by Liz Isaacson
“Thank you, Lord,” he said, his voice barely reaching his own ears. He knew God would hear him though, no matter how loud or how quiet he spoke. He wasn’t even sure what he was thankful for—or who he was thankful for—only that he wanted to acknowledge the feeling of gratitude as he felt it.
“Please help me with Owen.” He put the truck in gear and added, “And help me get down this canyon without sliding off the road.”
Satisfied with his pleas to the Lord, he kept a tight grip on the steering wheel as he inched down the snow-packed roads toward flatter ground. The plows had been out down here, and he relaxed as he started driving down the country roads that would take him to the place where he’d been raised.
A lot of people had farms in Coral Canyon, and homes generally sat several hundred yards apart. He’d always liked exploring his property, hopping fences, and checking out a new place too. As he’d grown older and learned he shouldn’t do that, he admired farms from appropriate distances.
He made a left turn and drove slowly down the road that had served as a dividing line between his family and the Abbotts for years. To his right, the Abbott farm spread north and east. To his left, the Zuckerman farm spread south and east. To an outsider, they looked quaint. Beautiful. Similar.
But on the inside, Zach knew something seethed and writhed, staining everything and everyone it touched.
He just needed to figure out what that root source of contention was and get rid of it. Easy.
He scoffed at himself and caught sight of a truck moving down the Abbott’s lane toward the road he was on. As he neared, he kept his eyes on the driver.
It was Mack Abbott, the oldest of Celia’s brothers. Because Zach hadn’t spent much of the last thirty years thinking about the Abbotts, he had a hard time remembering how old the man was.
Older than Owen, who was fifty-three. Older than Celia, who was fifty-four. Almost at once, he remembered Celia saying she and Mack were barely a year apart, and he lifted his hand in a hello as he put on his left blinker.
Mack returned the gesture, so either the feud didn’t matter, or he didn’t recognize Zach.
Zach turned onto his family’s lane and immediately looked in his rear-view mirror. Mack’s scowl spoke volumes, and Zach almost braked to go back. Maybe two people just needed to sit down and talk.
“And it’s not going to be you,” he told himself as he continued forward, the snow here deeper than in Dog Valley.
He pulled up to the homestead, where someone had cleared off the driveway, and got out of the truck. The air smelled crisp and clean, and that was one good thing about the snow. Of course, a breath too deep could really burn the lungs, so he didn’t waste any time outside.
The front door wasn’t locked, and Zach called, “Hello?” as he entered. His mouth watered with the scent of coffee, and his muscles relaxed at the introduction of heat to the surroundings.
“Zach.” His brother Owen appeared from down the hall, a friendly smile already on his face. They embraced amidst laughter, and Zach glanced around the house where he’d once lived.
“Everything seems so small,” he said.
“I know,” Owen said darkly. “I’m getting some remodeling done once spring comes.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yep. Aleah wants to open things up.”
“Can’t say I disagree with her.” Zach had never liked Owen’s wife all that much, but he knew how to play nice and get along. “Where is Lee?”
“Shopping,” Owen said, getting down a couple of coffee mugs. “Audrey’s birthday party is this weekend.”
“Oh, right,” Zach said. “Fifteen.”
Owen flashed a smile, though it certainly wasn’t the first birthday party he’d hosted at the farm. He had five children, and Audrey was the youngest.
He put a sugar bowl on the counter and poured Zach a cup of coffee. “So what brings you by? I know it’s not to help with the chores in this weather.”
Zach chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. I’m already pulling double-duty for my friend while he’s out of town.”
Owen lifted his mug to his lips, his dark eyes full of questions. Zach had no idea what to say. He took his time stirring entirely too much sugar into his coffee.
“I have a dilemma,” he finally said. “I was hoping you could help me with it.”
“If I can,” Owen said, and Zach saw the overprotective brother he’d always had. Owen did love his family fiercely and would do anything for them.
“I started seeing someone.” Zach cleared his throat. “A woman.”
A smile bloomed on Owen’s face. “Wow. That’s a big step for you.”
“Yeah.” Zach felt flushed all over, and he wanted a cool drink of water instead of this hot coffee. “Anyway, there’s a problem with her family.” He watched Owen for any type of reaction.
Confusion knitted his brother’s brows. “Really? Her family?” He straightened. “Is she twenty years younger than you or something?”
“No,” Zach said slowly, wishing he’d brought up the feud first. He didn’t see a way he could bring it up now without disclosing who the woman was. “She’s actually older than me.”
“How much older?”
“Only a few years.” Zach squirmed on the barstool and pushed his coffee away. He was fifty years old, for crying out loud. “The problem is, she’s an Abbott. Or she used to be.”
Owen sucked in a breath that sounded very much like a hiss. “Celia?”
Zach nodded, desperation coursing through him now. “And I’m wondering if you can tell me more about this feud between our families.”
Owen paced to the kitchen sink, looked out the window there for what felt like a long time, and then faced Zach again. “They’re crooks, Zach. You know that, right?”
