Homecoming Ranch Read online

  His dad smiled a little. “She is that.” He looked down at his hand, stretched the fingers wide, and said apologetically, “Sorry you had to come all this way, son.”

  He looked tired, Luke thought, and as usual, a wave of sympathy coupled with a stronger wave of guilt swept through him. “I wanted to come. I haven’t been home to see you guys in a while.” It was only a small lie; Luke hadn’t wanted to come. He liked being in Denver, where he didn’t have to think about the perpetual sea of trouble on which his family seemed to bob around like little buoys. “How about a beer?” he suggested.

  “Love one,” his dad said.

  In the tiny kitchen, Luke tossed his dad a beer and helped himself to one.

  “A party and no one invited me?” Leo called from the living room. A moment later, he and his chair crashed in through the narrow doorway. Luke tried hard not to grimace, but the marks on the door indicated Leo was having a difficult time getting around this tiny house.

  “Have you been keeping up with baseball?” Leo asked as he maneuvered himself into a spot at the table. “Dude, you won’t believe the pitching depth the Rangers have this year.…”

  The three men talked about sports—well, Leo did most of the talking there—and about life in general. Dad and Leo asked Luke about his work in Denver. Leo expounded about Marisol’s finer qualities without mentioning her mind, and Dad and Luke laughed along like pigs. It felt like old times, when they’d all lived on the ranch where Luke and Leo had grown up. Back before Leo got sick. Before Mom died. Back when they’d been three guys hanging out, talking about guy things. Before Luke got calls at night saying Dad and Leo weren’t at the ranch anymore.

  But then Dad reminded Leo that he was not supposed to eat cookies, only soft foods, and reality roared back into that little kitchen on a freaking freight train.

  Leo, God bless him, just grinned. “That means you’re going to have to put my pizza in a blender, bro,” he said to Luke. “Be sure and get a big straw because I like lots of cheese.”

  “Noted,” Luke said. “So,” he said, popping the top off another beer, “what happened with the ranch, Dad?”

  “On that note,” Leo said, backing away from the table, “I’ve got a date with the Hounds of Hell.” He scooted back with his remote control, banging into the little bar, then scraping against the door as he pushed his way through.

  Luke’s father sighed. He rubbed his face with his hands, rearranging his features and, for a moment, looking younger than his fifty-eight years. But then his flesh slid back into familiar sags and folds. “I got myself into a deal.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Cooked it up with Grant Tyler. You remember him?”

  “Vaguely,” Luke said. What he remembered was a rotund guy with a booming laugh, nothing more.

  “Grant knew that I needed cash to pay for Leo’s expenses that aren’t covered by Medicaid. Like that fancy bed in there. My credit is maxed out, Luke. I couldn’t borrow enough to buy a shovel. The only thing I had was the ranch. So Grant, he’d done pretty well for himself in some deal, and he said, ‘Look, let’s just do a sale. I’ll give you the cash you need and hold on to the title until you’re able to sell some cattle or whatnot and get on your feet. Then I’ll sell it back to you for the same price.’ It was sort of like a second mortgage, a way to get me some cash. So we did the deal, and everything was good. I sold part of the livestock and paid off some debt. I was building up again, getting ready to get the ranch back when Grant up and died.”

  “Okay,” Luke said. So far, nothing earth-shattering. “So there was a deal, and he died, but you have all the paperwork on it, right?”

  “I’ve got paperwork for the sale. But we didn’t have a written agreement that I would buy it back for the same price he’d paid.” Luke must have looked as shocked as he felt, because his dad said, “We were friends, son. We had each other’s word, and that’s all we needed.”

  And there, in the distance, was the sound of the earth shattering. Luke’s heart sank. “Dad, you always need a written agreement.”

  “Well I know that now,” his father said a little irritably. “But I didn’t think so at the time. He was a good friend and he was doing me a tremendous favor.”

  Luke looked at the dingy window above the kitchen sink. “Why didn’t you tell me you were having trouble?” he asked calmly. “I could have gotten a loan. I could have helped you.”

  His father sighed. “Come on, Luke. You’re in the middle of starting your own business. You’re in school. You have your own problems, your own credit to worry about. You’ve got people backing you up that you have to think about. And you already pay for Marisol—you don’t need my problems on top of that.”

