“What does that mean, exactly?” Jane asked hesitantly. “He gave my daughters cows?”
The lawyer nodded. “Yes.”
“How many cows are in the herd, exactly?” she asked.
The lawyer smiled indulgently. “Currently, it consists of four hundred and eighty cows.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?” she asked feebly.
Micha put a sodden cracker into Jane’s hand, and she instinctively closed her fingers around it.
“That’s where you have some decisions to make,” Mr. Davis replied. “You have a few options. Once the paperwork is finalized, of course.”
“Of course...” she breathed. “But what options?”
“You could sell the herd back to Colt here, for one,” Mr. Davis replied. “Or you could move the herd to another ranch, if you own one.”
“I don’t,” she murmured.
“Or you could work out some other deal with Colt.”
Jane looked over at Colt, but his expression was granite. He was staring at a spot on the carpet between his boots. Right now, she didn’t even know where she was going to stay. She was homeless with two little girls and nothing but the hope of an inheritance to sustain her. She could feel the tears rising up inside her.
“First things first, though,” Mr. Davis said cheerily. “It’s going to take a week before all of this becomes finalized. Then you can both talk to your banks and decide upon a course of action.”
“The inheritance is for my girls, though,” Jane said. “You said I’m allowed to sell the cattle?”
“Beau has his will set up in such a way that you, as their mother, can manage their inheritance—the cattle or the money gotten from the sale of them—until they are eighteen. At which point, whatever is left will be divided between them. He wanted to make sure that you could provide for them in their formative years.”
“Okay...” That was particularly kind of her late father-in-law. Jane didn’t want to deprive her girls of their rightful inheritance from their grandfather, but she did need to care for the girls in the meantime. At least there was some ability for her to do that.
“Why did he do this?” Colt broke in.
“That’s a good question,” Jane agreed. “We’re going to have cattle and nowhere to put them, and Colt is going to have a ranch and no cattle!”
“I think that’s the point, isn’t it?” Mr. Davis asked. “An earlier version of the will had the cattle going to Josh, not the girls. Beau was hoping that when he passed on, Josh might...come home.”
“And we’d work together,” Colt concluded.
“Yes,” Mr. Davis said with a nod. “That was his hope.”
Colt grunted, and Jane glanced over at him again. If this had been a plan to reunite the cousins, it was too late for that.
“So why leave the cattle to my daughters after my husband died?” Jane asked.
“The ranch was remortgaged,” Mr. Davis said. “There was a lot of debt, and he didn’t want to cut his grandchildren out of his will. He didn’t have any cash to leave to them, and quite honestly, he was hoping that after a few years, he’d have built up a little more wealth, gotten past the rough patch. Then he could have reworked his will again. He didn’t get the chance, unfortunately. This was his worst-case scenario, I’m afraid, but he still hoped that his granddaughters would have a connection with the family again.”
“He wanted my girls to know their family,” she breathed.
“That’s what he told me.” Mr. Davis smiled gently. “But that’s no pressure on you, okay? We all have a certain number of years in our lifetimes in order to make up for our mistakes. Beau ran out of time, as sad as that is. But that doesn’t mean that you owe him anything.”
No, she didn’t owe Beau anything—he’d done nothing more than send her a couple of emails after the girls were born, neither of which had been terribly warm. She could see where her husband’s emotional distance had come from. She’d loved Josh dearly, but being his wife hadn’t been easy. If nothing else, by her brief communication with Beau, she’d understood why her husband had been so unwilling to reconnect with his father. But still, her daughters had family out here—and that would mean something to them one day. Their cantankerous grandfather was dead, but there were other family members that the girls might want to know. Perhaps even their “uncle” Colt. He was a relative, at least, and being considerably older than them, she wasn’t sure what else to call him.
Suzie clutched at Jane’s dress and she absently reached down to pick the toddler up. She’d come to the town of Creekside on faith. Josh’s death had been difficult to deal with. Those vows had tied them together on a deep level, and while being married to Josh had been hard, she couldn’t just walk away from him when it got tough, either. He’d never been an easily affectionate man, but she’d known how much he loved her. The stuff he saw in the army had left wounds that never healed, and she had only wanted to support him, let him know that she’d love him no matter what. Jane hadn’t realized how much of herself she’d lost as she struggled to maintain her marriage until she was forced to look at life without her husband in it. Coming out to Creekside was both an act of faith and a desperate leap. She’d take anything God provided. She’d come all the way from Minneapolis with her toddlers in the back of a ten-year-old sedan to see what God had in store.
And right now, she had to wonder if that had been a mistake. Maybe she should have stayed in Minneapolis and put her energy into finding an apartment instead of driving out here on a wish and a prayer. But what did she have to stay for? The house was gone. She’d been laid off from her job. She could have afforded to rent a tiny apartment while she tried to sort out her future... But that phone call from the polite Montana lawyer had sparked some hope inside her. He wouldn’t say what the girls had been left, but he’d said it was part of the ranch, and he called it significant, and definitely worth coming out. Her husband had told her that his dad had cut him out of the will, so this was completely unexpected, and she’d had nothing at all to lose.
“I realize that you both have a lot of thinking to do, plans to make,” Mr. Davis said, standing up. “For my part, I’ll get these papers submitted and that will put the land into your name, Colt, and the cattle into yours, Jane. Unless you have any other questions, I believe that takes care of our business today.”
They were being dismissed. Jane smoothed a hand over Suzie’s soft curls, and her heart sank inside her. She had enough money for a few nights in a cheap hotel, and then she was out of cash. She had an emergency credit card, but she was afraid to start using it. She knew firsthand just how easy it was to slide back into debt. What she needed was a job that would allow her to care for her daughters at the same time. That was a tall order...especially out here in Creekside, Montana, where she knew absolutely no one.
“Thank you,” Jane said, reaching out to shake hands with the lawyer.
“Thanks, Steve.” Colt did the same.
Jane picked up her bag and rooted out sippy cups of juice for the girls. Sometimes keeping their hands full helped them to cooperate a little better. Jane guided the girls toward the door. Colt got there before her, and he opened it and let her pass through first.
In