Chapter 5

1883

He was only 40 now, but he was an old man in reality. Life had ground him down quicker than it had done even to his brothers who worked the ranch – the most dangerous profession around if you looked at things like broken bones and strained muscles and sore backs and butts after spending years in the saddle. But lawyering had its dangers too. Carrying other people's problems, dealing with angry clients and men who wanted revenge on you for helping put them in prison – like the Cass Hyatts of the world who had taken his wife – and spending your life arguing your head off for a living.

It had given him an ulcer he had to keep trying to control. No more alcohol, the doctor had warned him, and more. We won't even get into the damage you did to yourself after your wife was killed, but pushing yourself into your work since then hasn't helped any and you know that's what you've been doing for years. Make some changes in how you eat and the work you do or you'll be resigned to eating nothing but boiled wheat and milk for the rest of your life. Worse yet, you're going to bleed to death from the inside out before you're 45. And -

The doctor kept reading him the riot act even though he had made his point. Jarrod was paying the price for doing what he'd done, and for being who he was.

He wasn't really unhappy about his choice to be a lawyer for a way of life. He didn't even really feel cheated that his profession and the weights it imposed on him were threatening to take away years he might have otherwise had. When he looked back on what he had accomplished – what he had wrecked and what he had repaired – what he had done to get justice for people who needed it – it bolstered his soul. He had been destructive in his time. He had gone bad. But overall, he had worked more good than evil, and even now, while his body was quitting on him, his soul was still fighting the good fight.

He came to Isla del Cielo more frequently than he ever had, to restore some of that strength that seemed to be zooming in and out again through him these days. In the five years since he lost Beth here – the five years since he'd gone rogue and repaired that terrible error – he had fallen into despair and too much alcohol but he re-examined who he was and rebuilt the man he wanted to be. He had worked hard to pursue justice. He had helped his family wherever he could. He hadn't found love again – not enough to remarry – but he had found attachments that had great meaning for him. He'd found them, lost them, then found them again. He'd constructed a better man than he had been when he was younger, a man who continued to fight for justice for the trampled people like those Spanish kids in school, for the regular shop keeper who had been robbed of his hard-earned money, for the kid falsely accused of harming or even killing another. An older man who fought the fight better and smarter.

He liked the man he'd rebuilt. This man was a better man than even Beth had known, but he had concentrated too hard on his work since he lost her. His body was giving in to all that effort. He couldn't keep doing it.

On the day he told his family that he was considering turning away from Jarrod Barkley Esquire and rebuilding another man yet again, Jarrod came up to Isla del Cielo and sat down on that log again for a long time. He left his hand on the spot in front of the log where Beth had been sitting before she moved to pick the flowers and took the bullet meant for him. He remembered every moment of his time with her, because she had been the love of his life. No one would ever reach deeper into that broken heart of his, but that would just have to be the way it was going to be. He had to face the now, now.

The new man he would build now would take life easier. He would have to control life less, and he would have to let other people handle their own problems, or reach for other lawyers to help them.

The sound of the horses interrupted his thoughts. He had never heard horses up here before, not in all these years, not even Cass Hyatt's horse, but now he heard them. Two of them. He looked up. For the first time, someone had followed him.

Nick and Heath. He should have known.

He didn't get up. Nick and Heath dismounted and came down to him. "Well," Jarrod said. "You finally found me."

Nick sat down on the log beside him. "Didn't have to look hard," he said.

Heath sat down in the grass in front of them. "We've known for years you come up here."

Jarrod was surprised – and yet not surprised. "Thanks for not disturbing me before, but why are you doing it now?"

"Mother and Audra and Suzanne and Nancy," Heath said with a crooked smile, as if sharing a secret they all should have known.

Jarrod chuckled.

Nick said, "You can't drop a bomb like 'I'm giving up my law practice' at the breakfast table and then disappear without us following you. I went to get Heath and we figured we'd better make sure you knew what you were doing."

"I know what I'm doing," Jarrod said. "I'm 40 years old now – but it's an old 40 and we all know it. I burned the candle at both ends, so to speak. It's time to stop doing that."

"What are you going to do with yourself?" Heath asked.

"Oh, write a little, maybe something important like a history – maybe just some bad poetry." Jarrod smiled. "Maybe paint a little, play the piano more. Visit with San Francisco society a bit more – more Shakespeare, more opera. Maybe even find myself a wife like you two have." He looked over to his side, to the spot where Beth died. "I don't think Beth would mind."

"I think she'd be happy about it," Nick said.

Jarrod looked up very earnestly. "Nick – Heath – I might not live a long life. I'm 40 now – there might not be a 50. I don't want to just close it down. I want to live, and I want to take it easier on myself. I don't want to resort to a life of boiled wheat and milk. I don't want to live like I'm going to die tomorrow, or wish I would, but to do that I need to make changes. And if there's one thing I've gotten from coming up here all these years, it's restoration."

Jarrod got up and took a few steps to the water's edge. Nick and Heath watched him but did not stand.

Jarrod looked out across the lake he loved. "It's good to do this when you have big decisions to make – come to someplace that settles your soul enough so you can make them. I haven't always made the wisest decisions when I came here, but this time, I have." He turned to face them, smiling a little. "An easier life, but I might chase a stray or dig a post hole every now and then if you'll let me."

Nick and Heath both snorted. "And get those lily white hands dirty?" Nick said.

Jarrod looked at his hands. "Not so lily white, Nick. I've gotten them pretty dirty now and then. I'm hoping to do good things with them for a while still, though. I hope you and everybody else understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it."

Nick and Heath stood up and came to his side, to look out over the lake with him. Nick put an arm around his older brother's shoulders. "We do," Nick said.

"Whatever makes you happy, Big Brother," Heath said.

Jarrod smiled with an appreciative nod and looked back out over the lake. Ducks were swimming about fifty yards away, and watching them. The clouds overhead were caught in the reflection of the water, as was the blue of the sky. Isla del Cielo was what it had always been for Jarrod, a place to reflect his own soul and restore it. A place to make mistakes but repair them. A place to live life.

He was finished with part of his life, but not all of it. Isla del Cielo would always be part of whatever he made of it now, and whatever he made of it in whatever future he had. That thought restored his soul, as it always did. And he smiled.

The End