“That’s thanks to my wife,” she relished being able to say. “She just picked up the paint, a brush, a sprayer, and did the work. She knows what needs doing and just does it. She’s really very handy,” she said as she began to walk to the barn with her father, a sullen Rosemary tripping along behind them. Fiona knew she wouldn’t stay quiet very long and wondered when the issue of the check would come up.
Fiona showed them the very clean barn, except the stall where she had kept her cow patient previously, which had the straw for their next patient. She showed them, with a considerable amount of pride, the box stall they had converted into a surgery. “Allyssa is going to promote low-cost spay and neuter to the district,” she bragged proudly.
“This is nice. This is very nice,” her father complimented her, noticing all the details including the stainless-steel walls.
“Yes, it’s taken a while, and we’re just waiting on the lights,” she pointed up.
“But by taking a lower fee, won’t you lose money for your services?” Rosemary asked, sounding aggrieved.
“We’ll make up in volume and goodwill what we lose in fees,” she explained, knowing the woman was just looking for a reason to complain.
“Sounds like you found a good helpmate,” Keith put in, giving his adult daughter a sideways hug.
“She is,” Fiona agreed with a smile. “Let me show you what she’s done with the cabin,” she eagerly anticipated showing her dad, who would appreciate it.
As they slowly walked up the slight incline, she could hear giggles down around the barn where Allyssa had gone with her younger siblings. It made her happy to know they were already getting along. She didn’t know them well, but always treated them as though they were full siblings and not half. It wasn’t their fault their mother was who she was or acted the way she did.
“Oh, Fey. This is beautiful,” her father marveled as he took in the wooden enclosed book shelves. The sun was gleaming through the windows showing off the rich woods, the high polish, and the glass. The medical items—from tools to medications to books—looked just right behind them.
“This must have cost a pretty penny,” Rosemary put in as she saw the rich-looking bookshelves.
“Allyssa got a really good bargain and cleaned them up,” she informed her with no emotion in her voice, so her stepmother couldn’t take offense. She had tried to befriend her when her father first introduced them twenty-some years ago, but Rosemary wanted nothing to do with the child who was a threat to her own two boys and the attention Keith heaped on them. She had seen that the child would do better with her grandparents and made sure Keith kept that arrangement. Later, the excuse was that she was too tired with her own young children. Fiona no longer resented her for it. Her grandparents had not only been loving and kind, but had made sure she accomplished her dreams and ambitions.
“So, you live in the mobile home?” Rosemary asked with a ‘better than thou’ tone. She didn’t live in a trailer. She had a fine house that Keith provided for her.
“Well, we sleep here in the cabin…in the loft,” Fiona told her, pointing upwards. She noticed the phone was blinking on the desk, which meant they had voicemail. Tempted to ignore her visitors and check on it, she resisted. That would be rude. “But we use the mobile home for refrigeration and cooking. In a pinch, I have the camper,” she pointed to her truck that they hadn’t noticed beside the shed.
“That’s wise. You can clean up after work or sleep in it if you have a particularly nasty case,” Keith complimented his wise, older daughter. “Now, you just need a house on the place to complete it,” he added, deliberately bringing up the subject.
“Yes,” Fiona turned to Rosemary to put her on the spot and keep her from getting too comfortable. “I understand my mail came to your house? Would you please give me the insurance check?”
“I don’t know that...” she began uncomfortably, but Keith gave her a warning look. “I think we should renegotiate the terms of the trust and the...” she tried again, ignoring him.
“The trust was very clear. It spelled out exactly what my grandparents wanted. Dad understood that and it is taken care of. Do I have to make an appointment with the attorney to have him explain it to you again?” she asked, a sweet smile on her face despite the threatening words.
“No…no, I understood it. However, this is a lot of money, and the checks...” she began and then stopped, horrified. Even Keith hadn’t known there was more than one check.
Fiona pounced on the words, “Checks?”
Rosemary looked at her husband, who looked angrier than she could ever imagine him looking. He had, on more than one occasion, threatened to divorce her. It was why she had the children, to keep him tied to her and to have him provide for her and her sons forever. She glanced back at a steely-eyed Fiona. “Well,” she huffed, “you shouldn’t be the beneficiary of both the house and the life insurance policies!”
“Rosemary, you have more than one check?” Keith confirmed in a carefully controlled voice. “I suggest you turn them over…NOW!” he nearly thundered, but maybe it was the fact there was no other noise in the small cabin, not even the tweet of birds coming in from outside.
Clearly reluctant, certain she could have negotiated a higher settlement from Fiona, Rosemary reached inside her purse and removed four envelopes. All of them had been opened. All of them were from insurance companies. All of them were addressed to Fiona Herriot in care of Keith Herriot.
Fiona held out her hand and Rosemary reluctantly placed them in it. Keith looked thunderstruck as his daughter went to sit in Allyssa’s desk chair to read them.
The first was about the house and the investigation saying it had been concluded to be an accident and that a check would be forthcoming. The next was the actual check and the amount nearly had Fiona gasping. She glanced at the date of the issuance of the check and nearly looked up at her stepmother. This had come in months ago. Months when they had to be so careful what they spent. Months they could have been preparing to build a home. Months that Rosemary greedily kept her from her rightful monies.
