Chapter 3
“Good morning,”Erin chirped happily as she looked up from filling her coffee cup for the umpteenth time that morning. She had been up at the crack of dawn, cooked breakfast for her and Reid, then after he left, she’d gotten started on making pies, and a couple of Riceman family traditional dishes for Thanksgiving dinner the next day. Currently, there were four pumpkin pies in the oven, four more waiting to go in, and she paused for a cup of coffee while making more dough for the apple and cherry.
She smiled when Clark stumbled over to the coffee pot. “I thought you were an early riser.”
“I am, but I think I had one too many beers last night. I vowed I wouldn’t drink a lot, but it was so great being with the men again.” Clark closed his eyes as he sipped his coffee, savoring the first sip. When he seemed more awake, he opened his eyes and looked at her. “Wow, you’ve been busy.”
“Yes, do you want breakfast? I’m at a point that I can take a break.”
“I’m fine, unless you have a bagel?”
Erin grinned as she opened the bread box and pointed. When he lunged for a package, she stepped back and went back to what she had been doing. As she rolled out the dough, Clark fixed his bagel, then immediately grabbed a knife and started peeling the apples.
“We’re peeling them, correct?”
“Correct. The only commercially canned ingredients are the cherries.”
“What’s that mean? Commercially canned?”
“This.” Erin laughed as she held up a can of cherry pie filling then went to the sink and picked up a quart Mason jar. “This was canned by one of the worker’s wives.”
“Ah, like Mom used to do.”
“Correct, I haven’t done it, because I’ve been extremely busy around here and don’t have the time.” She went back to her task, and looked at him when he didn’t respond. “Clark, don’t worry about it. We’ll sit and talk, and you’ll know that I’m not blaming you for anything.” They both looked up when they heard stomping in the back room, and waited until Reid strolled in.
“Good morning,” he said cheerfully. He kissed the side of Erin’s head as he walked to the coffee pot. As he poured a cup, Clark fixed his bagel. Without Erin asking or saying a word, both men started peeling the apples she had laid out. In no time, the three of them had four apple pies and four cherry pies ready to go into the oven.
“Rin?” Clark asked hesitantly as he took a seat at the kitchen table. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“How did you get the pumpkin pies into the oven without spilling them?” He pointed between the pies and her missing hand.
“I called Reid in from the barn. He came in and put them in the oven.” She grinned as she looked at her boyfriend. “You done in the barn?”
“Only with Lazarine, Tom had to leave on an emergency and will call if he can come back.”
“Good. Did you mark it down?”
“I did.” He pulled papers from his front pocket and laid them on the table in front of her.
Clark looked between the two of them and the image he’d been carrying around of his baby sister being helpless immediately fled. Before him, he saw not only a beautiful woman, but a strong one, and a focused one. When she turned to him, he nodded at her.
“After breakfast, we need to talk. Reid will man the rest of the pies, won’t you?”
“Yes. There’s a dish I want to try to make.”
“The kitchen is yours. I tried to clean as I went, but it’s not done.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll do it. Go talk to Clark.” He refilled both of their cups, put the leftovers in his cup and quickly started a new pot. Clark picked up the rest of his bagel and followed his sister down the hall and into his father’s office. As he followed her, he looked around with a frown.
“You didn’t change anything,” he said as soon as she walked in behind him, and sat behind the desk. He automatically took one of the seats before it. “May I?” He lifted his cup and hovered it above the wood surface, and smiled when she put a coaster there first.
He settled back and looked at her. “I’m ready.”
“Okay, what I’m about to tell you is the God’s honest truth. I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad, or to blame you. I’m telling you this because what I went through made me the woman I am now.”
“I understand. I’ll say this now, based on our phone conversations over the years, I’ve heard how mature you’ve become. I’m just sorry that I wasn’t here for you.”
“Don’t be.” Erin shook her head, drew in a deep breath, then let it out in a rush. “I don’t blame you. I think if you had been here, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”
“Talk to me.”