  “But I’ve got some money put aside,” Luke argued. “I’m doing pretty good. Dad, we’re family—”

  “Luke,” his father interrupted sharply. “I know you mean well, son. But I already have one child who can’t fulfill his dreams. I’ll be damned if I’m going to have two.”

  Luke clenched his jaw. He stared down at the table, away from his father’s gray eyes. “I still don’t get why you left the ranch to come to this cracker box.”

  “Because a fellow named Jackson Crane came to see me. Said the estate had passed on to Grant’s kids, and they were coming in for a powwow, and he suspected they’d want to sell. He said given the circumstances it was probably best we get out of the way while everyone decides what needs to be done. He knew about this house and I rented it for dirt cheap.”

  Luke could believe that. “What about Ernest?” he asked, referring to their long-time cowboy. For all of Luke’s life that he could recall, Ernest had lived in the bunkhouse and taken care of things when Dad couldn’t.

  “Oh, Ernest just went down to Albuquerque to see his mom. He’ll be back. Jackson Crane is keeping him on.”

  At least there was some good news. Ernest had been with them so long that Luke suspected he had no place to go. But the rest was more than Luke could absorb in one sitting. He stood up and walked to the sink, staring out at the patch of back yard. “So who the hell is this Jackson Crane guy, anyway?”

  “He was Grant’s guy. A business manager.”

  “He had a business manager, and none of this was written down? Grant essentially loans you money and you put up the title, and nothing about the loan agreement is recorded?” Luke turned to his dad, but Dad’s head was down as he pushed thick fingers through his thinning hair.

  Luke’s shoulders sagged. His father was a good man, a great dad, a steady provider. But what he knew was ranching. Not real estate. And Mom had always been the one who kept their finances in check. “Okay, look, Dad, I am going to talk to this Crane guy,” Luke said. “I’ll talk to the heirs, too. I think we can all be reasonable about this. We’ll work something out.”

  “Maybe,” his father said with a shrug.

  “Have faith—”

  “Luke, look,” his father said sharply, and suddenly came to his feet. He was an inch shorter than Luke, but just as broad. “I don’t like that I had to borrow money against the ranch. I don’t like that Grant died and left me in a bind. But the fact is, I got the money I needed for Leo,” he said, pointing to the front room, where they could both hear Leo shouting at his game characters. “That’s what matters. Leo’s problem ain’t going away, either. He’s not getting better, he’s getting worse, and the ranch… the ranch takes a lot of work.”

  Luke glanced at the doorway and hoped to hell Leo wasn’t hearing this. “I get it,” he said low. “Hell if I know how you do it all, Dad. But Leo isn’t always going to be here. Homecoming Ranch is his home—not this place. More than that, it’s your home—you’ve lived there all your life! So did your parents, and their parents. Ranching is what you do. What are you going to do when you don’t have Leo anymore?”

  Luke’s father clenched his jaw. He put his hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed it. “It’s time you faced the fact that things have changed for us. And what’s d
one is done. Now, I’ve got to give Leo his medicine.” He turned away, stepped to the counter next to the fridge where three rows of dark brown pill bottles were lined up. A chart was taped to the front of the fridge, which his father consulted.

  What about me? Luke thought. What about his life at the ranch, his memories, his hopes for it? He felt the hard kernel of resentment sprouting in him—resentment at how life had turned out for his family, all of it. “It’s not done,” he said tightly, but his father ignored him.

  SIX

  In a village where flannel ruled and elkhorns seemed to be mandatory décor, Jackson Crane looked as fresh and as Hollywood as he had the first time Madeline had met him. She’d found his office easy enough in this postage stamp of civilization that was Pine River. It was a low gray building that looked like a bomb shelter.

  Jackson—who did not have a receptionist, Madeline noted—showed her into his office. He had a gunmetal gray desk, a squeaky office chair. On the wall behind him was a calendar with the picture of a man gleefully kissing a big fish, and the 18th of the month had been circled with a fat red marker. Below the calendar was a montage of pictures of Jackson Crane. He was skiing, or wearing a big hat and riding a horse, or grinning at the camera from behind goggles on a snowmobile. But what Madeline found odd about the pictures was that Jackson was the only person in them.

