16. Colton
“You’re insane.”
Shifting my focus from the Hanjie logic puzzle in front of me, I cut my youngest brother a look. “Figured you’d get it more than anyone. That weed farm I uncovered is huge. Power of attorney or not, I’ve already set men on the Bar 9 and?—”
“Stop thinking like the mindless bourgeoisie, Colton.”
Ah, the ultimate insult.
I take a deep sip of my coffee. “I knew reading Marx would make you spout crap like that.”
It’s going to be one of those goddamn days.
“Of course, you’re going to set men on guarding that weed farm. We can’t let asswipes from the city think they can get away with growing pot on our ranches.” He sniffs like I’m a moron.
If so, I’m the moron who did a scan of the Bar 9 and discovered an audaciously large plot of land being used to cultivate weed.
That alone was enough to tell me how disorganized and understaffed the McAllister ranch is.
The hiring process is going to be a nightmare.
“—as happy as I am about this development, you’re going to make him worse.”
Confused about the topic shift, I demand, “Who? Pops?”
“Yes, him. You cut him out, but he’s like Hydra. Another head will spawn.”
“That’s what I’m insane for?”
“Yes.” His expression turns knowing. “Still, at least you’re heading the company and not just the ranch. We can shift some of the herd to market.” He forks up a piece of bacon. “We probably need to sell a quarter even with access to the McAllister’s water rights.”
“I was thinking a third.” I snag a couple spoonfuls of scrambled eggs when Mrs. Abelman dumps the bowl on the table.
What she offers in rudeness, she makes up for in cooking.
And love.
You’d never think to look at her dour expression, but she’s singlehandedly kept us from falling apart since the divorce.
“We’d only have to buy them back when we get our situation regulated,” Callan points out.
“I’d prefer to keep the herd numbers low.”
“Why?”
“Chickens.”
“Chickens?”
“They cluck.”
“I have an IQ of 159, Colton. I know what a chicken is.”
“Such modesty,” I remark. “Chickens are more sustainable than cows.”
Callan hoots. “You want to turn us into a chicken farm?”
“No,” I grumble as I snag three slices of toast from the stack Mrs. Abelman drops in front of me. “But that land over on the border with the Frobishers—it’d be a good place to start. Even if we can only supply the town, it’s something. Proactive.”
Callan frowns at me. “There won’t be enough money in it. Not on a small scale.”
“Doesn’t need to be. Not everything’s about profits.” I wag my fork at him. “Sometimes, you have to preserve the land as well as your soul.
“I’m going to implement a ton of measures that Pops wouldn’t sign off on to help prevent wildfires and we’re going back to breeding horses. That’ll fund some of my ‘quirky’ ideas.”
“Oh.” His eyes brighten with excitement as he sits taller in his seat. “Really?”
“Yeah. Proof that I am insane. Cole’s going to give me nothing but shit for wanting to restart the breeding program.”
It’ll be worth it though.
“He’s still grieving,” Callan says calmly.
Calmly because he was on the brink of turning nine when the fire happened.
The aftermath is nothing but a distant memory for him after the trauma he experienced in his childhood. All the same, it triggered an inherent need to secure the ranch.
We have more closed-circuit cameras than North Korea.
“Betsy was his heart horse,” Mrs. Abelman interrupts as she seats herself at the table. “You can’t be restarting that breeding program without telling him. I’m not going to be the one who picks up the pieces when he has a meltdown.”
“Mia’ll do that. The perks of being an engaged man, Mrs. Abelman.”
“You say that and watch him get his anger issues out with those damn pucks in the vestibule again!”
I grimace. “That window cost ten grand to replace.”
“Be double that now,” Callan inserts. “Best to tell him outside. Away from expensive stained-glass windows.”
“He’s never here anyway.”
“So you intend for him to just show up and see the stables?” Mrs. Abelman demands, tutting as she pours herself some coffee. “Colton, your mum raised you better than that.”
