after the war, his PTSD debilitating. He couldn’t find—or keep—a job, but Frank brought him in, just like he had all of us. Gave him a job and fresh start. He’d saved Mack.
He’d saved me too.
I whipped off my shirt, tossing it over a stall’s fence. Ginger, the mare inside, whinnied at the intrusion.
I ignored her, snagged a hay fork, and went to work.
For a minute, Mack watched me shuck hay, sitting on a bale, catching his breath while I slung straw with more force and speed than was necessary.
“You knew Frank was gonna give her the farm,” he finally said.
That shock again, sharp and quick. “That’s not the problem. She’s not leaving.”
“Oh,” he said in an unreadable tone. “She fire you?”
“Nope. Because Frank left me the farm too. Fifty-fifty.”
Silence behind me as I drove the fork into the pile.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he breathed. “Congratulations, son.” A pause. “So how come you’re so pissed?”
“Because she wants to work the farm when she doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I fired, dumping the load onto the little trailer hooked up to the ATV.
“I see.” He didn’t at all sound surprised.
“She’s got all these big ideas about social media and who knows what else. She wants to change things—I know she does. I can smell the city all over her. She mighta fed chickens and milked cows when she was a kid, but she didn’t know this farm. She doesn’t know the day-to-day. She doesn’t know how much we’ve worked for. What Frank worked for. It’ll be a cold day in hell when I let her sink what he built.”
“Change ain’t never easy, Jake. And there’s gonna be a lot of change around here now Frank’s gone.”
That familiar heaviness sank in my ribs.
Frank. There was only one directive—run this place exactly as he’d done. I’d known him well enough to know what he’d do in any given situation, and the best way to honor him was to act as he would. Anything short of that would be blasphemy. Sure, we were in the red, but there were plenty of conventional ways to turn that around. And if I ever got a handle on running the entire farm alone, I’d get right on that.
It didn’t matter that I was afraid of failing him—there was no choice to be made. I’d stepped into his place whether I knew what I was doing or not. I had to preserve him. It was the best way I knew to make him proud.
Another pause, leaving me to mark the feel of the smooth handle in my fists, buffeted by calluses I’d had since forever. The burn of my shoulders was a comfort, a punishing ache to remind me that I was here. That this was my place.
“I wish I could say I was surprised she wants to step in,” Mack said. “But she’s Frank’s kin, after all. Giving up isn’t in the Brent genetic makeup.”
I stopped, turning to him with my brows strung tight. “You figured she’d want to stay?”
He rolled one sloped shoulder. “Oh, I dunno. But I didn’t figure she’d give it all up, either. I wasn’t convinced she’d just pick up and leave. Frank was just as much a father to her as he was to you.”
That thought hit me in the softest of places. “You let me go on thinking it was a sure thing, her turning it over to us.”
“Well, you seemed real sure of yourself, Jake. None of us coulda told you any different. Kit figured there was a chance you were right and didn’t want to upset the apple cart for no reason.”
“Kit too?” I snapped. “And all this time, I thought you were on my side.”
“Oh, quit it. There’s no side to pick here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said, taking back to my task with a little more determination. “She’s gonna fold like a lawn chair, just watch and see. If she really knows what’s best, she’ll let it go. Her meddling is only gonna make things harder around here, not easier.”
“Guess we’ll see,” he said like he knew something I didn’t. “I’m getting out to the barns to check on the milking crew. Want me to keep the news buttoned up?”
“They’re gonna find out anyway. Better from you than me.” I dumped the hay, irritated that the trailer was full.
“Don’t be too hard on her, Jake. She wants what’s best for the farm, just like all of us.”
“Except she doesn’t know what’s best for the farm.” Annoyed by my own