Chapter 9 – Kaitlyn/Sunshine
NINE
KAITLYN/SUNSHINE
Later that night, I was standing in the foyer of the Lodge with no idea where to go, so I just walked until I found what I assumed was the main living area.
It was a huge space with soaring beam ceilings over plush leather couches and chairs where I imagined the family gathered to open presents on Christmas morning.
Where they might sit in front of the fire and talk at night.
On the mantle over the fireplace were a series of pictures I couldn’t look at.
My half-brothers. My birth father/sperm donor. His wife.
I mean… I couldn’t even hold it in my head, so I looked away and just catalogued how much nicer this house was than the one I grew up in. The couches didn’t sag and they weren’t covered in dog fur and my sisters’ socks. The chairs matched and went with the dark drapes. Everything was tidy.
It was an appealing contrast from the chaos I grew up in. Not bad chaos, just too many people in too small a space .
The McGraw house was very quiet. And still. Almost…eerie?
“Hello?” I said.
Ethan, Carter and Mac had left me a while ago, and I’d been in front of my laptop ever since, doing a shit ton of research. But now my eyes were burning with screen fatigue and my brain was in overdrive.
We needed a high return with a fast turnaround and the best answer I could come up with was one no one would like.
Crypto.
I’d researched every other option I could think of, and none of them had the potentially fast reward that crypto did.
These guys were going to hate that option. I kind of hated that option. As a trading currency, it had been tainted by grifters since its inception, and the media didn’t help.
And the reality was, the risk was real…unless you were me. I knew the Asian markets. I knew how quickly they moved. I knew how you could push money through multiple channels in a way that could double, sometimes triple an investment.
There was always risk. But with someone who understood the game, it was doable.
It was late now, close to seven in the evening. I just needed to find Harmony, explain that I was working on some theories, and head…home. Where was home, again?
“You’re half McGraw…”
I waited for the anger and hurt to stir again. And it bubbled. Simmered. But I was too physically tired to give it much energy. The early flight out from New York, the time change, the soul-crushing family news.
The orgasms .
All of it had drained me.
“Hello?” I repeated.
Hoooooooonk!
Startled, I jumped and turned to see a three foot white goose waddling toward me. It lifted one wing, the other was in a sling contraption.
“What the…?”
It kept coming for me and I jumped sideways, trying to put the couch between me and the charging goose, but it just kept coming. And honking. And flapping its one wing.
“What the hell?” I breathed, circling the couch. “I’m a friend,” I told it, hoping that understanding English might have come with that sling. It honked at me like I’d insulted its mother.
“Friend!” I shouted.
A black and white herding dog came running down the stairs from the second floor and stood under the big antler chandelier. The war goose detoured to the dog, who barked once in ferocious warning at the wall.
The goose waddled into position between me and the dog, as if to have the dog’s back.
“I’m not the enemy here, guys.”
They made more noise than the alarm system in my apartment. Honking and barking. Barking and honking.
“Great,” I muttered to myself. “Even the animals don’t like me.”
“That’s not true!” Harmony bounced down the steps, her red braids trailing behind her. “Jenny and Bruce just need time to get used to strangers.”
“Jenny and Bruce?”
“Jenny is the blind dog, Bruce is her emotional support goose.”
“Of course she is. ”
Harmony settled her…pets, who slunk off to beds in front of the cold fireplace. The dog barked one more time in the wrong direction, and the goose eyed me like he knew I was up to no good.
“Not…not that you’re a stranger,” she said. “You’re just…”
“A stranger,” I said.
“New,” she countered.
I wondered how desperate it would seem if I showed up at Tag’s home and asked him if I could sleep with him.
I didn’t need any more orgasms, I just wanted to…rest. In a quiet place. A place where I wasn’t a stranger, or a place that wasn’t loaded with a thousand secrets and hurt feelings. I knew by looking at Harmony she wanted to talk about everything that had happened, and I…didn’t.
I didn’t want to talk about anything.
