Gray kept going. “I saw it once. On the ranch. You were twelve. He backhanded you so hard you hit the barn wall. I wanted to tell my Mom, but you begged me not to. Said it’d just make it worse.”
“I don’t even remember that.”
Gray’s hands were shaking. “I should have done something. I should have told someone.”
He was talking to me, but the words were for himself. I could hear the years of regret in every syllable.
Walker leaned forward. “Trauma and abuse can lead to memory loss. You’re not going crazy, Ford.”
Damon didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he stood up, walked to the window, and stared out into the dark. “I wanted to blame someone,” he said, voice thick. “Ty was my friend. He was a pain in the ass, but he didn’t deserve what happened. And you were my best friend. You left without a word and I thought it was because you didn’t care. I thought—if it was you, at least I could hate you. If it was just an accident, or a fight, or whatever, I could live with that. But nobody ever gave me the truth.”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was too tight. “I’m sorry.”
He turned around. The hate was gone from his eyes. It was replaced by something heavier, something closer to grief. “I’m sorry, too.”
We sat there, the five of us, with nothing but the sound of the fire and the distant howl of a coyote.
Mason reached over and gripped my shoulder. “You’re not your old man. You never were.”
Walker nodded. “We got your back, Ford. Always.”
Gray still looked guilt-ridden. I slapped him on the back.
The cards were still scattered across the table, but nobody bothered to pick them up.
Instead, we sat together, the old wounds open but not bleeding, letting the warmth of the fire—and maybe each other—do what it could.
Twenty-Three
Ford
Later that week, I sat alone at Chickadee, grumpy as hell that Lily needed to be up even earlier than usual. I’d been staying over every night since we had that talk, and each night got better and better. But tomorrow she had to open the bakery for Sutton, and went on about ‘needing a solid seven hours of sleep not interrupted by you humping me’ which made me only want to hump her more.
But I obeyed and drove back home after I surprised her and Noah with pizza. Now I was doing what I’d been dreading ever since I heard about that damn podcast. A deep dive.
The only light in the living room was the blue ghost-glow from my laptop screen, which cast weird shadows over the half-painted drywall and the tools I'd left scattered across the coffee table. Outside, the wind howled across the near-frozen pasture, throwing itself against the windows with each new gust. It sounded pissed off, and honestly, I could relate.
My hand was wrapped around a mug of coffee gone cold hours ago. I hadn’t bothered to heat it up. The taste matched the mood: bitter, stale, maybe a little burned. Most people just listened to the podcast, but their YouTube channel had video of it and I thought it would give me more insight into whatever liesthey were about to tell. On the screen, the spinning circle finally resolved into the scratchy, homegrown intro of "Unsolved Montana." The host’s voice was sharp and nasal, oozing with the kind of performative empathy that made my skin crawl.
“—and now, an update on the murder of Ty Higgins,” she announced, her vowels stretched wide as the county lines. “We all know the story. We’ve all heard the rumors. But today, for the first time, someone claims they know what really happened out at Sucker Creek.”
The next sound was a jarring cut to old news footage: a reporter standing in front of the Whittier Falls police station, the sign behind her battered and faded. “Ty Higgins was found here, early October, his body pulled from the water less than a hundred yards downstream from the old rail bridge. The official report lists the cause of death as accidental—from injuries suffered in the crash. But locals aren’t buying it. They say it was murder. And they say they know who did it.”
Another hard cut. This time, the voice wasn’t professional. It was raw, maybe a little drunk, thick with the kind of rural accent you only pick up if you’ve spent most of your life within three miles of your own front porch.
“I saw Ford Brooks out there that night,” the man slurred. “He was yellin’ at Ty, right before Ty went into the water. Everyone knows he hated him. Everyone knows he’s the one that did it.”
My jaw tightened so hard I felt my molars grind. I flexed my grip on the mug until the ceramic threatened to snap. There it was again—the same old story, played on loop by anyone with a beer in their hand and an axe to grind. It didn’t matter that the police had cleared me. It didn’t matter that we fought hours before then, at a different location entirely, didn’t matter that there wasn’t a shred of proof. If you let a rumor live long enough, it grows teeth and starts biting back.
The podcast host came back on, her voice syrupy with concern. “Authorities have declined to reopen the investigation, but sources tell us there’s more to the story. Much more.”
A musical sting, followed by static. Then, after a dramatic pause, the voice of the host came back, quieter now, like she was sharing a secret at a funeral.
“We received a voicemail this morning from an anonymous tipster. They claim to have information that could change everything. Listen for yourself.”
A click, a breath. Then, a new voice. Genderless, shaky, run through some kind of filter that made every vowel sound like it was underwater.
“It wasn’t Ford. I saw someone else at the creek. Someone with a limp. They had a flashlight, and they were dragging something through the mud. I tried to call the sheriff before, but no one would listen. Please, just look at the security cameras from the feed store. You’ll see what I saw.”
