9. Meg
CHAPTER 9
MEG
S o much about running a ranch came down to the tedious task of maintaining fences. If even one panel goes down without you noticing, then all your livestock can wander off and get lost, stolen or killed. And that’s precisely the opposite of what you want to happen to your cattle, isn’t it? That was how Nash was planning to spend the day, roaming around the perimeters of each field, checking what might need repairs.
Meg still wasn’t used to having so much time on her hands. She’d gone from working till she was borderline delirious to actually having whole hours to herself. In theory it was great. In reality she was bored out of her brain.
“Can I come?” she asked as Nash was chugging down the last of his coffee.
“You want to come check fences?”
“Yeah?”
“ Why? ” he asked, looking amused.
“Because I’m bored,” Meg said with an honest shrug.
“Checking fences is boring too, you know.”
“It’s less boring than hanging around here on my own.”
There was also the fact that Meg was here in the first place because she was supposed to be evaluating the ranch. Not a whole lot of evaluating had been happening. Nothing at all if you wanted to get technical about it. Between navigating being thrown together with Nash, horses giving birth and recovering from the depths of burnout, Meg had barely even scratched the surface of the job she was here to do. The problem was that now she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to be partly responsible for taking this place away from Nash. Not to mention, the longer she was away from the stifling world of the industrial livestock yards, the less she wanted to add yet another smaller farm to their catalog. As her fragile new relationship with Nash thawed out, she became less and less certain about what she was actually here for?—
“Come on then,” said Nash, interrupting her internal spiral of doom. “You can ride Nickel if you’re that interested in coming along.”
They could take the truck around the property, sure. That would be the more efficient way to do things. Instead, they saddled up the horses and decided to do things the old-fashioned way. Nash insisted it was just to keep the horses fit and healthy, but Meg suspected he just wanted the opportunity to go riding. She’d never seen him enjoy something as much as he enjoyed taking care of these animals. But who could blame him? As soon as she climbed on top of Nickel, Nash riding ahead on Gadget, Meg could feel her whole body start to unwind.
This was what she needed. Sitting indoors had never really been her style, and even when she’d been outside on the feedlots with the cattle, it was still a whole bunch of steel fences, flat ground and rectangular buildings.
Nash’s ranch couldn’t be more different. As they rode from pasture to pasture, the land swelled and dipped, morphing from hills to shallow valleys. The grass was green and thick, so fresh you could smell it, and trees dotted the landscape, making it look like a storybook. Then there was the sky — blue as crystal and reaching on forever. Meg found herself straining her neck with how much she was looking up at it. You’d think she’d never been outside before, but being out here in all this openness was making her realize just how closed off and oppressive the yards really were.
At least Nash didn’t have to witness her existential crisis while he rode slightly ahead of her, his head constantly dipping up and down to inspect the fences. Occasionally he’d kick a foot out and tap at some of the wooden posts, but he was so engrossed in his task that Meg was free to soak it all in in relative privacy.
They spent a good hour riding around checking the fences, and even then, they hadn’t explored all of the ranch. They hadn’t spoken much, but the silence between them was no longer awkward. In fact, Meg had been enjoying herself immensely.
Eventually, Nash came to a halt and Meg stopped beside him. This was the farthest she’d ventured from the house. Right now it felt like they were the only two people on earth.
Nash was giving her a funny look, one she couldn’t read at all. It was like he was thinking really hard about something.
“Those fences are looking real good,” Meg said dryly, hoping to snap him out of it. “You know, ’cause I’ve definitely been helping this whole time.”
An amused grin flickered across his face. But then the look of concentration came back, and Meg felt like he was looking straight through the middle of her.
“I wanna show you something,” he said, and without any more explanation than that, he took off across the field. Meg followed — of course she did — encouraging Nickel into a canter to keep up with Nash. They were heading towards a cluster of trees, a massive and ancient oak taking pride of place. Its branches spread out like the fingers of a hand. Nash pulled Gadget to a stop as he neared the trunk, and Meg followed suit.
“Nice tree,” she said. “Very good tree. Definitely worth the ride.”
