Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
CALDER
The taproom isn’t very lively for a Friday night. Is this typical for summer, with the Fourth of July just a few weeks away, or is it due to the owner’s death and the community thinking the juicy family drama is now behind us?
The urge to leave is strong, and it has been since Meredith rushed out, but I have a lot to cover with both of my brothers while they’re here, and I only have the weekend to do it. We’ll move cattle on Monday, and then Landry will be gone. Bowen, too, probably.
I don’t know how much time Meredith wants to think, but it’s ticking by really fucking slow. Did she go to Sawyer’s? Should I call Sawyer and ask her to check on Meredith?
It doesn’t help that all the empty tables are wiped off, refills have been taken care of, and I don’t have the heart to send Molly home.
Meredith’s comments stick with me. My portfolios are making money while I’m standing here.
If I send Molly home early, she won’t make a dime. This is how Dad went into so much debt.
“So, all of you?” Molly blinks from me to Bowen to Landry. We’re gathered at the edge of the bar counter, counting down until closing time. “Wow. I bet Meredith is relieved. We were terrified you guys would run us out.”
Landry shifts his feet and squints at the half-filled tables. “It’s still a possibility.”
Molly giggles nervously. “My grandma used to say, ‘If he’s pretty and he’s honest, he’s a liar,’ but I’m not sold that you’re lying.”
Bowen coughs with a laugh.
“To be fair,” she continues, oblivious to our discomfort, “my grandpa would say that about women, but he cheated so much Granny changed it around.” She drums her fingers on the countertop.
“It’s weird not having Meredith here, isn’t it?
I’m glad she’s finally taking some time off.
Poor thing. So, what are your plans for the place?
You’re not renaming it to, like, Three Brothers Brewery, are you?
Or would that be Three Brothers and a… um, Sister? ”
“She’s not our sister, or any relative at all,” I say and wince at all the declarations of what Meredith isn’t. I haven’t had a woman in my life mean anything for a long time—definitely nothing serious. So why does it bother me so much that it hurt her? “She’s part owner. That’s all.”
Molly’s mouth forms an O. “I’d have quit a long time ago if it weren’t for her.
Not that your dad was bad,” she rushes to tack on.
“It’s just that I could make more bartending in Williston.
Those oil guys like to tip but can also be a little psycho.
” She holds her hands up. “Not all oil men, not just oil men, and not people with real psychopathy, but you know what I mean. We get a tamer crowd here. But the money doesn’t compare. ”
“When was your last raise?” I know the answer, but I want to get Molly’s impression of everything.
She’s refreshingly open, likes to chatter, and I can see why she was kept on, even though she can coast through a shift.
She doesn’t do that with the customers, and she’s been someone Meredith can lean on.
She scrunches her face up. “Um, I think it was…”
Bowen flicks his gaze to me before shaking his head. He’s seen the books. “Never. Dad never gave you a raise.”
She flushes like she was the pretty one busted in a lie trying to tell the truth.
“No. No raise. Meredith really is great to work with, and she lets me get extra hours. She also doesn’t fire me when I have to miss work.
I’ve gotta work around the baby daddy’s schedule, and it can get hard, you know. ”
I frown. No, I didn’t know. “You have a kid?” How did I not know this? I’ve worked with Molly for only a week, albeit on eight-hour shifts, yet it feels like I’m more informed about her as a person and an employee than any of my staff in Denver.
“She’s four.” She digs out her phone and brings up photos of a grinning little girl with wild dark hair.
I look away. It’s not that I don’t want to get to know Molly, but she’s one of my employees.
Since when did I want a glimpse into the personal life of someone who worked for me?
I don’t know anyone’s private life, and I prefer it that way.
I give them the means to take care of themselves and their loved ones, and that’s all the responsibility I care to have.
What an empty fucking existence.
I itch to get out of my skin. It’s like I’ve tried on a new life and it’s chafing.
Or I’ve thought about my old one, and that’s what’s bothering me.
Ultimately, if the taproom isn’t busy enough that we have time to comb through family pictures, I don’t need to cover for Meredith’s absence.
I have to try to talk to her, to tell her…
I’m unsure what. I just don’t want to waste my days in town not speaking to her, yet she has no reason to discuss anything more than financials with me.
Fuck it. “I need to head out early. If you’ll excuse me.”
