Christmas at Colts Creek

by Delores Fossen

  Behind him, Brody heard his mother politely offering everyone to sit. Offering coffee, too. Leave it to his mom to keep her manners even when a ball-kicking was in progress.

  On a resigned sigh, Brody motioned for Janessa to come in, and when she took a few steps, he saw that she was limping. Wincing, too.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “I kicked Abe’s tombstone, and I might have broken my big toe. Serves me right,” she added in a grumble.

  Yeah, it did. Or rather Brody would have said that before he’d heard what was in Abe’s will. It was obvious Janessa had neither expected nor wanted this, and by leaving her everything, Abe had created a very messy situation. One perhaps worthy of some tombstone kicks.

  “Sorry about intruding like this,” Asher said when Brody and the still-limping Janessa joined the others in the living room. Asher and Margo were already seated, and his mother was in the kitchen, pouring coffee. “But we need to finish talking about Abe.”

  “And the letter,” Margo snarled.

  “Yes, that and the will,” Asher verified. “I didn’t get a chance to finish going over the last parts of the will. What do you know about the letter Abe sent Janessa?”

  It took Brody a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. Apparently, this was going to be his day for shocks and surprises. Too bad none of them had been good so far, and Brody wasn’t holding out much hope that this one would be any different.

  “What letter?” Brody fired back.

  “This one,” Janessa answered. She took a rain-spattered envelope from her purse and passed it to Brody. “Abe sent it a week ago, but because I’ve been out of town on business, I didn’t open it until this morning.”

  Brody looked at the envelope first. Not handwritten but rather typed, and it was addressed to Janessa at the Bright Hope House in Dallas. He had some vague recollection of someone mentioning that Janessa ran a place for troubled teens. Why Abe had sent her a letter there, though, he had no idea. Unless Abe hadn’t had her home address. That was possible since they likely hadn’t stayed in touch. In fact, Abe hadn’t once mentioned Janessa in the sixteen years since her last visit.

  “FYI, I got the same letter,” Asher explained. “A courier delivered it from San Antonio right about the time the funeral started. On the drive over here, I had my assistant read it to me, and I confirmed that the one I received was identical to Janessa’s.”

  Wrestling with his own questions, Brody took out the letter that Janessa had given him and unfolded it. Like the envelope, it was typed, not handwritten. Definitely no pouring out his heart to his only child. Heck, there wasn’t even a dear or a hello.

  “‘I’m dying,’” Brody read aloud.

  That stopped him, and Brody could have sworn his heart stopped for a couple of seconds, too. Yeah, today was definitely the day for shocks and surprises.

  There were only a couple more lines of the letter, and after he cleared his throat, Brody read them aloud, too. “‘Janessa, I need you to come to the ranch ASAP. There are some things I have to tell you, some things I have to fix. Please come. Please.’”

  There was a large A scrawled at the bottom.

  Well, hell.

  Brody read through it again. Then again. To the best of his knowledge, he’d never heard Abe say please to anyone, but Janessa had gotten two of them. However, that wasn’t what got his attention.

  I’m dying.

  Yeah, that was an attention grabber all right. Those were the two words that kept repeating through Brody’s mind. Along with those repeats, he tried to sort through the past week to see if he could remember Abe giving him any hints or signals that something was wrong. But there was nothing, causing Brody to add another internal round of, Well, hell.

  His mother came into the living room, set a tray of filled coffee mugs on the table between the two sofas and immediately went to Brody to slip her arm around his waist. It was her protective Mama Bear gesture.

  “You might not remember me, but I’m Darcia Harrell,” she said, introducing herself to Janessa. “Brody’s mother.”

  Her voice was cool. Yeah, definitely Mama Bear time. Darcia was almost certainly remembering how he’d moped and brooded after Janessa left him all those years ago. Mama Bears had long memories, and it wouldn’t do squat for Brody to tell her that was an old-water-old-bridge kind of deal.