“I didn’t know that,” he said evenly.
“They claimed to own the exact piece of land where the water flowed to our farm from the north,” Owen said, his face an angry mask of fire. His eyes blazed with the hatred Zach could feel streaming from him.
“When did this happen?” Zach asked.
“Right when Gramps was taking over the farm,” Owen said. “And suddenly, the Abbotts owned another ten acres of land and we had no way to water our crops.”
Zach didn’t want to point fingers or escalate anything. “But we obviously still water our crops.”
“Yeah,” Owen clipped out. “We had to buy a whole new set of rights, and I just barely finished paying for them.”
Decades of debt. Zach nodded, his heart heavy. A single ray of hope shone through him though. “So it could be over. I mean, it’s been what? A hundred years?” Their grandfather had taken over the farm when their dad was three or four years old.
“It’ll never be over,” Owen said. “They caused us grief for a long time.” He shook his head. “You should find yourself a new girlfriend.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Zach said quickly just to avoid further argument. “I just started seeing her.”
“Yeah, well, end it.” Owen slammed his coffee mug on the kitchen counter. “I have work to do.” He stormed out of the kitchen, exactly as he’d done for many years when things didn’t go his way.
Zach stayed even after the back door had slammed closed and he’d watched his brother move down the paths in the snow to the outbuildings on the farm.
“Help him forgive,” he whispered to the faint reflection of himself in the glass. But he knew that would take a miracle, and while Zach believed in those, he hadn’t seen one in his own life for a long time.
Chapter Nine
Celia scrolled to the next page on the film she’d requested from the library. The air held the general sense of dust, as if no one ever used these machines to look at these old documents anymore. And they probably didn’t.
But the history of Coral Canyon hadn’t been completely digitized yet, and it wasn’t available on the computer. So she sat at the microfiche station and scrolled, the white letters on black bac
kgrounds starting to wear on her eyes.
Zach had told her about the root of the feud between their two families, and Celia had started researching. Maybe she just didn’t want her family to be the villains. Maybe she needed to justify what they’d done.
No matter what, she had an affinity for history, and she’d loved learning about the people that had come before her, the places they’d lived, and the laws they’d had to uphold. She’d first gone to her History of Coral Canyon hardcover book, and she’d learned that ninety-seven years ago, new laws for farmers had been introduced.
That had to be close to the time her family had allegedly gained ten more acres on their farm, effectively cutting the Zuckermans off from their water rights.
She hadn’t spoken to Lennox or Mack, so she wasn’t sure what the story was on her side yet. She wanted to be armed with as much knowledge as possible before she approached them.
Zach had not been happy when he’d picked her up earlier that week. He hadn’t broken things off with her, but he’d been strangely distant, and she’d skipped driving to Dog Valley to spend Saturday with him in favor of holing up here in the library.
He wanted a solution to the problem as much as she did, and he’d put out calls to his friends still in real estate to find someone who sold water rights and what was happening in Coral Canyon at the time.
She’d learned that Wyoming had since moved to a permit system, and that both her family and Zach’s had permits with the state to use the water they’d been fighting over. So she wasn’t sure what water rights Owen had just paid off, and neither was Zach.
The whole thing made her head hurt. And yet, she continued to scroll, searching for something in the headlines that would give her another piece of the puzzle. She wasn’t even sure what to look for, what words, what announcements.
She took out the roll of film when it finished and inserted the next one. As it came to life, right there at the top sat the headline Two Local Farmers Vie For Water.
Her great-grandfather’s picture stared back at her, and Celia couldn’t read fast enough. “When the state implemented it’s new law, all riparian land and water had to be claimed or else it was lost.”
She went on to read that if her great-grandfather hadn’t claimed that extra ten acres, neither farm would’ve had water.
“We want to use the water we have for decades,” she read. “Augustus Zuckerman said. If he takes all the land there, we have nothing. Zuckerman goes on to say that he offered to split the cost of the land with Abbott, who refused.”
She leaned away from the article, her heartbeat thrashing through her veins. “It was your family’s fault,” she said. “Why couldn’t they have just shared with the Zuckermans?” It seemed like that was what the two farms and families had done previous to the new law.
Looking up toward the ceiling, she imagined herself in the room with her great-grandfather. “Why?”
“Are you finding everything okay?” the librarian asked, interrupting Celia’s heart-to-heart with her dead ancestor.
“Yes,” she said. “If I wanted to print this, how could I do that?” She indicated the story still on the screen of the microfiche.
“Oh, that’s easy,” Amelia said. “You just push that button right there.” She pointed to a big, black button on the side of the machine.
“Great, thanks.” Celia printed out the article, paid for it, and hurried out of the library. Armed with more answers—and many more questions—she felt one step closer to a resolution.
She could only hope and pray that the resolution included keeping Zach in her life. She sure did like him, and she didn’t want something from almost a century ago to keep them apart.
No, she didn’t know if everything would work out between them, but until she knew that it wouldn’t, she wanted to keep all her options open.
