by Anna Jeffrey
“Sign of the times,” Drake said. “It’s taken some getting used to, I admit.”
“It would be nice to know what we’re trying to be secure from, wouldn’t it?”
“I think they’re close to solving it.” Drake said.
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” Pic gestured toward the moving array on the wall. “What’s all that?”
Drake clicked a remote at the screen that showed buildings. An architect’s rendering of several multi-story buildings came up. “Look at this. This is the new medical facility campus I’ve been telling y’all about. We’re getting ready to move forward.” He grinned.
Pic grinned, too. His brother was in his element. He would never have been content to stay at the Double-Barrel and be a rancher.
Pic and his siblings and parents owned a piece of the new facility. It would house many physicians and services and bring one of the premiere cancer treatment centers to Fort Worth. It would cost hundreds of millions to build. The forecasted return on their respective investments was substantial. That was how it was with everything Drake had anything to do with. Some press person had jokingly called him “The Donald Trump of Texas.” Everybody said he had the Midas touch, but one visit to his offices revealed how much work he put into every project. Blind luck had little to do with his success.
“Looks great,” Pic told him.
“It’s going to be extremely profitable,” Drake said. He touched the drawing that Pic had tucked under his arm. “Whatcha got?”
“Blueprint.”
“Something for me to look at?” He pulled it from under Pic’s arm. “Let’s go into the dining room where we can spread it out.”
Pic had planned to ease into a conversation about the construction of a swimming pool behind the ranch house, but now that Drake had grabbed the drawing, the prospect was out there. Drake wasn’t a guy to beat around the bush.
Carrying the blueprint, Drake led the way to the dining room and a long table. He removed the rubber band that encircled it and unrolled the drawing, using the dining table’s floral centerpiece to anchor one corner. Shannon came from somewhere and fit herself against his side. He looped his arm around her and kissed her temple, then turned his attention back to the drawing, studying it. “This looks like a swimming pool….Behind the garage.…At the ranch?”
Pic shrugged. “Remember last year when I asked you for a designer’s name? This is what I hired him to do. Whaddaya think about it?”
Drake looked up at him, his eyes narrowed. “You’re wanting to build a swimming pool at the ranch? You don’t like water. And you don’t know how to swim. And neither does Dad.”
Pic frowned. “Well, I can learn. So can Dad. Especially if we’ve got a good teacher.”
“What the hell, Pic? What are you not telling?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. Pic swallowed the knot in his throat and shrugged again. “I was thinking it would make a good wedding present if Mandy and I got married.”
Pic held his breath as a few beats passed. Then Drake’s face broke into a huge grin and he laughed. “No shit? Y’all decided to get married? It’s about time.”
“I’m thinking about it. Since I’m so busy at the ranch, I can’t get to town that often. I think she’s getting impatient. I guess I’m lucky she’s stuck with me. For sure, it’d be nice if she lived at the ranch and I didn’t have to drive nearly forty miles to town just to see her and spend a little time with her. But I haven’t said anything to her yet.”
“God, Pic, you’re such a dumbass,” Drake said, laughing. “I can’t believe you’re up here talking to me before you’ve talked to her.”
“This is a wonderful idea,” Shannon said, sliding on glasses, bending forward and looking closely at the drawing. “It’s so romantic. Isn’t she a swimmer?”
“Swims almost every day,” Pic answered. “That’s why I thought asking her to move out of town and live at the ranch might be more appealing if we had a pool.”
“Actually, I think it’s a great idea, Pic,” Drake said, thoughtful. “I don’t know why we didn’t do it before. If we’d had a pool and learned how to swim, maybe we’d have gotten over what happened.”
Drake looked up and Pic stared into his eyes, knowing they were both re-living a memory from childhood when their friend Johnny Mize had drowned. Drake was ten and Pic was eight. Johnny’s mom had taken the three of them to a movie in Camden. On the way home in a torrential rain that brought on a flash flood, her van drowned out when she tried to cross a low-water bridge over a dry wash. A raging torrent of water caught the van and floated it into the current. All of them somehow escaped and found trees and brush to cling to. Johnny’s mother, hanging on to his hand, lost her grip and Johnny was swept away by the roiling water. In a touch and go situation, Pic, Drake and Johnny’s mother had been rescued by chopper.
From that day forward, Pic had never had a desire to dip his toe in water other than a shower. Or a bathtub only occasionally. Even now, he had nightmares about drowning.
Not liking the memory, Pic swallowed. “That isn’t the only thing I came up here to talk to you about, Drake.”
To Pic’s relief, Drake switched gears. “We can go into the study.” He released Shannon, re-rolled the drawing, snapped the rubber band around it and handed it to Pic. “This is a good idea, Brother.” He turned to his wife. “Will you excuse us for a little while, sweetheart? Can we use your study?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll go watch TV with Grammy. Do y’all want a beer or something?”
“No, thanks,” Pic said. “I just finished working out.”