Nash gave her a dirty look over his shoulder as he jumped to the ground. Meg just smiled brightly in return.
“It’s not the tree I’m showing you,” Nash grumbled. “It’s what I made in the tree.”
“Wait, what?”
“Look up.”
Meg did as she was told and noticed the ladder hanging down for the first time. Following it up, she saw the bottom of a tree house sitting above them, held in place in the fork of two branches with elaborate wooden struts.
“You made a treehouse?”
“Yeah,” Nash said, eyes only meeting her sparingly. “Thought I’d recreate the old one, you know. The one we only ever used when we were sneaking around at night.”
Meg looked back up at the treehouse, which was a little hard to see from this angle. Immediately any desire to tease or poke at Nash vanished into thin air. She hadn’t thought about that little tree house in so long… mostly because it hurt to think about. It had been her safe place, her little sanctuary for years . And part of that sanctuary was having Nash there beside her. So Meg had stopped thinking about it, had left it behind with the rest of her life in Fordswell.
But seeing that Nash had literally rebuilt the treehouse all on his own, that he’d been thinking about it over the years… it left her speechless.
Nash started fidgeting as her silence stretched on.
“Thought you might like to see it,” he said, flushing red around the collar of his shirt.
“Yeah. Yeah, I would,” Meg said, sliding off of Nickel before Nash could get too embarrassed and change his mind. She wanted to see inside more than she’d ever wanted anything.
He climbed up the ladder ahead of her, escaping her scrutiny. She was still feeling knocked sideways by the fact that he had built this. He was the one that had blown her off so spectacularly, seeming so indifferent the whole time. Now it seemed that he was the one hanging onto memories all this time. It was hurting her head, trying to make sense of it all.
She hadn’t climbed a rope ladder in over a decade, and it wasn’t nearly as easy as she remembered. When she somehow managed to wobble her way to the top, Nash reached a hand down for her and she wrapped her fingers in his. He hoisted her up and she stood up in the little house, pretending that she wasn’t disappointed at having to let go of his hand. Luckily, she was distracted soon enough.
She’d been expecting the same interior as the old tree house, bare boards that hadn’t even been sanded, banged together with ancient nails. She expected it to be small too, having to crouch around like a goblin so she didn’t smack her head. But this treehouse was huge; she could stand upright and walk around even. Not to mention that it was nothing short of beautiful inside. Nash really had gone all out. There was paint on the walls and ceiling, an off-white, with soft blue painted around the window frame and the skirting boards. Because the treehouse had floorboards , and they were nicer than the ones inside Nash’s house. Sanded and stained a golden brown and clearly so well constructed that Meg knew she could do jumping jacks up here and the place wouldn’t so much as wobble.
“How long did this take you?” Meg asked, fingertips against the wall.
Nash leaned back against the wall. “A couple of months for the actual building part. Whenever I had some free time, I’d put together another bit of wall or something. But then I finished it, and it looked kind of boring, so I’ve been prettying it up over the years. Just bits and pieces. It needs curtains, but I’m terrible at sewing anything.”
“It looks great,” she said, and it was the absolute truth. “Even without curtains.”
Meg pretended she didn’t notice the redness flaring around Nash’s collar again.
“I just always liked the old one, you know?” Nash said, scratching the back of his head. “And I had planned to be here the rest of my life, so I figured I’d rebuild it. This one’s a bit nicer though. But I figured if someday I had kids running around the place, I wanted them to have a really nice treehouse. The old one was great, but I am surprised neither of us got tetanus.”
Meg laughed, because he was right. It was a miracle that neither of them ever ended up in the hospital from a rusty nail. But the laughter died off pretty quickly. She imagined the ranch getting bought out by the company. A company that would see no profitable reason to keep an old oak tree standing, let alone a treehouse. She knew how they worked; this tiny little sanctuary in the branches would be bulldozed within weeks.
She bent down a little and looked out at the view, mostly to distract herself from such dismal thoughts.
“Wow…”
“Pretty nice, huh?” Nash said smugly.