“Okay, I’ll try not to get into too much detail, but you need to know some stuff in order to understand what I went through. I didn’t only lose my hand in the accident.” She held up her right hand, and Clark tried not to wince when he only saw the stub at her wrist.
“What else happened?”
“Because of the extent of the crash.” She shook her head to stop him from talking. “There’s a file about everything that you can read when we’re done. Please, let me get through this.”
“Okay.” He nodded as he leaned forward and grabbed his coffee. Before they could continue, Reid interrupted, but he only came in and placed a carafe of coffee on the corner of the desk, walked around, kissed the top of Erin’s head, then walked out.
“Okay,” Erin chuckled as she picked up the carafe and refilled her cup, and let Clark do the same with his. “Other than the severed hand, that same arm was broken. I also had several broken ribs. One had punctured my lung. Of course after being rushed to the hospital they assessed the situation, and I was taken to surgery. They had to sew up my lung, fix my broken arm, and they knew there was no reattaching my hand, so they had to clean up the stump. I’m only giving you basic details for now.”
“The rest is in the folder?”
“Yes. Anyway, I was out of it for six weeks. Drug induced. Because of the severity of my injuries, they didn’t want me to jerk and move to rebreak my arm or ribs. Thankfully there was no injury to my head or the rest of my joints. Anyway, when I woke up, Wendel was there. If it hadn’t been for that man, along with Floyd and Virgil, I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be here today, and you would have come home to a run-down ranch.”
“I can’t imagine that.”
Erin gave a snarky laugh and shook her head. “Yeah, you would. Anyway, after I woke up and realized Mom and Dad had died, and they had already had the funerals, I got depressed. It got to the point that the doctors threatened to put me back in a coma and put a feeding tube in.”
“How did you rally back?”
“Wendel.”
“Really? What did he do?” Clark continued to sip his coffee and he tried to picture what Erin had gone through. He had seen a lot of death and destruction in his career, but couldn’t imagine his baby sister going through what he had seen. The thought made him shudder.
“First, I need to back up just a little bit. I think you were the one that encouraged Wendel to do what he did. The more I think about it, the more I agree that you were the one the turned me into what I am today. Or at least started my transformation from that clueless, carefree girl, into the savvy businesswoman I am today.”
“Me, what do I have to do with anything? I wasn’t even here.”
“No, but remember when you called and told us that you were going dark?”
“Yes. That was the last time I saw Mom and Dad.”
“Shit, that’s right. Sorry, but after that conversation, I asked Mom and Dad a question. That started me going down a road of discovery. It was Wendel that brought me back to that road. As I lay there in that hospital bed feeling sorry for myself, he said something that got me to thinking.”
“First, what was the road of discovery you were on, and second, what did Wendel say or do?”
“After that Facetime with you, I asked Mom and Dad how Erin’s Way got its name. You know, how it became what it was back then, and then how I turned it into what it is today.”
“What was the answer?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.” Clark shrugged as he continued to sip his coffee. He had subtly looked around and liked that the pictures he remembered always being on the walls were still there. It gave him a sense that his father was still there. It would probably take a few days to realize Jeremy wouldn’t be walking down the hall toward him. He shook his head and tuned into what Erin was saying.
“Our fifth or sixth great-grandmother started Erin’s Way.” She grinned at him. “It was Grandma that started the ranch. Her name was Erin, and I was named after her. A brief history. Erin’s husband, Harem, was a coward, in my opinion.”
“What happened?”
“Dad told me that Harem hated crowds and they lived in Philadelphia at the time. This was in the eighteen thirties, and they are Harem, Erin, and their son, Lester Riceman. Harem got some bug up his ass and wanted to head west. This was several years before the gold rush out in California. Well, apparently others had the same idea, and as they traveled by covered wagon, others joined them. According to Dad, that pissed Harem off. He ended up leaving the group in the middle of the night, and went through the mountains instead of around them. There are journals of Erin’s that you can read all about it. It turned out that they were on their own for a few weeks when the wheel of their covered wagon broke. Two weeks later, Erin woke up to find all of Harem’s clothes, half their food, and two of their four horses gone. He left a note saying that he couldn’t do it, and basically she was on her own.
