Christ, he hated irony.

He rode alongside Tucker, amazed that the old man could ramble on about nothing at all, as if he didn’t have a clue that the world was coming unglued around him. He was amazed that there weren’t visible signs-the sky ripping open like a blue silk sheet, the earth cracking and separating as the various factions warring over it tore it apart. It all looked perfectly ordinary. The grass was green. The air smelled sweet with the promise of rain. The ranch buildings in the distance looked as they had always looked, aging but neat, one or two in need of paint. In the pasture they rode through, calves bucked and chased each other. Most of the cows were lying down-another sign of the coming rain. Normal sights.

He thought of what Chaske had said to him about owning the land, and knew that if the Raffertys ceased to exist tomorrow, the land would still be here. Ownership wasn’t the important thing. Stewardship was. Tradition was. He had pared down his life to the point that tradition was just about all he had, and it could be lost in a heartbeat, in the time it took a banker to sign a note.

His heart felt like a lead ball in his chest.

“… J.D.?” Tucker leaned ahead in his saddle, stretching his back, frowning at J.D. The chaw of tobacco looked like he had a golf ball in his cheek. “You use them things on the side of your head for anything but hanging your sunglasses on?”

J.D. shook himself out of his ponderings and scowled to cover his embarrassment. “What?”

“I asked, had you figured out the water yet. If we’re moving the herd next week, who’s gonna change the water?”

The way of ranching. In the spring and summer everything needed doing at once. During the long, cold winter there was hardly anything to do at all. It was time to start irrigating the hay ground. The system on the Stars and Bars was an old one of ditches and dams that cost nothing but required almost constant manpower as someone had to periodically move the dams to make certain all the land would be irrigated. With Will gone, they had postponed driving the herd up to the high pastures, and now the move would conflict with the irrigation. With the two jobs happening simultaneously, they were essentially short two hands on a ranch that ran with a skeleton crew as it was.

“I’ll see if I can get Lyle’s boys to help move the cattle. You’ll have to see to the water. I can’t trust some kid to that job.” Which was true enough. The job, while boring as hell, required experience. It was also far less physi-cally taxing than driving a herd of cattle up the side of a mountain.

Tucker digested this with a nod. He spat and kept his gaze forward, trying too hard to be nonchalant. “’Course, if Will comes back-”

“I don’t see that happening, Tuck.”

“Well, I dunno. If that ain’t my old truck parked up in the yard, then I’ll be giving some poor fool my condolences for having one just like it.”

J.D.’s gaze sharpened. The truck was unmistakable, a hulking, inelegant block of rusted metal. Someone sat on the tailgate, throwing a Frisbee for Zip. The dog blasted off the ground, did a graceful half-turn in midair, and came down with the brilliant yellow disk in his mouth.

Normal sights. As if nothing were wrong. As if his brother weren’t an alcoholic who went around picking fights with billionaire land barons. As if the rift between the two of them weren’t as wide as the Royal Gorge.

“Now, go easy on the boy, J.D.,” Tucker began.

J.D. nudged his horse into a lope and left the old man behind.

Zip played keep-away with the Frisbee, trotting toward Will, then ducking away when he reached for the toy. There was a certain sadistic gleam in the dog’s blue eye that made Will think he knew perfectly well the pain it caused him to bend over and reach. His ribs ached as though he had been crushed between a pair of runaway trains, and when he bent over, his broken nose throbbed like a beating heart.

Each pain was brilliantly clear and separate from the next, dulled by neither drugs nor drink. The colossal stupidity of what he’d done at Bryce’s had struck full-force sometime after Mary Lee had left him and Doc Larimer had yanked his nose straight and wound twenty yards of tape around his ribs tight enough to keep his lungs from expanding. He had limped out of the emergency room to find Tucker’s truck waiting for him in the parking lot. Sent down by Bryce, no doubt. He wouldn’t have wanted the brute cluttering up his driveway and ruining the presentation of Mercedes and Jaguars. It was a wonder he hadn’t just run it off a cliff.

His temper still simmering, Will climbed behind the wheel with every intention of going straight to the Hell and Gone to throw a little fuel on the fire. But as he drove through town, he caught himself turning down Jackson and parking in front of that empty little sorry-looking house he had once shared with his wife.

Ex-wife. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.

It squatted there on the corner of a yard that was weedy in patches and bare in others, where the dog had done his business. The place looked forlorn and abandoned. Mrs. Atkinson next door came out onto her porch with her hands on her bony hips and stared at him as he made his way up the walk. He gave her a wave. She scowled at him and went back into her house.

You’ve sunk pretty low when the folks in this neighborhood turn their nose up at you, Willie-boy.

He let himself in and wandered aimlessly around the living room and kitchen, then into the bedroom he hadn’t seen in weeks. The bed was made, the cheap blue chenille spread tucked neatly beneath the pillows. Sam was a good housekeeper, even though she’d never had much of a house to keep. Nor had she ever asked for one. He knew she dreamed of a nicer place, a place with shrubs and flowers in the yard and a kitchen big enough that you didn’t have to go into the next room to change your mind. But she had never asked him for that. She had never asked him for fine clothes or expensive jewelry or a fancy car.

She had never asked him for anything but that he love her.

One thing to do and you managed to screw that up, didn’t you, Willie-boy?

He stood in front of her dresser and ran his fingertips over the collection of dime-store necklaces and drugstore cosmetics and recalled the look on her face when he said he’d never wanted a wife.

You sorry son of a bitch, Willie-boy. Stood right there and broke her heart in front of God and all the millionaires. Way to go, slick.

He looked up at the reflection in the old mirror that needed resilvering and saw a pretty poor excuse for a man. Excommunicated by his family. A lost cause to his friends. Just a beat-up, boozed-up cowboy who had thrown away the one good thing in his life.

You wanted your freedom. You got it now, Willie-boy.

But it didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like exile. And he ached from the loss of those things he had never wanted. The ranch. The wife.

He sat on the bed and cried like a baby, his head booming, his face feeling as if someone had stuck it full of thumbtacks, his cracked ribs stabbing like a rack of knives with every ragged breath. The sun set and the moon rose and he sat there, alone, listening to the distant sounds of traffic and screen doors slamming and Rascal whining at the back door. Samantha did not come home. No one came to rescue, redeem, or reconcile. Mary Lee’s parting shot was like a sliver beneath his skin: grow up.

He straightened now, ignoring Zip as he pranced by with the Frisbee in his mouth. J.D.’s big sorrel had dropped down into a jog. His brother’s face was inscrutable beneath the brim of his hat, but he stepped down off the horse as he drew near the truck and Will took that as a good sign. A gesture, a courtesy. Better than a kick in the teeth.

J.D. looked at Will’s battered face and pained stance and choked back the automatic diatribe. Too many bitter words had already been spoken between them. This was no time for accusations. He was as guilty as Will, just for a different set of sins.