Chapter 27
MATTHEW
I wanted to take Lauren to the airport, but she insisted I let Tyler drive her.
“I want to say goodbye to you here at the ranch,” she said as I cradled her in my arms in the early hours of the morning. Her words whispered across my skin. “I don’t want to picture you at an airport. I want to see you here, surrounded by all this beauty.”
When she said things like that, it was hard not to beg her to stay.
Somehow, I held myself together as we said our goodbyes, and then Tyler drove her away, off of my ranch, but hopefully not out of my life forever.
I wanted to take the day off and mope but, for better or worse, my job didn’t allow me time to wallow.
Not only did I have to prepare for the Titans, I had to call my siblings like I’d promised Lauren I would.
Instead of putting it off, I bit the bullet and sent out an invitation for a video call for the following afternoon. I’d delayed this moment long enough.
Predictably, Bowie grumbled about having to download another app onto his phone because the guy who flew charter planes for a living also mistrusted most forms of modern technology.
Don’t anyone get him started on the evils of social media and artificial intelligence or you’d get an earful.
Also predictably, my sister Faith was the first one to log onto the call.
In fact, we were both ten minutes early, which gave us a few minutes to catch up with each other before the guys arrived.
No doubt, at least one of my brothers would be late.
Faith gazed into the camera, her smile tired and careworn even though it was only three o’clock in the afternoon.
There were mauve-colored shadows underneath her eyes and lines drawn around her mouth that could have been from age but leaned more toward melancholy.
Maybe it was the bad lighting in her kitchen making her look ten years older than her forty-seven years.
“How are you?” I asked.
“I’m alright. It’s great to see you, Matty.
” At least her voice sounded the same as always, warm and sweet, like her personality.
Our mother had called me Matty, and hearing Faith say it somehow made me feel loved and bereft at the same time.
“You have me curious about why you want to talk to all of us together,” she continued.
“I hope everything is okay? You’re not sick, are you? ”
“No, I’m fine.”
I didn’t want to get into a conversation about my problems at the ranch before our brothers joined us. In fact, I wished I could put it off indefinitely. I dreaded telling Faith more than anyone else because she’d predicted the folly of trying to save this place, and I didn’t listen to her.
“How are things going down there?” I asked. “You look a little rundown.”
She touched her hair, which was pulled back in a soft headband, and I could tell she was judging her appearance on her screen. “I guess I am. I’ve had a lot going on lately.”
Her two daughters were grown and flown, as they say, with careers and social lives that kept them busy.
Faith didn’t work outside the home and never had.
She left college in the middle of her senior year to marry Palmer, and their daughter Vesper was born a year later.
She and Palmer divorced several years back, and she refused to start dating again.
Taking all of that into account, I wasn’t sure what “a lot going on” could mean.
“Tell me how I can help,” I said.
“I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I snorted. “That’s never stopped either of us.”
Faith laughed, and her face transformed into someone more recognizable. “That’s so true. We’re the worriers of the family, especially me.”
Sam showed up on the call. “Hey there! Am I late?”
“Not as late as Bowie.” I considered texting our wayward brother, but he rarely kept his phone on him.
“What did you want to talk to all of us about?” Sam asked.
“I’d like to wait for Bowie.” I didn’t want to have to tell the story twice. “Do you think he forgot?”
As if he’d heard me, Bowie logged onto the call, still pushing buttons on his keyboard. “Can you see me?” He leaned forward and squinted into his camera, his hairy face crowding the screen. “Is this on?”
“Yes, we can see you.” Sam rolled his eyes. “And you’re even later than I was for this call.”
“There is a two-hour time difference, Samuel,” Bowie said gruffly. “Plus, I had a late run last night, so I needed to sleep in a little.”
“Did you go to sleep as the prince and wake up as the beast?” Sam asked, mocking Bowie’s voluminous beard and wild hair. He got a laugh from almost everyone.
