In Fortune, Colorado, Lou Grant, an aging beauty queen, has been on a five-year losing streak. She lost her husband and daughter during the plague. She lost her son Steve after their funerals when a long-held secret about his father came to light.
Night Falls
A Novel
In Fortune, Colorado, Lou Grant, an aging beauty queen, has been on a five-year losing streak. She lost her husband and daughter during the plague. She lost her son Steve after their funerals when a long-held secret about his father came to light.
She had promised her dying husband she’d protect the ranch for their kids. To help her keep that promise, she forms a cockamamie partnership with a nearby rancher which puts the ranch on the brink of failure. She is certain her luck is about to change when she hires a new manager to run things until she can make amends with Steve.
When Steve finally breaks the ice and visits the ranch at Christmas, she believes her troubles are nearly over. He is her Obi Wan, her last hope to complete her promises. The new ranch manager is skeptical of Steve. Even Lou’s Magic 8 Ball says, “Ask Again Later.”
Lou
Lou closes her eyes as they pull out of the ranch. She knows the sound of the car rolling over the dirt in the driveway. She senses the change as they turn on to the pavement of the highway. She tries to shut it all off, but the landscape is too much a part of her. Every nuance of it plays across her mind’s eye.
She knows in her body every curve and bend as they start up Swan Pass. The geology of this place has shaped her into someone new since the first time she came down that pass; a dewy and fresh-faced queen. Time has eroded her face and put blue-veined rivers over her hands, put snow in her hair, given her limbs that grew strong as she explored the curvature of this piece of earth, and now, a lifetime later, the curvature of her spine succumbs to the pull of it. Even the tallest mountain eventually yields to the forces of time. Those are the visible changes, but it is the underlying faults, the grinding of the joints of the earth that make the surface quake.
She’s riding off into the sunset in the most humiliating way possible. After all the battles and skirmishes and out and out brawls, she’s led off the field in defeat. She wishes the accident at the dam had killed her. An ordinary rancher’s death. But she isn’t allowed to be done. She hasn’t kept her promise to Bill.
She counts the curves in the road. At the last moment, she opens them to catch a final glimpse of the Double Seven caught in the halo of the morning sun.
Ryder
On Lou’s closer inspection, Ryder’s head has a circular patch of scabs near the crown. She studies more of Ryder, the cheekbones, the skin tone, the hair color, the nearly black eyes overflowing with questions. “That must have been quite an accident. It almost looks like someone tried to scalp you.”
Ryder jerks her head up and rubs her hand over the top of her head. “In a way…”
“Are you of Indigenous descent?”
“Does that matter?”
Lou considers it. “No, not at all.”
“Then yes, ma’am. Blackfeet, black Irish and black sheep.”
Lou pushes her chair back, stretches her leg out under the desk. A wave of pain whispers to her. She should end this interview now. What’s the point? Give up and get it over with. No amount of time is going to make Ryder the man she expected. She worries the stiff corner of the ranch journal next to the stack of bills. The leather cover is stained from when Bill coughed up blood on it trying to get his ideas down before he died. What Would Bill Do? Keep Ryder. For now.
“Are you a black sheep? Do you attract trouble?”
“The black sheep is the misfit. Not a troublemaker.”
Lou nods. But it’s like the backup alarm on her Suburban. “Watch out. Watch out. Watch out.”
Steve
Steve lifts his chin and adjusts his tie. “You know, you are like the Grants your mother was warned about. She went to the trouble of trying to pull the two sides of the family together and you are repeating history to tear it all apart again. To tear us apart.” He points a finger from Lou to himself several times.
The Wheel of Fortune stops spinning. “Maybe the ranch is bigger than any of this family. Maybe we are merely stewards. And maybe we can’t save the world, but can we save our thousands of acres. Is that a piece of the solution? Why can’t you give that possibility a chance?” Lou can’t bear to look at her own son.
“Because it will have zero impact. And nothing is gained.” Steve starts to go back inside.
“You mean you personally will have nothing to gain.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.” But he squints up into the sun again. It’s only mid-day, but a thunderstorm is building up over the Flatirons. “This isn’t over.”
“ But it is.”
“No, it isn’t. I will see you in court.”