Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Safety third.
—Denver to Holly
HOLLY
Honestly, despite the bad day that I’d had the day before, today was turning out to be a pretty damn good one. All things considered.
At least, it had been.
We’d started out the morning eating a late breakfast that Margery and Sorcha had put on.
Margery, Denver’s mother, was so stinkin’ cute.
I found it even cuter when she announced, “I hope you’re okay with us cooking today, seeing as I fired your other cook.”
That comment had everyone at the table freezing.
Denver paused with a massive bite of waffle halfway to his mouth, syrup and butter dripping down onto the tabletop in front of him. “It’s Thursday. What happened?”
Sorcha rolled her eyes. “Mom walked into the house today, and Enid acted like she was the lady of the house. Ordered Mom to take off her shoes and not to come into her kitchen.”
“Oh, boy,” Denver commented.
My eyes wide, I gasped, “She did what? Does she know that this is practically your house?”
I mean, she hadn’t lived there in years and years, but I remembered a time when it was Margery in this kitchen baking and not random women.
Margery, for the years that her husband was working, was the cook who fed all the ranch hands and kids running around.
And Enid didn’t stop and think…well, I should probably not insult her?
“That’s what I asked her exactly. Who did she think she was telling me I couldn’t come into my own house?”
“Technically, you haven’t lived here in fourteen years,” Sorcha pointed out.
“But anyway, Mom asked her what the fuck she was thinking, literally. When Enid said that she was going to be the woman of the house soon and that she needed to mind her manners, Mom told her to take a hike. Enid was all ‘you can’t fire me, Denver hired me,’ Mom told her that she was the one that started his trust fund. ”
Denver snorted. “I was having issues with her as it was. Though I’m going to have to figure out a replacement.”
“I can do that,” Sorcha sighed. “The grandbabies are old enough now that they want to put them in daycare for socialization. This’ll be a good transition back to working full-time. Though I’d like to still have the weekends off so I can see them.”
“I can cover a weekend day,” I offered. “I love cooking. Plus, I think you do the feedings in the morning way more than you should, and I don’t really work enough to be paying for a full-blown apartment. Especially not when you threw that truck into the mix for me to drive.”
Denver shoved another quarter of a waffle into his mouth, wiped his beard with his napkin, then stood up to clear his plate and mine.
I’d given him the rest of my waffle, which he’d finished with those two previous bites.
I stood up and started to clear the table, but Sorcha waved me off. “Don’t. I got it.”
I sighed. “It’d be really nice if everyone stopped treating me like I was spun glass.”
“You were kidnapped yesterday,” Margery pointed out. “Let us be nice. There’ll be plenty of time later when we’re not as considerate.”
I just shook my head, because what else was there to do?
After leaving Denver’s family in the house, I walked with him to the barn to help saddle up the horses we’d be riding for the day.
We’d just gotten to the barn when Sorcha hurried out of the house and called out to us.
Denver turned with a frown on his face when he saw Sorcha’s worried look.
She held out a Walmart sack to us and said, “Hey, these papers look really important, Holly.”
I winced. “Oh, shit.”
“What are they?” Denver asked as he reached for them before I could.
I started to take them away from him but he only shoved the empty sack in my hand before reading what was on the papers. “What is this?”
I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest. “My mother’s suing me.”
“For what?” Denver barked at the same time Sorcha cried out, “What?”
I scrubbed at my face, noticing a sticky spot on my finger, and brought it to my lips as I said, “For the life insurance policy that my dad left me after his death.”
Denver growled. “She’s doing what now?”
Seeing no point in lying now, I told them everything.
“Mom wants her fair share,” I said. “She also tried to take me to court for the house that she thought I got. But luckily, that went to you.”
Denver grunted and thumbed through the pages. “You have a lawyer?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“This says that the hearing is set for next Monday. That’s four days, Holly.”
I made a face, which caused Denver to sigh. “I’ll contact the club’s lawyer. Get him everything.”
