Breaking Point by C. J. Box Page B

was born one hundred fifty years too late.”
    Joe nodded. It was a familiar story. He knew dozens of men who were hard workers and could pull in more income if they relocated elsewhere. North Dakota was booming, and it wasn’t that far away, for example. But the reason they lived and worked in Wyoming, he knew, was because of the outdoor culture, the lack of people, and the resources; specifically, big-game hunting and great trout fishing. It certainly wasn’t because of the wind or the weather.
    “So five years ago,” Pam said, “he was talking with one of the developers of Aspen Highlands. They wanted him to build a spec home up there to help get it going. As you know, we’re not wealthy people and our little construction company kind of exists week-to-week. Not many people are building homes these days, and those that want to can’t get bank loans, so it’s tough. So, financially, we really couldn’t make it work to do a spec home with no guaranteed return right away. But the developers offered Butch and me a deal: build the home in exchange for a lot that was worth sixty thousand dollars. We didn’t get first pick because they wanted real money for the first few sales, but we saw it as our opportunity to have the place Butch had always wanted in the mountains.”
    “What about you?” Marybeth asked. “Is that your dream, too?”
    Pam looked away rather than answer. Finally, she said, “I wanted Butch to be happy. I wanted him to have something to aspire to, if you know what I mean. You don’t know this about him, but he has a tendency to get down in the dumps. He was raised in a tough household where his dad had nothing good to say to him. Ever. He doesn’t have a lot of confidence in himself at times, even though he should, because he’s a good husband and father and he’s solid as a rock most of the time. But Butch can really be hard on himself, and when he gets like that he’s not much fun to be around.”
    “That surprises me to hear that,” Joe said. “I’ve always found him rough and ready.” As he said it, he was reminded of Butch Roberson’s haunted eyes just that afternoon.
    “He comes off that way,” Pam said. “He doesn’t like to talk, and sometimes I have to practically scream at him to say something. But when he told me that the most important thing to him—besides Hannah and me—was a nice home in the mountains, well, I wanted to do all I could to make that happen for him. So I agreed on the deal, even though we were taking a risk if the spec home didn’t sell. We had to really beg our bankers to max out our loan ceilings, and we knew the bankers and the material suppliers were nervous about getting paid back.
    “But we did it,” she said, with a proud smile. “It took too long, almost eighteen months, to sell the spec home. Did you see that nice A-frame up there?” she asked Joe.
    “I did.”
    “That was it. And when it sold, we paid off everyone and got the title to the lot you saw. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Butch so happy. He was like a little boy because it was the first time in his life he really had his own property. Even though we can’t afford to do anything with it yet, he goes up there after work and on weekends just to putter around. He’s got targets set up for archery and for his hunting rifle, and he’d ask Hannah to go with him. It makes me almost cry when I think about how happy he was, how proud he was.”
    Joe glanced over at Marybeth and saw her eyes glisten as she listened to her friend.
    “So this was five years ago,” Joe said. “But it doesn’t look like anything was done with the lot until very recently.”
    Pam placed both of her hands around her tea and focused on the glass itself.
    “Not until a year ago,” she said. “That’s when Butch put our company tractor on the trailer and took it up there to start leveling out the ground for the foundation. Until then, we hadn’t really done anything with it except get all the