“Have a good night, boss.” Molly doesn’t miss a beat scrolling through her pictures. “And this is her third birthday party. She’s wearing more cake than she ate.”
My brothers shoot me knowing looks but don’t try to stop me.
They might feel guilty for what Meredith overheard, but they probably aren’t getting torn up by it.
My stomach’s killing me, and I can’t concentrate.
I filled two Honey Creek orders with a stout.
The customers chalked it up to the funeral, their expressions full of understanding. It’s not Dad’s death that’s thrown me.
On the way home, I go through town and drive past Sawyer’s old farmhouse.
Only her old pickup is outside. I head home.
The lights are off when I arrive. I haven’t watched the security footage, and after so many pings, I shut off notifications.
I almost turned them on as soon as she left, but that’s a little too close to being a stalker.
I’ve toed that line enough when it comes to Meredith Winslow.
I let myself into the house and don’t bother with the lights. I know the layout better than I know my place in Denver. I grab my sweats and change right in the living room. Then I grab two bottles of water and tread upstairs, making sure to miss the stairs that creak.
Her door is closed. I knock lightly. She doesn’t answer. I should leave—she can probably guess it’s me—but I tentatively crack the door. All I can make out is the dark lump in the middle of the bed.
“Go away.” Her hoarse, nasally voice stabs right through my heart. She’s been crying, and that guts me.
“I brought you water.” I step in and close the door behind me. Setting one bottle on the end table, I crack the top of the other.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m not buying it.”
The covers rustle, and she sits up. “What, like you know me?”
“I know you work hard. I know you’ve been stuffing your emotions down to get shit done.
I bet Uncle Carlos and Sawyer have been able to grieve.
I bet you told the sheriff you’d break the news to Sawyer, Uncle Carlos, and everyone at the brewery so they could hear it from someone who cared. ” I wiggle the bottle. “Drink.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you tell me you’re fine one more time, you’re going to find out I’m not an office jockey who cosplays as a cowboy. I’m going to wrestle you down like I’m branding you.”
She snatches the water. “Big talk for a guy who tries to forget all this exists.”
“Crossroads proved impossible to forget. I just kept going regardless.”
She pauses before tipping the bottle to her lips. Her swallows make me feel better.
“Did you eat?” I ask.
“Are you going to force-feed me otherwise?”
There’s enough sarcasm to assuage me. “I promise I’ll find out if you lie, rosy.”
A frustrated huff echoes in the dark. “Why do you care?”
I never intended to hurt this woman, but that’s exactly what I did. She had a right to go off on me at the brewery. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. You said that already.” She thrusts the bottle back, and water sloshes onto my sweats. With a jerk of the covers, she lies down with her back to me. I hear her sniffle.
I put the cap back on and set the bottle by mine. Carefully, I ease myself under the blankets and curl around her. She stiffens, but my body lights up when I touch her. I angle my hips back. She doesn’t need an obnoxious erection pushing into her ass crack.
I wrap an arm around her middle. “It’s okay to cry.”
Her body shakes, but she holds it in. “That’s rich to say, coming from a guy who didn’t shed a single tear yesterday either.”
“I had a long time to get used to not having him around.” I press a kiss to her bare shoulder. “I’m sorry about your sister.”
Weeping takes over. She trembles and shakes as she cries, and I just hold her. Maybe a few of those tears she accused me of not shedding squeeze out too. Meredith is hurting, and dammit, I ache because of it.
“I miss her so much.” She draws in a shuddering breath and reaches for a tissue on the nightstand, but she returns to the tidy cove we’ve made.
“Tell me about her.”
She sniffles and tosses the tissue onto a pile she’s already made by the box. When she lets out a long exhale, I expect her to brush me off or ignore the request entirely.
“She was a homebody.” She swipes at her cheek with the back of her hand.
“I think she was, uh, intimidated by everything that happened. But before that, she was always working on the house in Rolla.” That’s where Mama was from.
The other corner of the state. She grew up with Holly, and Meredith spent the first part of her childhood there.
“Having movie and popcorn nights. She’d talk to Julia and tell me about you guys.
She really loved your mom. But maybe… maybe when she came to help, she was already half in love with your dad. ”
“She knew him that well?”
“She knew him through Julia. How well he took care of her, and of you three. She’d grown up with a dad who purposely lost jobs so he didn’t have to pay our mom child support.
Julia always gushed about what Ransom did for her and you guys, and I think Holly was wistful about how welcomed and looked after Julia was here.
