A Silver Lining Read Free

remembering a robust man with a head full of white hair and a moustache to match. She had been slightly intimidated by him at age fifteen, as she had been by the tension between him and her father. Now she entered his bedroom as an adult with twenty hard years under her belt.
    "'Bout time you got in here.” Her grandfather greeted her on a wheeze.
    Heather blinked at the frail-looking man lying in the middle of the hospital bed. Gone were the hair and the moustache. In fact, hair barely remained on his head in a bad comb-over. The once stout and sturdy man had been replaced by a body bordering on emaciation. Monitors and machines crowded around his bed like small statues paying homage, each one playing its part in keeping a dying man alive as long as possible.
    She shifted her balance on her feet, ready to bolt, not sure if she felt up to talking with the living dead. Because that's all her grandfather was now, a skeleton talking.
    "Gonna stand there all day, or you gonna come over and sit with me?"
    "I don't know if I want to,” she answered truthfully.
    A frightful chuckling sound came from between his lips. Heather moved closer. “At least you're honest,” he said. “More than your father ever was."
    A padded chair sat next to the bed. Heather sat gingerly, poised on the edge of it. She looked all around the room, everywhere, except directly at him. She wrinkled her nose. The room smelled of lavender hiding the stench of decay.
    "Do you know why I asked for you to come back here?” he asked with a wheeze, watching her indecision on whether or not she wanted to stay.
    "Because you're dying.” She answered him blandly, finally committing to the conversation.
    "A lifetime of smoking is gonna kill me at eighty-one.” The announcement was followed by a hail of coughing. His frail body shook through the fit until it passed, leaving him sweaty and pale. Heather took another look around the room, and the lingering taste of nicotine on her tongue suddenly felt disgusting and dirty.
    "I'm glad you came. You're the only grandchild I have. The last of the Harts."
    The words were whispered. Fatigue laced his voice. They pained Heather to hear.
    "Dad's still alive,” she reminded him in a slightly sarcastic tone.
    Lincoln Hart waved that reminder away, like he swatted at a pesky fly. “Your father...disgraced me long ago. A wastrel of a man."
    Heather's eyebrows rose. With that statement, she heartedly agreed. The summer they had visited the ranch had been the last of her happy memories, the last she had been a carefree, innocent girl. After that, she had lost everything, including her father.
    "I'm hoping you're not a wastrel of a granddaughter."
    The statement brought her out of her reverie. “Thanks, old man. Is this why I'm here, for your charming personality?"
    Lincoln Hart cackled, or tried to. It came out sounding like nails on a chalkboard. “My great-grandfather built this ranch bare-knuckle. This is Hart land."
    "It's just a name,” Heather murmured, eyes narrowing. “Thousands of other people have it as well."
    "Is that what you think, girl?” he demanded, though his weak voice sounded pathetic. “A name defines who we are, what our bloodline is. Your father shorted you on pride, and for that I won't ever forgive him."
    She wanted to say that made two of them, but this man was nothing more than a familiar stranger, as was this place. She held her tongue and leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.
    "So you brought me here to tell me that I may or may not inherit this ranch,” she said instead, “depending on my character. So if not me, then who?"
    "You've met Tristan.” It wasn't a question.
    "Oh."
    "He's become the son your father should have been. I wish he had been mine. Then we wouldn't be here talking."
    "Ouch. You definitely don't pull any punches do you, old man?"
    "I don't have any time left to pull punches."
    Heather sighed and narrowed her eyes. “What do you want from me? I know nothing about