A Divorce Lawyer From Manhattan Booked a Week at My Wyoming Guest Ranch. By Friday, She Was Fighting to Save It

I took her up to the high meadow where Beth and I used to go. I built a fire. We sat on a blanket and watched the stars come out over the Tetons, more stars than she’d ever seen in her life.

“I’m supposed to fly back tomorrow,” she said.

“I know.”

“I have a custody hearing on Tuesday.”

“I know.”

She turned to look at me.

“Ask me not to go, Wade.”

I didn’t ask. I kissed her instead. Slow and long, with the fire crackling and the whole sky turning above us.

When we finally stopped, she put her forehead against mine.

“That’s not an answer,” she said.

“Go to your hearing,” I said. “Win it. Then come back.”

She flew home on Sunday.

She came back three weeks later. And again for Thanksgiving. And again at Christmas, when the ranch was buried in snow and the guests were gone.

In March, she called me from her office in Manhattan.

“I quit,” she said.

“You quit?”

“I’m opening a small family law practice in Jackson,” she said. “Mediation. Helping people end things kindly, if they have to end them at all. Is that crazy?”

“It’s the best idea I’ve ever heard.”

She runs the business side of the ranch now, too. Bookings are up forty percent. She says it’s because she fixed the website.

I think it’s because the guests can tell something good lives here again.

Would you have given up the big city for him? Be honest. Tell me in the comments.