“I have enough shit on my plate without thinking about Cole’s feelings.”
“He’s your brother,” she chides. “For good or ill.”
“Mostly ill,” Callan comments, making me chuckle. “What time’s your flight?”
I check the clock on the wall. “I need to be on my way in two hours.”
Mrs. Abelman nods. “Your mother called.”
Unsurprisingly, Callan braces himself for disappointment.
“When’s she coming?”
“Next week. Said she put her resignation in as soon as you told her.”
I flick a look at Callan who’s evidently relieved by the news.
Who can blame him?
Eighteen years old and he barely knows his mother because his father’s an asshole.
Pops didn’t want us.
He sued for custody to spite Mum—the only parent who genuinely loves us.
Ever since I told my kid brother I was bringing Mum home, he’s been warily excited—waiting for the disappointment of her not coming when I know nothing would stop her from being here.
He’ll learn.
“Chickens,” Mrs. Abelman says out of the blue. “I’d like some of those. Your father’d never let me have a coop. Said he got sick of being woken up by roosters when he was a boy.”
Pops had weird ideas.
Who has a ranch and doesn’t have a coop for eggs?
Clyde Korhonen, genius extraordinaire, that’s who.
“You can have your own personal one, Mrs. Abelman,” Callan inserts cheerfully. “Can’t she, Colt?”
“Definitely.”
It’s the least I can do for the woman who’s been half-mom to us all.
She tries to hide her pleased smile but mostly fails.
It’s… odd.
Mrs. Abelman doesn’t do smiles.
She’s dour and quiet. Scuttles around like a mouse but has a bark as bad as her bite. I’m sure that’s how she survived here as long as she did with Pops hanging around.
Cole calls her Poltergeist Abelman for a reason.
“I’ll arrange the coop when I’m home,” I inform her.
“With the McAllister girl.”
Her tone’s not disapproving, but…
“Yes.”
Her lips purse. “Never thought she’d agree to live here.”
“I gave her the option of living at the Bar 9.”
Primly, she sips her coffee. “You were willing to move?”
“It was the least I could offer.”
She clucks her tongue. “We did raise you right. Faith in you restored.
“She probably jumped at the chance of not having to live with Juliette. That woman would turn a nun to Satanism.”
Callan snorts. “Just think, Colt, she’s going to be your grandmother-in-law.”
I toss my napkin at him, satisfied when it gets him right in the face.
“No fighting at the table,” Mrs. Abelman orders. “Where shall I put her? And your father’s things now that they’re out of his suite?” A menial task she’d insisted on taking because she’s a control freak about her domain. “What about your mother? Should she still stay in the guest quarters?”
The multitude of questions has me rubbing my chin.
The house is split up into wings. Head, guest, and sons, with staff accommodations off the kitchen. The head shares one wing with his wife, the guest beds number in the half-dozen, and the sons all share a wing because the Korhonens rarely breed girls.
The last one died in the forties—killed in a shell factory when ammo she was making for the troops exploded in her face.
“Send Pops’s shit to the house in Saskatoon?—”
“You’re kicking him out forreal?” Callan sputters, eyes wide with delight like the time I told him we were going to Disneyland when he was nine.
“Sure am,” I retort, unsettled when I take note of his relief at the news.
This time, Mrs. Abelman smiles fully.
It’s disturbing.
“I’ll get on that today. The sooner I don’t have to see his face again, the better.”
I warn, “He might bounce back in this direction. You know he won’t like us evicting him from the house.”
“Can we change the locks?” Callan queries. “I could buy those electronic ones. With a code.”
I think about how Zee sounded on the phone after he tried to hijack her at the airport…
“Good thinking. But don’t you have some exams to study for? Deal with them first.”
“I could ace them in my sleep.”