  This man was an enigma to Madeline. He was a personable guy; he’d greeted her warmly, shaking her hand earnestly. “So glad you made it,” he said, as he moved some papers around on his desk, obviously seeking something. “I don’t have much time before my next appointment, but I wanted to get you the particulars of our meeting.”

  “I thought this was our meeting,” Madeline said as he thrust a file folder into her hands.

  “This?” he asked, his eyes widening slightly with surprise. “No, no, I asked you to come here so I could give you some basic information. We’ll be meeting this afternoon at the ranch. We’re on for three.” He suddenly smiled. “You’ll be meeting your sisters!”

  A shudder of trepidation ran through Madeline. Of course she knew she would be meeting her sisters, but with it suddenly so concrete, Madeline did not feel prepared. She needed more warning than this, she needed time to mentally gear up. She felt like something was missing, like a flowchart, dossiers, pictures, something. “Just like that?” she blurted. “I fly out here and meet them just like that?”

  Jackson chuckled until he realized she wasn’t kidding. “Sorry—did you have something else in mind?”

  No, Madeline didn’t have anything else in mind. She just needed time to prepare, she always needed time to prepare. Meeting new people was never easy for her, and for two new sisters, she needed to collect herself, to tamp down unnecessary feelings about how these “sisters” had had a father, and she hadn’t, that sort of thing. She assumed that they had been the recipients of the fatherly love that she’d been denied, that the reason she had never heard from him was because he’d been completely satisfied with his other two daughters.

  “In the file I gave you is a copy of your father’s last will and testament, as well as some information about the ranch,” he said, and began to recite some statistics that flew over Madeline’s normally tidy and organized head. “I’ve included a map.” He looked at her curiously when Madeline didn’t speak. “So we’ll see you there at three to go over the details.” He stood. “Okay?”

  No, it was not okay. It wasn’t remotely okay. Madeline really needed someone to hold her hand right now. But she stood reluctantly. “Yes,” she said, and tucked the file into her purse. “Thank you.”

  Jackson walked her to the door like he had some place to be, and as Madeline walked down the gravel path to the parking lot, she heard the door shut behind her. She had just reached the parking lot when an orange jeep barreled up, coming to an abrupt halt. She barely had time to register that she’d seen the vehicle before when the man who had changed her flat stepped out of the Bronco.

  Madeline tried to ignore the little thrill she felt sweep down her spine. She’d been standing on the road yesterday trying to convince herself that she could change a tire, to not panic, when he’d driven up in an old jeep-looking thing. A modern day knight in shining armor in his trusty orange steed. Not only was he almost unconscionably good-looking, he had changed that damn tire in about two seconds.

  But now she felt a shiver of trepidation. What was he doing here?

  He was wearing a white shirt tucked into skin-tight jeans, and a dark blue hoodie and boots. He’d combed his dark hair back so that it brushed his collar. He was tall and muscular, more than what she remembered. He fixed his gray eyes on her; she saw a flicker of recognition, and her pulse ticked up a notch.

  She would have been very suspicious had he not seemed so surprised to see her. How was it possible that a man who looked like that, whom she’d met briefly on the road to Pine River, would end up outside Jackson Crane’s office?

  He looked at her, then at Jackson’s office, then at her again, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Something changed in his expression. It seemed to tighten somehow. “You’re the highlighter—”

  “The what? I’m Madeline. The flat, remember?” she said, and fluttered her fingers in the vague direction of where the flat had occurred.

  “I remember,” he said, and pointed in the opposite direction of where she had fluttered her fingers.

  She smiled. “Luke, right?”

  “Right. Are you here to see Jackson?”

  “Do you know him? I mean, I guess you do, seeing as how you are here. You do, right?”

  “Sort of,” he said, and looked at the office again, like maybe he wasn’t in the right place.

  “What a coincidence!” she said, feeling a little off kilter. “Are you from Pine River?”

  “I was,” he said, his gaze settling on her again. Now he looked at her as if he was seeing her differently. “I’m in Denver now. I’m here visiting family.”

