her arm. “Sierra, about the information you wanted . . .”
“Did your investigator get back to you?”
“Yes. I didn’t want to do this today, but I don’t want to keep it from you any longer.”
She studied his serious face. “What do you mean ‘longer’?”
“I’ve actually had it for a little while. I just didn’t know how to break the news to you.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “It can’t be worse than what I’m imagining. Just tell me.”
He glanced at the boys and her mom waiting on the porch. “Not here. We’ll go over it after the boys’ ride this afternoon. Maybe Dede can watch them while we talk.”
Her stomach tied into a knot. “It’s that bad?”
“If I’ve learned anything in my law practice, it’s that secrets are always bad. I wish I didn’t have to tell you what I know, but . . . you deserve the truth. I just hope you’re prepared to hear it.”
“Mom! Can we open these?” Danny called out.
Sierra touched Mason’s arm. “We’ll talk about this later.” She headed for the porch, then remembered what she was supposed to tell him about their ride. “Heather and Hallee are joining us at the ranch later.”
Mason stopped in his tracks behind her. “Why?”
She caught herself and turned back to him. “She wants to introduce Hallee to a horse.”
“I wish you’d told me about this sooner.”
His reluctant tone made her raise an eyebrow. “Have you run out of horses?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s just . . . we really need to discuss the information I received from my investigator. But you didn’t know, so we’ll deal with it later.” The postponement frustrated him. He seemed to want to get it over with, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted to know given his dire tone.
He touched her back to get her moving up the stairs to where the boys waited at the table, their presents in front of them, hands ready to tear into the packages. “Let’s do this and save the rest for later.”
Sierra let it go, tried to shake off her worry, and focused on the boys. “Okay, you two, I don’t want you to think you’re going to get presents every year but after the fire and we lost everything of your dad’s I made some calls to our friends in Napa and downloaded what I had and made you these.” She nodded for them to go ahead and open the gifts.
They tore open the wrapping paper and tossed it away. Danny and Oliver both stared at their photo books, a picture of each of them with their dad on the cover.
“Our friends sent all the pictures they had of you guys with your dad. Aunt Amy and Heather and Grandma gave me some from family gatherings. I used all the ones I had stored on my phone and put them all together in these books.”
Danny flipped through pages, tears rolling down his cheeks.
Oliver simply stared at the cover, his face solemn.
Her mom wrapped her arm around Sierra’s middle. “They’re gorgeous, Sierra. When you told me what you were doing, I never expected it to turn out like this. It’s like a photography book.”
“You custom-make them online.” She addressed the boys then. “I wanted you to remember all the good times we had with Dad. Now any time you miss him, you can look at these pictures and see his face and remember how much he loved you.”
Choked up, she swallowed back her own tears.
The books had taken quite a bit of time to design, but they turned out so well. She customized each one to focus on either Danny or Oliver, though of course many of the pictures showed both of them. But there were lots that were just one of them with their dad and her.
She vowed to make new ones for them every few years, so they had their memories to look at instead of all the pictures simply sitting in the cloud doing nothing for anyone in cyberspace.
Sierra hoped this helped heal their hearts. She couldn’t give them back everything lost in the fire, but this had been a way to bring the memories back to life for them.
They were so young. She didn’t want those memories to fade away without them having something to help bring them back to life in their minds and hearts.
Danny finally looked up at her, so much sorrow in his eyes. “Thanks, Mom.” He clutched the book to his chest. “Thanks.”