Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 441(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
As if this entire operation wasn’t complex enough, we now had the added complication of her father’s dementia.
I could handle chaos. Stalkers. Armed lunatics with bad intentions.
But there was no tactical plan for a man losing his own mind, one memory at a time.
9
LOFTON
“She’s gone,” I whispered. The weight of those two words nearly suffocated me.
His blue eyes sparkled as he blinked back tears, confusion painting his face. “Clara?” he croaked out, his forehead wrinkling in agony. “My Clara?”
I slid my hand across the faded wooden table to cover his. “She didn’t suffer. It was peaceful. She simply went to sleep and drifted away.” I don’t know why I thought that was any consolation. A loss like that was a tragedy, no matter how it happened.
Just like Marty.
“Lord help me,” he groaned. His hands shook as he combed his thin, gray hair. “Was she alone?”
She was, but I didn’t have the heart to confirm that to her beloved husband of almost fifty years.
I swallowed hard. “She lived a beautiful life surrounded by the people she loved. That’s what’s important.”
Grunting, he stood. He walked to the sink with physical ease, his body picking up the slack of his failing mind. Resting his calloused hands on the edge of the old beige countertop, he blew out a ragged breath. “I need to call the kids.”
My heart splintered as I watched tears roll down his cheeks.
“It’s already taken care of.” I placed my hand in the center of his back. Given the magnitude of him losing his soulmate, it was little comfort, but it was all I had to offer. “They told me to tell you they love you very much.”
The deep crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “They’re good kids. Just like their mama.” His voice broke into a sob. “Oh, my sweet Clara. What am I supposed to do without her?”
“Hey,” I breathed, careful not to let my own emotions bubble to the surface. This wasn’t the time for my sorrow. Pain, guilt, anger, maybe. But not sorrow. “Jenn and I are here for you, okay? Whatever you need, just say the word.”
He hummed in acknowledgment. “Did I ever tell you the story of how she duped me into marrying her?”
My nose stung as I nodded. “Best mistake you ever made.” I hooked my arm in his. There was nothing I could do. No magic words of comfort. No warm embrace could ease his pain. And yet, it was my job to try. “Why don’t we have breakfast and then go for a walk? The weather’s beautiful today.”
Twin rivers streamed down his cheeks, gutting me as they dripped from his chin. He wasn’t a big man. Five-ten to my five-eight. But he was still one of the strongest men I would ever know.
For a long minute, he stared out the kitchen window. His chest heaved, but his face was blank.
Eerily so.
I didn’t have to follow his gaze to know what he was seeing.
With a twelve-horse barn and a small quarter-horse breeding program, Beck Farms had once been a steady rhythm in the Tennessee equine community. Not big or flashy, just respected. The kind of place horse people talked about when they needed a sturdy colt or honest training.
There hadn’t been a single day of my childhood when the property sat quiet. There was always a handful of farmhands, a trainer or two, maybe a farrier’s truck in the drive. Seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year, rain or shine, Lawrence Beck had always been the first one in the barn each morning and the last to shut off the lights at night.
But as his forlorn gaze drifted across the property, it was no longer that version of his legacy that he was viewing.
The before and after was heartbreaking to anyone who had ever set foot on the farm during its heyday, but that wasn’t the saddest part by a million miles.
If time were a thief, it had performed its greatest heist on Lawrence Beck.
He looked at me, a barrage of conflicting emotions clouding his eyes.
Then he smiled.
It was more devastating than the tears, because it was wholly empty, just like the man in front of me.
“Have you seen Clara this morning?” he asked.
My soul withered.
It was different every time. Sometimes he’d remember for hours, crying himself to sleep or into a fit of rage. Others, like today, the tears hadn’t yet dried on his cheeks before he’d forgotten again.
The truth was, Clara Beck had died two years earlier. He had already been in the fight of his life with his mind when we lost her to a heart attack in the middle of the night, leaving Jenn and I as his sole caretakers. He’d never stopped asking for her.
I could have told him again, but it would have done no good.