  “Yes, I remember you. It’s nice to see you again,” Janessa responded, either ignoring or not picking up on Darcia’s coolness. But maybe seeing his mother triggered another memory because Janessa glanced at the mantel.

  At the framed family photos centered between two tall slim vases that his mother had made.

  There were five pictures, but her attention seemed to zoom in on the shot of Darcia, him and Layla. His sister. A sister Janessa had met and spent time with that summer she’d been at the ranch. Janessa opened her mouth, and Brody could almost see the question she was about to ask.

  How’s Layla?

  Brody didn’t realize his expression had changed, but it must have because he saw Janessa table that question and move on to another uncomfortable topic. “I don’t know why Abe wanted me here in Last Ride,” Janessa said to him. “But I’m guessing it was to tell me about the will.”

  Probably. There was also a chance that Abe had just wanted to say goodbye to her. Or try to smooth over their rocky past. Of course, Brody had no way of knowing because Abe hadn’t seen fit to fill him in.

  “Had Abe been sick?” Asher asked Brody.

  “Not that I knew of.” Then he glanced down at his mother. She worked at the hospital, in pediatrics, but she might have heard something about Abe’s claim of I’m dying.

  Darcia shook her head. “I didn’t know.”

  Even though Brody figured he’d get the same response from Margo, he looked at her. And got the headshake that he’d expected.

  Margo wouldn’t have kept something like that to herself, even if Abe had sworn her to secrecy. Ditto for Velma Sue. Not that Abe would have told them anyway. Brody considered himself the person who would have most likely heard news like that from Abe, and yet he hadn’t heard a word about it.

  “I didn’t know about any illness, either,” Asher supplied. “During my last meeting with him, when he told me he wanted me to draw up some new estate documents for him, including a new will, Abe expressed some concern about how he’d lived his life. That maybe he hadn’t always made wise choices.”

  “A very understated understatement,” Margo grumbled. “Did Abe get into specifics about the people he’d screwed over and how he planned for Janessa to fix it?”

  “No,” Asher said after a long pause. “I did ask him if there was a reason for wanting a new will, but Abe certainly didn’t say it was because he thought he was dying. He just said he’d changed his mind about some things.”

  “Who was his beneficiary in his old will?” Janessa asked.

  Asher opened his mouth. Closed it. “I can’t say.”

  “It was Brody,” Janessa concluded on a heavy sigh. She groaned and squeezed her eyes shut a moment. “If I hadn’t been out of town and had come to Last Ride when the letter arrived, I could have found out what was wrong with him. I might have been able to talk him into not leaving everything to me.” She stopped, and some fresh anger lit in her eyes. “Or adding those blasted stipulations.”

  Brody certainly hadn’t forgotten Asher mentioning stipulations at the graveside, but he hadn’t seen the point of hanging around to hear them. Judging from the scowl on Margo’s face, he’d been wrong about that.

  This time, Brody didn’t bother with the cursing, either mentally or aloud. In fact, he was reasonably sure that nothing else Asher could say would shock him more than he already was.

  Asher drew in a long breath. “Abe wanted me to read a summary of his will at the graveside service, but becaus
e of the, uh, circumstances, I’ll dispense with that and finish reading it here.” He pulled some documents from his briefcase. “As I’ve already told you, Janessa is the only beneficiary.”

  He handed out copies to Brody, Janessa and Margo. That’s when Brody realized some more ball-kicking was about to happen. Ball-kicking that Janessa and Margo were apparently already aware of.

  “It’s just like I said,” Margo griped. “It’s one of those stupid online challenges. Would you live in this amazing house for a month with no internet, no phone, some panty-sniffing poltergeists, blah, blah, blah?”

  Brody was certain he looked confused. Because he was. “What?”

  “It’s all spelled out here,” Asher went on after a heavy sigh, “but I’ll say this started as more of a contract than a will. Estate documents,” he emphasized. “Abe wanted me to draw up an offer for Janessa to come to the ranch, not just for a visit but for an extended stay through the holidays. He wanted a chance for them to get to know each other.”