Chapter 21
Pic followed as Drake led the way. He had seen the room they called Shannon’s study from the hallway, but he hadn’t been in it. The cozy space had a nineteenth century look. Two walls were lined with dark wood shelves that sat atop ornately-carved closed-door cabinets. Books filled the shelves. A fragile-looking desk—an antique maybe—stood across the room. Since Shannon had moved out of an old Victorian house, she probably liked antiques and old things.
Besides a soft-looking sofa that had big red flowers all over it, he spotted other feminine touches like the ones Mom used to try to bring to the Double-Barrel ranch house—flowers, candles and doo-dads. Mom had taken most of that with her when she left and it had never been replaced.
The room reminded him of how it had been to have a woman’s influence in the house and immediately he felt comfortable. Johnnie Sue and her crew kept the ranch house spotlessly clean, but did nothing toward creating a soft atmosphere. The longer Mom had been gone, the more masculine and utilitarian the Double-Barrel ranch house had become. Pic didn’t know about his dad, but he personally missed a few feminine touches. Instantly, he envisioned all of Mandy’s cute and colorful chicken décor brightening up the stark ranch house kitchen.
Like Drake’s office, one wall of his wife’s study looked out onto the lake. Tonight, a three-quarter moon appeared to be near enough to touch. It cast a long white-gold reflection the width of the lake and distant lights from homes across the water showed in the black night. Drake’s office had the same lake view, but with so much activity on three TV screens, Pic hadn’t noticed the moon’s beauty. The moonscape and the room’s serene ambience conveyed calm. It seeped into Pic’s psyche. He needed a little tranquility. The day had been a sonofabitch.
Two cushy chairs with fat arms and wide seats sat in front of the two adjoining walls of bookcases and cabinets. A lamp table hunkered between them, light coming from an ornate stand lamp spotlighting it. Drake pointed to the chairs. “Have a seat.”
Pic plopped down, placed the drawing on the floor beside the chair and propped his ankle over the opposite knee. “This is a nice quiet room. I like the feel of it.”
Drake took the adjacent seat. “It’s Shannon’s domain. Her grandmother’s house was full of antiques. She left most of them behind for the museum, but she did bring a few of her favorite pieces here.”
; Pic laughed. “I wasn’t talking about the furniture.”
Never one to fail to get straight to the point, Drake asked, “So, what’s going on with you, Brother? What did you want to talk about?”
Pic leaned forward, his forearms braced on his thighs. “I stare at those plans for the swimming pool and think about getting married and my head starts spinning. What would you think about me and Mandy living in the ranch house? Do you think the family would be pissed off?”
Drake opened his hands, his elbows resting on the chair arms. “God, Pic, it isn’t up to them. Is living there a problem?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never even hinted about bringing someone else into the ranch house to live. Dad likes Mandy and all, but—
“I understand. Talk to him. Feel him out”
“It’s such a big house,” Pic went on. Now he couldn’t stop venting his thoughts aloud for the first time. “Dad and I are lost in it. Already, there are parts of it we never go to. A squatter could be living with us and unless he started robbing the fridge, we wouldn’t know it. If I moved out, leaving Dad there all by himself, he’d be even more lost. But when I think about Mandy moving in, I can’t keep from wondering if some kind of a damn blow-up would happen every time Mom came around.”
“You’re right about the size of that house. If you got married, it seems a waste for you and your wife not to live there. What about Mandy? How would she feel about moving into the ranch house?”
“Oh, Mandy loves the place, I think, although she hasn’t been there much lately.”
“You wouldn’t have to live there, but you’ve got to be somewhere nearby. You could remodel—” Drake stopped himself. “Forget that shit. Kate and Troy both have their own places. I’ll never return to the ranch to live. As for Mom, she left there by her own choice. She shouldn’t be able to dictate what goes on there. If you and your wife lived in the ranch house and Mom couldn’t stand to be around her, whether it’s Mandy or somebody else, Mom would have to stay away.”
On a sigh, Pic sat back and rubbed his brow with two fingers. “This is just one of the things that gives me a headache every time I think of the future. The day’s never gonna come when Dad’s not trying to get Mom to come back. I think he honestly believes it’ll happen.”
Drake shook his head and got to his feet, walked over to a bank of bookshelves and opened the bottom doors in a lower cabinet, revealing a small refrigerator. He pulled out two bottles of Pellegrino. “He might believe it, but I don’t.”
He handed Pic a bottle and returned to his chair, opening his own bottle. “Why would she go back? She’s got the best of all worlds. She lives in a damn nice place convenient to downtown Fort Worth. She does anything she wants to, travels anywhere she wants to. Answers to nobody. She has a generous allowance for her personal needs. If she needs or wants a big-ticket item, Dad steps up and pays for it, like with the new car he bought her in April. And she doesn’t have to put up with him and his peccadilloes. She couldn’t get a better property settlement than that even if she wanted to divorce him.”
“Are you gonna tell him that?”
“I have told him that, but he doesn’t listen.”
Pic set his bottle unopened on the lamp table. He didn’t like the taste of Pellegrino. He saw nothing wrong with plain water. “You know, there have been plenty of times when I’ve wished they would get a divorce and be done with the whole thing.”