“He’s right, you’ve gone feral,” Faith teased. “But you’re still cute.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bowie said. “I’m a hairy mess. Let’s move on. Why are we all on here today? Not that I don’t want to see you all, but this isn’t my favorite hour of the day for chatting.”
“Right.” I drew in a deep breath and tried to look like someone who wasn’t dying inside.
“I need to talk to you about the ranch. The bottom line is we aren’t pulling in enough money.
We’ve only had a handful more guests this summer than last, and I’m burning the staff out because we’re always short-handed.
To keep this place going, we’d need an influx of cash to hire people and renovate the property, and we don’t have any money left.
Faith, I should have listened to you. I’m sorry.
I took on too much here.” Their silence made me feel worse, but I forged ahead.
“I think we should put the property on the market, so we need to talk about pricing and how and when we want to proceed with the sale. You’re obviously co-owners of the property, and we need to think this through together. ”
Maybe the money from the sale would help Faith feel more independent from Palmer.
For some reason, she still felt like she had to run all her major purchases past him.
Sam had been wanting to expand his practice, and he could use this money toward that end.
Bowie…well, I honestly had no idea how he’d spend some extra cash because he already owned his own plane and he certainly wasn’t spending money on grooming these days. Those eyebrows were out of control.
“Think this through together?” Bowie repeated with a scowl. “Seems like you did all the thinking, and you’re telling us how it’s gonna be.”
I was speechless. The sibling who had been back to the ranch once since he was eighteen years old was the one pushing back at me?
“Go easy on him, please,” Faith said to him. “Can’t you see this is hard for Matthew?”
Bowie shook his head in disbelief. “It’s hard for me to hear that he’s selling our family’s ranch without even getting our input!”
“You haven’t been down here since the funeral,” I reminded him sharply.
“You don’t know what I’m dealing with here, and you’ve shown zero interest until now.
In fact, none of you have, except for Sam, who gives us free vet services.
I do appreciate that, Sam. Without you, we wouldn’t even be open at this point. ”
“What exactly did you want me to do?” Bowie snapped back at me. “I don’t remember you calling on me for anything. You always said everything was fine, and you had it all under control. When have you ever asked for or accepted anyone’s help?”
“I think what Bowie is trying to say,” Faith said carefully, “is that we’re here for you now. Maybe we can figure out a solution together?”
“There’s no solution,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve tried to find one.”
“Hear me out,” Sam said. “We turn the ranch into a home for aging fashion models, thirty and up. A place they can roam free and stretch those long legs.”
Faith rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the time for jokes, Samuel.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t save this place.” I gripped the handles of my chair, trying to contain my emotions. “It tears me up, thinking about losing Silver Sage.”
“Then let us help,” Bowie said, “and stop trying to be the lone hero who saves the day.”
I bristled at his accusations. “That’s not fair. I was here alone! And I’m not trying to be a hero. I’m just trying to hold things together.”
“Let’s talk about this calmly,” Faith said. “What could we do to keep the ranch going for the time being until we can make a long-term financial plan?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to give,” Sam said. “My practice keeps me busy, but I have some savings I could contribute.”
“Savings you were going to use to expand your practice,” I said. “I don’t want you to pour that money in here when I can’t guarantee a return on your investment.”
“Maybe it’s not an investment,” Sam said, finally getting serious. “Maybe it’s just a way to keep our land in the family.”
“I could come up there and do some cleaning and decorating,” Faith said. “Those old curtains on the cabin windows are probably threadbare by now. I can sew new ones right here at home. My machine still works.”
She was right. The curtains and so many other things were in poor condition. This was the first time I’d tried looking at the situation from their point of view. Maybe I did like the idea of being the one who swooped in and saved the ranch, but I couldn’t do this on my own anymore.
“I’ll take some time off and help with renovation projects this fall,” Bowie said. “You know I love demolition.”