The third and fourth envelopes were from another insurance company altogether. They too had the address in care of her father. They contained condolences, obviously computer generated because they were identical, but they were life insurance beneficiary policies and named Doctor Fiona Herriot the beneficiary. The amounts were substantial. They explained that as the original beneficiary, her grandmother in the case of her grandfather’s death and vice versa, she was next in line to inherit. She glanced up at her father. “Dad, I don’t think I should take these. This is for your parents’ life insurance,” she explained and went to show him the two envelopes and checks.
“No, my parents knew what they were doing. They knew my family was taken care of. They left it to you because they knew you were just starting out. You deserve it,” he said and meant it.
“But what about Sean and Traci?” she asked, feeling guilty for having so much.
“Yes, what about our children,” Rosemary put in pettishly. She was down, but she wasn’t out.
Keith turned angrily on his wife. “The trust set aside money for them. There is enough for them to go to college, unlike Trevor and Peter that I paid for out of my own money,” he pointed out.
“But they’re your sons!” she gasped.
“No, they are your sons as you’re so fond of bragging,” he corrected her. “I’ll take care of Sean and Traci. They don’t need my parents’ money. They didn’t grow up out here and they didn’t even know my parents. Fey came by it rightly, and she deserves it as far as I’m concerned. They were her parents, not me.”
Fiona was surprised. First, her father sticking up for her was unprecedented. Second, she hadn’t known he had sent her stepbrothers, Trever and Peter to college. Her grandparents had paid for her college education. That was when they had started to cut back on the cattle and other livestock they had raised right here on the ranch.
“Sean and Traci sh
ould benefit from their grandparents’ money...” began Rosemary, obviously still determined to get her hands on some of it.
“They had the trust. That’s enough,” he said with finality. He turned back to his oldest daughter. “You keep it, baby. You build your wife a house and maybe, someday, make this old man a grandfather?” he smiled at her.
Fiona had tears in her eyes as she got up to give her father a hug. She heard her wife and siblings coming and released him, wiping the tears with the back of her hand and then her hands on her jeans as they came up the steps.
“Hey, let’s have this out here,” Allyssa called.
“Cool,” Sean said, looking in the cabin and seeing all the spectrums of color the glass reflected. It made it very bright inside the cabin; the wood on the walls and cabinets seemed to glow.
“That’s pretty,” Traci said, her hands each held two cups by the handles.
“Let’s have some of that lemonade,” Keith said heartily, a warning glare at Rosemary as he ushered them out.
Rosemary did not have a nice trip out to the ranch. She spent most of it sitting on the chair in front of the cabin. If she had had an old-fashioned musket and a jug of hard cider, she would have been picture perfect. The rest of them had a blast. Fiona took each of her siblings out on the horses, and then her father and siblings rode them while Allyssa tried to entertain Rosemary. But when her attempts at conversation were ignored, she worked on the new blog announcing the low-cost spay and neuter clinic they were setting up. She’d wait for Fiona to give it a second eye. She’d seen the checks and put them in one of her file drawers for safekeeping. Fiona had told her about the confrontation and she secretly cheered for Keith, who she had always thought a bit of a wimp.
Keith helped Fiona put up a fence around the garden with plenty of room for future expansion. The wood looked attractive with a fresh coat of paint, and they stapled chicken wire around the lot of it, burying it in a foot-deep trench to keep the rabbits from undermining it.
“You can grow strawberries and blueberries up here, but you’re gonna have to get some netting to keep the birds off,” Keith explained to Allyssa who was very appreciative of their hard work on her behalf. For her first garden, she was really failing, but she was game.
Keith and her siblings even went with Fiona on a couple of calls. It allowed bonding between the four blood relatives, and Keith and Fiona told the younger two siblings stories about their grandparents that they would never have heard; Rosemary didn’t encourage Keith to talk about his parents, and any mention of Fiona was frowned upon. By the end of the weekend, the siblings had formed a bond that the occasional visits Fiona had made to Portland had never secured. Now, with the invitation to come and stay for the summer, they were excited and looking forward to coming back.
Rosemary was the first in the car when it was time to leave. She had never been so insulted! To be asked to stay in the mobile home with Keith? She had hated the two nights and had complained bitterly. She was sure there were bugs in her hair and her clothes, and she was sure the children would come down with something. Her children were happier and healthier than they had ever been, they were excited to get to know their much older sister better, and her wife was a lot of fun. Allyssa had even shown them the ATV, allowing them to drive carefully around the farmyard with her on the back ready to take over the controls if necessary.
“Dad, can we get one?” Sean had pleaded excitedly.
Keith was pleased with the whole trip, but he knew it hadn’t turned out at all like Rosemary had planned. Not one dollar of that money was coming to him, and he hadn’t known about the life insurance policies.