“I’ll do that.” Sorcha snatched the papers. “That bitch. I hated her from the moment I first met her.”
And, like we’d conjured the wicked witch herself, dust started to travel along the length of the road heading past Denver’s driveway and straight to my old one.
I watched from at least half a mile away as a sporty-looking SUV turned into our old driveway and came to a stop where the house once stood.
“Who do you think that is?” Sorcha asked.
But somehow, I just knew.
“It’s my mom.”
Denver looked over to me. “How can you tell?”
“I mean, other than driving ninety miles an hour down a road that only two families have ever driven on for going on thirty years? That’s how my mom used to come home every single night after her friend dates in town.
Always ninety miles an hour, taking the turn into the drive on two wheels, and always driving a black high-end SUV.
Sometimes, I felt like she chose black just so she could complain about the dust on it. ”
Sorcha snorted. “I remember once when we did a car wash at the school for Denver and his football team. She’d brought that sporty SUV which cost over three hundred thousand dollars, then complained the entire time when the boys missed spots.
I had to point out to her that she was asking teenage boys to wash her car. Not men that did this for a living.”
“I remember that,” Denver said. “She complained that we scratched her car. Then that we missed several spots. I remember writing PENIS in the dirt covering her back glass before I washed it. Then she complained to our coach that someone had done it.”
I giggled. “That’s fantastic.”
His eyes settled on the SUV. “What do you think she’s doing here?”
“Best guess?” I asked. “She knows that she is going to lose the suit she brought against me and wants to ask me to split it beforehand so that we ‘don’t have to go to court.’”
He jerked his head toward the barn. “Let’s saddle up and head over there to talk. Sorcha, please call Jedidiah and get him working on that.”
Sorcha rolled the papers up into a tube and bopped him on the shoulder. “Yes, little brother.”
Denver and I were saddled up and heading over to my old property ten minutes later.
My mother was standing in front of her car, wearing a black dress and her Louboutins.
I nearly rolled my eyes right out of my head when I saw those red bottoms.
She would come out here wearing that.
She saw us coming and stiffened, hanging up her phone.
“Where’s the house?” she demanded.
“Buried,” Denver answered. “Why are you on my property?”
“This isn’t your property, it’s mine. I bought it.”
“Actually, it is. Go check the county records. It’s been mine for months,” Denver countered. “What are you doing here?”
My mother’s face didn’t change expression at all.
Most likely because the Botox wouldn’t allow it to.
Her eyes, so much like my own, settled on me.
Her white hair, again like my own, lifted with the wind.
Mine did, too.
But unlike hers, mine was up in a ponytail and easily restrained.
I just tucked the tail of my pony into my shirt and stared, not saying a word.
“Aren’t you going to say hi to your mother?” my mother asked.
“Hello.” Denver rolled his eyes. “Last time. Why are you here? The next time I won’t ask, I’ll just toss you off my property.”
My mother peeled her gaze away from me and raked her gaze along Denver’s big body.
She obviously found him lacking.
Clearly, she was delusional.
Because he was wearing a white t-shirt that hugged him in all the right places, tight Wranglers that fit him like a glove, cowboy boots, and a cowboy hat that made me want to steal it and wear it forever.
Literally, a woman’s wet dream.
If my mother couldn’t see how attractive that was, she was blind.
“You could try,” my mother decided on. “In the meantime, while you find someone to toss me out, I’ll talk to my daughter.”
“Not your daughter anymore.” Denver snorted. “She goes by Holly now. You want to know why?”
My mother stiffened. “You changed your name?”
I didn’t bother telling her that I didn’t.
Though the thought sounded like a good one.
“I gave you a strong name that has a hell of a backing to it, and you changed it?” She gasped, affronted.
I wish I’d gone to court to change it legally. I would’ve loved to see her face as she learned that.
“You stupid little girl.”
I sighed.
I’d heard that so many times before.
