Or maybe he’d let his anger steal from Echo the last affection from her mother.

She blew out a breath as she gathered up some freshly chopped logs and added them to the bin by the door. Then she stepped inside the arctic entry, letting Granite in with her, and stomped out her boots on the rug.

The house was warm, although no fresh smell of dinner greeted her, but maybe her dad had heated up some leftovers. She stepped out of her boots, shed her jacket and her insulated pants, and walked by his closed office door. A light shone from under the crack, so she stopped. Knocked.

“Dad?” No answer. Maybe he’d fallen asleep in his recliner. And honestly, she wasn’t quite ready to face him yet.

“We stay in touch.”

Now, that just wasn’t fair, was it?

She stopped by the ham and called Sky King Ranch. Barry answered, and she delivered the okay message Dodge requested, a little relieved she didn’t have to talk to him herself.

She walked back into the great room. The fire still smoldered in the hearth, on its last breath. She stirred it to life, added kindling, then a log.

Granite flopped down on the floor, and she couldn’t help but think of Dodge, here, just a few days ago, trying to figure out how to build a bridge between them.

“I came back for you, E.”

She could almost feel him standing here in the room with her, the smell of him, his very presence nearly taking up all the breathable air.

“I read every single letter you wrote to me so many times I could recite them.”

But he hadn’t written back. Maybe because he knew, deep inside, their worlds had broken apart.

“I couldn’t believe I’d let myself get that far away from who I wanted to be, and I had no words.”

She got that. She did.

But he’d figured out who he was now.

And their world was still broken apart.

Her last words to her mother pinged as she headed to the kitchen to check on dinner. Leftover stew, still in the fridge.

“You know, I used to think you left because of me. That I wasn’t enough for you. And yes, maybe that’s true. But really, you weren’t enough for you.”

Her mother simply wanted more than this world. More than Echo. More than her father.

More than this life.

And Echo refused to compete with that. With her mother. With Dodge.

Because, in the end, she knew she’d lose.

She went upstairs to the tiny bedroom that took up most of the loft, grabbed clean clothes, and went back downstairs to the bathroom. The overhead water tank was in a room next to her bedroom, and they filled it regularly from the river.