  “And why would he have possibly thought I’d agree to that?” Janessa asked. Her tone was more like Margo’s now, and since she was shivering, Brody took the throw off the back of the sofa. When he handed it to her, she muttered a “Thanks.”

  “Because he was going to offer to fully fund the Bright Hope House for the next ten years,” Asher answered without hesitation.

  Janessa sucked in her breath. “That would have been millions.”

  Brody could only shake his head. He hadn’t heard Abe say a word about any of this. He didn’t have to think of Abe’s motivation for the funding. Nope. It was the golden carrot to get Janessa here. The “getting her to stay” was the puzzler. Well, not as much of a puzzler, though, as what Margo had said about the panty-sniffing poltergeist.

  Then it hit him. Hard.

  “Janessa has to live here to keep ownership of the ranch?” Brody asked.

  “Like the stupid social media post,” Margo said with a finger jab at Asher.

  “Like the post,” Asher reluctantly admitted. “Janessa does inherit everything if she agrees to live at the ranch for three months, starting now.”

  The room went silent again, but Brody figured everybody there was doing some hard thinking. He certainly was. Three months could feel like a lifetime for Janessa. This wasn’t her home and, added to that, her last three months here hadn’t exactly been a cakewalk.

  “I’ve already told Janessa and Margo this particular stipulation, but I’ll spell it out for you,” Asher said to Brody. “If Janessa leaves for even one night, that’ll nullify her ownership of Abe’s estate. If she doesn’t agree and abide, then the ranch will be sold to the highest bidder at auction, and the proceeds from the sale along with all of Abe’s other assets will be donated to various charities.”

  “Janessa kicked Abe’s tombstone when she heard that part,” Margo told Brody. “She kicked it again when Asher told her the rest, and then she stormed off like you already had.”

  “So, I called Janessa and asked her to meet Margo and me here since you were supposed to hear this, too,” Asher said before Brody could ask what in the hell was the rest. “What I told Janessa before the second kick was that if she stayed the three months and the other stipulation was met, then she would be able to do whatever she wanted with the ranch and the rest of Abe’s estate.”

  Janessa jumped right into the explanation. “Of course, I would have gladly handed over the ranch and all the money to you and given Margo the land under her house,” Janessa said in such a way that Brody knew the pisser ball-kicking moment still wasn’t over. “Tell him the rest,” Janessa insisted.

  “There’s one other stipulation, an important one,” Asher said. “Janessa’s mother, Sophia, must also agree. When I tried to contact Sophia to ask her to come to Last Ride so I could discuss some important things with her, she told me she’d be here if and when hell froze over.”

  Brody was still letting that sink in when Asher continued.

  Asher dragged in a long breath. “Janessa has twenty-four hours to convince her mother to live at the ranch for three months. If not, all of you lose everything.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  JANESSA SAT IN the examination room of the ER, waiting for the nurse to return with her X-ray results.

  And hopefully some pain meds.

  The big toe on her left foot was throbbing nonstop and had now swollen to the point that she’d had to limp shoeless into the Last Ride Memorial Hospital.

  Thankfully, she’d been the only patient in the ER and had been seen and x-rayed right away. That quick attention had prevented her from having to sit in a waiting room where she likely would have run into someone who already knew about the mess Abe had created with that blasted condition in his will.

  No way would Margo keep something like that to herself.

  And it wasn’t over yet. Asher had texted her to tell her she needed to come to his office to sign some papers acknowledging that he’d notified her of the conditions of Abe’s will. Apparently, she was once again going to be reminded about what her father had done.

  Janessa hadn’t told Asher that she was in the ER but instead had said she’d get there when she could. Asher hadn’t responded, probably figuring that she needed a little time to cool off and contact her mother.

  Margo had also tried to call her more than a dozen times. That was understandable since, thanks to Abe’s dumbass ploy, she now held the woman’s home in her hands.

