Amy sat and tucked in her legs, noticing for the first time the chill in the air but too absorbed in the story to care. She was still puzzled; the connection to the foreclosure had yet to be made clear, but she sensed she was about to find out how the pieces fit together.

“All right,” she said, “what happened next?”

“Well, as you might expect, I was up that entire night. The hospital had given me brochures for every nursing home within a hundred miles, and my job was to find one where my father would fit in best. But instead, all I could think about were the what ifs. What if this was a big mistake? What if the doctors were wrong? What if they were acting too quickly, giving up too soon? Yes, they knew the science, they knew the odds, but I knew my father, and what if all he needed was another chance at treatment, not in the hospital but somewhere different . . . somewhere he could feel safe, somewhere quiet. A place where he could look out the window and see fields and trees and not a walled-in courtyard. A place where he could go outside and listen to the birds, watch the horses play, see the sun setting behind the hills. A place where, instead of air freshener and disinfectant, he could smell the sweetness of hay curing in the mow, or the soil after a spring rain. What if that was what my father needed for the rehabilitation to work? And that was when I had my epiphany—that was when I knew what had to be done. Despite the risks and despite the costs, I knew that somehow I had to get my father back to the ranch and give him a second chance at therapy.”

“But your insurance? They had already canceled on you.”

“Yes, it meant I needed to go private.”

“Pay for it yourself?”

“That’s right. So, the next thing I know, I’m on the phone—I’m calling up the hospital, treatment centers, speaking with doctors, nurses, therapists, care providers—anyone who could help me organize what I needed. And none of it was cheap. Just two months of treatment was going to empty our savings account, and that was without factoring in the extra expenses like equipment and supplies, nor did it include the nursing care he’d need or the travel costs of bringing these people to Seabrook.”

“How could you afford all that?”

“We couldn’t. I needed a loan. And the only way to get one big enough was to borrow against the ranch.”

“Oh, I see . . .”