A Father's Stake by Mary Anne Wilson

gotten to her. She just wanted to make very sure that this would work for everyone. “I do like it here,” she said, a great understatement.
    Parrish nodded. “Good, good. I’ll check about the horse for you. No pony, right?”
    She thought about it. “No, just a horse. A calm one.”
    He tugged at his cap, and with a, “See ya,” went to his truck and rumbled down the driveway.
    Grace spent the rest of the day going through the storage room. She found two more bed frames, a small chest for Lilly and a plain white dresser for her mother. Putting furniture in each of the bedrooms gave a semblance of order to the house. After another peanut butter sandwich for dinner, she sat in the great room facing an empty hearth.
    She probably should have told Jack that she wouldn’t sell. But she’d had too many disappointments in her life to count her chickens before they hatched. Her plans to become a great artist, her marriage. Maybe when she got everyone on the ranch, things wouldn’t work out the way she thought. What then?
    One thing she’d learned from her mother through the years was that you always had to have a backup plan. Things very seldom turned out the way you thought they would, and you had to be prepared. Jack’s offer to buy the land would be her backup plan. The thought made her feel a whole lot better.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    G RACE STARED INTO the empty hearth and wondered what Jack’s wife thought of him wanting to buy the place. Did she plan on them moving here? Or was his desire for the land all about getting it back in the family? She shrugged those thoughts off and was heading to bed when her cell phone rang.
    “Hi, Mom,” she said, glad to hear her voice.
    “Just wanted to know how things have gone?”
    “I went to the school and it’s remarkable. I think Lilly would love it there.”
    “That’s so good to hear.” She paused, then asked, “What do you think? What do you really think about us all moving there to live?”
    She bit her lip hard, wanting to say, “Let’s just do it.” Instead, she said, “I like it, really like it, but it’s very different here. It’s well water and huge skies and no neighbors within spitting distance.”
    Her mother laughed softly. “Actually, that sounds wonderful. Especially the neighbor part. And the school...I love that, too.”
    “I asked the caretaker to look for a horse for Lilly, a nice gentle horse.”
    “Oh, my, that’s...I don’t know. Isn’t she awfully young to be on a horse?”
    “No, not really, but I’d get her lessons. I’m not sure we can even afford a horse in the first place, though.”
    “I have to ask you something, and it’s crazy, but it’s bothering me.”
    “About Lilly?” she asked immediately.
    “No, no. Just something that happened a few minutes ago. The landlord came by and wanted to see if we were moving.”
    “How could he know about that?”
    “My thoughts exactly. Not even Lilly knows we’re considering it. He said that he wanted to know if the apartment was going to be available by the end of this month.”
    “I don’t understand.” She sank down on the edge of the bed. “Why would he ask that?”
    “He said there’d been an inquiry about this apartment to find out if it would be available anytime soon.”
    That almost made Grace laugh. “Why would anyone be interested in it? It was empty for four months before we moved in.”
    “That’s what didn’t add up, but I guess it’s just some strange coincidence.”
    “What did you tell him?”
    “I said I’d be in contact with him if we ever decided to move.”
    “That’s fine.” Grace fell back on the soft bed she’d made up earlier with the linens and pillows she’d found in a wardrobe. The beams crisscrossed overhead, shadows gathered in the corners of the room. “I wish I knew that we could do this, but there’s so much to running a ranch. Just the water supply gets complicated, and then there’s windmills and drainage and