Page 115 of Sunday Morning

Numb.

Dazed.

“Look at me,” Isaac said.

I didn’t move.

“Look. At. Me.”

With a shaky inhale, I peered up at him just as he pulled his shirt over his head. Then he took my bra and T-shirt and proceeded to dress me.

“I’ll make my father buy me out. We’ll pack up and go to Nashville, or anywhere you want to go.”

I furrowed my brow. “What are you talking about? Buy you out of what?”

“The ranch.” He closed the tack room and tucked his hands into his back pockets while facing me. “My dad did something. I helped him out. And in return, he gave me fifty percent of the land.”

Fifty percent of the Corys’ ranch added up to more than a fourth of the land in and around Devil’s Head.

Brenda.

Isaac knew about Brenda, and Wesley gave him half the farm to keep his mouth shut.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“I can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

He shook his head. “Can’t.”

I frowned. “I already know. But I don’t want to do this now. I need to figure out where to rinse off so I can get dressed for the funeral.”

“I don’t know what you think you know, but you’re way off,” he said.

“I’m not. But it doesn’t matter. I have to go.”

“It does matter,” Isaac said as I brushed past him toward the door.

He grabbed my arm. “Sarah, whatever you think you know, you?—”

“I knowabout the affair.”

Isaac’s grip on my arm tightened for a few seconds until I tugged it away from his hold. When I glanced back at him, his tan face began to lose its color.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured. “But I’m tired of the secrets. They’re destroying everyone.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

AEROSMITH, “DREAM ON”

Isaac

She knockedme on my ass.

I couldn’t believe it. How did she know? And if she knew, who else knew?

When I entered the machine shed, Dad was sitting on an overturned bucket. He looked up at me and quickly wiped his eyes with his fists. I couldn’t imagine why he was crying.