meant so much more. It meant having to be brave all the time, and carrying the full load herself, not having someone to share her burdens with, or her joys. She hadn’t fully understood the meaning of the word “alone” or what it would feel like day after day for seventeen years, and for the rest of her life, if she wasn’t brave enough to share her life again. Loving him had meant risking pain, and losing him had been so much bigger and worse than she had anticipated. And yet it was the choice she had made, and he had respected it. He had never tried to come back, nor did she. Once she was on her solitary path, whether out of stubbornness or pride, she had stayed on it. And now she wanted to face him again. She wasn’t even sure what she’d say when she saw him, or why she had come. But a force stronger than she was had propelled her toward him, across the country and the years, and now she was here. She wondered what he would say to her and what it had been like for him. They hadn’t spoken in seventeen years, since a little while after she left. She had still been young then, although she didn’t realize it, and now, after the fall off the ladder, she felt so old, as Deanna said she was. And Jacques said she wasn’t. She no longer knew which was true.
She walked back to the bed and breakfast, with the mountains seeming so close. She could almost feel them breathing, they were so alive. They had a soul, just as Andy had said to her. She lay down on the bed with her clothes on when she got back to her room and fell asleep.
It took all the courage she had to get up the next morning, knowing what she was going to do. There was no avoiding it now. She had to face what she’d been running from for all these years, how much she loved him and needed him, or thought she did. She had been afraid of that, that she’d become dependent on him, and lose herself in Andy’s shadow. He was a big man, although he never forced her to do anything, and had a deep respect for her, enough to let her go when she wanted him to, no matter what it cost him.
She stood under the shower for a long time, trying to clear her mind. She was too nervous to eat breakfast and dressed carefully. She had found her old cowboy boots in the back of her closet in New York and put the right one on. The boots were just worn enough not to make her look like a New Yorker trying to be cool on a ranch, which he had teased her about when he first met her and the boots were new. They had aged nicely in her many trips to see him for over a year. And she had brought the kids to the ranch for a second time before their relationship ended. Ben had been disappointed when she told him it was over. The girls didn’t care as much, although they liked him too.
She drove thirty miles from Moose, in the direction the GPS told her Andy’s ranch was. It was in the foothills of the Tetons, and the area was beautiful. She left the houses and small B and B’s behind her after the first few miles, and to buy a little time so she could compose herself, she stopped and took some pictures. There was a deer standing in a clearing and another one in the tall grass, they didn’t move when they saw her. She remembered with ease that Andy always knew what she was thinking, and understood her better than she understood herself. She had no idea what she would tell him about why she was there, but he would sense it without words. She didn’t know if she had come back to him, she didn’t think so, but she needed to see him. It was visceral, more than any decision she had made.
The entrance to the ranch was simple but impressive, with his brand emblazoned on a wooden archway. Their website said it was one of the biggest horse ranches in Wyoming, which had been his dream. She didn’t know how he had done it, but she was proud of him. The website said it had been in existence for a dozen years.
There were neat outbuildings, and a big barn, several corrals, and three stone houses, one with a sign that said “Office.” Horses were everywhere, galloping through fields. Her heart was pounding when she parked the car and walked up the steps of the building marked “Office.” It looked like a serious operation, and there were ranch hands going about their business, some taking horses to the barn on lead lines, others loading them into trailers to go somewhere. Andy sold horses, and there was an auction on the premises once a month, according to the website. There was a large parking lot, which suggested that the auctions were well attended.
A woman at the desk glanced up at Maddie and smiled.
“I’m here to see Mr. Wyatt. He’s not expecting me. I’m an old friend,” she said, sounding nervous to her own ears.
“Of course. I’ll get him right away,” the woman said, stood up, and disappeared before Maddie could say her name. She left Maddie to sit in one of the big comfortable chairs in the waiting room. There was nothing showy about the office, but it seemed efficient and businesslike, and several people walked past her. She walked outside to get some air and admire the horses. The website said he sold Arabians, among others, and she could identify them as she waited for Andy to appear.
She could feel her heart pound, and after a few minutes, she saw a familiar shape loping toward her with his distinctive walk, she would have recognized him anywhere. His battered hat with the wide brim was pulled down low over his face the way he always wore it, and she stood smiling as she watched him. Just seeing him was like coming home, and when he was a few feet from her, he turned his face toward her, and she realized with a shock that it wasn’t him. It was a younger face, so similar to Andy’s but different. The man looked serious and familiar, and she slowly realized that it was his son, Sean. He was as surprised as she was. She realized that she hadn’t specified to the woman which Mr. Wyatt she wanted to see, Sean or his father, and she had called the wrong one.
