How are you feeling?” Joely smiled at her mother, who sat in the passenger seat of her pickup truck clearly happy to be on Crockett land again. They were still nearly fifty driving miles from Rosecroft, but her mother’s face had finally lost the drawn, devastated shadows of grief that had lined it for the past three weeks. They’d flown the 960 miles to Los Angeles from Jackson twenty days ago, to take care of packing and sorting Joely’s belongings, fighting twice with an angry Tim, quitting her part-time job and her volunteer positions, and packing up her beloved Penny along with the mountains of tack and equipment that went with owning a champion barrel racing horse. Now they were on the final few miles of a marathon drive back to the ranch—the empty ranch since her father was no longer there. Still, both she and her mom couldn’t wait to be home. Joely was determined to make this move the most positive thing she’d ever done. Taking over management of Paradise Ranch would be good for her.
