Chapter 5
aria
Iwake up early.
Part of it is that I’m an early riser, which is needed for my job in Napa, but with the time zone difference, I should be getting a couple of extra hours of sleep, which I didn’t because a man with blue eyes and a cynical attitude kept me tossing and turning all freaking night long.
I step out of my room and feel what I always did here—the opulence of it and my good fortune that I grew up here.
The ranch house is massive—nearly eight bedrooms, ten bathrooms, and too many hallways that I know like the back of my hand.
The house was smaller in my grandfather’s days, but Papa expanded during Longhorn’s heyday, when cattle prices were good and Papa had reason to believe the future would stretch on forever.
Back when the name Longhorn Ranch meant something in Wildflower Canyon.
I love this sprawling house, even if Mama hated it—thought it was too big, too quiet, too untenable. She couldn’t stand how barren everything around it was, just mountains and forest, no curated views, no boutiques within walking distance.
What she hated is precisely what I love. She couldn’t bear that it was a forty-minute drive to Main Street, like civilization was an inconvenience.
That’s why she bought herself a pied-à-terre in Aspen. Which is where Celine and Hudson, Nadine tells me, spend most of their time.
It’s a sleek, glass-wrapped unit on the top floor of a luxury building tucked just off East Cooper Avenue, where fine dining, designer shops, art galleries, and imported French linen are within easy reach.
It’s fancy, overlooking Wagner Park on one side and has a straight sightline to Aspen Mountain on the other. It’s airy and modern, all white stone, polished oak floors, and abstract art that never meant anything to me.
Mama hosted parties there, hobnobbed with the rich and famous in Aspen. She spent more and more time in Aspen in the later years, drifting farther from Papa and the ranch and me, like she was trying to rewrite her life in curated square footage.
Celine, for all practical purposes, lives there, probably sipping expensive wine like Mama used to on the rooftop terrace, pretending she’s above the land that raised her.
The ranch house is the antithesis of the Aspen apartment.
Here it’s all stone and timber, with wraparound porches and a roof that’s been patched more times than anyone can count.
It sits heavy on the land, proud.
Celine and I used to have our rooms close by, which is now referred to as the guest wing. Yeah, the house has freaking wings.
She and Hudson have Mama’s old suite on the other side of the house, because Mama set it up to look like a Parisian apartment inappropriately in the middle of Colorado.
I doubt Celine changed it much. Our mother’s rooms were her favorite. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything, but Celine was.
As a child that hurt. As an adult…fuck, it still hurts.
I remember how her suite smelled—lavender from Provence, Chanel No.
5 lingering in the drapes, and that soft, powdery scent from the pink box she kept on her vanity, the one with gold script and a little puff inside.
The room was adorned with delicate wallpaper, antique mirrors, and silk curtains that didn’t belong anywhere near a ranch.
It felt like stepping into another country. One I didn’t have a passport for.
I take the stairs down to the kitchen and stop by the closed door to Papa’s office. His bedroom is tucked behind the office. I remember what it looks like. Heavy furniture, thick rugs, and a worn leather chair in the corner where he used to read the livestock reports.
I wonder if it still smells like tobacco and cedar.
I put my hand on the doorknob for a long moment and then decide I’ll go in when I have my bearings, which I don’t right now.
I’m still fragile.
Nadine looks at me when I come into the kitchen. “What on earth are you wearing, girl?”
I look down at my dark blue floral maxi skirt. She can’t see the blouse because I’m wearing her cardigan. “I came straight from a wedding in Napa Valley, Nadine. I got no clothes.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll ask Tomas to bring down some of your things from the attic so you can at least dress like a normal human bein’ instead of….”
“Instead of?” I pour myself a coffee and take a seat at the large dining table that sits in the middle of the kitchen, where the ranch hands were served when I was growing up.
Mama refused to enter the kitchen where they ate, so the cook served the family meals in the formal dining room.
Nadine used to take care of the house and help the cook, but after cook left—retired and wanted the sun and beach in Florida—she became cook, housekeeper, farmhand…everything Papa needed her to be.
Mama had died by then, or she’d have had a fit seeing Nadine run her house like a general—coffee always hot, cornbread on standby, and lard in the pantry.
Lard for everything holy!
“Instead of a fool from California,” she muttered.
I spent a lot of time in the kitchen growing up, probably because Mama never came in here.
It’s the heart of the house.
Big, open, with a butcher block island and a thick farm-style table that’s seen more fights than any bar in town.
There’s a stone fireplace off the breakfast nook, and expansive windows that look out onto the back pasture.
