Chapter 5 – Kaitlyn #2
I’d never seen Sunshine run before. And in those fancy wedges, I didn’t see how she could pick up any speed, but she was kicking up a cloud of dust behind her as she bee-lined straight toward me.
“Not well,” I said. “That’s how she took it.”
The entire clan poured out of the house behind her. Including Harmony’s blind dog Jenny, who was running off in the wrong direction, while Harmony’s goose was honking at Sunshine’s heels.
“Harmony!” Monica Calloway yelled. “Come back, please.”
“Harmony!” Everyone else echoed. “Come back!”
“It’s Kaitlyn!” Sunny roared over her shoulder.
“Who is Kaitlyn?” Ethan asked.
“She thinks she is.”
“Start the truck,” Sunshine yelled. “Now!”
“I think she’s talking to you,” Ethan said, backing up a few steps, like he was afraid of a charging lion.
I didn’t blame him. Sunshine looked like an Amazon princess charging into battle. Her fists were clenched, her face was red, and if she’d had a weapon, I would have been nervous. As it was, I was used to charging wild things.
But, damn, she was fierce.
Her wish was my command, so I hopped back into my pickup truck and started the engine. A few seconds later, Sun was throwing herself into the passenger seat.
“Drive!” she barked at me.
“Yes, ma’am. Any particular…” I stopped talking when I saw her face. She was tears and rage and shock. She just wanted to get away.
I reversed the truck at stuntman-worthy speed, and drove away from the Lodge like it was chasing us.
The two families were in our rear view mirror, bent over and panting as we made our getaway .
“Did you know?” she snapped at me, her arms crossed over her heaving chest, her damp eyes shooting out sparks.
“Oh, no, sweetheart. Don’t lump me in with them. I knew. But, I’m not your family. Yes, I volunteered to come get you in New York. But, as far as I was concerned, none of it was my business, and it certainly wasn’t my doing.”
“You made it your business when you offered to come and get me.”
“Fair enough. But, I’m not your enemy, and I think you know that, or you wouldn’t be using me as your getaway driver.”
Wiping her eyes, she looked out the window, back towards the ranch. The McGraws and Calloways were getting smaller, but distance and speed weren’t going to make the truth go away.
Without thinking about it, I headed towards town.
Last Hope Gulch wasn’t much more than a public square that abutted a set of abandoned train tracks that used to bring cattle to market in Cheyenne two hundred years ago. Last Hope Gulch grew up around those tracks.
The first Calloway – the widow who refused to sell her land to the McGraw who wanted it – started selling goods to people on the train. Her daughter started cooking, and a café sprung up. It wasn’t long before a bar joined the dusty main street.
Last Chance Goods and Provisions.
Last Meal Café.
Last Stand Bar.
All original to the town. That’s how the Calloway kin ended up running the local businesses, while the McGraws owned all the land and the cattle surrounding it.
“Oh, my God,” Harmony breathed. “Slow down.”
I crept along Hangman’s Lane .
“None of it has changed,” she breathed, looking at the old store fronts.
“Well, your sister is serving something called cold foam with coffee at the café. Folks are real excited about it.”
“She’s one step closer to a Starbucks,” Sunshine murmured.
“That’s what Amity said.”
I was happy to see her smile.
“God, look at those stupid statues,” she said, as we drove by the town square.
At every corner was a bronze statue of some violent moment between the McGraws and Calloways.
The bootlegging Calloway just after she was killed by the McGraw Sheriff.
The Calloway widow who was shoved over Widow’s Peak, only to survive long enough to kill her murderer.
In place of pride, right in front of the train depot that served as our municipal building and historical museum, was a bronze recreation of a gallows where Widow Callow was hanged.
I forgot how much I loved the morbid whimsy of this town.
“They’re talking about building a statue recreating Ethan and Harmony’s wedding.”
“You’re joking,” she said.
“This town doesn’t joke about the feud.”