  “Oh.” She laughed nervously, her gaze flicking between his eyes, his shoulders, his mouth. Holy smokes, but the air felt weird. Sort of electric. She needed a script, something to follow. But since she didn’t have one, she blurted, “So tell me, is there anything to do here? I have a three o’clock meeting and I am looking for something to do until then.”

  Luke shifted, peered closely at her. “There’s a lot to do in Pine River.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well,” he said, his gaze sliding down to her shoes and up again, “Do you fish?”

  Madeline snorted. “No.”

  “Hike?”

  She’d never even contemplated hiking, much less done it, and shook her head so that a strand of dark hair escaped the claw and bounced down on her face. His gray eyes were fixed on hers, making her feel just the tiny bit woozy.

  “What about riding horseback?” he asked.

  For some reason, that made Madeline laugh. “I don’t have a horse.”

  He arched a brow. “You don’t have to have a horse to know how to ride.”

  “But if you don’t have a horse, how would you know how to ride?”

  He studied her curiously, as if he’d just discovered a dinosaur bone. “So basically, you came to a mountain town, but you don’t do mountain stuff.”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I’m only here for a couple of days to tend to some business.”

  He nodded, almost as if he knew what her business was. “Well,” he said, “there are a couple of souvenir shops in town. If you aren’t here for recreation, I’m not really sure what else there is.”

  Souvenirs? He was telling her to go buy a souvenir? “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

  “You bet. If you will excuse me, Madeline, I’m a little late for an appointment,” he said, and stepped around her, all six foot plus, impossibly broad shoulders of him. Had she missed his shoulders yesterday? “I’ll see you around, okay?”

  What did that mean? Would he see her around? “Okay,” she said, trying to sound airy and unconcer
ned. She walked on, got in her ridiculously tiny car, and surreptitiously watched him walk into Jackson’s office. This much could be said—that man knew how to fill out a pair of jeans.

  “That is enough of that,” she muttered to herself, opened the file Jackson had given her, and removed the hand-drawn map to Homecoming Ranch. “Get a grip, Madeline. You are not here for fun and games. Or ogling.”

  She would start, she thought, by comparing the map Jackson had given her to the map of the area she’d picked up at the visitor’s center. She certainly hoped this map didn’t include any “sometimes” passes over the mountains. In her humble opinion, roads should be clearly labeled and marked on all maps.

  SEVEN

  Luke almost kicked my ass on “Hounds of Hell,” but I came back with a surprise assault and pulled it out. I like it when Luke is home. Dad tries, but sometimes, a guy just needs his brother home so he can totally annihilate him on “Hounds of Hell.”

  I know Luke and Dad argue a lot. Dad says things aren’t like they were before and we have to face that they aren’t. Luke says there’s no reason they can’t be like they were, except without Mom, and without me on a horse driving cattle down the mountain, but I’m pretty good at directing traffic from the back of the pickup. Luke rigged up a deal where I can ride back there. It’s cool. I don’t tell him that it hurts like hell because I like getting up on the mountain. I miss it.

  But last night, Dad and Luke had this big argument about Homecoming Ranch, and this morning, Luke was in a mood. He put on a good shirt, a go-to-Sunday-meeting shirt, and went down to Poplar Street to have a “word” with Jackson. I told him that Jackson’s an okay guy, but Luke wasn’t buying it. He said anyone who worked for Grant Tyler was suspect. I had to remind Luke that my muscles may not work, but my brain is still a functioning miracle of exceptional genius, and I’m serious, Jackson’s okay. He had an asshole for a boss. Luke’s had a couple of bosses like that, so he ought to be a little nicer about it, right?

  He came back from the meeting all pissed off because Jackson told him what I knew Jackson would tell him—it’s up to the heirs. It’s not as if Jackson can rewrite all the Colorado state laws to make Luke happy. Still, that made Luke super annoyed because apparently he met one of the heirs. He said she was coming out as he was going in, and he was pretty sure she had to be one of the heirs, because why else would she be on Poplar Street? He’s got a point there. Dani said Jackson took up space in an old gray building that looks like a morgue, only it isn’t, but the story would be a whole lot more interesting if it was a morgue, wouldn’t it? Dig it—Jackson Crane holding meetings in the middle of a bunch of dead bodies covered by sheets. What if they started rising up, one by one, and it turned into Zombieland?