Jac and Rose slept for nearly ten hours, ate some berries and yogurts after waking and getting ready for the day, then toured the yurt that the hotel featured, listening to the hotel’s manager, Gerel, talk about the history of nomadic life in Mongolia. After that, just the two of them took a hike through the parkland that was the backyard of the hotel.
Jac loved the trip so far, investigating cities and food. But being able to hike through a wide-open forest with mountains close enough to touch, felt comforting, felt like coming home in a way. Though Jac had been born and raised in a flat part of Denmark, he wondered if Montana had become his home because he thought of mountains as part of himself now.
Rose was quiet after the hotel’s tour, but so was he. After yesterday, they probably were processing what had happened. As they walked along a dirt trail that the green, green grass was trying to usurp, Jac happily recalled that Rose had said she loved him, and he’d confessed it before her.
It was still a little hard to believe, even with repeatedly saying it to each other while making love a few thousand times yesterday.
They had so much still to discover about each other, he thought as he walked along the path directly behind her. She had the cutest bum, he smiled while checking her out. She wore another pair of leggings, these ones black like yesterday’s but she wore cute little hiking boots, her white socks bunched up on top.
It was nearing off-season, so there were hardly any people at the hotel, let alone in the park. She had to wear a puffy, teal vest to keep warm, and a black long-sleeve T, and a little pink hat. He liked her outfit, and her, so much that sometimes his heart would slam against his ribs painfully and make breathing difficult. She’d given herself two braids this morning while he’d watched. She had complained about her wild hair. Her dark tresses were wavy and had gotten rather fluffy while in Tel Aviv and Seoul. But there wasn’t as much humidity here, so her hair was now staticky—his was too, but since it was short it wasn’t all that noticeable. After making love last night, she’d sat up; only, it had looked like her hair was pulling her up, nearly standing on end at the top of her head. He’d calmed it with his palms and had sparked her and himself in the process. They’d laughed.
He remembered all of it—her staticky hair, the spark, her saying this morning how she needed her hair to calm down so she was braiding it as punishment. She’d said this to her hair, not him.
He laughed recalling her shaking a finger at her braids. Rose didn’t stop walking but looked over her shoulder.
“What? You see something?”
He shook his head. “Just remembering you, this morning. You’re a funny lady, Roselyn.”
She smiled but turned and looked ahead. “My hair is funny. Is that what you’re talking about?”
He caught her hand. She stopped and looked at him while he said, “You’re funny, Rose.” His heart beat so hard it hurt. “I like knowing that you talk to your hair and tell it how to behave.”
“Well…” she said. She tried to hide her smile.
“I love you.” He then touched one of her soft braids and held it, looking down at the dark strands. Her hair was thick, as well as wavy, making the braid luxuriant, heavy. The braid he touched looked so dark some might think it black. But looking closely, she had highlights of burnt umber and an almost pink brown. He loved her hair, wondering what it might look like as she got older, a few streaks of silver sparkling through. He wanted to see that.
He could barely manage eye contact after he said as much in the light of day. Even though it was overcast, the sun made some appearances from time to time and shone at that second, making everything bright and honest, peeling back the layers of him to his exposed and vulnerable heart.
She squeezed his hand. “I love you too.”
And he wasn’t vulnerable any longer. He glanced into her dark glowing eyes. “Doesn’t this feel like home?”
She glanced around the park. Off to the left was one of the yurt or ger resorts, where you could rent a luxury yurt, complete with en suite bathroom, and hike the park to your heart’s content. They’d talked about horse tours or a camel tour but had decided to hike the park instead, check it out on their own two legs for the first time.
She nodded. “Cities are wonderful, but there’s nothing like being where there are trees and hills.”
He sighed, feeling content. “What do you want to do with your life?” he found himself asking, knowing this wasn’t the right time, but since she’d confessed that she hadn’t exactly planned for herself to have a future, he worried. He also, selfishly, worried about his place in her life because he loved her and wasn’t sure he could stand to be without her. Not now. Not ever.
She sucked in a breath. “Before this trip, what were you planning to do with your life?”
He hesitated, but, forbasket, he just needed to tell her. “I didn’t know if, when liquidating your assets, whether you meant the farm or not. So I was thinking of making a bid if you were going to sell it.”
“You were thinking of making the farm yours?”
“It sounds terrible now that I—”
“It doesn’t sound terrible. You had no clue what I was going to do. I think because of the way I acted while at the farm, you assumed I didn’t have any sentimentality towards it.”
She was being thoughtful, putting herself in his shoes. It made his heart hurt all the more. “Thank you for being so understanding.”
She shrugged that off, not even realizing what a huge thing she had done. At least, it was huge for him—her empathizing.
