Finding something new.

He supposed there was something to be said for that.

“I’m happy for you,” Logan said. “It’s a good thing.”

“Well, I don’t have the job yet. My old coach is the one leaving the position, and he’s recommending me for it. So I mean, I’m going to have a bit of a personalized recommendation, which never hurts. But you never know. There might be somebody all lined up ready to take the slot.”

“Nobody who would be as good as you,” Rose said, and her blind loyalty to him made up for her brattiness of a few moments earlier.

“Would you have been a football player, do you think?” Iris asked. “If it hadn’t been for us?”

“I would have been the wrong kind of man if I had turned away from my responsibilities. Not a man that I could’ve been proud of. It doesn’t really have anything to do with you so much as the shape of the life that we ended up with. I’m not unhappy.”

“You’re not?” Rose asked.

“I mean,” he said. “At this current moment I could be happier. But I’m... I’m doing something. All right? You know, Sammy said that I was retired. And now I think there’s something to that. And you all think that you’re obligated to me. Because I took care of you, or whatever bullshit. But I think if I would have done more than just sit around here all these years you might not feel that way. I mean, I chose to. I need you all to know that. I don’t feel stuck here. But I did think that maybe picking up a hobby wasn’t the worst idea in the world.”

“That’s good,” Iris said. “Because I think sometimes I do worry about that. I know you’ve dug in and chosen to be here, Ryder. You’re the most responsible man I know, and I do wonder sometimes what you left behind.”

“I’m in the most important life that I could be in. We all sacrificed. We all came together. And no, our lives aren’t the same as if our parents hadn’t died. But we have life. I was thinking... You know, I am not significantly younger than Dad was when he died. And I’m about to become a father myself, whatever happens with Sammy. It would have been impossible to not be affected by their deaths. But we can’t go on living for those deaths forever. Still, I think they would’ve been real proud of what we made here. And there’s not a whole lot more I could ask for than that. That we made something, that we became something that they could’ve been proud of.”

“Dad would have been proud of you,” Rose said. “Because you are the reason we’re still here. You’re the reason the ranch is still here.”

And he was proud of that. But still, it was difficult to feel triumphant when he had all those things but he didn’t have the woman that he loved.