Dana shook her head. “There’s no father listed on the birth certificate. I was eighteen when I went to work on the ranch and I was taking some online college courses toward a degree. He came into my life not long after that. He was a little older than I was, and we lived together but we never got married. He skipped out when Dana was just a toddler. He knocked me around a few times, but when he slapped my baby—well, I was so angry with him that I told him to get lost and never come back.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“And?” Zed asked.

“It was the third time he’d cheated on me that I knew about, so I kicked him out. He was so mad that he said she wasn’t even his child—that he’d had surgery after his last child with his wife was born. She is his, but I was so mad, Uncle Zed, that I told him he was right and I was glad that she wasn’t his. She’ll see that birth certificate someday. What do I tell her?”

Her shoulders heaved with tears and pain. Zed reached across the distance with his long arm and wiped away the moisture. She grabbed his hand and held it to her cheek. Payton was right. Telling a stranger was so much easier than telling someone she loved like a grandfather.

“You tell her as much of the truth as she can bear to hear at that time. That’s exactly what you’ll do, but you don’t have to worry about it tonight, child. Tonight you put all that sadness out of your mind and you go to bed and dream sweet dreams about this new person in your life.”

She kept his hand in hers and held it on the sofa. “I don’t deserve any of this. Not Granny’s legacy, not Payton, not a daughter who means so much to me, not you for sure.”

“That’s only your opinion. Me and Annie see things different than you girls do,” he said as he pulled his hand away and stood up. “Things look different in the daylight, darlin’ girl. Get some sleep.”

Zed sat down in a rusty old metal chair beside the door to his quarters. “Annie, my heart is broken. One of our girls couldn’t tell us about the baby because she didn’t want to disappoint us. The other one lied to us because of the same reason. It’s humbling to feel so loved that someone don’t want to bring you heartache, isn’t it?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Demons aren’t little red creatures with a forked tail, and they don’t carry a pitchfork around in their bony hands. Harper knew that for a fact. Her black cloud demon hovered over her head and followed her around as little bits of it oozed into her heart and soul. It came around again every April 4, the day she’d signed the papers to give her baby away. The day she’d walked out of the unwed mothers’ home and didn’t even look back.

She tried—God knew that she gave it her best—that Wednesday. She pasted on a smile and bantered with the regular customers in the café, but by the close of the day, her feet turned to lead as she made her way across the lawn to her cabin. She paced the floor and poured a triple shot of Jack and set it on the nightstand.

“I will not drink that.” She stared at the amber liquid every time she passed it. “It only makes it worse. It’s all closing in on me, Granny. I’m not as good as my sisters. They can run this place without me, and they deserve to split everything down the middle, not have to share it with me. I should pack up and leave.”

Tears cannot drown a demon. They only make it angry. Still, Harper’s cheeks flooded with tears as she sobbed that evening. Finally, she dragged a suitcase from the closet and threw it on her bed. Fight-or-flight mode had set in, and to fight with her sisters, she had to come clean with them. It was easier to run away and start again.

So you’re going to let this misery inside you control you and make you leave?

“I can’t fight it. It’s stronger than me,” she argued with the voice in her head.

But is it stronger than your sisters and Zed?

Harper picked up the suitcase and hurled it across the room. It hit the door with a bang and slung clothing all over the room. A pair of lacy underwear hung on the ceiling fan, and a bra floated down over the lamp beside her bed.

“You okay in here?” Tawny opened the door without knocking. “God Almighty, Harper. Why would someone trash your room?”

“Go away,” Harper screamed and threw her stuffed Easter bunny at her sister.

Tawny caught it midair. “What’s the matter with you? Are you drunk?”

“No, that won’t fix anything now. It’s time for me to leave. My heart doesn’t want to go, but my mind says that I can’t stay.” Harper dropped to the floor, drew her long legs up, and leaned her head on them.

Tawny grabbed the phone and hit the button to call the house. “Dana, come quick to Harper’s cabin. She’s gone crazy, and I don’t know what to do.”

In seconds Zed, Brook, and Dana crowded into the room with Tawny. With so many people around her, it reminded Harper again of the day she put her name on those papers. There had been a roomful of strangers there when she’d signed the adoption papers giving that sweet couple the right to hold her baby, to comfort her when she was sick, to clap for her when she took her first steps.

“Open your eyes, child.” Zed touched her shoulder.

“Go away,” she sobbed.

Zed sat down on the floor and wrapped his arms around her. “We can’t do that. I’m here for you. Always have been and always will be.”