Chapter 5 #3
He doesn’t look impressed with my scant acquiescence. “You do that. I’m gonna tell your brothers the same thing.”
Whenever they get here.
I slap my hands on the armrests. “Good luck with that.” I stand up. “I’m going to go through the records and get familiar with everything again.”
I should tell Carlos about our plans and give him more time to prepare, but I hold back. It’s no use concerning anyone until I learn what we’re legally allowed to do.
He stuffs a thumb toward his computer. “Have at it. Take it to the house, pop a can of whatever beer is stocked in the fridge, and relax a little.”
I haven’t had a Jules Creek beer in decades, but sitting on the porch with a cold one is a siren’s call I can’t entertain. I’m not home to kick back and relax.
I collect the laptop and head to the house.
My loafers crunch on the gravel. A moo echoes from a distance, followed by another.
To my right, a horse whinnies. With the computer tucked under my arm, I confront an unfamiliar sorrel quarter horse with a star marking between her eyes.
She’s grazing near the fence line, and the crunching fills the air as her jaw works back and forth.
“And who are you?”
She lowers her head to take another mouthful. Her coat glimmers in the sunlight. She adjusts her stance and goes back to grazing.
“That’s Styx,” Carlos calls from the mouth of the barn. “Short for Pixie Styx.”
“Whose is she?” I ask as loud as I can without yelling, but Styx remains unbothered.
“One of Holly’s friends got a divorce and took the mare out of spite. Couldn’t care for her, though. Had to give her up. Meredith likes to ride her.”
Of course she does.
I give the horse one more appreciative glance, as I do with the other unfamiliar horses grazing behind her, and continue toward the house.
It’s been twenty years since I’ve ridden, and the urge to head straight to the barn and find my old saddle is hard to resist. My steps even stutter like I’m going to turn around.
No, goddammit. I’m not here to go horseback riding or frolic through the pastures inhaling the scent of wildflowers. Nostalgia’s making me need a lot of damn reminders.
I veer farther away from the lilacs surrounding the yard. My shoes thud heavily against the porch boards. I don’t even pause to think about whether I need a key for the house. My parents didn’t lock up a single day of my first twenty-one years, and I doubt Dad has started now.
Holly might’ve.
I yank open the door, relieved to have one less thing to resent, and step into the entry.
My heart crawls into my throat and chokes me worse than when I stepped into Dad’s office.
A swell of loss crushes against my rib cage.
The place looks different, yet it doesn’t.
The pictures on the wall aren’t Mama’s photographs of the hills and buttes on the property.
Instead, a foggy Highland cow stares at me from over the couch.
Down the hallway, I can see the old family photos have been rearranged.
How many are still there? Is Mama in any of them?
Or is that like putting the headline of the crime on display?
Dad’s cigar smell is stronger in the entryway but fades as I move deeper into the house. The cherry hardwood remains the same, but the walls are a slate gray, and the furniture is a shade of gunmetal.
Mama hated doing anything that was just for the aesthetic.
She thought a person’s life should decorate their walls.
She had pictures of me, Bowen, and Landry at all ages hanging everywhere.
Our football pictures. The three of us at the rear of a cattle drive.
There was at least one of each of us with a fish from the river that runs by our property.
Pictures meant something. They weren’t of fucking cows we didn’t even raise.
But what do I know? There could be a Highland cow in the pasture with Styx. I didn’t recognize any of the horses. Dad said the gelding I grew up with died two years ago. Our dog passed away from old age way before that. All the barn cats were definitely different, as were the chickens.
I stomp through the living room into the kitchen, pleased the typical compartmentalized farmhouse style blocks out the garish living room. Then I pause.
“Are you kidding me?”
“Farmhouse chic” practically screams at me. The walnut cabinets have been painted a cornflower blue, the countertops look like they could double as a cutting board, and there’s a goddamn dishwasher. My brothers and I served as the dishwashers growing up.
My blood pressure creeps to a critical level as I cross to a dining table I’ve never seen before. What happened to the custom-built table my grandpa made? I never met Mama’s dad, and that table was all she had left of him.
Fuck Holly, and fuck this house. I’ll go through the records, get a sense of what my brothers and I need to expect when we sell, and another family can try to find some happiness within these walls. They were capable of providing it once.