Our house was run-down. Holly couldn’t work a lot with me around, and our mom and my dad didn’t send us much money.
My sister couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help around the house.
You know those jokes about sons holding the flashlight for their dads and their dads yelling at them about how they’re messing that up? ”
I smile, my mouth against her warm skin. “No, but I’ve had plenty of those experiences.”
A soft laugh leaves her. “I can hear Ransom now.”
“‘Can’t you see where the bolt is? Shine the damn light on it,’” I mimic in a gruff voice. “Then he’d put his head right in the way.”
“Holly was like that about the how-to videos. ‘Rewind that, Mer. What’d he say? Hush up now—I can’t hear.’ She was a good sister, and she was more like a mom to me than mine ever was. But I think…” She sighs. “She wasn’t a very loyal best friend in the end.”
“People are complicated.” I don’t want to delve into the issues we’ve already lived through. I didn’t like Holly Winslow, but her sibling is starting to be a different story. “Tell me more about her as a sister.”
“You don’t have to do this, Calder.”
“Tell me, or did you forget I’m McBossy?”
This time, her body shakes from a chuckle. “Fair. Um… well, she painted this room to cheer me up when I moved back after my breakup with Tanner.”
“Did it help?” I ask dryly. The room is really bright.
“McBossy, are you hinting that you don’t like the sunset motif?”
“I like it if you like it.”
“I do.” She falls quiet. “It was what I needed to cheer me up. She and Sawyer helped me move out of my place with Tanner. Ransom too. I told them to behave.”
“Did they?” I hope not. Dad probably wanted to beat the guy’s ass like I want to.
“To remind him of being the Car-Alarm Humper, they set off their car alarm before they pulled away. Let it blare for at least a minute right in front of his house.”
A low chuckle starts in my chest and grows. I could get behind Holly Winslow for that display of passive-aggressive behavior.
She giggles. “Did you have Jed Cook for a teacher?”
“No, he was after my time.”
“He got fired for making social-media videos complaining about his students. As one of the top four in my class, I had to give a senior speech.”
There’s a core memory unlocked. “I had to give the same speech.”
“I bet all of you did. And none of you probably chose the theme ‘unexpected,’ using examples in your speech of how our graduating class met a lot at the funeral home because of the bat infestation at the school. Or that our gym teacher got fired for going viral.”
“Someone was upset about that?”
She rolls a little more to her back, and her hair tickles my nose. “It was for the principal. He sent me a ‘shame on you’ email two days later. Told me I should think twice before ever doing that again. I apparently made someone cry that day.”
“You made someone cry because a grown adult got fired for publicly making fun of his students?” Meredith is the most responsible woman I know. “How is that your problem?”
“Right? Holly thought the same. So she charged into the superintendent’s office.
Told him that just because he and Jed were tight and wanted to sweep the whole thing under the rug, didn’t mean I should censor myself.
Fifteen years later, he still won’t look me in the eye.
” She drapes an arm across her abdomen, and I hook my fingers through hers.
She lets me. “Tell me about you and your brothers.”
I place a kiss on her soft hair. Wildflowers bloom in my nose. “Later. You need to sleep.”
“Calder, you made me spill my guts.”
“If we’re all moving cattle together on Monday, you’re going to see us just as we were. We haven’t done a thing like that since we left, so I don’t have any new routines or insults. It’ll be like looking into a time capsule.”
“You have more muscles now than you did then.”
“Meredith Winslow, were you checking me out?”
“The brooding older boy who was one of the few who could get his brothers to listen to him? Most definitely. You had muscles then too.”
“Did you check out my brothers?”
“One hundred percent.” When I nearly swallow my tongue, she chortles. “Gotcha. Not really. Landry thought a lot of himself, and Bowen always seemed sullen. You were stern. I liked it. It was only for six months before your mom passed.”
And then three months after, when it all imploded.
She turns her face toward me. “What about you?”
“Check you out? That’s a hard no. You were thirteen, and when I was home, you were like a Victorian ghost. You just hovered at the fringes, watching everything.” When she giggles, I smile.
“Probably for the best.”
I snuggle closer. For a guy who never cuddles, I don’t want to stop. “Adult Meredith is a different story. I check her out all the time. But she also needs rest.”
Her breathing is steady. “You going to sneak out again?”
“No, rosy. Not this time.”