My Husband Exiled Me to the Ranch of My Dreams novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Refused

Audra reaches the ruined Dunning ranch, where a neighbor with a rifle hands her three letters he wrote her; all three came back stamped refused in her husband's handwriting.

The lawyer wanted the tax bills, and when I asked Curtis for them, he did not answer.

Three days later, I stopped waiting and drove to Wyoming.

The gate to the Dunning place had a new chain on it and a man sitting on the tailgate of a truck in front of it.

I stopped my Subaru at the cattle guard and got out.

I had driven eleven hours to get here, and the road behind me was nothing but dust.

The man didn't stand up.

He was somewhere in his forties, lean and sunburned, with a hat pushed back and a rifle lying across his knees.

"Private road," he said. "If the bank sent you, tell them the answer's the same."

"The bank didn't send me."

"Then it's the lodge people. Tell them the water isn't for sale either."

"I don't know any lodge people."

He looked me over, my wrinkled shirt and my car packed to the roof, and then at the key ring in my hand.

"Whose key is that?"

"The gate's."

"Lady, that gate has been mine to open for twelve years."

"It's my grandfather's gate," I said. "I'm Audra Dunning."

For a moment he didn't move at all.

Then he set the rifle down on the bed of the truck, very carefully.

"The old man's granddaughter."

"Yes."

"Huh," he said.

He got down and unlocked the chain, and I followed his truck up the lane.

I had pictured this road my whole life.

The cottonwoods were taller than I remembered from the summers I spent here as a girl, and the creek ran low and bright on the left.

The big house came into view at the top of the rise.

Half the porch roof had come down and lay in the dirt in a pile of gray shingles.

One upstairs window was boarded.

But the barn stood straight, and the fence along the near pasture had new wire.

Over the door of the barn hung the board my grandfather had burned his name into with a hot poker when I was nine.

DUNNING, it still said, and somebody had painted over the letters last year.

Somebody had been here.

I got out and stood with my hand on the warm hood of my car.

I had waited twelve years to see it.

I wasn't going to cry in front of a stranger.

"Jed Halvorsen," the man said. "I run cattle on the next place up the creek."

"Audra."

"I know." He took off his hat and put it back on. "I thought you were younger."

"I thought you'd be friendlier."

"That's fair."

He almost smiled, and then he caught himself.

"Your grandfather asked me to look after the fences. I told him I would."

"He'll want to know I'm here. Where is he?"

Jed looked at me for a long moment.

"You don't know," he said.

"Know what?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

"Come on," he said. "I've got something for you."

He walked to his truck and took a shoebox from behind the seat.

It was a boot box, soft with age, tied shut with baling twine.

He held it out.

I took it and untied the twine.

Inside were three envelopes, addressed to me in a strong, square hand, at our house in Boise.

I knew the address.

I had lived there for twelve years.

Each one had been stamped across the front in red.

RETURN TO SENDER. REFUSED.

"I wrote you the first one the winter he got sick," Jed said. "The second one in the spring, when the doctor said it wouldn't be long. The third one after."

"After what?"

"After the funeral."

The creek went on running.

"I didn't get these," I said.

"They all came back stamped refused."

"I never refused anything. I never saw them."

I turned the top envelope over.

Under the red stamp, in black marker, was a line of block capitals.

NOT AT THIS ADDRESS. DO NOT FORWARD.

I looked at the letters for a long moment, and then I looked at the way the S was cut, with a flat top and a hard little tail.

I had seen that handwriting on every birthday card, every school form and every grocery list for twelve years.

It was my husband's.

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