“Sean?” Maddie smiled at him, and his smile slowly reached his eyes when he recognized her. “You’re all grown up.” She remembered that he was a year younger than Milagra, which made him thirty-two now. She hadn’t seen him since he was fifteen. He looked so much like his father that it was easy to recognize him.
“Maddie?” He was stunned. “What are you doing here?” He knew she was famous now, his father had told him and showed him pictures she’d taken over the years. She hesitated before she answered the question.
“I came to see your father. It’s been a long time.”
He nodded, and didn’t say anything for a minute, and then waved her to a wide porch so they could sit down. She followed him up the steps, and they each took a seat in two big wicker chairs. And then he looked at her, with tears in his eyes.
“It would have meant a lot to him, but he probably wouldn’t have wanted to see you at the end. He died two months ago. It went fast, he wasted away pretty quickly. Did you hear he was sick?” She felt as though a wrecking ball had just hit her heart, or a sledgehammer. She had come too late, fate had intervened.
“No, I didn’t,” she said in a choked voice, too stunned to speak at first. “I just wanted to see him. I know it’s been a lot of years, too many. I’m so sorry. I wish I had come sooner. The ranch is beautiful, he must have been so proud of it.”
“He was,” Sean said. “He saved every penny to buy it. It was in foreclosure, and he got a good deal. He was pretty tight with a buck,” Sean went on, grinning. “He had some money put
away and we scraped up the rest, and we’ve been building on it for the last twelve years. We’ve been doing well,” he finished proudly.
“I can see that.” She was still in shock, realizing that she had missed Andy by two months. Their meeting wasn’t meant to be.
“He never stopped loving you, you know,” Sean said gently. “He talked about you a lot. There was a woman he hung out with. She runs a restaurant in town, but she always said the same thing. They were good friends, but he wasn’t in love with her. He was in love with you. He said you did the right thing. He would never have had this if he had moved to New York, and he couldn’t have lived there. You would have hated our first few years here. We lived in an old bunkhouse in the barn with no heat and no plumbing for the first two years, until we could afford to put in electricity and indoor plumbing into his house. We built my house two years after that. And we built the office five years ago. It’s still a work in progress even now. But we’ve got the best horses in the state. My dad really knew horseflesh. He never thought it would grow to be as big an operation as it is now, our auctions pull in people from half a dozen states. They’re a big deal.” He looked like a kid again as he said it. “It’s going to be hard now, running it without him.”
“You can do it,” Maddie said gently. “He had a lot of faith in you, even as a kid.”
“I know he did.” He blushed and pushed his hat far back on his head, the way Andy used to when he talked to her on the ranch where he worked and she first met him. “I hope I can live up to it,” Sean said. “I’m married and have two kids now, with two more on the way. We’re having twins in a month, if they wait that long.” He smiled at Maddie, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. She had cheated them out of the rest of their lives together, or had she? Sean said that Andy thought she had done the right thing. He had the ranch he always wanted and his son working with him, and grandchildren. And what would she have done here? She didn’t belong here, no matter how much she loved him, and he knew it too. “We have two boys,” Sean added, “the twins are girls. My wife will have her hands full. She helps us out in the office, but she won’t be able to for a while. Her mom helps us with the boys, but four will be a lot for her to manage, or us for that matter.” He smiled nervously as he said it, still startled that he was soon to be the father of four.
“Ben has three kids, and he lives in San Francisco. Deanna has two girls.”
“Milagra?” He had had a huge crush on her, which Andy and Maddie used to chuckle about when they were alone. Milagra had played the femme fatale with him, and liked him too, even though she would never have admitted it. He was a year younger than she was.
“She lives in Mendocino and writes weird gothic books.” Maddie smiled at him. “She isn’t married.” Maddie always had the feeling she never would be, but didn’t say it to him. She was too immersed in her gothic world and involved with herself and her menagerie of stray dogs and cats. And by no stretch of the imagination could Maddie imagine her as a mother of four, or even one child, let alone twins. Maybe they had all made the right choices.
She had wanted the best for Andy, and in trying to respect him and be honest with herself, she had stepped away and allowed him to follow his dream. And she had followed her own dreams too. She had wished he could be part of them, but he couldn’t. They weren’t meant to be together, only to love each other, which was a great deal to both of them. Their love had lasted for eighteen years, more than most people ever got to share. They would have torn each other apart if they had tried to force things and stayed together. She could see that more clearly than ever now, sitting on the porch with Sean and looking out over the ranch Andy had built, some of it with his own hands, and all of it with his perseverance, sacrifices, and ingenuity. It had been a labor of love for him.