Pretty nice was a pathetic understatement. Just a few yards off the ground made a whole world of difference when looking out at the land. Even the colors seemed brighter from up here. Meg’s attention was taken by the hills on the edge of the ranch that, until now, hadn’t inspired much interest in her. But now she noticed the structures peppered around the place that she hadn’t seen before.
“What are those buildings?” she asked. Nash didn’t even need to look out the window to know what she was talking about.
He sat down against the wall, his wrists resting on his knees. “That’s the old farm, where whoever had first lived here, however many generations ago, originally set up. My uncle rebuilt on a flatter surface because it was ‘more convenient’ apparently.”
“Yeah. Building a whole new set of buildings seems way more convenient than driving up a hill,” Meg said, bemused, looking out at the old buildings.
“I never said he was sane,” said Nash.
“So are we going to go and have a look?” she asked.
“Why?”
Meg raised her eyebrows. “I’m supposed to be evaluating the place. I figure my bosses will want to know about a whole extra set of buildings up on the hill.”
She regretted mentioning the evaluation. It seemed to deflate the good mood that had been growing between them all afternoon. Nash didn’t show much of a reaction, but his expressive shoulders sagged a little before he sighed and hauled himself to his feet.
“Yeah, let’s go and have a look.”
“We don’t have to,” Meg said, suddenly desperate to keep this good feeling between them.
“No, it’ll be fun,” Nash said with a smile. Meg couldn’t figure out if it was real or not. “I haven’t been up there in years. I should probably go check it out.”
Feeling guilty, Meg followed him down the ladder, which was much easier than climbing up it. But by the time she was back in the saddle, she’d stamped that guilt out, pushing it far away.
She was here to do a job. She knew that. Nash knew that. This wasn’t a vacation. She was here to do a job.
It seemed she needed to remind both of them of that.
They rode in silence, but thankfully it didn’t veer back into that uncomfortable quiet that they’d been stuck in before. Mostly they were quiet because on horseback, heading up the hill to the old house and sheds was a lot steeper than it looked from a distance. Suddenly, Nash’s uncle relocating to a flatter part of the property didn’t seem entirely crazy.
They dismounted and hitched the horses to one of the fences that was still in surprisingly good condition. There was an old cottage, much smaller than the house Nash lived in now, a couple of sheds the same size as the cottage and a barn.
The buildings were old, for sure, and they definitely wore the signs of their abandonment, but they were still in pretty good shape, considering. The wood they were made from was still strong, with no sign of rot.
“Do you reckon we can head inside without the roof falling in on our heads?” Nash asked, peering around the outsides of the structures with a critical eye.
“They look really good,” Meg said. She wasn’t a builder, not anything close. But they really did look good.
“They actually do,” Nash said, mirroring her thoughts. “All right… c’mon.”
He opened the door to the cottage, its hinges squeaking unsurprisingly. Meg followed a few seconds later when there was no sign of the roof caving in.
The word old kept springing to mind. Old, old, old. This was the sort of place she’d imagined she’d be inspecting when she’d taken this assignment.
There were animal nests here and there, but nothing had chewed its way through the timber or left irreversible damage, so that was good. There was dust and spiderwebs, piles of leaves and general debris. A typical abandoned building.
Nash was looking around the place, his face sad.
“You don’t really want to sell this place, do you?” she asked. Nash said nothing; he just sighed, but that was answer enough.
“No, I don’t.” He said it so quietly that Meg wasn’t even sure he’d meant to say it out loud. She tried not to focus on how sad he sounded. She also tried not to focus on how she was playing a major part in taking this place away from him. She might have held a pretty solid grudge against him for a decade, but there was still a loyalty there underneath it all. The stoop of his shoulders and the resigned expression on his face had her old allegiance to him roaring back to life.
If there was a last-ditch way to help him out, to help him keep the ranch instead of helping to take it away from him forever, then she would jump on it.
The idea struck her, hard and fast. Meg had never really understood why cartoons had lightbulbs above characters’ heads to show that they’d had an idea — such a bizarre connection to make. But right now, that’s exactly what it felt like; a light switching on out of nowhere, illuminating a whole bunch of things.
