4. Ben
BEN
“You want to do what?” Liam asked as we stared at the living room wall.
“Your mother wants to rip down this wall.”
“For what purpose?” Michael asked.
I grunted in amusement. “Because she’s a woman.”
“Yeah, I have one of those, but even so, I wouldn’t rip down a perfectly good wall for her.”
Very slowly, I turned to face my extremely stupid son. “This from the man who gets thrown through a window when he disagrees with his wife.”
He shrugged as he continued to stare at the wall. “Okay, you might have a point, but surely you can reason with her.”
“Since when can you reason with a woman?” Liam asked, sighing heavily. “Let’s face it. As soon as the women see what we’re doing here, we’re going to hear about all the improvements needed in our homes.”
“But I just built my home,” Michael argued. “My home doesn’t like changes. It will literally kill you if you try.”
“Then be grateful that you’re saved from having to make too many home improvements,” I said, slapping him on the shoulder. “In the meantime, we have to figure out how to tear down a load-bearing wall and turn this into an open concept.”
“You should just hire Randy,” Liam grunted.
“See, that’s exactly what your mother said. As if I can’t do the job myself.”
“Of course you can,” he retorted.
“I know!”
“But why should you have to?”
“There is no reason in the world I have to, but I will not allow another man to build my house. Do you know why?”
He shook his head slowly. “Because your mother is trying to prove a point. She thinks I sit around too much.”
“Well, you sort of do,” Michael chuckled.
“And she thinks that since I sit around too much, I should have to rebuild the whole goddamn house.”
“Just tell her you can’t do it,” Michael shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
I sucked in a breath at his words. “Tell her I can’t do it?”
“Yeah, what’s the problem with that?”
I gritted my teeth in annoyance. He was so cute in his youth. Give him a few more years, and he would understand. “I already told her I could do it.”
“And now you say I can’t.”
“There is no way on God’s green earth that I’ll allow your mother to look at me and say I told you so. I would rather die.”
Michael huffed out a laugh. “That’s taking things a little far.”
“Again, not to point out the obvious, but you’ve been through a window multiple times.”
He walked over to the wall, clasping his hand around the edge. “Okay, let’s say we do tear down this wall…what exactly does she have planned for the kitchen?”
“She drew me a diagram,” I grumbled. “Which isn’t a lot of help unless you want a refrigerator in the middle of the kitchen and the oven about ten feet outside the house.”
“So…you need to build an addition,” Liam surmised.
“And not just any addition.” Pulling out her drawing, I showed the boys how their mother had redesigned our house.
“Wait, this is twice the size it is now,” Liam said, pointing to the brand new fireplace she wanted in the living room.
“And she wants a sunroom off the front of the house.” As I traced my finger along her plans, I could see how it would transform the house, making it more spacious and comfortable than it already was. I just wasn’t sure what the point of all of it was.
“How the hell are you gonna afford all this? It’s like building another house.”
“It’s two rooms,” Michael corrected.
“Yeah, but the price of building those two rooms is the same as building a house back in the 80s.”
I already knew how she planned to pay for it, and because of that, there wasn’t a lot I could say to deny her. “She has her trust fund.”
“Her what?” Liam asked, his eyes squinted in confusion.
“Her grandparents left her a trust fund.”
Both of my boys were shocked. It wasn’t exactly something we discussed, mostly because it was their mother’s money, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Pop, if you had money, why didn’t you invest it into the ranch?”
I snatched the paper out of Michael’s hands and walked away. “Because I didn’t want a penny of their money. And besides, it belongs to Clara. There’s not a chance in hell I would risk her money when it wouldn’t have made a difference.”
“Pop, it would have—”
“Face it,” I hissed. “Our way of ranching is over. You know it, and so does everyone else around here. Yeah, we could have saved the ranch for a few years, but eventually, we’d be back in the very same spot.
” Sighing, I ran my hand over my beard, pissed that I finally had to admit it.
“You boys did the right thing. I know I grumbled about it and made you miserable, but if you hadn’t taken the steps you did, we would have lost everything. ”
“Pop—” Liam started.
“Don’t get all gushy on me now. I said what I said, and let’s leave it at that.”
“I was actually going to say that you should have admitted that about three years ago, but sure, we’ll go with the lie that I got all gushy.”
My lips twitched in amusement, but I immediately went back to the drawings. This was for Clara, and if she wanted it, I would build it for her. Even if it was with her grandparents’ money.
“So, what’s with the whole ordeal with her grandparents? Did you not get along?”
“I didn’t get along with her old man. Or her mother,” I muttered, rubbing my fingers over my eyes. I really didn’t want to get into this, but it wasn’t like I could hide it forever.
“They didn’t like me. They always said that the ranch would be a waste of money, and I’d end up sinking every penny I had into this place until it died and we lost everything.”
They both winced at that.
“Well, it turns out they weren’t too far off base on that one.”
“Pop, you ran the ranch for years—”
“Right into the fucking ground,” I muttered. “They really didn’t want Clara to marry me. The whole family was against it.”
Michael glowered at me. “You said that her parents couldn’t make it for the wedding. That’s why they weren’t in any of the pictures.”
“They couldn’t make it because they didn’t want to. Clara was heartbroken when her father wasn’t there to walk her down the aisle. I told her it didn’t matter, that I was the man in her life, and I would take care of her.”
Fuck, I failed miserably at that. Yes, we had a house and a ranch—thanks to my sons.
But the life I promised her was far from what she was living.
Between the feud with the neighbors and that tired look constantly on her face, I wondered if she was still happy with the choice she made all those years ago.
