“Yeah,” he said, voice flat. “But you know how it is around here. Folks got long memories.”
For a second, the image of the fire threatened to crowd everything else out, but I locked it away, deep as it would go.
“I’m not here to stir up trouble,” I said. “My mom’s sick.”
He bowed his head and set the bottle down on the dusty end table. “I heard. Awful sorry ‘bout it.”
“Thanks . . . Look, I know I’ve been away from home for too long. Needed to come back, take care of things, maybe even find a place to clear my head.”
Then something occurred to me. “How’d you find me?”
He laughed. “News gets around, Ford. Even if you pay cash and use some California lawyer to sign the deed with a company name. You should remember what small town life is like.”
Mason was right. I should have figured. Maybe I had been in California for too long.
“Chickadee’s a fixer-upper, but hell, I always thought it had good bones.”
“Didn’t plan on buying anything. It just felt right.”
I looked around at the cracked baseboards, the peeling paint, the ancient fireplace that probably hadn’t worked in years. The house obviously needed some TLC. But the ranch itself was beautiful land. Land I could work, build into something. Not as big as Red Downs, or Damon’s ranch, Wild Creek, but it would be mine. Would give me something tangible to do. It might seem crazy to some, but I was born here. I needed to come back.
Mason’s mouth curved into a smile—not a happy one, but one of those small, private jokes people tell themselves. “You always were one for surprises.” His gaze went cold for a moment, then softened. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. After what happened with Damon yesterday. He’s got a temper, but he doesn’t mean most of what he says.”
“He meant that punch,” I said, rubbing my jaw.
Mason barked a laugh. “Yeah, that part’s probably true. But he’ll get over it. We all will.” He looked around, taking it all in again, like he was memorizing every angle. “Never thought I’d see this place sold,” he said. “Chickadee Ranch was one of those properties nobody ever touched. Old man Beaudry let it rot for twenty years.” He paused, studying me with a kind of cautious curiosity. “You planning to stay a while?”
I shrugged. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether people let me,” I said, meaning it more than I wanted to admit.
“Buying property sure seems like you made your mind up already.”
“I bought it cheap,” I said, half a joke.
Mason nodded, then ran a hand through his hair, leaving a pale streak across his temple. “I guess I don’t get why you’dwant it. I figured if you ever came back, it’d be to just pass through. Not settle in.”
I shrugged. “I needed a place to think.”
“About what?”
I hesitated, then decided honesty couldn’t make things much worse. “About why I left. Why I stayed gone so long. Whether there’s anything left for me here.” I looked him dead in the eye. “Whether it’s worth trying to fix things.”
He was quiet a long time. The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock and the crows outside, squabbling over a scrap of something dead.
“You hurt a lot of people when you left,” Mason said. His voice wasn’t angry, just worn down, like he’d rehearsed this speech for years and never quite got it right. “Gray, Damon, me, Walker. But especially my mom and dad. They always thought of you as one of their own.”
I nodded, because I knew it was true.
“Wasn’t easy for us, you know,” he said, and his eyes softened a notch. “Even after all this time.”
I stared at the floor, at a knot in the wood that looked like a bullet hole. “Wasn’t easy for me, either.”
He let that hang, then exhaled. “I came here today because I wanted to say thank you. For what you did for Chloe.”
I looked up, surprised. “Wasn’t anything, really.” And it wasn’t. I’d just been able to track some locations when Mason’s girlfriend had been taken and her life was at risk. What came easy to me ended up being what allowed them to save her. I was happy to help of course, but it didn’t feel like two minutes at my keyboard made me some kind of hero.