“You take care, chick-a-bee,” he teased his oldest daughter, ruffling her short brown hair. He saw in her eyes the beauty that had been her mother. He couldn’t see that she looked just like him as well as her brother and sister. “Invite us when the house is built, okay?” he pointed with his chin to where the house site was, the blackened timbers long gone due to Allyssa’s efforts.
“I will, Dad. I’m so glad you all came,” her look took in her father, sister, and brother, who looked just as happy to have been there. “You are all welcome back anytime,” she assured them, but she didn’t quite look at Rosemary who sat stiffly in the passenger seat.
“Goodbye. Goodbye,” they all called and waved.
“Whew, I’m glad that’s over,” Fiona said as the car disappeared over that last rise.
“Come on, that was fun,” Allyssa teased her, taking her in her arms. “And from what you told me, you won against Rosemary.”
“It was really weird, the way my dad stood up to her. I wonder if he’s finally sick of her and her attitude. I didn’t know he paid for my stepbrothers’ college. I thought the army did that,” she mused, looking thoughtful.
“Well, it’s over and done with, and hopefully they will come back.”
“We are going to have to make an appointment with one of those factory house places or an architect or builder,” she said with a gleam in her eye.
“I don’t know if I want a pre-fab. They don’t look much better than the mobile home,” she said almost worriedly.
“No, they’ve changed a lot in the last years. Now, you can’t even tell they are prefab. Some of the models look like they built them all on site.”
They discussed once again what they wanted in a house and both agreed on an old farmhouse look with modern conveniences.
Chapter Nineteen
That week was busy…too busy to plan a house. Toby Colbert came by, met Fiona, and both were favorably impressed. Fiona had asked her father and he had the same reaction she had … the name sounded vaguely familiar and neither could put their finger on why. She asked at the farms and ranches, and some vaguely remembered him from years past, but didn’t really know him. She decided upon meeting him that they could work out a deal, and they signed a contract. He would use their hills and fields and meadows in exchange for a couple of beef a year and a set financial amount.
It was weird to see cattle back on the ranch, and Toby evidently had a lot as they kept coming in. He found the backroad onto the ranch and brought them in that way too until he had the maximum he could support on the land without overgrazing it.
Allyssa found it weird to see cows occasionally coming up to their fences and chewing their cud while watching her and her activities. Rex, after he got yelled at a few times, finally stopped trying to chase them. Actually, it might have been the one bull who chased him back that convinced him to leave them alone.
Allyssa was pleased as the appointments for their low-cost spay and neutering day came in. The fact that it was only one day and appointments were filling up fast seemed to inspire people. By the end of the first week, they were full and had made several appointments for full cost procedures. The new surgery would be well used.
“I’m going to have to get a vet tech out here,” Fiona griped as she looked over the many she would have to do in a day.
“What? I can’t help?” Allyssa was almost insulted.
“That one surgery was an emergency. You aren’t qualified.” Seeing her wife’s look, she quickly added, “But I’m going to need your help.”
“I’m not qualified,” she murmured almost angrily.
Fiona quickly took her in her arms. “You are the best marketing, internet guru, receptionist, bookkeeping partner a person could ask for. You are qualified at other things. If you want to go back to school and get your tech degree or become a vet yourself, I’m sure we could manage.”
Allyssa smiled at her wife, her ruffled feathers soothed. “I really don’t want to go back to school,” she admitted. “I like it here too much.”
“Hey, what did Charlie at the bank say?” she asked, Allyssa had taken the checks to be deposited in their ranch account.
“That ass said it would be two weeks while they ‘verified’ the funds were good on those checks. He tried to tell me that was standard procedure. I think that a certified check should
mean it’s good. Then he questioned why you had waited so long to cash them.”
“Well, Rosemary did hang on to them for a while,” Fiona admitted, and that still annoyed her. She was surprised they had gotten them from her unscathed. Whatever her father had on Rosemary had worked. “Let’s look at houses online tonight and see if anyone in this area can come out and start giving us quotes. I’m sure it’s going to take weeks for those quotes too.”
Allyssa was the one who ended up talking to the various salesmen. Apparently, there were no women who sold houses in this area or who could quote on the building of the house they wanted. There were quite a few companies that made prefabricated house, but not many architects and builders who would come out this far.
“No, no, NO,” she told salesmen who had an agenda of their own, “We want wide porches and a screened-in porch over there,” she would point. “The view of the mountains is better there.” She was adamant, wanting to recreate Fiona’s grandparents’ house but with their own touches. It was very frustrating.
“But if we put in–” they’d begin, trying to beguile her with some of their versions of the latest features and she’d cut them off.
“If you don’t want our business...” she would finish with them, pretending to walk away until she got what she and Fiona wanted.
“He said what?” Fiona would ask, outraged on her wife’s behalf at the nerve of these salesmen. She secretly cheered as Allyssa thought of improvements she hadn’t, but then she spent a lot of time online and saw things they could use on this remote ranch.
* * * * *
The low-cost spay and neuter day was a complete success. Rex was tied up down near the corral. He could see and announce visitors, but couldn’t challenge any of them for trespassing on his turf. He made up for it at night when Allyssa let him off the leash and he peed on everything to mark it all again. He was indignant, but he wasn’t their priority.
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