But that wasn’t going to happen here, and it definitely wasn’t going to happen in my mother’s house.
“How about some dinner?” Harmony suggested, her voice soft. “You must be starved.”
“I had some BBQ,” I said. And I wasn’t hungry for anything other than sleep. “I guess I should go home. Mom’s probably freaking out.”
“Mom can stew in it,” Harmony said, curtly. “I’m not happy that she kept this secret from you, Sunny. From all of us. You deserved to know the truth.”
“Would it have made a difference?” I asked. “If she’d told me when I was eighteen? I’ve been trying to imagine all day how sad it would have made Dad. And it’s not like I would have attempted to have a relationship with Mr. McGraw.”
“Still, you should have known. The boys should have known too. What if one of them wanted to date you back in high school?”
“Right,” I laughed. No one wanted to date me in high school, and certainly not the most popular boys in town.
“Well, it could have happened,” she grumbled. “If you won’t let me feed you, at least have a glass of wine with me?”
I shook my head. I should just pull the Bandaid off and go home to talk to Mom. “Is there a car here that I can use?”
“I’m sure there is, but you don’t need to go home tonight. I asked Mrs. Walker to make sure one of the guest rooms was ready so you could stay here.”
The relief was palpable. No more talking, no more explanations or excuses about how and why decisions were made. Eventually, I was going to forgive my mother. Because she was the only mother I had.
But Harmony was right. I didn’t have to do that today.
“Then a glass of wine sounds nice,” I said. I followed my sister into the kitchen and took a seat on one of the stools pressed against the quartz covered island.
The kitchen was small but beautiful, with white tiles and sleek countertops. Top of the line stainless steel appliances, a massive eight burner range with hood, and a butler’s pantry.
It was a fancy kitchen that also came with Mrs. Walker, the housekeeper and cook, who had worked for the McGraws for decades.
It’s crazy to think of Harmony as someone with a housekeeper.
“Do you like living here?” I asked my sister.
She pulled out a chilled bottle of wine from the fridge.
“I’m ridiculously happy with Ethan.” She poured the wine into a stemmed glass and set it in front of me .
“Yes, I get it. You’re fabulously in love, yada yada. I asked if you are happy living here. In this house. With all this stuff and Mrs. Walker, who makes up guest rooms.” I circled my finger in the air to encapsulate everything surrounding us.
“It’s fancy,” she said, taking the seat next to me with a glass of water in her hand.
“And not really me, of course. But we can’t fire Mrs. Walker, she’s been with the family for ages and she’s practically raising Carter’s kids.
Also, it’s really nice to come home from the store and have dinner made.
Having that kind of extra time and mental energy makes me think I could actually run for city office. ”
“Of course, you can run for city office. The Gulch needs you to run for office.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Harmony said, because she couldn’t take a compliment to save her life.
“But I have to say, one of the best things about falling in love is that it really doesn’t matter where you are, it only matters who you’re with.
” She shrugged, like love just simplified everything, when I’d never seen the truth of that statement before.
“Ethan told me you recommended the boys sell some land?”
“Selling off some of the land, wouldn’t mean you had to leave your house,” I explained, in case she was worried about that. “It would just downsize the operation. Maybe you wouldn’t need as many hands during calving season. That kind of thing.”
“Do you know anything about calving season?”
I snorted. “I do not. Other than baby animals are born. So, there would be less of them. Is that so horrible?”
“Sun,” she said, and gently laid her hand on my forearm.
My sister was a toucher, I’d forgotten that.
It made me realize how little I was touched in New York City.
No one at work would casually lay their hand on me, and I didn’t have friends that did that kind of thing.
It was extremely uncomfortable and…kind of nice at the same time.
“I know you’re probably not going to believe this, but honestly, truly, if you want to go back to New York, you can,” Harmony said.
She squeezed my arm, and like she understood she was already pushing me to my limit, she let go of me and wrapped her hands around her glass of water.