She could have had so much more. There were other men out there, men with better jobs than I had. They could have given her the life her parents wanted for her, but she chose me. And I worried every fucking day that I was failing.
“Her grandparents still left her money. They didn’t like the idea of leaving her with me, with no money to fall back on when I failed,” I bit out. “She hasn’t touched the money, but now…”
Now she would use it to fund this new house she wanted, all the repairs. And I would let her. It was hers to do with, and I wouldn’t let my pride get in the way.
“So…we’re tearing apart the house, then,” Liam said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “Well, at least it’ll give us something to do before the winter hits. Frankly, I’m tired of building homes for the ranch. It’ll be nice to do it for you.”
“I’ll help out when I can,” Michael nodded.
“And you’ll always have Jeff around,” Liam chuckled.
“That boy scares me when he swings a hammer.”
“At least it’ll be entertaining.”
Moving furniture was the last thing I wanted to do today. While Michael was putting in a lumber order, Liam and Jeff helped move shit out of the living room so we could start construction. It was…interesting, to say the least.
“Can’t we just throw this chair away?” Jeff grumbled as he hefted it with Liam, moving the monstrosity to the edge of the living room. “It won’t even fit through the door!”
“That’s Clara’s favorite chair.”
“Actually, it’s the chair she sits in because it’s the only one around,” Jeff pointed out.
He had a point. She did say that this wasn’t her furniture. But if we got rid of it now, where would we sit? “Just put it in the damn corner.”
“It’d look better in the dumpster,” he muttered under his breath.
“And if we had a dumpster, I might let you toss it in there, but it doesn’t come until Monday.”
“Where’s Ma?” Jeff grumbled. “If she wants this done, why isn’t she here to move all this shit out?”
“I’m sorry, are your arms broken?” I snapped at my son.
“No, but I was shot.”
“There’s only so long you can use that argument. And since you were out drinking at the bar the other night, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on.”
“I’m lucky I even have legs. You know, when I was laying on the ground—”
“Fucking hell, Jeff!” Liam snapped. “How many times do we have to hear about your heroic efforts? Yes, you were shot. Yes, you called it in with your dying breath. We get it. You’re a fucking hero.”
I chuckled as Jeff glared at his brother.
It’s not that we weren’t all terrified when he almost died.
We all thought for sure that was it, but if we had to hear one more time about how he bled out on the side of the road, one of us was going to shoot him again, just so we could watch the replay instead of hearing about it in ample detail.
“Nobody fucking cares that I almost died,” he grumbled. “Maybe next time I’ll actually die. Then someone might shed a tear.”
An ache grew in my chest as I tried to forget that day. There was nothing that came close to hearing that your son had been shot and was fighting for his life. And then to have my wife nearly die not even a year later…
I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t affected by any of it.
Hell, half the time I sat in my chair, I just stared at the television screen to block out the shit running through my head.
Even after all this time, seeing with my own eyes that he was okay…
Some part of me still felt like I would wake up and find out he’d died on the table and I was just living a nightmare where I thought he was fine.
But he was really dead.
I sucked in a ragged breath, then looked long and hard at my son. He was still here. They were all here, and they were damn lucky Austin hadn’t taken them out.
I was lucky.
“I’m just saying, a little bit of sympathy wouldn’t be amiss!”
“Amiss? Did you eat a dictionary for breakfast?” Liam jested.
“Hey, I have smarts.”
“You have the ability to read. There’s a difference.”
“Let’s get this shit taken care of,” I interrupted. “The furniture isn’t going to move itself.”
“Yeah, Jeff. Stop pretending you’re injured and get to work.”
Jeff flipped him off, and then Liam tackled him to the ground, giving him a noogie just like they did when they were kids. Chuckling, I ignored their horsing around and focused on things in the present.
And I did a pretty damn good job of it until the afternoon when Clara stormed into the house with a flurry of bags, along with Bailey and Krista in tow. I had never seen so much shit in all my life.
Well, when the kids were little, there had been a few Christmases when Clara went overboard. But this…
“What the hell is all that?” I muttered.
“Looks like Ma went a little crazy at the store,” Liam grinned.
“Yeah, well, don’t laugh at me just yet. Your wife went with her.”
His smile instantly dropped, and he rushed off to find his wife. “Bailey! I think we should talk.”
“See, you guys are all chumps,” Jeff chuckled. “I’m the only smart one. The bachelor of the family. No woman to tell me what to do. No woman to spend my money.”
“No sex,” I retorted.
“That’s not a problem. There are plenty of ladies chomping at the bit to get to me.”
“No, they’re not,” I laughed. “Name one woman who’s chasing you around town.”
“Plenty of them, Pop. Just you wait. One day, you’ll be coming to me, asking if you can use my spare bedroom because Ma is driving you crazy. I’m just counting down the days.”
“First, that’s your mother you’re speaking about. Second, the day I ask to stay with you is the day your mother divorces me. And third…” I slapped him upside the head. “You’re an idiot.”
Wincing, he rubbed the back of his head. “There’s no need to get violent. I was shot recently, you know.”
“Trust me, I know. I also know that if you don’t find a woman soon, your mother is going to do your laundry for the rest of your life.
That’s not a good look, whether you have a woman or not.
And I also know that you can’t cook worth a damn, which means that you’ll starve when your mother decides she no longer wants to cook for you. ”
“Hey, I know how to do laundry. She just likes to do it for me. And I won’t ever starve because I know how to open a can of beans.”
“So… you won’t starve because you’ll have beans, but you won’t have any women because…all you’ll eat is beans.” I gave his shoulder a squeeze. “I think you might have your priorities mixed up.”