Page 9 of The Cowboy's Best Friend

Or anyway, she felt like a grown woman, not the silent, cowed girl who had spent entirely too many dinners sitting in that house, braced for whatever character assassination might come.

She could have predicted the things they’d said and the way they’d said them. She had, pretty much point by point. How she had been raised by the two of them yet had somehow come out different, she would never know.

Then again, Sierra thought as she climbed back into her Jeep—and had to sit there for a moment because her teeth were chattering a little bit from the intense fight or flight situation going on inside of her—was she really all that different?

She didn’t like that question.

Once she felt a little bit calmer, she pulled away from her parents’ house and drove around Marietta the way she often had, all these years, to settle herself. Because whatever was happening—or wasn’t happening—inside her parents’ house, or inside the house she’d shared with Matty on the other side of town, Marietta always soothed her. This town that her parents thought they were better than, that they thought was beneath them because they considered themselves on a completely different social strata that anyone here, was in realityperfect.

Or anyway, Sierra had always thought so. She loved how pretty it was, in every season She loved the restored glory of the Graff and the beloved little shops that felt more like a part of her now than a part of the town. She loved Paradise Valley and had missed it terribly during the years she’d spent in college at Montana State in Bozeman, another huge disappointment to her parents. They’d expected that their daughter would have had East Coast aspirations.

But she hadn’t. Her parents might have thought themselves too high and mighty for Big Sky country, but Sierra was Montana born and bred. These mountains were in her blood. She wouldn’t know what to do with skyscrapers and all those oceans, so few wide open spaces, and no access to the prairies or the splendor of Yellowstone.

Despite her parents’ best efforts and a great many of their threats, she’d insisted on staying in Montana. People called it the Last, Best Place for a reason.

After she did a few laps through Marietta, she turned the Jeep toward Copper Mountain, the picturesque peak that rose up there above her pretty hometown and had once looked like the promise of a better life to folks escaping from worse situations back in places like Boston. The ten miles of Dry Creek Road—called Desolation Drive by all the locals—wound itself around and around on its way up and over and deeper into the Gallatins.

This time of year, there was still snow at the top and it got colder the higher she went. The road was dark and had no lights to speak of, but Sierra knew it by heart and wasn’t a teenager any longer—though even back then she’d never drove up here recklessly. It was a little too scary for that.

Besides, there were stars everywhere, giving off more than enough shine for her to make her way through one switchback into the next, until she skirted around the base of the actual peak and then rolled over the hill that led down into the Cowboy Point community.

And as much she loved Marietta, and alwayswouldlove Marietta, it was Cowboy Point that made her release a deep breath she hadn’t known she was holding. She felt her shoulders creep down from her ears. In Marietta she drove around and wondered how she could fit in to all the postcard prettiness.

Up here, she didn’t worry about things like that. Up here, she was just… herself.

Feeling that rush at her, she knew something else she hadn’t wanted to admit.

She’d almost lost her nerve tonight, and she hadn’t even gotten around to quitting her paralegal job at her father’s office. She’d almost taken it all back—and she knew she still could. That was the trouble with all of this. All she had to do to maintain the status quo was to simply… ride it out.

Nothing would change. Not Matty, not their marriage, not her parents, not as single one of the details of this mostly pleasant life that she’d ended up in and could remain in if she liked.

But the trouble was, Sierra had turned thirty-two three weeks ago.

It wasn’t thirty, that big marker at the end of her twenties. It wasn’t thirty-one, which had felt strange but still kind of a part of turning thirty.

Thirty-two was completely uninteresting. It was just…in her thirties. Thirty-two was simply life.

Her birthday had been fine. Nothing bad had happened. Matty had given her a card and some flowers, because he was always good at a showy gesture. They had gone out to dinner, to his favorite restaurant up in Livingston. Her friends had checked in. Boone had delivered her a cupcake, by hand, at work. He even smiled at her father’s secretary, making the usually unflappable Mrs. Lloyd blush like a schoolgirl.

And then she had woken up the next morning, looked in the mirror, and thoughtif this is it, I might as well drive off a cliff tomorrow.

Everything had cracked wide open from there.

Because once she’d started to see her life for what it was—what itreally was, not what shewishedit was—she couldn’t stop. She turned over every stone. She dug into every dark place she could find. And it turned out that hers was not the sort of life that stood up to any scrutiny.

Sierra didn’t think that she could live with it. Maybe she’d decided that she couldn’t. Or, more revolutionary, shewouldn’t.

Now, coasting down the hill into Cowboy Point with its majestic pines on either side and the sprinkling of lights in the hills around this much smaller valley—plus the stately old lodge that stood so proud on the far side—she knew she’d made the right decision.

No matter what her parents thought.

Everyone in her life would think she was crazy, but she didn’t care. Or she didn’t care when she was up here, on the back side of Copper Mountain and away from all of that judgment and commentary.

Up here she could be whatever she needed to be. She took another deep breath and let it settle.

She drove through the tiny little town, smiling to see that Mountain Mama Pizza was still open with all its bright lights, happy music, and a bar that served drinks late into the evening. In a few weeks they would open up their outside patio as well, always strung with fairy lights, so that folks could expand out into the summertime. On the other side of the road, the historic market was closed, but had lights outside. The coffee cart that had become a permanent part of town was shut up for the night too, tucked into the parking area on the side of the General Store. On the other side, there was the family diner that would open up the crack of dawn. Across the creek that ran through the valley was the Copper Mine, the more serious local bar that was always kicking.

Home, Sierra thought, not sure if that was delight or anxiety bubbling in her.This ishomenow.

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