The Flood Stranded Me With Three Ranch Men, So I Kept All Three novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Ashes
I opened my mother's letter on the porch step at dawn, with Emmett's coat around my shoulders and my feet bare on the boards.
It was a single sheet, written in blue ballpoint, in the loops I knew from every permission slip of my childhood.
"Dad," it said.
"I have six weeks. I'm not writing to ask you to forgive me."
"I'm writing so you'll know you were right about the boy and wrong about everything else."
My hands shook on the page.
"I have a daughter. Her name is Jessamyn. She nurses the dying and has never in her life had a place to be warm."
I had to stop and breathe.
"If you open this after I'm gone, give her the ranch."
"Let her be the one who decides what happens to it. She will know."
The last line was pressed hard into the paper.
"I loved that valley. I'm sorry I never said so. Lorna."
I read it three times.
Then I folded it back along its creases and held it against my chest, and the sun came up over the Absarokas, red and gold.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Flood Stranded Me With Three Ranch Men, So I Kept All Three are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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