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gradually gotten better, until he was well enough to leave the hospital, and Cheyenne had gone back to San Diego and thrown all her energies into her job.
    â€œDo you think we could get a dog?”
    Cheyenne blinked. Returned to the here-and-now with a thump. “A dog?”
    Mitch smiled, and that was such a rare thing that it made her heart skitter over a beat. “We couldn’t have one at the apartment,” he said.
    â€œBut you’ll be going back—”
    â€œI’m never going back,” Mitch said with striking certainty.
    â€œWhat makes you say that?”
    â€œWe don’t have to pay rent here,” he answered. “Mom’s talking about painting again, and getting a job waiting tables or selling souvenirs someplace. She’ll probably meet some loser and make it her life’s mission to save him from himself.”
    For all her intelligence, Ayanna had the kind of romantic history that would provide material for a week of Dr. Phil episodes. At least she hadn’t married again after Pete.
    Tears burned in Cheyenne’s eyes, and she was glad the room was lit only by Mitch’s computer screen and the tacky covered-wagon lamp on the dresser.
    â€œI wish—” Mitch began when Cheyenne didn’t, couldn’t, speak, but his voice fell away.
    â€œWhat, Mitch?” she asked, after swallowing hard. “What do you wish?”
    â€œI wish I could have a job, and a girlfriend. I wish I could ride a horse.”
    Cheyenne didn’t know what to say. Jobs were few and far between in Indian Rock, especially for the disabled. Girls Mitch’s age were working, going to college, dating men who could take them places. And riding horses? That was for people with two good legs and more courage than good sense.
    â€œIsn’t there something else?” she said, almost whispering.
    Mitch smiled sadly, turned away again and brought the war game back up on his computer screen. Blip-blip-kabang.
    Cheyenne sat helplessly on the bed for a few moments, then got to her feet, laid a hand briefly on her brother’s shoulder, and left the room, closing the door behind her.
    Â 
    T HE HEADLIGHTS OF J ESSE’S truck swept across the old log schoolhouse his great-great-great grandfather, Jeb McKettrick, had built for his teacher bride, Chloe. Jesse’s sisters had used the place as a playhouse when they were kids, and Jesse, being a decade younger, had made a fort of it. Now, on the rare occasions when his parents came back to the ranch, it served as an office.
    He pulled up beside the barn, and the motion lights came on.
    Inside, he checked on the horses, six of them altogether, though the number varied. They’d been fed and turned out for some exercise that morning, before he’d left for town, but he added flakes of dried Bermuda grass to their feeders now just the same, to make up for being gone so long.
    They were forgiving, like always, and grateful for the attention he gave them.
    He took the time to groom them, one by one, but eventually, there was nothing to do but face that empty house.
    It was big; generations of McKettricks had added on to it—a room here, a story there. Now that his folks spent the majority of their time in Palm Beach, playing golf and socializing, and Victoria and Sarah were busy jet-setting with their wealthy husbands, Jesse was the unofficial owner.
    He entered through the kitchen door, switched on the lights.
    The house his cousins, Meg and Sierra, owned was reportedly haunted. Jesse often wished this one was, too, because at least then he wouldn’t have been alone.
    He went to the walk-in Sub-Zero, took out a beer and popped the top. What he ought to do was get a dog, but he was gone too much. It wouldn’t be fair to consign some poor unsuspecting mutt to a lonely life, just so he could come home to somebody who’d always be happy to see him.
    â€œYou’re losing it, McKettrick,” he said