She narrowed her eyes. “It’s a multimillion-dollar farm. So you were…?” She was trying to politely ask how on earth he could buy it.
He shrugged himself. “Yeah, I’d have to get a loan, but I have a couple million saved. That’s a good down—”
She let go of his hand and held her palm up to him. “Wait. You’re a millionaire?”
He shrugged. “I was saving it for the possibility of buying the farm. It’s not like I was actually spending it. And, wait, why don’t you know this? Lily’s Breads, your mother’s business—she was a millionaire. You just inherited her millions.”
Rose’s eyes got huge then reddened.
“Oh god, you didn’t know,” he said.
She kept blinking, trying to hold onto her tears.
“But her will,” he said. “It’s in her will. She even had me proofread it a few times after she got it back from the lawyers.”
Rose stopped breathing, her eyes red and glassy now. “I didn’t have the lawyers read me her will yet.” She shook her head, the color draining from her face. Her knees buckled and he caught her, holding her close as she said, “I just couldn’t do it.”
He picked her up and glanced around, finding a fallen tree trunk to set her on. Making sure there were no branches that could hurt her, he finally put her down, kneeling in front of her, holding her hands.
“She never told you how well Lily’s Breads was doing?”
Rose shook her head and kept swallowing, looking out into the forest. “She—she—the last time we talked, she asked me for money for this trip.”
Jac cocked his head to the side. “She did?”
“I just assumed,” she finally looked back at him, “that the business was doing okay, but not global-trip good, what with asking for money, you know? I didn’t look into her finances because it wasn’t the first time she’d asked, so…” She waved a hand around her head.
Jac nodded. “You mean to say that she’s been asking you for money for—”
“Years!” Rose’s voice was loud and must have been louder than she’d wanted because she startled herself. In the process, bright pink dusted her cheeks, making her look vividly alive and aggrieved. “Why…I mean, why in the name of…shit, I can’t think of a cliche…why would she do that? I used to dig into her finances and pay things off for her, but she started asking for money, so I stopped looking. I paid off the liens on the farm, I paid for the seeds for years, I paid for the winter wheat when you guys made the switch, I paid for the mill. But she was making money? I mean, I know farming is tough. I know the price of wheat barely covers yearly expenses, so I took care of the rest. Or I thought I did. Hell, I paid for the bakers.”
“But…but…that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “The business got huge in Denmark. Lily’s Breads is everywhere. Sweden, being so close, and Germany are now wanting her breads. We can’t keep up with demand. There was no need…” He was repeating himself so he stopped.
Rose looked at him. “The business is doing that well?”
He nodded. “We truly can’t keep up with demand. Hell, we have requests from Norway and Finland. All of Scandinavia is in love with your mother’s breads. Since America still has an anti-carb mentality, we weren’t sure about trying much there, though we obviously sell to the nearby reservations.”
She exhaled, looking deflated. Her eyes glistened. “Why would she keep asking for money when she didn’t need it?” Her eyes got even redder, the tip of her nose too. A tear spilled over. “I mean, I think I know why, but why do you think she did that?”
Jac thought and thought. The realization hit him as he wiped away her tears. “To have a reason to keep calling you.”
Rose covered her mouth as more tears spilled down and she nodded. She removed her hand to say, “What do you think she did with the money I sent her?” She put her hand back over her mouth.
He knew it was a way for Rose to cope, her hand over her mouth like that, but he wanted to remove it. To make her feel that she had her voice, her say, through this heartbreaking realization. And god, his heart was crashing and burning too. What must this be like for her? He so wished he could protectively shield her with his body, with his own heart.
He kept wiping away her tears. “I don’t know. But if we investigate, I’d bet she’d make your wish come true.”
Rose made a questioning sound.
“You wanted your mother to tell you what to do with the billions you made. I think she did something with the money you sent, gave it back to the tribe.”
“You think so?” Rose removed her hand to ask that then it went back over her mouth.
He nodded.
She finally placed her hand back in his. “I hired a bunch of economists and financial experts, and my mom had the answer all along, and maybe if I’d just read her will, I would have known that a long time ago.”
Jac huffed a sad chuckle. “Lily was giving away thousands, while you’re giving away millions. Big difference. You’ll still need those experts, who are so excited about having a job that gives back to their own nations. You didn’t waste any money or anyone’s time.”
Rose swallowed. “Still, my mom had to make up excuses to call me, Jac. She didn’t think I’d talk to her without pretext. That kills me.” Another tear dropped.
He caught it and wiped it away. “She was a complicated woman. Maybe she was asking for the money because she wanted you to feel involved with the farm or to come with her on this trip.”