  Or rather Sophia did.

  Which was why Janessa had texted and tried to call her mother more than a dozen times since hearing the bombshell from Asher. Sophia hadn’t answered even when Janessa had played dirty and mentioned she was in the hospital. She didn’t normally use such tactics, but there was nothing normal about this situation.

  Ironically, the other person Janessa hadn’t heard from was Brody, even though he had the most to lose. Maybe he was still stewing over the way Abe had screwed him. She certainly was and might stew for a long time. Especially if she couldn’t pull off a miracle and convince her mother to come back to the one place she’d sworn never to return.

  Her phone rang, and Janessa nearly dropped it when she bobbled it to look at the screen. Not Brody or her mother but rather Janessa’s own ex, Kyle McKinney. Though ex was somewhat of a loose term, and that term was yet something else Janessa had on her plate. Thankfully, Kyle was okay with whatever she chose or didn’t choose to call him, and that’s why they worked so well together to run Bright Hope House.

  “You’re in the hospital?” Kyle immediately asked.

  Janessa sighed. “My mother told you?”

  “Yup. She texted me a couple of minutes ago.”

  Good. It meant Sophia was at least reading her messages or listening to her voice mails. Of course, she almost always did since she was a family law attorney, a dedicated one, who often took calls from her clients.

  “Sophia thinks it’s some kind of trick to get her to call you, and she doesn’t want to ring you back,” Kyle explained. “She figures you’ll just want to talk about your father.”

  “I do want to talk about him,” Janessa snapped and then reined in her temper. No use sending anger missiles at Kyle. “Abe messed over a lot of people in his will, and I need to ask her to do me a huge favor.”

  Like the ex-label for Kyle, favor certainly wasn’t the right word for something that would throw Sophia’s life into chaos. Hers, too. Of course, if she couldn’t get her mother to come, then there’d be no reason for her to stay in Last Ride, either. She’d have violated Abe’s assery conditions, and the ranch would be sold. Janessa didn’t know how much the ranch was worth, but she doubted Brody would be able to come up with the money to buy it in an auction.

  “Seriously, are you okay?” Kyle pressed. “Are you actually in the hospital?”

  “I am. Well, I’m in the ER anyway. It’s just
a broken toe.” One that was still throbbing.

  “How the heck did that happen?”

  “Long story.” She paused, gathered her breath. “Kyle, there are some things going on, and I might have to stay here in Last Ride for a while.”

  He grunted, his go-to response, but this one had a you’ve-got–to-be-kidding-me tone to it. “Because of a broken toe?”

  “No, because my father was a flamin’ bunghole.” Obviously, she wasn’t being completely successful holding back her temper. “There really isn’t a best-case scenario in this, but if I can talk my mother into doing something, I might be here in Last Ride for the next three months.”

  This time, Kyle’s grunt went up many notches in the you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me. “What the heck’s going on?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. “We need you here. You know the fires we have to put out every day.”

  Yes, she knew, since fire dousing was a major part of what she did. And there were always plenty of metaphorical fires in a place that housed troubled teens. Some actual fires, too, along with a constant stream of fundraisers since it wasn’t cheap to keep a place like Bright Hope running.

  “I probably won’t end up having to stay here,” Janessa said, talking over the string of objections that Kyle started to spew. “I just wanted to prepare you in case I can pull off a miracle.”

  Kyle quit talking and grunted instead, as if that’d given him some reassurance that she’d soon be back behind her desk. Miracle worker wasn’t something on her résumé. Especially when it applied to her mother.

  “I’d have to convince my mother to come to Last Ride for three months and live at the ranch through the holidays,” Janessa continued. “It’s a condition of Abe’s will that Sophia and I have to live here.”

  “Like one of those stupid internet challenges?” Kyle asked.

  Janessa sighed and wondered why that analogy had jumped to both his and Margo’s minds. “Yes, like that. If my mother doesn’t come, people will get screwed over.”