as the founder of the Wyatt Ranch, and Sean Wyatt, his son, was listed as manager of the ranch. Sean was a year younger than Milagra, and had been a nice boy. Andy was widowed. He’d lost his wife to cancer not long after Sean was born. He’d been a good father and a good man. Maddie had met him at a ranch she took the children to one summer, and they fell head over heels in love. They were the perfect match, in a way she had never expected to find. Their values were so similar. She had waited until she was forty to find the love of her life. Everything about their time together was perfect, but geography was the one problem they couldn’t solve. She had a major career in New York by then, couldn’t afford to give it up and didn’t want to. It was part of her identity. She had two kids in college, and Milagra to get through high school and into college, and Andy couldn’t exist anywhere but on a ranch, close to his roots and in the world he had always known.
At forty-nine, there was no way he could transition into city life in New York, far from horses and mountains and wide-open spaces. He had come to visit her in New York once, and no matter how much he loved her, he couldn’t wait to leave. He had said that he felt like the air was being sucked out of his lungs. He was a cowboy to the very bottom of his soul, the way some men are sailors and can’t live far from the sea. She understood that about him, but she couldn’t give up her identity for him either. Her work was an integral part of her. She wasn’t sure she’d make the same decision now, but she thought she would. In the end, they had made the decision together, and knew they had to. The tension was beginning to poison their relationship, which was the last thing she wanted. They agreed that they had to end it, which had been the most painful choice she’d ever made.
They spoke a few times right after the breakup. She’d hoped that they could be friends, but neither of them were capable of it. They loved each other too passionately, and had to stop talking. She cried over him for two years afterwards, and she hadn’t had a serious relationship since then. They had ended it seventeen years ago, and it still felt like yesterday. She wondered if they’d be able to see each other now.
Having found the box of photographs and love letters had jogged her memories and her heart, and she suddenly had a longing to reach back into her past and see the people who had been important to her. She didn’t want anything from them, but she wanted to remind herself of what they had meant to her, and to see if she’d made the right decisions. She had always wondered about Andy. She could see that he had his own ranch now, and she was happy for him. She was at peace now too. Her children were each in a good place for them, and her work was satisfying, but she wanted to see the men she had loved, and reassure herself that she had made the right choices. She needed to contact them one more time, to validate the past, and who she had been then, with each one of them. She wondered if doing so was a sign of age, or a reminder that she was still alive and had been capable of great love, at least once. It was something she was beginning to feel she needed now in order to move forward in her life.
She didn’t think she wanted a man in her life again. It seemed too complicated to her now. But all the men she had looked up on Google had been more than just passing relationships for her, and she wanted to see where they were now. It seemed an important rite of passage to her. Especially with Deanna convincing her that her life was over. She was mildly afraid of seeing Andy again. He had meant so much to her, but maybe they were capable of friendship now, even if they hadn’t been then. The sting had gone out of it for her, and hopefully for him too. She wondered if he had married again. He wanted