“Don’t be precocious.” To Mrs. Abelman, as I butter some toast, I direct, “Keep Mum in the guest wing. She was happy there last summer.” When we’d been hoping God would evict Pops from the world permanently after his first bout with arrhythmia. “As for my stuff, if you could move it into Pops’s room, please, Mrs. Abelman, and make sure Mum’s old suite is ready so Zee can unpack in there when her things arrive.
“The changes are going to be…”
“Rough?” Mrs. Abelman nods. “We’ll get through it. Just like we always do.”
The ‘together’ part of the sentence goes unspoken.
“Two came in last night,” she informs us both.
“Everything go okay?”
Callan, like always when this topic arises, clams up.
He certainly doesn’t disapprove of what we do behind the scenes here at Seven Cs, but it unnerves him.
The pain men can put women through, women they vowed to cherish, is something I don’t think he’ll ever fully be able to accept.
The funny thing is, he’s the one who remembers how Pops beat on Mum the least but our guests affect him hardest.
I say that but it’s not like Cody or Cole know what goes on here.
They’d have to stick around for more than five minutes to look beneath the surface, and that’s more than either of them are capable of.
“I settled them in the bunkhouse as planned. It’s getting too full,” she warns.
“There’s an empty house by the gas station that we can use if need be. The tenants moved out last month.”
It’s not like we can refuse someone sanctuary because we don’t have the space.
“There are no scheduled drops, are there?” Callan asks, anxiety riddling the words.
“No. But emergencies happen.” She pats his shoulder, fully aware of how sensitive he is in these situations.
He might be eighteen in the eyes of the law, but he’s still a kid. A kid from a broken home with a fucked-up parental unit.
Callan’s fork clatters on his dish. “There won’t be the anonymity of the bunkhouse in a rental.”
I glance at him, making sure to present a calm facade. “I’ll look into having another bunkhouse built.”
His sigh of relief tells me that was the right answer. “Did you hear about the Linnox place?”
“What about it?”
“It’s no longer for sale. They’re closer to us than the McAllisters. It could be important for logistics.”
“Can you find out who the buyer is?”
“I heard in town it’s someone famous.”
My brows lift at Mrs. Abelman’s words. “Since when do you listen to the rumor mill?”
“That old fool, Harold, sometimes knows more than the Herald does.” Her disapproval is a tad hypocritical, seeing as she’s using him as her source. Not that I point that out.
“Ugh. Famous?” Callan whines. “Are we going to have an influencer breeding alpacas next door?”
I grin at the thought. “It might shake things up in town.”
“Things need shaking,” Mrs. Abelman says dourly.
Callan pulls a face.
With a pointed nod at Callan’s breakfast, and only once he’s started eating again, she asks, “Are you going to tell Susanne?”
“About the famous person?”
Mrs. Abelman pins me in a glower. “No, Colton. About Dove Bay.”
“The fewer people know the better.”
She nods her understanding.
Our operation is sensitive. Its success lies in secrecy—only a handful of people know about it. Us, Theo, and the two trusted ranch hands who work in that quadrant—Darrel and Buck who’ve both been with us for two decades.
Building another bunkhouse will eat into that anonymity, but Callan’s right about the rental and we’ve been needing to expand for a while now so it’s time to bite the bullet.
“She’s bound to notice. Plus, is it any way to start a relationship with that kind of secret?
“‘Oh, once or twice a month, darling,” Callan mocks, “a truck drops off women at our bunkhouse who’ve been psychologically and physically abused by the monsters they married. We’re not people trafficking, I promise.’”
I think about how she picked up on my barely-there interaction with Bea that day in town…
“We’ll deal with that if and when it comes to it,” is all I say.
And if she’s anything like the girl I used to know, I have a feeling it’ll be sooner rather than later, but it’s still tomorrow’s problem.
Today, I have a flight to catch.
If she doesn’t notice, then she won’t be here long enough for Dove Bay to be an issue.
I refuse to ponder how that makes me feel. Because if I truly thought about it, I’d upend this table, inadvertently scaring the shit out of my brother and Mrs. Abelman, and that’s never on my to-do list.