“Can I show you around?” Sean asked her shyly, and she nodded. She followed him off the porch, and he took her through their horse barns, past the breeding pens, which were a growing operation. They went through all the buildings, and he got in his truck and drove her to the far reaches of the property, and the entire time the mountains were standing behind them, like a mystical blessing over the whole ranch.
“Your father loved those mountains,” Maddie said as she looked at everything with him, and could feel Andy everywhere.
“Yes, he did. He went riding up there the day before he died. I think he was saying goodbye to them. I always feel like he’s up there somewhere now,” Sean said in a gruff voice and Maddie nodded.
“He’s always with you, Sean. He always will be.” Andy had breathed life into the ranch.
“With you too, Maddie, he always was. It would have killed him to move to New York. I’m sorry you couldn’t be together, but he was meant to be here.”
“I knew that then. It was just shit luck that our lives were so different.”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s a good thing. You brought something special to each other. He always said that he was braver because of you.”
She smiled at the thought. “I think I was braver because of him too. I had to make my dreams happen, to justify not staying with him.”
He nodded. “My wife, Becky, and I went to high school together. Sometimes that keeps things small. She went to Cheyenne afterwards and got her CPA. She does the books for me. And her brothers work on the ranch here. It’s kind of a family operation. That’s what you need here. People you can trust. Selling horses can be a risky business.”
“So can life,” Maddie said quietly. She was still shaken by the idea that Andy had died two months earlier, and she had missed him. It shocked her to realize that a man she had loved so much was dead now. That made her feel old too, although he had been eight years older than she was. He was sixty-six, too young to die.
After the tour, Sean stopped his truck outside one of the two stone houses. “Dad and I rebuilt these houses with our own hands. Some of the other buildings were here, and falling down when we bought the place. We fixed them up, and remodeled them, put in insulation, new roofs, heating, plumbing, all of it. I’m going to have to add on to this one next spring. We’re going to turn Dad’s into more offices. We need them, to run the auctions. It’s a lot to keep track of.” He looked slightly overwhelmed, but he had only been running the place on his own for two months, and he was young.
Maddie followed him up the front steps, and into the house as he called out to Becky. She was in the kitchen feeding the boys lunch. Sean’s oldest son was five, and had just gotten home from school for lunch, and his little brother was two. Becky stood up, smiling at them, and Maddie had never seen anyone so pregnant. Sean explained to her who Maddie was, and she looked touched immediately.
“I’m sorry, Maddie. I’ve heard so much about you. Sean’s dad talked about you a lot.” Maddie nodded, fighting back tears again. “Would you like some lunch?”
“I’ll get it,” Sean said immediately. “She’s supposed to be resting,” Sean explained to Maddie. “She never does, but it’s okay now if the twins come early. They’ll be fine, although the doctor would like them to stay where they are for another two weeks, if possible, for their lungs.”
“Both of the boys weighed ten pounds when they were born, and the doctor says the girls weigh eight pounds now, so we’ll be good,” Becky added. Her arms and legs were slim, and she had a pretty girl-next-door face with big blue eyes. Her long blond hair was in a braid down her back. She was beautiful, and probably had a trim figure when she wasn’t carrying sixteen pounds of baby. The thought of it made Maddie wince. “I’m ready,” she said, as Sean put two turkey sandwiches on the table with a bowl of potato chips, and Maddie thanked him and helped herself to one of them. They were a sweet family and she could imagine how much Andy must have enjoyed them, and seeing his son happy. It must have been wonderful building the ranch together. It really had been his dream.
Maddie chatted with the two children and Beck
y and Sean all through lunch. Sean showed her around the house they had built. The boys shared a room and the twins would too until he added on to the house in a year or two, when he had time to do it. Maddie stopped in the living room for a minute and looked intently at a framed photograph of Andy, leaning against one of the corrals, beaming at the camera, with his favorite hat on, and his weathered cowboy boots. The picture was pure Andy, and he seemed like he was smiling at her.
“We had just sold the best horse we’d ever sold at auction, for the highest price anyone’s ever gotten around here. It was last year, right before he got sick. I think it was one of the happiest days of his life.” Sean reached out and grabbed the photograph then and handed it to her. “You should have it. He would want you to. I’ve got others.” Maddie instinctively hugged it to her as though she were hugging him. Then she leaned over and kissed Sean on the cheek.
“Thank you,” she said in a whisper, as Becky went to put the boys down for their naps. She was back five minutes later. They were sweet, well-behaved children and reminded Maddie of Ben’s boys, Willie and Charlie. Sean’s oldest was named Andrew for his grandfather, and his little brother was Johnny. They hadn’t decided on names for the girls yet. They wanted to see them first, Becky said.
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