Page 56 of Knox
“He’s so hard on himself. Driven. Focused. But I think he spends so much time working he never gets a chance to breathe. He’s told himself that he must be as good, if not better, than his father and doesn’t see that it’s strangling him. Not that he could with his head down, always driving forward. I don’t think he’s ever even let himself cry for his father.”
Kelsey looked out. “Maybe it’s the only way he can hold himself together.”
“That’s the problem. He doesn’t need to. Not all the time. There’s a time to just let Jesus take the wheel, as Carrie Underwood would say. Hey, do you know her?”
Kelsey laughed, shook her head. “But Benjamin King sang a few nights ago with the Yankee Belles.”
“Benjamin King. Wow. My son Reuben has a friend, Pete, who knows him.”
“He’s a nice guy.”
Gerri stood up. “I’ll leave the cookies with you.”
“Not if you love me.”
The words just tumbled out, easy, as if—
“I do love you, sweetie. That’s why the cookies are staying.”
Gerri winked at her, her smile sweet, as if she didn’t even notice that Kelsey’s heart was suddenly hanging on the outside of her body.
She opened the door but paused in the threshold. “There’s a path to the high place, if you’re interested.” She pointed to a thin, worn trail. “A little change in perspective always helps.”
The door closed behind her.
Kelsey listened to the wind whispering, then got up. Grabbed a couple cookies and headed off the porch, through the grasses up to the ridge, climbing a hidden trail cut out of the rocks like stepping stones.
Scrub pine and cluster grasses cluttered the top of the ridge, but she followed the trail farther through the maze and found at the end a small wooden bench. She slid onto it, her breath catching.
The ridge overlooked a winding river, the same one that led down to Geraldine, but here, she could make out a breathtaking waterfall that fell from a high mountain ledge into the pine-edged lake below, frothy white, a mist rising from the cascade like a veil.
It dropped into a moraine lake, then down into the valley in a river that widened as it hit the valley floor, meandering around granite cliffs and steep, green mountainside until it emerged into the flat land, spent.
“My father proposed to my mother up here.”
“I know.” Kelsey turned and shielded her eyes to find Knox standing behind her. A pretty quarter horse grazed with dropped reins not far away. “She sent me up here.”
He took off his hat and settled it on her head. “Can I join you?”
She adjusted the hat and patted the seat, feeling a little like she was in high school. Although she’d never once had a handsome cowboy—or any guy, really—pay attention to her in high school. Or if they did, she—or more aptly, Glo—ran him off.
Knox sat far enough away for her not to run. But close enough for her to see a day’s whisker growth in his beard, which glinted copper in the sunlight. He wore a denim work shirt, the cuffs rolled up around his forearms, a pair of canvas work pants, and his scuffed cowboy boots. A pair of gloves hung on his belt.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “And you’d never know the waterfall was here unless you went looking.”
“I love this place,” Kelsey said, the words just spilling out of her.
He gave a low chuckle, and she could feast on it every day of her life. “Yeah. It sort of gets into your bones. But don’t be fooled—ranch life is dangerous, hard work.”
She had no doubt, but something… “I know it’s none of my business, but…would you tell me how your dad died?”
He went silent for a moment. “Are those my mom’s cookies?”
“She’s tweaking an old recipe.”
“Sure she is,” he said as she held out the napkin. He took a cookie. “She thinks cookies are life’s answer to every problem.” He took a bite, made a humming sound. “Maybe.”
She laughed and sort of hated that she’d asked—