“Well, according to those journals, Erin pulled up her big girl panties and got to work. She staked a claim right where that broken wagon stood. Eventually, over the years and generations of Ricemans, we became what we are today. I was reading her journals when the accident happened. Wendel was the one to bring it to me and shook it in my face. He asked me what would the original Erin do in my situation? Was I a strong woman like her, or a weak coward like Harem. Oh, I forgot to tell you that when Harem left Erin and their two-year-old son, Lester, she was pregnant.”
“Damn. I did not know any of this.”
“It’s all in her journals. I’m not telling you what to do, but I believe you need to read them first before you read everything else. Only then will you understand our history. Anyway, after Wendel berated me for being like Harem, he asked me one question.”
“Which was?”
“What would the original Erin do if she learned I had run her beloved ranch into the ground.”
“Damn, that was harsh, wasn’t it?”
“No, it gave me the motivation I needed. I stayed in the hospital for the next two weeks, started eating, and finished healing. When I was released, Wendel took me to see Liam, the lawyer, and that’s when I learned Mom and Dad had left everything to me. I’m sorry about that.”
“No, don’t be. I’m actually glad they did.”
“Really, why?”
“Think about it, think back over the years. How many times would you have had to put a decision on hold if you had to wait for my signature or approval on something? What would you have done if I had gone dark again and couldn’t be reached for months on end?”
“Shit, you’re right. Okay, I’ll call Liam shortly and talk to him about getting your name on everything, but I won’t do it until after the first of the year?”
“Why that long?”
“Because I want you to do what I did. No, you need to do what I did.”
“Which is?” Clark scowled at her as he refilled both of their cups of coffee. Instead of settling back, he sat on the edge of his seat, staring at her.
“You need to read the journals, then you need to read all the files on what happened to this ranch. I did, and that’s how I got to where I am today. It’s hard to explain, so you’ll have to read.” She giggled as she pointed behind him. He turned and cocked his head to the side, then looked back at her.
“What am I looking at?”
“Those black file cabinets are everything about Erin’s Way. From Erin’s journals to last week. The green ones are all the files about Broken, and the tan ones are for Riceman Stallions.”
“Okay, I can understand Erin’s Way and Broken, but what in hell is Riceman Stallions?”
Erin grinned as she reached into a drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. She flipped to what he thought was page five, grabbed a highlighter, used it, then handed him the papers.
“Read the highlighted passage.” She laid the papers down, then started getting out more papers.
Clark shook his head as he took them and started reading. He had to read it at least three times before it registered what it said. He looked up in shock, and was handed another piece of paper. He took it, read it, and couldn’t make head nor tails of it.
“I don’t understand.”
“What did you take away from the first paper?”
“That you somehow extracted sperm from the stallions you sold, and you’re using it.”
“Correct. That was a contract with the buyer of one of the stallions I sold. I only sold them because they rejected me, and I couldn’t run and operate a horse ranch if the horses were going to try to kill me every time I was near them. That second piece of paper is the total sales year-to-date, on that one stallion’s sperm. Riceman Stallions is an on-line business for the sperm of our past, and present stallions.”
“Holy fucking shit.”
“Correct.
“See, there’s a lot of shit you need to read. With that being said, there’s something that I have to tell you that no one, and I mean no one knows about. Not even Wendel, Floyd, and Virgil. Well, they know some, because I needed their help, but as a result, they know nothing about it. The only other person that knows is Liam, our lawyer.”
“Is it bad?”
“It started out that way, but ended up great. Again, there’s a file on it.”
“Tell me what you can, but hold that thought. This coffee needs to be drained.” He stood and hurried from the office, with Erin’s laughter following him as he rushed to the bathroom.