Chapter 5 – The Funeral

Henry’s funeral, held on the ranch itself under a wide Texas sky, drew neighbors and ranching families from three counties, many of whom had known him for decades and had their own quiet suspicions about the tension building between his two children in the weeks since his diagnosis had turned terminal.

Colin and Audrey stood together at the graveside, a careful, strained truce holding for the duration of the service, both of them aware of how closely the assembled community was watching for any sign of the conflict that had, by then, become something of an open secret among the ranch’s longtime neighbors.

“Your father talked about you both constantly, right up until the end,” one longtime family friend told them afterward, during the reception held in the ranch’s main barn. “Never once doubted either of you loved this place. Just worried, I think, about whether you’d remember to love each other too, once he wasn’t around to remind you.”

The comment landed heavily on both siblings, neither entirely willing yet to acknowledge how directly it echoed the argument Henry had overheard from his hospital bed weeks earlier.

After the last guests departed, Colin and Audrey found themselves alone in the barn for the first time since the funeral began, the practical questions of the ranch’s future — and the will neither of them had seen yet — hanging unspoken but unavoidable between them.

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough what he actually decided,” Audrey said quietly, and Colin, exhausted from weeks of grief and unresolved tension, could only nod in reply.