“Or its statues.”
I was about to take my foot off the brake so we could head down past the school and the emergency clinic, but someone shouting my name stopped me.
“Tag! Tag! Wait up!”
“Uh oh,” I muttered, as I saw the older man running as best he could from the municipal building towards my truck. “It’s Mayor Gallup. I’ve got to pull over for him. ”
“Please don’t,” Sunshine groaned. “Let’s just pretend you didn’t hear him?”
“Can’t do that, sweetheart. You might be passing through, but this is my home. If the mayor needs me, he needs me.”
“Great,” she muttered. “I picked a getaway driver who also happens to be an upstanding citizen.”
I parked the truck in one of the open spots along the square, and leaned out the window. “What can I do for you, Mayor?”
He came right up to the truck, his hands curled over the door, like he was holding on so he could catch his breath. I hadn’t seen Mayor Gallup move that fast in years. His big, fancy rodeo championship buckle from about forty years ago was barely visible under the curvature of his belly.
“Tag! Just the man I wanted to talk to. I heard this business with Leroy’s will isn’t over and the ranch is still in-”
I opened my mouth to interrupt him, because he clearly didn’t recognize who was in the truck with me, but Sunshine got there first.
“How do you know about Leroy’s will?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Mayor Gallup asked, looking past me to Sunshine in the passenger seat.
“Mayor, you remember Sunshine, the oldest Calloway girl.”
“Well, I’ll be a sonofabitch, you’ve grown up into something special,” he said, pushing his head into the truck. “Quality, my dear, I can see it from here.”
“Hello, Mayor Gallup,” she replied, cooly. “Amazing to come home and still find you in office. What’s it been now? Twenty years straight?”
He laughed like she was telling a joke. “No term limits in the Gulch. Thank goodness. I just keep running and winning. Running and winning. What’s a mayor to do?
Am I right? Now, you must be home to help settle all this will nonsense, once and for all.
Never thought I’d see the day when the McGraws called in a Calloway to help settle things, but after Ethan and Harmony, I guess all sorts of pigs are flying. ”
“I haven’t agreed to anything,” Sunshine said. “Go shove that in the gossip mill.”
“Now, Sunshine, there’s no call to be ornery.”
“Oh, I’ll show you ornery.” she growled low in her throat, and I realized Mayor Gallup was a dead man walking.
“We gotta get going, Sheriff, thanks for saying hello.” I put the truck in gear and left Mayor Gallup standing there with his mouth open.
“The name is Kaitlyn!” she yelled out her open window. “I can’t believe no one has challenged him after all this time.”
“Don’t look now, but the rumor is, your sister is thinking about running for mayor on the heels of her success with managing the Feud Day Festival.”
“Harmony?” she asked, and then nodded. “Good. He could at least have someone challenging him.”
She looked out the window as we drove past the school and the clinic.
“This town,” she said. “Maybe it should vanish.”
“There’s a lot of good people who call this place home,” I said.
“I never knew them.”
“Maybe this is your chance,” I said.
She looked so mad. Belligerent, even. In fact, she looked exactly how she used to in class when the bullies were tormenting her for knowing all the answers .
“Hey,” I said, reaching over to squeeze her shoulder. “Breathe.”
“I’m just so…” she shook her head and I knew what she was.
Frustrated. Tangled up in her own head. She was moving a million miles an hour in her brain and getting nowhere. She needed to take it out on someone, and if I wanted to ensure she didn’t have another run in with someone local, it was best to take her out of town.
“You want something to eat?” I asked. I’d say what she needed was some exercise, but those fancy sandals weren’t going to hold up on the trails around here.
“No. I don’t want to eat,” she said, and then she pinned me with her brown eyes. That amber color that made me want to drink. “You know what I want?” she asked.
I’d never known what was in a woman’s head. And, least of all, Sunshine’s. But my dick twitched like it knew what she was about to say.
“I want to play.”