Episode notes
Thirty-eight-year-old Virginia is a polished, high-flying city executive who has spent two decades running from her past. Her carefully constructed corporate armor is completely shattered by a phone call delivering devastating news: Jed, the deeply pious grandfather who raised her, has passed away. Leaving her sterile office behind, she drives back to the Maryland farm she abandoned long ago. As she pulls up to the empty porch swing, the familiar scents of whiskey and wildflowers trigger a vivid, emotional flashback to her reckless youth. At nineteen, consumed by grief over the sudden death of her parents, Ginny was drowning her pain in late nights and rebellion. Despite her furious resistance, her grandfather extended unyielding grace, forcing her up at dawn to work the land. It was during one of these miserable, hungover mornings that she first clashed with Wes, a handsome, sharp-witted nineteen-year-old cowboy Jed had hired to help keep her safe. Back in the present, the memory fades as a man steps out of the evening shadows. It is Wes—now a rugged, powerfully built man in his late thirties who stayed behind to tend the roots Ginny left behind, his piercing green eyes holding the exact same knowing intensity she hasn’t forgotten.