But for the first time, it didn’t shred my soul to be called stupid by my mother.
“Denver,” I said. “I’m heading back to grab our lunch. You can…do what you need to do.”
My mother screeched at that. “You will not leave! We have things to discuss.”
I gently pulled the reins to my left and led Skylark back to the barn.
I had no plans of grabbing lunch, but I’d wait for Denver to do whatever it was that he was going to do.
“I called the cops,” Margery said. “She’ll be escorted off soon enough.”
I looked over at Margery on her golf cart.
“Some days I wonder why I was given a mother like her,” I lamented.
“I question what God was thinking. And then when my dad was diagnosed, I cursed him a thousand times over because not only was I given a woman like her for a mom, but I was given a dad that was the best in the world, only to have him taken away.”
Margery looked up at me, the sunlight causing her to squint as she looked up.
“Sometimes we have to make do. It’s not fair.
It’s not easy. It’s not even logical sometimes.
But what you make of your life despite the hardships becomes a thousand times more worth it,” she said softly.
“Your dad loved you so much. And when you grew up to look exactly like your mother, he loved you even though his heart broke every time he looked at you.”
I didn’t get affronted by what she said.
I knew that seeing me caused my dad to hurt.
I was the spitting image of her.
“Sometimes,” Margery said, “I think your mother hated you toward the end because you were young and beautiful. Had your whole life ahead of you. And she was on the downward slide. She left because she wanted people to look at her like she was beautiful again. To only focus on her. If she stayed, she would always have you as a reminder that she wasn’t as young and pretty as she used to be. ”
I snorted. “I think that’s why she always belittled me. She had to find a way to tear me down.”
“Your mother is a tool,” she said as she smiled. “There he is.”
A sheriff’s department SUV pulled up across the pasture, and my mother whirled around, pointing her finger and stomping those high-heeled feet.
“Maybe she’ll break the heel,” Margery mused.
“She would die,” I snorted. “Those shoes are her favorites. And like she used to say, ‘this stupid land has taken way too much from me.’ That’d be just one more thing it’s ‘taken’ from her.”
“Your mother spouts so much bullshit that it’s coming out of her ears.” Margery sighed. “You may look like your mama, but your personality is all your daddy. He did a great job raising you.”
That made my heart happy to hear.
“Her leaving was the best thing that ever happened to you,” she continued in that frail voice that most elderly had.
“It may not have seemed like it. But when I tell you that she was the worst kind of cancer, even worse than the kind that took your daddy from this earth, you need to trust in what I say. If she’d stayed, if she’d raised you, you’d be just like her right now.
You’d be mean and obnoxious, think you’re better than everyone else.
She comes to this town twice a year since she left, and she expects everyone and their brother to fawn over her like she’s God’s gift to Bear Pass.
When, in reality, she was a washed-up has-been that peaked in the eighties.
” Margery looked my way. “Did you see the last thing she did was a commercial for the female version of erectile dysfunction?”
I giggled.
Margery placed her hand on mine. “Not to switch topics here but…be careful with his heart.”
I blinked and turned, studying the woman’s face.
“I may be old, but my eyesight is better than a forty-year-old’s, thanks to a laser doctor in Bozeman.” She smiled softly. “I know when my boy, my precious baby boy, is falling in love. And he’s halfway gone with you already.”
My cheeks flushed. “Do you think that’s bad? Our age difference…”
“The only time age matters is when you’re in grade school.” She smiled again. “My Sol and I were twenty-four years apart. And other than losing him way sooner than I ever wanted to, he was the best thing that ever happened to me. And he was virile. My god.”
I covered my ears and started to laugh.
A poke in the thigh had me turning to see Denver had arrived on his horse, a look of wonder on his face. “What’s so funny?”
I looked over to Margery.
Margery beamed and said, “I was telling Holly how virile your father was, even at fifty-five.”
Denver shook his head. “My god. Please don’t.”