Chapter 16 – Sunshine/Kaitlyn
SIXTEEN
SUNSHINE/KAITLYN
“Is there blood coming out of my eyes?” Carter asked his younger brother, Mac.
“I understood everything she said,” Mac told Carter.
“Bullshit,” Ethan coughed into his fist.
We were back in the study at the Lodge, the brothers having congregated again to hear my plan to save the ranch, which gave me an excellent opportunity to bust out my PowerPoint presentation.
The last slide read: Questions?
The three men sitting on the brown leather couch looked at me like I’d presented the entire slide show in Mandarin. When, in fact, only two slides which highlighted the Asian markets had just a few words in Mandarin.
I didn’t see the problem.
“Is there a way to make any of what you just said comprehensible to normal human beings?” Ethan asked me.
My jaw must have dropped. “Seriously? That was my entire plan boiled down to its most simplistic form. I don’t know any other way to say it, other than big rewards need big risks. ”
“There you go!” Mac said.
“Just say that,” Carter agreed.
The door to the study was pushed open by Harmony’s goose, with a corresponding honk to announce her arrival.
“I thought it went very well, Bruce,” I said to the animal. It had taken some time, but we were starting to bond.
Harmony was carrying a tray of snacks, and what looked to be a pitcher of iced tea.
“I thought you could use some food,” she said. “Help fuel the brain.”
“Too late,” Ethan said, getting up to help her move stuff around the desk to make room for the tray. “She already melted our brains. Shoo Bruce, this is important ranch business.”
The goose honked in protest but waddled out of the study, like it understood the directions.
Harmony turned on me. “Oh, no. Did she go all math on you guys?”
“Worse,” Mac said, helping himself to a sandwich. “She threw in Mandarin for good measure.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my right eyebrow.
“Oh, please,” Carter begged me. “Not the eyebrow. That thing fucking scares the crap out of me.”
Of course, I knew that. It’s why I used it so effectively. “I’m trying to help you all. You brought me here, remember?”
“A plan like this. We’re going to have to bring it up for a vote,” Ethan said. “I don’t see any other way around it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked them. “Who’s voting? All of the brothers?”
Carter shook his head. “The town. ”
“But it’s your ranch,” I said.
“It’s our ranch, sis. But, big decisions like this, we can’t make it without everyone being involved,” Ethan said. “Too many lives are impacted by the choices we make. Dad didn’t care, obviously, but we do.”
“Fine,” I told them. “I already have the PowerPoint presentation ready.”
The three men groaned in unison.
“It’s a good presentation!” I shouted back. I wasn’t used to having my excellent work questioned.
“Just don’t do the eyebrow thing,” Carter said. “We want the town to trust you, not fear you.”
“I’ll get everyone assembled,” Harmony said. She took out her phone and started typing out a text.
“This feels like overkill,” I muttered, leaning on the desk behind me.
“No, you’ll see,” Harmony said. “Town hall meetings are fun.”
“Town hall meetings are not fun,” Mac told Harmony. “Carter, let me know what time this thing is and I’ll come over and watch the kids.”
“Don’t you get a vote?” I asked Mac.
“I’ll go with the consensus,” he said. “But I don’t do town hall meetings.”
Harmony sighed. “Mac…”
“Don’t, babe,” Ethan said. “Not worth it. You headed back to the bunkhouse?” he asked his brother. Mac nodded. “Stop by Tag’s place and let him know we’re calling the town hall. Tell him to get the word out to the hands.”
“On it,” he said, as he stepped outside the study. “Oh, and Bruce has been eavesdropping this entire time.”
Honk!
“Is that true?” I asked my sister .
“Bruce doesn’t like to be kept out of things,” Harmony pointed out.
The guys left and it was just the two of us. I poured a glass of iced tea for myself and grabbed a handful of peanuts. I hadn’t realized how nervous I’d been about the presentation, but now I was starving.
Funny. I presented all the time to investors, the partners. Some of the richest men and women in the country, and it never phased me.
Three new half-brothers whose ranch was on the line, and I was flustered.
Maybe I shouldn’t do the Mandarin slides for the town. I bit down on my thumbnail and cursed, realizing what I’d done. Time for a distraction.
“So, Mac not going to town meetings, is that also about…”
“Our sister?” Harmony asked. “Yes. Mac doesn’t attend anything if Amity is there, and of course, she’ll be there. She owns The Last Meal. Her future, like everyone else’s in the Gulch, is linked to this ranch.”
“He really holds a grudge, huh?”
“Oh, don’t be mistaken. The grudge goes both ways,” Harmony said. “Which wasn’t really an issue until I married Ethan. But, now we’re family, and I’m having a hard time convincing both Mac and Amity that they need to get over it. Hold on. I need to let Mom, Bliss and Amity know about tonight.”