“I’m sorry I kept you in the dark,” I said, “and I do appreciate your willingness to help. We’re still going to need a large infusion of cash to make major changes here, well beyond what Sam has in the bank. I don’t know how we’d get our hands on that kind of money.”
“What about a bank loan?” Faith asked.
“I don’t think we can get another one,” I said, “not when the business isn’t doing well.”
“We need to think of another option,” Bowie said. “Could we sell off some of the land?”
I’d already considered that. “Then we can’t get money from Cal for letting his cattle graze here. That income has been keeping us afloat. But I guess if we have to sell off land, we could.”
“What if we found an investor?” Faith asked. I hoped she wasn’t talking about Palmer. There was no way I was going into business with that asshole. It would be like Lauren selling part of her business to Freddy. Lauren…
“Someone was interested in buying the ranch,” I said. “A guest who was here recently.”
“Mrs. Wagonblast?” Sam said immediately.
“How did you guess?” I asked.
“Duh. Lauren Cozzi is a wealthy woman, and she loved the place. Besides, who else would it be? It’s not like you’ve had a lot of guests lately.”
He had a point there.
“Sam told me there was someone at the ranch who you’d taken a shine to,” Faith said in an irritating sing-song voice. “He said he’d never seen you so smitten with anyone.”
“That’s Lauren.” Sam smiled brightly, happy as a pig in shit.
“Enough about Matthew’s crush on her,” Bowie grumbled. “What did she offer for the ranch?”
“We didn’t get into specific numbers.” I told them about Lauren’s interest in the ranch as a place for retreats. I expected them to balk when I mentioned filming a reality show on our property. Quite the opposite happened.
“You can usually get a tax break for stuff like that,” Sam said.
Faith’s face lit up with excitement, making her look like a different woman than the one who’d logged onto our call. “I know Ms. Match ! Lauren and Tori seem like amazing business women. It would be like we’d partnered up with one of the people from Shark Tank if we go into business with them.”
‘’I’m fine with shifting our focus,” Bowie said, “as long as we get to keep our land and retain a say in what happens to it.”
“Lauren was talking about buying the ranch outright,” I explained. “That wouldn’t give us any control over what happens here.”
“How about she can have fifty percent ownership of the ranch if she makes a sizable monetary investment?” Bowie said. “Our family would keep fifty percent ownership, and we can make business decisions together.”
His idea appealed to me, but I wasn’t sure how Lauren would feel. “We’d need to find out the value of the ranch first, and work on our offer from there. I could bring it to her.”
“Matthew needs more support from the rest of us, though,” Faith said, “even if we decide to work with Lauren Cozzi. What can we do about that from now on?”
Bowie was not the person I thought would speak up first. “I could come there to the lower forty-eight and help you run the place.”
The way he was talking completely baffled me. “You have your own life in Alaska. What about your charter business?”
“I’m ready for a change,” Bowie said. “You know what they say, with great risk comes great reward. Let’s see what we can build this ranch into.”
We all stared at him. Bowie had been refusing to come back to the ranch for decades.
“Are you serious?” Faith asked. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who found his change of heart surprising.
“Totally serious,” he said. “Silver Sage is my home too. I know I’ve been gone a long time, but that wasn’t because I didn’t care about you all or the ranch. You know I had to get away from Dad and make my own life. I like the idea of coming back now. I’m ready.”
I wasn’t sure whether I should agree to run the ranch with Bowie, whose personality had all the subtlety of a stampede.
Working side by side with him every day would be the real challenge.
Then again, no one worked harder than Bowie, and he had experience managing his own business.
We’d have to work out our personality differences and make the best of it.
“Alright,” I told him. “Let’s do it.”
“Keep your plane,” Sam said. “We can use it to shuttle guests in and out. We’ll call it Yeti Air, and you can be your own mascot.”
“Hilarious,” Bowie said, “but also, not a bad idea about keeping the plane.”
I finally felt like I could breathe again. “Okay, we have a plan.
Sam grinned and pumped his fist. “We’re gonna save Silver Sage.”