LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      “CLARA?”

      Clara knew she was supposed to respond. She was supposed to say something. Yell, maybe. Or cry? Something. Alex was standing there telling her he was now linked—legally—to this place that she had poured her whole self into.

      She’d grown up here. All twenty-one years of her life. Jason had joined the army when she was just eight years old, coming back intermittently when her parents hadn’t been able to care for her. But since she’d turned eighteen it had all been on her.

      There had been no college. No dates. There had been this ranch. It was hers. And now he was just...taking that?

      She didn’t scream, though. Instead, she just stood there, numbness spreading from her mouth to the rest of her face. She was way too familiar with this feeling. With the moment the earth fell away and the world shifted. With innocuous moments rolling over and becoming something significant.

      With her life changing completely between one breath and the next.

      That was the worst part about this moment. Not that it was singular in its awfulness, but that it wasn’t.

      Of course there was more. Of course there would be no putting her head down and simply getting over this. Moving on to the next thing. Getting used to her new, incredibly crappy normal.

      Alex had just redefined normal. Again.

      Asshole.

      That little internal invective seemed to wake up something inside of her and her gaze snapped to his. “He left everything to you?”

      “Yes.”

      “Why?” She was shaking now, a strange, deep trembling that started at the center of her chest and began to work its way out her limbs. “Why would he leave everything to you? I’m the one who’s been living here. I’m the one who’s been taking care of this place while he was deployed.”

      “He wanted to make sure you were taken care of,” Alex said, his tone maddeningly flat.

      “Then he shouldn’t have died!” The words exploded from her, and it didn’t matter if they were fair or not. It was how she felt. And Jason was dead anyway, so he couldn’t hear them. Couldn’t get a sense for how upset she was that he had died.

      “But he did,” Alex said, his bluntness offensive to her wounded heart. “And he made it pretty clear to me what was supposed to happen if he did.”

      “I am a grown woman, why did he think he needed to send you here? I’ve been here without him all this time.” She didn’t feel like a grown woman right now. She felt like the floor was shifting under her feet and she didn’t have the strength to stay standing.

      “You’re not a grown woman to him, Clara,” Alex said, slipping up and talking about Jason as if he still thought anything. As if he might be about to walk in the door from a long fishing trip. “The way he talked about you...you were his kid sister. He worried about you constantly, and he worried especially about what would happen to you if he couldn’t come home to you.”

      Clara’s eyes felt scratchy with the effort of holding back all the emotion that was swamping her.

      Jason had been her hero. He’d taught her to ride a horse. He’d taught her to fish—which she’d hated, but she would go with him anyway. Every weekend he was home, he would pack a picnic with the sandwiches he knew she liked and they would drive to the river.

      He’d park his truck on the side of the road and they’d hike down the sandy trail together and sit on the rocks for hours. Talking while they sat there mostly not landing any fish.

      And when she’d complain, Jason had always said, “This is why they call it fishing, not catching.”

      The image of her brother standing out by the river with that carefree grin on his face felt like a stab to the chest.

      Alex shifted, rapping his knuckles on her table. “He wrote me a letter.”

      “What are you talking about? He wrote you a letter that was like... Open in case of my eventual death?”

      “Something like that.”

      “Wow.”

      She didn’t know what else to say. Somehow, the fact that there was a letter almost made it worse. Of course, Jason had known that his death was a possibility. Every soldier knew that. But Clara had never allowed herself to think about it.

      Somehow, it was less disturbing to imagine he hadn’t really given it much consideration. Envisioning him sitting down and writing a letter about what Alex should do if he died... It... It enraged her. Even if it was unfair. The fact that he had thought it through that deeply, but had still been in the military, had still put himself in that kind of danger...

      He had fully imagined a future in which he might be gone and she might need help. Where she would be left alone and he might have to assign somebody the responsibility of taking care of her.

      He had known he could die. Known enough to prepare for it. It made her furious. Absolutely furious.

      “He loved you, Clara,” Alex said, his soft, apologetic tone worse than the arrogant tone he had used when commenting on her dinner.

      “If he loved me so much, he shouldn’t have reenlisted in the military after our father died,” she said, finally giving voice to the small, useless, mean thoughts she’d been having ever since she’d gotten the news of his death. “If he loved me so much, he would have stayed here. He would be here helping me with the ranch. Rather than sending a surrogate in his place. Did you all love the military so much that you couldn’t stay away? Is it better than this ranch, this town?”

      “He believed in the military,” Alex said, his voice rough. “He believed in the ideal of serving something

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