“Did I imagine my big sister coming home to save the day? Sure, I did. Because I believe you can do anything. I always have. But I don’t want you to think I need you here to save us so I can have this fancy house.
Ethan and I could move into a trailer and be happy. And that’s the truth.”
“Yes, but what about the store? The bar? The café? I think they’d make it, but I don’t know. If I leave and the ranch doesn’t make it, everyone loses. If I do take a chance and blow this, everyone could still lose. The odds are shit, Harmony.”
I reached for the glass of wine and took a long slug.
“You can’t take on everything, Sunny. It’s not fair.”
“You did,” I said. “You married Ethan to save the festival. No one is asking me to do anything but what I’m really good at.”
I slid off the stool with my glass of wine in hand and walked over to a window with an amazing view of the land.
The barn and paddocks were far off to the right.
The horses I’d never consider riding were grazing out in the pasture.
It was gorgeous. A post card. They should film a movie here.
How much money could we make renting out the land to movie people?
But, then, I dismissed the idea, we couldn’t make it work in time. And Tag would hate it.
“Fake marrying your nemesis is just what you did this year. Let’s be honest, you took on all of this when I left for New York,” I said, as everything I’d left behind, everything I’d left on my little sister’s shoulders, sunk in.
“Mom’s grief after losing Dad, all the businesses, Amity and Mac’s break up, Bliss getting into all that trouble after high school.
Boone enlisting. I mean, I’m sure our mom hated that.
I was the oldest, but I left you with all that responsibility. ”
Harmony shrugged, like none of it bothered her. She was so much like her name, it was a cliché. “Yes, but I love it here. Everything I do, it’s from a place of love. Like you love the city.”
Did I love the city? I knew people who did. So many folks at the firm were die hard New Yorkers who wouldn’t consider living anywhere else. The theater, the food, the cultures.
For me, it had been an escape. A place to blend in and hide. No one looked at me like some freak, because no one looked at anyone in New York.
There were too many of us.
But, these days, it felt like I was on this never-ending escalator, and it didn’t matter how fast I ran or how hard I climbed, I was never any closer to the top.
Worse, I didn’t know what was at the top if I eventually reached it.
“I don’t know if I love it anymore. The city, I mean,” I confessed, and took another sip of wine. “Sometimes, I feel…trapped.”
The words fell hard between us. I hadn’t said that aloud. I wasn’t sure I’d even really thought them until this moment in a quiet kitchen with my sister. Things were never still in the city. It was loud and fast and non-stop.
“Uh, that’s news.”
“I’ve been up for a partnership for the last two years and it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Jared, the asshole partner I told you about, keeps telling me to be patient, wait for my time, but…”
“But?”
“It feels like they’re stalling,” I admitted. “I was such a hot shot in the beginning, but now at thirty, I’m just like every other broker out there. Making so much money, I’d be an idiot to leave, but at the same time, is making money enough? Will it be enough for the next thirty years?”
“Thirty years?” Harmony snorted. “I can’t look ahead to the next thirty days. Heck, thirty hours.”
“My therapist says I don’t know how to be in the present,” I told her, over my shoulder.
“Wow. You really are a city girl. With a therapist and everything.”
“Oh, please. Mom kept a secret for over thirty years, you don’t think she needs therapy?” I told her.
Harmony came up behind me and dropped her chin on my shoulder. We must have made a picture. Me, in designer wear. Her, in her denim overalls and long braids down her back
“This,” she said, pointing out the window to the setting sun. “This is my therapy. It reminds me how small I am every day. Just a spec on the earth for a limited time, so I need to enjoy it while I can.”
“Bleck.” I pretended to gag. “That’s the love talking.”
“Maybe it is,” she said, and then tickled the spot along my ribs where she knew I was sensitive. “You should get some for yourself.”
“Pass,” I drawled, dodging her fingers. Though an image of Tag smiling at me in his truck did flash across my mind.
That was the sex talking.
And, also, maybe because I still wasn’t wearing underwear.