ANNOUNCEMENTS BELOW.

With this segment of Chapter Seventeen of Repairing the Legacy, we continue the serialization of Repairing the Legacy. This is a rough draft work in progress and may not reflect the final form. Time period: set after the ending of The Martiniere Legacy main trilogy. I’m breaking longer chapters into sections for readability. This is the second part of Chapter Seventeen. There will be five parts to this chapter.

New to the series? Chapter order:

Chapter One, Section One

Return of the Prodigal Son (2 parts)

Conversations and a Dinner (2 parts)

Dancing into Change (2 parts)

Sisterly Compromises (3 parts)

Conspiracies at the Rodeo (3 parts)

Passing the Baton (4 parts)

Research Complications (3 parts)

Chasing After Shadows (3 parts)

Fifth Anniversary Present (3 parts)

Mariah (5 parts)

Shadows, Redux (3 parts)

Accidents Happen (4 parts)

Maternal Memories (4 parts)

A Voice…Weeping for their Children (6 parts)

Winding Down the Years (4 parts)

The Gathering of Shadows (6 parts)

September, 2073

RUBY

Ruby stood in the Double R’s kitchen after eating her granola and yogurt breakfast, arms crossed, looking out the window, her cup of faux coffee steaming in front of her on the counter, Gabe’s old Stetson next to it. Yesterday’s hard rains had washed the last of the wildfire smoke out of the air, leaving the next day to be crisp, the sky that heartbreaking deep blue that marked the transition into fall from summer in the Thunder Valley.

Haying was done. Weaning was done. Most of these chores had fallen to her anyway as Gabe grew weaker—but there was no Gabe waiting for her at the house anymore.

One month ago—

She sighed and picked up the cup. Ever since she had been going through Gabe’s files, Gabe’s records, the mystery of that last day he had spent out on the ranch nagged at her. He had made notes and videos. But the handwritten notes didn’t make sense, and the videos were encrypted so hard that Serg and Donald struggled to break it.

A code, Serg, Donald, and Justine had concluded. Not one that they were familiar with.

And what little Ruby had been able to piece together didn’t make sense. What she could read was just bizarre enough that she didn’t want to show those notes to either Justine or Serg, for fear that they might think Gabe had been slipping into delusions at the end of his life.

Multiverses? Other lives? A world where he died on April 1st, 2036, and their daughter Gabrielle Marguerite spoke to him in dreams?

I want to retrace Gabe’s last day out, she had told Mike several days ago. By myself. A way to remember him. It’s been a month. Ruby hadn’t shared her concerns about the notes and videos with Mike. It seemed as if every time she wanted to talk to Mike or Brandon about it—the two people she could trust to share this information with—she didn’t remember the subject until later. That damned worm?

Possible. But why?

Nonetheless, this was a perfect day to ride out and examine her memories of Gabe. Maybe that would banish the sobbing emptiness that struck her at odd moments.

She sighed again and set the cup down. Needed to put together supplies for this ride, and now that there wasn’t Gabe around to do it for her—

Make herself a sandwich; there was enough leftover pork loin from last night’s dinner that Mike could fix himself a lunch. The faint clump-clump echoing down the hallway told Ruby that Mike was on his way to the kitchen. He hobbled in, passing through to let Striker out.

“So today’s the day you’re riding the ranch?” Mike retrieved a mug and poured himself coffee, then mixed granola and yogurt for breakfast. Gabe had been the one to cook breakfast. Neither of them felt like cooking that meal—memories.

“Yeah. Upper part only. Should be a good day for it.” Ruby wrapped the sandwich in bioplast. What else? She retrieved an apple from the crisper and filled a water bottle, then put it all in a cloth bag. As an afterthought, she included a notepad and a couple of pencils. Just in case she wanted to record something.

“Horse or crawler?” Mike sprinkled chopped dried fruit over his bowl.

“Horse. Legacy. I’ll be going up to Ladyslipper, hang out there for a while, then over to Lone Pine, and back down.”

Mike grabbed Striker’s dog food from its place in the fridge. “Be careful.”

“I will. What are you doing today?”

“High school finals, and starting up my online college class.”

Ruby nodded. “Hold down the place while I’m out and about.”

They winced simultaneously—memories. What she had always said to Gabe and Mike before going out to work on the ranch.

Mike exhaled. “All right then. Stay safe, Ruby. Push the emergency button if anything goes wrong. I’ll be working in the living room, so it won’t take me that long to get to the crawler.”

“All right.” An awkward moment where she hesitated, because this was when Gabe would have kissed her and told Ruby not to get herself bucked off—a bit more fraught after she and Boomer had been attacked by the cougar and she ended up in the creek. And then she was out the door, headed for the corral where Legacy waited, pausing only to grab Gabe’s old black Stetson and clap it on her head.

At least his hat could make the rounds with her. They had always worn the same hat size.

The ebook version of The Enduring Legacy (book version of Repairing the Legacy) is available on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, and Kobo for $2.99 through the end of December. Click on the name of your preferred ebook store to go to it.

Three more episodes to go and that’s the end of this book. The next one up will be The Cost of Power, set in the Martiniere Multiverse, a universe where Gabe tells Ruby who he is from the start. But this is also a world where the dynamics between Gabe and Philip end up being somewhat different—

The Cost of Power will begin serialization in January, after a week off for the winter holidays.

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