Rose snorted and shook her head. “No. I tried to invite myself and she made it obvious she didn’t want me. She just wanted you to go on it, saying something about how great you were because you didn’t have a shared history.”
Jac winced. “Ouch.”
Rose nodded. “Yeah. She was fucking breaking my heart.” She gasped and covered her mouth again, shaking her head, then said between her fingers. “I didn’t mean that.”
Jac took her hand in his after he wiped a few more tears away. “That was a painful thing Lily said to you. Just because she died doesn’t change that. She’s not some sudden saint. She made mistakes.”
Rose cried more. “She was a saint who put up with loud, always-angry me.”
Jac shook his head. “You’re not all that loud. And as for your anger, it’s righteous. You have every right to it. And you’re not really all that angry.”
“I can be and you know it.”
“But the majority of the time, you’re quiet and thoughtful. Calm.”
“I am angry. After all these years of therapy, I’m still fucking angry.”
“Rose, you have a right to that anger.”
“But—but—”
“I don’t have your experiences, so I’m only speaking from my own,” he said. “But therapy helped my parents finally pay attention to my sister and me, but for years they neglected us because of their grief after my brother died.” Rose already knew about his past, but she still emitted such empathy when he shared, with a compassionate gaze and squeezing his hands. “I have a right to feeling resentment and anger about those years. I also understand why my parents did what they did, grieving that way. I can be both—angry and understanding. The understanding tempers my anger, but, yeah, it’s still there. I don’t act on it because my parents apologized and did better. So it’s—I don’t know—dormant anger, not-actionable anger. But it’s still there. It doesn’t miraculously go away when you have a right to it. It’s softened. And like a scar, it’s there to remind me. But it doesn’t hurt any longer.
“I knew Lily differently than you knew her,” he continued. “You two had a complicated relationship, Rose. From the way she passive aggressively called you asking for money she didn’t need to actually taking your money, that’s…hella complicated.”
“She did that because I’m so—”
“But you’re not.”
“—hard. I’m so hard to deal with.” Another tear fell from her eye.
He caught it and wiped it away. “You’re not. You’re really not.”
She shook her head. “I keep telling myself that I am. It’s a story of mine, something I invented to try to understand…life. It’s slowly getting through that I might be…okay to deal with.”
“You’re better than okay.”
“Thank you for saying as much.” Her back rounded, her head sunk. “I’m so scared I’m just like my dad.”
He picked her up again and set her on his lap, holding her close, settling them so he had his back against the tree trunk. “You’re not. You’re just Rose, that’s all. You’re just you. And you’re nothing like him.”
“My mom was always humming and chipper and—”
“You always hum,” he said.
She looked at him like he’d grown antlers, which made him laugh.
“You do.” He nodded. “You make your lists and hum, sometimes even singing, ‘I’m making a list to get stuff done. I’m making a list to get stuff done.’”
She laughed and looked away. “I do not.”
“It’s adorable.”
She might have been looking away, but he saw her blushing from the compliment.
After a long time of just sitting, she finally said, “Maybe in some ways, I took after my mom?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Baby, you have the best of her in you.”
She finally turned and looked at him again. “I haven’t planned this far ahead, but all I know is I want you in my future.”
“I want you, Rose.” His eyes stung and he knew he was going to cry, but he tried to get a handle on his tears. “I want you in my future too.”
“So you want to continue farming, and...” She inhaled. “Do you think it would be selfish if I saved enough money for us to go on trips like this, maybe once or twice a year?”
“Not selfish,” he answered. “And I can pay for the next one, now that I know I’m not buying a farm. I want you to meet my parents and sister and her wife.”
“I want that too. We could be partners on the farm, and Lily’s business. You could buy in.”
He smiled. “Then I couldn’t pay for a trip this grand, but we could see my parents for sure.”
She softly chuckled and gazed back at the trees.
The way she looked to the forest made him wonder again about her future, like she was searching for answers in the way the evergreens gently swayed in the breeze. “Do you really want to teach real estate developing, Rose?”
“I’m not too sure, to be honest.” She glanced at him again. “I…worried I wouldn’t have the right temperament.”
She kept breaking his heart because she was so hard on herself. She was just brutal. He would help her work on that. “But if you thought you had the right temperament, you might want to?”
Her brows rose. “I like the idea of it, yes.”
“You have the right temperament, Rose.”
She smiled. It was sad and weak, but she still tried to smile for him. “Maybe.”
He held her close, burying his face against her pink knitted hat. “Definitely.”
She wrapped her arms around him. “If you say so.”
They were making plans for a future. Together. Partners. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been this happy and let a tear roll down onto her hat.
“I do,” he said.
She softly giggled. “I do too then.”