His stomach churned. Yes. Yes and no. “I did it for Mom,” he said.

He didn’t elaborate. He’d never told anyone even that much before.

“She’s proud of you,” Jacob said.

But it was deeper than that. More than that.

“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Either way, though, it’s time to move on. I’d like you to help me.”

Jacob looked around. “I’m hardly in a space to help myself.”

“Maybe if you got off your ass and started thinking of even one other person in your life, you would.” He realized that sounded harsh, but his brother was being ridiculous. He wasn’t dead.

“You can’t help anyone up here on a mountain,” Gabe pointed out.

“I still go out and fight fires, every year. I go right into the smoke, Gabe. I know how it can end, and I do it, anyway. So you can come up here and run your mouth about how I’m not doing anything...”

“You haven’t moved on.”

“Clint can’t move on. He’s dead. And if I hadn’t declined the call?”

“You would be dead. And we would be mourning you. I loved Clint. But you’re my brother, Jacob, and I am damned glad I didn’t have to say goodbye to you.”

“I’m not a husband or a father. Clint left Ellie and Amelia. Amelia won’t ever know him. He never even saw his daughter, Gabe. Ellie was still pregnant...”

“I know. But this isn’t fixing it. And there’s some boys... There’s some boys that could be fixed. You know what Clint’s home life was like. The ranch was a refuge for him. We could make it a refuge for some other boys, too. I think he would have liked that.”

That made Jacob stop, still, the bottle of beer frozen up against his lips. “Yeah,” he said, settling the bottle down. “I expect he would have. Do you even know how to go about that? How to get funding?”

“I suspect we start by talking to some different agencies, figuring out what kind of certifications we need.”

“Well, I’m not dealing with any of that shit.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it.”

“What made you decide to do all this now?”

He didn’t know how to explain that it had something to do with the fire in Jamie Dodge’s eyes. And he didn’t particularly want to talk about Jamie with his brother at all. Jamie, and everything that surrounded her, was his.

His secret. His pleasure.

And the crying really hadn’t been that big of a deal, because she wanted to be with him again.

“Just an idea I had,” he said, standing up, leaving half of his beer bottle sitting on top of the cool chest. “Maybe you can come out with Caleb and me sometime next week.”

“Maybe,” Jacob said. His brother’s eyes were fixed on the expansive view of the valley below. And he knew that Jacob had no intention of going out with them.

“You know, it doesn’t matter how long you sit up here. It isn’t gonna change anything.”