It could work. And even if the idea was a little bit out in left field, it was a last-ditch effort, after all…
“Oh, don’t make that face…”
She looked over at Nash, who was watching her like she might start biting or something.
“What? What face? What about your face? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’ve got that ‘I’ve got an idea’ look on your face.”
Meg folded her arms across her chest. “How do you know what my ‘idea’ face looks like?”
“Because it looks like that right there,” he said, pointing a finger straight at her nose.
“You haven’t seen me in ten years. You can’t possibly remember what my idea face looks like,” she continued to protest.
“Oh, but I do, because that face traumatized me one too many times, so it’s been seared into my memory.”
Meg pouted, but there wasn’t much use in arguing because he was right, after all. She had a pretty big idea brewing.
“I just had a thought…” she began.
“Oh God…”
“Do you want to hear it or not?”
“I never said I didn’t want to hear it. I was just bracing myself for whatever chaos crossed your mind.”
“Actually, it’s all about getting organized. So no chaos at all.”
“Ah-huh.”
“We clean these buildings up…”
“And?”
“And lease them out for holiday rentals. Overnight stays, that sort of thing.”
It was like she’d spoken in Swedish or something because he didn’t seem to comprehend the words that had come out of her mouth.
“You know,” she prompted, trying to get Nash to see her vision. “Like a countryside getaway for city people. They’d love to stay in a place like this.”
Nash raised his eyebrows and looked pointedly around the room. “Are you sure about that? Because I’m pretty certain there’s a skunk sleeping in the corner over there.”
Meg resisted the urge to go and look for the skunk and focused on the mission at hand.
“I mean, we clean it up, obviously.”
“We?”
“We. I’ll help.”
“Why?”
She wasn’t entirely sure. It had been years since she’d seen Nash and only a couple of days when she didn’t actively hate him. Partly, the truth was that she felt loyalty to their past selves, the kids who thought they’d be inseparable forever. The truth was, she was just realizing now how desperately she’d missed him. The real truth might even be that this would be an excuse to spend more time with him. All of which was far too raw and crazy to ever mention out loud. So Meg stuck to the most rational answer she could think of.
“Because… At least if we try this and it doesn’t work, then you can hand over the ranch to the company knowing you tried everything. And I can sign off on the recommendation with a clear conscience.”
Nash peered around the place again with a critical eye, as if he was trying to envision what it might look like with a bit of spring cleaning. A whole lot of spring cleaning, really…
“People would really pay to stay all the way out here?” he asked, still sounding dubious.
“Yeah. Rich city people who don’t get to see grass or trees, that sort of thing. We could even make the barn all nice and advertise it as a wedding venue. That would be a hit.”
Now Nash just looked at her like she’d gone insane.
“You’re telling me fancy city people would pay to get married there ?”
He stabbed a finger in the direction of the old barn.
“They’d pay a lot of money, yes.”
“To get married?”
“Ah-huh.”
“In a barn?”
“Yes, in a barn.”
He looked around the dusty and decrepit space with his face twisted up into a confused expression. Meg could practically hear the cogs whirring in his brain.
“I’m assuming we’d have to do some pretty intense renovations before we’d host a spa day here?” he drawled, kicking an abandoned bird’s nest aside and sending up a puff of dust.
“Not necessarily,” Meg said cheerfully, knowing he was inches away from agreeing. “I mean, all the structures look just fine. It would be a matter of cleaning and maybe some fresh paint. Well, not maybe. Definitely some fresh paint. But like, simple stuff, you know?”
Nash chewed on her words while Meg stayed quiet, letting him think.
“All right,” he said, with a shrug and a disbelieving shake of his head. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve got anything to lose.”
He looked over at her, head tilted like he was analyzing Meg now instead of the room.
“And you’d really help me set this up?”
She nodded. “I really would. Like I said, if it doesn’t work, then at least we’ll both have a clear conscience.”
He nodded and held out his hand.
“Well, then,” he said. “Looks like we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us and not a whole lot of time.”
Meg took his big hand in hers, her fingers immediately enveloped.
“I guess we better get started, then.”