Chapter 3

Twenty years earlier, I’d come back from Afghanistan with serious damage from an IED blast. There were multiple scars, both external and internal. The constant pity of relatives and parents weighed on me. Relationships had become impossible. A week after leaving the hospital, my fiancée dumped me. One look at gruesome facial scars did the trick. Year after year, any sort of normal life seemed out of reach. I couldn’t adjust. Physical healing was slow. More than a few times I’d entertained thoughts of suicide. Then, one bright day while surfing the internet, I stumbled across the listing for a small ranch in the foothills of central Montana

After taking a flight from Vermont, that first glimpse of a nearly derelict ranch seemed a bust. Overgrown and run down, the old house looked worse than shabby. I followed the realtor as she kept flogging the place, then we stepped onto a sagging, creaking porch. We entered the front door, the woman hurriedly glossing over the obvious problems and damage caused by years of neglect, renters and squatters. The interior was in sorry condition, the air reeking of mildew. What looked like blood splatters still showed on the entrance wall. I stopped in what had been a rustic kitchen, staring around at litter. A fly-specked, grimy window gave an unimpressive view of dusty brown foothills to the south. The whole place looked tired and worn. First impressions should have turned me off. Instead, the old house seemed to wrap about my heart. Like the ranch house, I was badly damaged, run down and feeling pretty shabby. Perhaps that sympathetic relationship was the start.

The foreclosure price was unbelievably low. The bank was desperate to dump the property. I dickered with the real-estate agent, managing to knock a few thousand off the price. That left me with enough capital to completely renovate and modernize the house. The location was remote, a good thing since I craved isolation. Within days of stepping into that kitchen, I’d scooped up the foreclosure property. Now, I owned a quarter section, half of which had been hay fields, water rights on a small, intermittent creek, and the homestead, the old rancher tucked into a bench off the foot of a steep little mountain. More than half my life savings and a vet loan went into the project. After closing, there had been a flurry of construction and essential renovations.