No amount of persuading had been able to convince Janet and Jenny to stay for supper on Saturday or to return on Sunday. Harlan decided he must be losing his touch. He thought he’d tried some very inventive arguments, along with a little subtle flirting and a few dares. There had been a brief spark in Janet’s eyes at one point, but she’d still managed to decline the invitation, albeit with a satisfyingly obvious hint of regret in her voice.

Watching them leave, he resigned himself to waiting impatiently for Monday morning when Janet would return to drop off Jenny. Maybe then Jenny would be able to shed some light on her mother’s abrupt shift in mood.

In the meantime, the hours stretched out ahead of him, promising nothing but tedium. Now that he was starting to feel alive again, he was even less tolerant of the prospect than he had once been.

Short of booting Cody out of his position as ranch manager, he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Los Piños was too small a town to need an influential citizen meddling in its affairs. State or national politics had never intrigued him. In fact, the only things that had ever mattered to him were his family and the ranch.

After church on Sunday, he spent most of the remainder of the morning wandering through all the empty rooms at White Pines, trying to remember the days when his sons had made the kind of racket that drove Mary nuts, trying to imagine the big old house echoing with laughter once again.

Jenny’s presence lately had given him a delightful hint of what it might be like, at least when she let down her guard long enough to act like a regular thirteen-year-old. Occasionally she and some of Maritza’s younger relations would whoop it up in the kitchen, usually when she counted on him being out of earshot. The joyous sound, when he happened to catch it, brightened his day.

Now, though, he tried to picture the generations before him, who had built the ranch into a thriving enterprise. He knew almost nothing about those early days beyond the scant information he’d shared with Janet. Mary had always been exasperated with him for caring so little about the past. He’d been more concerned with the future, with making White Pines into a legacy for his sons and their children.