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“Still true. And I know I’ll keep this one.”
“So will I.”
“And a Rafferty always keeps his word.”
“Yes.”
“Then we’re on,” she whispered.
And when he leaned over to kiss her, it was to a round of applause from everyone they loved.
“Did you know you can 3D-print jewelry, like they did your cast?” he whispered as he broke the kiss, mindful of their audience. “I’m working on a ring that will symbolize us, but won’t get in your way with the horses.”
Britt burst out laughing, and this time it was she who leaned in to kiss him. “That is so…so Cody. I love it, and that you thought of it that way.”
Cody knew this was the best day of his life. As they rode back—this time to the Rafferty house—he was almost delirious with it. So much that he almost missed Britt exchanging a glance with Ry, who nodded at her. He shrugged it off, figuring he’d find out what that was about later. Right now he was busy holding her hand as they rode, thinking about the house they would build, straddling that line, joining the two ranches.
It wasn’t until they were back and inside the house that he realized—that obliviousness again—that something else was up. Because Mom stopped everybody on the front porch, even though it was a bit crowded. Then she went inside, but quickly came back with something in her hands. A piece of heavy paper, with something drawn on it. He flashed back to that moment when he’d seen Ry and Britt in the kitchen, when he thought he’d startled them somehow. They’d been holding something that looked very much like this piece of heavy sketch paper.
“I found this, going through some things I’d put away because it hurt too much to look at…then.”
She held it out to him. He was beyond puzzled now, but he took the page and looked. “For Cody” was scrawled at the top, and his breath jammed up in his chest. Because he knew that writing. He hadn’t seen it often, and not at all recently, but it was etched into that memory of his permanently.
His father.
“He was planning your painting, Cody,” Mom said, so softly.
He stared at the page, wondering in some small part of his mind why his hands weren’t shaking, because he sure as hell felt shaky inside.
It was a sketch of, of all things, the ridgeline, the end of it, the exact spot where he’d made the big turn in the bluebonnets video. On the left there was the line of stone, on the right the hills spilling out into the distance, seeming endless to the horizon. And above that part were two words in the same, painfully familiar hand. “The Future.”
“He knew,” Keller said softly. “He knew, when he got you that first computer, that you would be the one to lead us into that future.”
“And he was right,” Chance said, holding up the new phone Cody had finally talked him into.
Ry stayed silent, but he looked almost nervous. Then Mom spoke again, turning his stunned gaze back to her.
“We were going to frame this and give it to you, but—” she looked at Britt with a huge smile “—when she saw this, Britt had a better idea. A much better idea.”
Britt? She’d been in on this?
“Come inside,” Mom said, and opened the door again.
He took one step inside and stopped dead. On an easel, facing the door, was a painting. The painting. His painting. The one his father had never had the chance to paint. It was the sketch he held, rendered in vivid color, the same colors he’d captured in the video, laid over the exact lines depicted in his father’s sketch, capturing the same energy and love of this place that was in their souls.
He was no longer the only Rafferty not to have one.
When he could move again, he turned to search out Ry, for he knew whose hand had accomplished this. For a moment the brothers’ gazes locked, and Cody guessed his own eyes were as suspiciously bright as Ry’s were. He remembered all the years when Ry had denied he was an artist, because he was certain he could never measure up to their father’s skill. Only when Kaitlyn had made him see the truth had he dared to even try.
And now he had produced this.
“It’s not Dad—” Ry began.
“Shut up,” he said, afraid he was going to bawl here in front of them all.
“I never would have even tried it,” his brother said after a moment, sounding exactly as Cody had expected, “but Britt hammered me until I had no choice.”
He turned to look at her. She wasn’t even trying to hide the tears that had obviously come as she watched him react to the surprise she’d arranged. She’d understood how much it would mean to him, how much it had always nagged at him that he was the only son who didn’t have this piece of their father. Mom had even offered to give him the one in the living room, but he’d said no. Because it wouldn’t have been the same. It wouldn’t have been something done especially for him.