I watched her type the message on her phone and hit send.
“Group chat, huh?”
She blinked like she didn’t understand the context of the question.
“You guys have a family group chat,” I said .
I wasn’t even sure what my point was, but the realization dawned on her face.
They had a group chat without me.
“Sun, you know the only reason you’re not included on this is because it would drive you nuts to be bombarded with family texts all day. We wouldn’t have wanted to bother you with nonsense stuff like who’s making what salad for the town BBQ.”
“No, of course not. I would have immediately left a family group chat. Especially over salad,” I said, with a fake smile. “Very busy during my work day. Very, very busy. With all the money and stuff.”
Stop talking! She’s going to think you’re upset because you were left off a family group chat.
You are upset because you were left off a family group chat!
“Sun,” Harmony said gently, her hand on my wrist. “Please tell me you understand.”
I patted her hand and let logic take over for feelings.
“I do get it. I think it’s just starting to dawn on me that as much as I thought I didn’t fit in here, part of that was because of me.
I mean, I like salad. If someone was making a salad, I might say macaroni salad is my favorite.
But I never did that. I never made it known that I might care about things like the town BBQ. ”
“Okay. You asked for it. It’s happening,” Harmony said. She pulled out her phone, typed a message, and then my phone, which was still on the desk next to my laptop, dinged.
I picked it up and smiled.
Family Group Chat:
Harmony: Did anyone know Sunshine’s favorite salad is macaroni?
Mom: Of course, I did. She likes anything with mayonnaise.
Amity: Oooh, good know. I’ll drop off a batch tonight at Mom’s house. We always have extra at the café.
Bliss: Why are we talking about Sun’s obsession with mayonnaise?
Mom: I don’t know. Ask your sister, she started this group chat.
Harmony: We needed an all family group chat. I added Sun to ours.
Amity: Uh, Sunshine? Do you know what you signed up for?
Bliss: Ha! Sucker. I give her until midnight tonight before she opts out. The dinging, Sis…it never ends!
Mom: She can put it on silencer mode.
Bliss: Mom! It’s silent mode. Silencer is what you put on a gun.
Mom: Whatevs.
Bliss: Mom!
Mom: Go touch grass, Bliss.
I looked over at Harmony. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”
“Nope. You’re in it, now. But you will want to put your phone on silent mode when the dinging starts.”
Town Hall Meeting
“And that is my plan,” I stated, finishing up my PowerPoint for the second time that day.
Except this time, I was standing on a small stage in the town hall auditorium, in front of what appeared to be most of the residents of the Gulch.
The McGraws, which now included Harmony, sat in the front row. My mom and sisters behind them. I hadn’t spotted Tag, but I wasn’t sure he’d even come.
Beyond that, it was basically everyone I’d ever known in my life, along with the office staff who supported the town hall and our quaint town historical museum.
Two teenagers had set up a projector and screen for me to present.
I finished, with the Questions? slide up, and looked out over the room, but didn’t see a single hand raised.
I gave Carter, who was in the front row, a bit of a smirk, as if to suggest some people obviously understood my presentation perfectly well.
“Okay,” I said with a whoosh of breath. “If there are no questions-”
“What’s crypto?” someone shouted from the back of the auditorium.
Uh oh.
“It’s fake money,” someone shouted back.
I couldn’t tell who had made the comments, but I looked out to the audience and shook my head.
“No,” I corrected them. “It’s not fake money, it’s just not tied to our traditional banking systems.”
“There are coins, I think.” That was from Mrs. Diaz. “You mine them. ”
“Like coal?” Cookie, the BBQ guy, asked. “From the ground?”
“No, it’s not a physical coin,” I said. “You see, a bitcoin is-”
“That’s how Tom Brady lost all his money!” This from Darryl Hernandez. One of two of the town’s municipal workers. “That’s why he has to do color commentary on the football games now.”
“That was a different company entirely,” I tried to explain. “And, fun fact not many know, most of the investors got paid back after the downfall of FTX.”
“But didn’t everyone go to jail?” This question was actually from my mom.
“Well, the CEO did, but, really, that was his own fault for mostly being a jerk.”
The crowd’s murmuring picked up, and I felt like I was losing the room.
“The computers just ate the money,” Darryl Jones said. The other municipal worker in town, who was commonly referred to as the other Darryl. Because when you have two Darryls in town, one ultimately needs to be the other Darryl. That they were married only complicated things.
“Computers don’t eat money,” I explained patiently.
“No, they get hacked!” Gary Feldman shouted.