“So you’re saying my family has a right to feel jilted.” Zach straightened, the piping bag of green frosting still clutched in his hand.
Celia had just finished explaining everything she’d found at the library and in her Coral Canyon history book. “It seems so,” she said miserably. She couldn’t even get into the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, though she’d signed them up for this cookie-decorating class only a few days ago.
“Wow,” he said. “I was expecting the Zuckermans to be wrong.”
“Were you?” She watched him go back to swirling the frosting over the four-leaf clover-shaped cookie. He hadn’t been thrilled about this cooking class, but Celia wanted to get out of his house. Out of hers. Out of the lodge.
Maybe the senior citizens center in Dog Valley wasn’t Zach’s first choice, but he seemed to be enjoying himself. And hey, he had the silver specks in his hair to prove he belonged there.
“Yes,” he said simply. “My father was a hothead. My brothers are too, especially Owen.”
“Has he asked about me since you talked to him?”
“Not for a few days,” Zach said.
“What did you tell him?”
Zach wouldn’t look up from the cookie, and Celia’s heart pushed out two extra beats, then three.
“Zach?”
He’d never answered her questions about how his meeting with his brother had gone. Not directly. He dodged. He changed the subject. He gave one-liners and moved on to something else.
His visit to his brother and his childhood farm had happened over a week ago. She’d shown up that morning as scheduled and put lunch in the slow cooker before surprising Zach with this mid-afternoon cookie-decorating class.
He set down the green frosting and picked up a white bag with a skinny tip. “I maybe made a mistake.”
Celia couldn’t focus on her own decorating anymore. “A mistake? What did you say?”
Zach wore a guilty look in those dreamy eyes, and Celia couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her all of this last week. “I should’ve just asked about the feud, but I wasn’t sure how. I told him I was seeing someone, and well, through everything else that was said, he knows it’s you.”
She fell back a step, trying to absorb what he’d said. She couldn’t breathe and think and speak at the same time, so she just stood there and stared at him.
“It’s fine,” Zach said, peering down at his cookie again as a red flush stained his neck and ears.
“Fine?” Celia repeated. “How is it fine?” She hadn’t said a word to Lennox or Mack, and if Owen did….
They don’t talk to one another, she reminded herself. Owen wouldn’t go spreading gossip to the cowboys across the street that he hated.
“I told him you weren’t my girlfriend.”
If anything, the words stabbed her deeper, driving all the way through her heart. She blinked, trying to make sense of them. “Wha—what?”
No, she and Zach hadn’t put labels on their relationship, but she was fifty-four-years-old. She wasn’t dating anyone else, and if anyone had asked her who Zach was, she’d have said he was her boyfriend.
In fact, she’d told Ruth and Reagan just on Sunday evening that he was her boyfriend.
Zach looked up, finally realizing that Celia had turned into a statue. She searched his face, trying to find the answers she wanted. Problem was, she didn’t know what she wanted to hear him say.
Oh, yes, she did.
“Am I your girlfriend?” she asked, lifting her chin. He’d have to flat-out say no for her to believe him. The man texted and called her every day. He held her hand whenever they were together. She’d snuggled into his side more times than she could count.
His throat worked, but no sound came out of his mouth. He finally came up with, “I mean, I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Celia shook her head. “That’s not good enough.” She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with him, with dozens of other people around. A peal of laughter came from the next table over, drawing her attention.
The other guests at this cookie decorating event seemed to be absorbed in their own tasks. Their family members
had come, and she hoped her grandchildren and great-grandchildren would come visit her when she got old enough to live in a place like this.
“Celia.” Zach put down his frosting bag and stepped toward her. When he said her name like that, soft and sincere, and full of emotion, she had no defense against him. “If anyone else was asking, I would have said you were my girlfriend.” A small smile touched his lips, and he ducked his head.
That cowboy hat came between them, and while Celia really loved the look, she really wanted to see his eyes in this moment.
She reached up and took off his hat. That got him to look at her, all kinds of emotions swirling in the dark depths of his eyes. “Really?”
“Really.”
Celia enjoyed the light as it spread through her soul, and she wanted to hold onto it for a long time. She felt warm from head to toe, and she wished she wasn’t standing only a few feet away from someone she’d met an hour ago. Her gaze dropped to Zach’s mouth, and she thought about kissing him—not for the first time.
“Can I have my hat back?”
Giddiness pranced through Celia, and she stepped back and handed him his hat. He settled it back on his head and looked at her again. “So we’re okay?”
Celia nodded, though she still experienced a lingering sting somewhere behind her lungs. “You really told him we weren’t dating?”
Zach sighed and squeezed the frosting bag like he wanted to choke the life out of it. “I mean, he was pretty angry. I probably would’ve told him anything.” He looked down at the completed cookies on their table and sighed. “He told me I should end things with you.”
Celia didn’t know what to say. That conversation between Zach and his brother was over a week old, and he hadn’t broken up with her. That meant something, right?
“You two are so cute,” an aged voice said. “Don’t worry about whoever said you should break-up with her, son. It’s clear you belong together.”
