and set Russ back on his feet. “Yep. Stone.” He reached out and traced the S in his father’s name. “See the S? T-O-N-E.” He put one hand on top of the stone and held it there, feeling the breath and life of his father.
Bear had spent a couple of years thinking he couldn’t miss his father. He couldn’t acknowledge that he was gone or admit that Bear felt lost without him. Then he’d realized how ridiculous that was, and he’d started coming to the family cemetery to just sit with his dad. It had taken him a while to work up talking to him, but Bishop had needed that, and they’d started coming together.
It had been at the cemetery when Bear had felt the need to get out to the Edge and check on Cactus. At the cemetery when he’d finally decided he better ask Samantha Benton on a date. At the cemetery when he’d found a way to forgive Duke Rhinehart.
“Your granddaddy worked so hard around here,” he said. “He loved this land, and he believed it was a gift from God. He wanted to do everything in his power to show the Lord how he could be trusted with the things he’d been given.” Bear wanted that same thing, not only for the Lord, but for his father and his uncle. They’d left him and Ranger this ranch, and when he saw them again after this life, he really wanted to be able to look them in the eye and say, “I did the best I could.”
His chest squeezed, because he often felt like there was so much more he could be doing. He grappled with the idea, because he didn’t know what those things were. Sometimes they would enter his mind, and he did his best to grab them and do them when that happened, the way Sammy baked gluten-free brownies for Ace, and double-chocolate for Duke, and blondies with walnuts for Preacher.
His wife was so amazing, and in that moment, Bear had the answer to one of his big questions. He sighed and bowed his head. “Give me strength and longevity to raise another baby to adulthood,” he whispered. Russ toddled forward and put his hand over Bear’s, and he lifted his head and smiled at his second son.
“Daddy,” Russ said, his smile bright and big and boyish.
“Yeah, Rock,” he said, startling even himself. He drew in a long breath and looked at the name on the headstone where his hand still rested, pinned there by his little boy’s. Stone.
Rock.
“Oh, your momma isn’t going to be super happy about this.” But a feeling like an electric current ran through Bear. The Glover family had a lot of nicknames, and they’d already given Smiles to his son Stetson. Bear called him either name—everyone did. The boy answered to both. Bear’s mother had given Stetson the nickname at an early age, though most of the Glovers didn’t earn their name until later in life.
His grandmother had been the one to dole them out, but as Bear looked at his son’s perfect five fingers splayed over the back of his palm, he simply knew the boy should go by Rock.
“It’ll remind you of your granddaddy,” he said to the boy, though Russ just looked at him with wide, innocent eyes. “He was tough as stone. He knew how to let others chip pieces of him off though, and while he started out rough, by the end, he was polished.”
Bear had felt himself going through that refiner’s fire for the past few years, and he hoped this nickname would remind his son of how important it was to be moldable. To change and adapt, while still trying to keep important family traditions on the ranch. The buzz of an ATV met his ears, and while it normally annoyed Bear to no end, today, he just lifted his head and watched Preacher arrive at the top of the hill.
He looked left and right, his eyes coming back to Bear. Bishop rode on the back of the machine, and the two of them came down the lane and parked just outside the gate of the cemetery.
“Can we join you?” Bishop asked after the ATV’s engine had been killed. He swung off the back first and turned to help Preacher.
“Of course.” Bear straightened and watched his two brothers. Preacher had graduated out of his crutches and his cane, but he still took precious seconds to put his hand in Bishop’s steady himself,