My limited inspection of the house suggests that it needs a facelift, desperately. The plumbing groans, the stairs creak, some of the windows are too weathered, the bathrooms look beat up, and the floors need a polish.
But the house has a strong foundation.
It’s still standing. Still holding.
Just like me.
Earl comes in and, with a howdy, makes a beeline to pour himself coffee. Tomas follows him and does the same.
“Where does Vera stay?” I ask about the woman who works around the house and has taken over most of the cooking. She’s better at it than Nadine. It’s a blessing.
“In the old bunkhouse.” Nadine sets a plate of sausage and bacon in the middle of the table.
Both Tomas and Earl get plates, knives, and forks and sit down to eat.
I don’t know Vera well. Like Tomas, she came here after I left, about three years ago, I think. She has a son whom I haven’t seen yet.
“She comes in late,” Tomas interjects, taking a break from shoveling food. Ranching is hard work. You burn everything you eat. I work in vineyards, and I feel the same way. “After she drops her kid off at school.”
I nod.
“Benji,” Earl says as he chews. Then he washes the bacon he just crunched on down with coffee. “Kid’s a menace.”
Nadine rolls her eyes. “Don’t be listenin’ to him. Earl adores that boy. And Tomas is teaching him how to ride. We’re goin’ to make a cowboy out of him, real soon.”
“How old is Benji?” I muse.
“Five,” Tomas says with a smile. He, obviously like everyone else in the house, has a soft spot for the boy.
I have a little information about Vera from Nadine.
She’s in her early twenties—a kid, really, and she has a kid. Her boyfriend, the father of her kid, used to beat her up on the regular. He did that until Sheriff Hugh Dillon arrested the ‘sumbitch and tossed his behind in jail, where it belongs.”
I remember the sheriff. He was and still is known to run the sheriff’s office with an iron fist. I remember how it was a scandal when he took over and forwent the traditional uniform for jeans, cowboy boots, a button-down shirt, and a Stetson, a sheriff’s badge gleaming on his belt.
“Tomas, can you run up to the attic, and you’ll see two suitcases…the only ones? Bring them down and leave them outside Aria’s room,” Nadine instructs him when he goes to put his plate and coffee cup into the dishwasher.
“Yes, ma’am. I can do that.”
Nadine takes a seat next to Earl. They’re both facing me.
“He’s the only hand we have?” I pose it as a question, but I know the answer. Most of Longhorn’s hired hands left four years ago, back when the drought hit and the cattle thinned to nothing but bone.
Now, there’s just Earl—Papa’s right hand for over forty years, too old to fix fenceposts but too damn stubborn to stop trying. He walks like his knees are grinding gravel, but he’s still up at dawn, feeding the chickens and muttering about how everything was better in ’86.
Right!
“How bad is it?” I ask, my arms crossed.
They trade one of those long looks that tells me I’m not gonna like what I hear.
“We’ve got seventy-six head,” Earl says finally, voice dry as the flour dust in the air. “Forty are in good enough shape to sell. The rest need feed, vet work, a miracle or two.”
“We were down to thirty-five,” Nadine adds, “But we picked up a few from an old neighbor who couldn’t keep his operation going. Got ‘em cheap.”
“Last buy your Papa made before he fell too sick.” Earl runs a hand over his white, patchy head.
“Who’s been running the place?” I ask.
“We are,” Nadine replies. “You know Celine doesn’t give two shits. And Hudson likes to pretend he’s boss, but he ain’t.”
“I thought he took care of all the finances.”
Nadine and Earl look at each other again.
Nadine clears her throat. “He hardly does any work. Mostly everythin’ that’s got to do with money is handled by Amos.”
I know Amos Langley. He’s the accountant for several ranchers in Wildflower Canyon. No nonsense. Honest. High integrity.
“Didn’t see him at the wake,” I mention.
“He couldn’t make it.” Earl gets up and pours himself more coffee. He looks at me, and when I nod, he refills my cup as well. “Called to let me know. He was in Chicago, and the storm grounded flights.”
“I’ll catch up with him. He still has his office on Main Street?”
“He does.” Nadine leans forward and rests her elbow on the table. “Look, your Papa had started to keep Hudson off the money.”
I narrow my eyes. “Since when?”
“Since some of it went missing,” Earl snaps. He never sugarcoats.
I want to say that Hudson would never steal, but I know Earl; he doesn’t spout bullshit. The man hardly talks, so when he does, it behooves you to listen.
“Amos will know?”
Earl nods. Drinks some coffee.