At My Daughter’s Colorado Ranch Wedding, She Slipp…

He tried, I’ll give him that. His hands were soft, but he was willing to learn. He blistered, swore quietly, then laughed at himself.

“This is good for me,” he’d say, flexing sore fingers at the end of the day. “Desk jobs aren’t meant for humans.”

On one of those afternoons, we took a break and stood side by side at the kitchen sink. The light was slanting golden across the fields.

“So, your land ends at that tree line?” he asked. “Yep.”

“And all of this”—he gestured to the meadow, the barn, the distant hill—“that’s included? One parcel?”

“That’s right.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“Must be worth a pretty penny by now, with Denver expanding.”

“You’d know more about that than I would,” I said lightly. He smiled. “I might have to run some comps just for fun.”

Third time he asked, I felt the first little tickle of unease.

By the time Claire called me four months into their relationship, breathless and laughing, to say, “Dad, he proposed!” that tickle had become a steady itch in the back of my mind. “He took me to this restaurant in Denver, Dad. Candlelight, live jazz, the whole cliché.