Drake shook his head. “Not happening. I didn’t know it until Mom told me this past Christmas, but when she left the ranch eight years ago, she did intend to get a divorce. But once she sat down with a lawyer, it didn’t take long for her to see that doing it could kill the golden goose and she could be tied up in court for the rest of her life. She wisely chose not to go down that path.”
Pic harrumphed. “One thing you can say for our mother. She might be high-strung, but she’s not stupid. Do you think she’s always known about the layers of corporations and trusts Grandpa set up?”
Drake shrugged. “According to Silas Morgan, Grandpa wouldn’t let Dad marry her until he got all of that put in place. Grandpa was a shrewd old guy. Ruthless, too, even with his family.”
Pic chuckled, remembering how controlling their grandfather had been. “That’s probably why Mom was six months pregnant before a wedding took place. If they hadn’t got their act together, you could’ve been a bastard, Brother.”
Their maternal grandparents hated the Lockhart side of the family. Pic was sure that their teenage daughter’s pregnancy and the delayed wedding was the fundamental reason. Add to that, Mom had been forced to quit school and hadn’t gotten a high school diploma via GED until after she had given birth to two kids.
Drake laughed, too. “I wonder if they would’ve let that happen. No doubt Grandpa took a hard look at what’s gone on with the old big spreads around Texas, and didn’t want to see the Double-Barrel follow. Some of them have been in litigation since the thirties.”
“Goes to show you what can happen when you get multiple generations of wives and girlfriends and mistresses and legitimate and illegitimate kids all squabbling over an estate. Case in point, our neighbor on the north side. I ran into him at a cattle sale a few weeks ago. They finally got a court ruling on that part of their place that woman from Houston sued them over. They didn’t have the cash to pay the settlement the court ordered, so they were forced to sell land and cattle. They had to let go of some mineral rights, too. Cody didn’t want to say it, but I think it’s just a matter of time before the XT goes on the market or goes under. I hate that. McAlisters have been around a long time.”
“We all have to be cognizant of that danger and see that nothing like it ever happens to the Double-Barrel. At least our ancestors weren’t as prolific as the McAlisters. And Dad has never changed one thing that Grandpa did. A few things he could’ve changed, but he chose not to. He solved a lot of future problems when he took Troy in and accepted him as an equal heir. McAlisters could have remedied some of their problems if somebody had had the foresight to do something like that.
“And Dad has branched out. He’s been a much smarter investor than Grandpa was. In the thirty-five years since he and Mom got married, the value of the Double Bar L Cattle Company has quintupled.”
“That brings me to one of the other things I came up here to talk to you about,” Pic said. “I gotta ask, Drake. I know it’s none of my business, but I gotta ask. Did you insist on Shannon signing one of those prenuptial agreements?”
“This is what’s kept you from popping the question to Mandy?”
“Not the only thing. Until today, I wasn’t ready.”
“What happened today?”
Pic related the incident with Zochi at the old homeplace.
Drake made no comment until he finished, then all he said was “Wow.”
“It’s like I had this damn epiphany,” Pic said. “Standing there in that old house, surrounded by all of that history, what you said to me one day about Mom counting on me not being able to keep my pants zipped kept coming back to me. Maybe that, as much as anything, was what stopped me from grabbing Zochi and fucking her blind when she was so willing. Mom might believe I’m a lowlife, but I don’t want to think that about myself.”
“Mom doesn’t believe you’re a lowlife, Pic. She worships all of her kids. I don’t know what’s going on in her head. I’ve wondered if she needs to be seeing a shrink or something. Maybe dealing with Dad has finally pushed her over the edge.”
“Do you think she sent Zochi to the ranch on purpose? Would she put Zochi or any woman up to doing something like that?”
“I’m afraid to guess,” Drake answered. “She’s done things that a few years ago I would never have believed. I haven’t told anybody, but she did something similar to me that she just tried to do to you. Figuring I wouldn’t able to keep my hands off Tammy McMillan, she brought her back into my life after her divorce.”
Pic’s eyes widened. “No shit? I hadn’t heard Tammy got a d
ivorce. Or that she’s back.”
“She’s in Fort Worth, working for her uncle. She has two kids, but they’re back in Arizona with her ex. Anyway, after I didn’t fall into that trap, Mom hired the PI to snoop into Shannon’s life.”
Pic shook his head. “I guess since Mom has success using sex to get what she wants from Dad, she thinks that will work getting her kids to do what she wants them to do. With the way Mom and Dad fight, I can’t believe they’re still sleeping together. And he’s such a sucker. I see the shit she pulls on him. Every time she wants something expensive, she gets together with him. It’s embarrassing. After your wedding, he spent several days at her house. Then all of a sudden, he bought her that new Cadillac.”
“I know. Mom probably feels like she’s earned it. I’m glad not to be as close to it as you are. So this Zochi is a real vamp, huh?”
Pic nodded. “Playboy centerfold. And she’s kind of helpless. Reminds me a lot of Lucianne. Not in the looks department, but her personality. In a way, I feel sorry for her. It’s just weird how Mom picked out somebody who could push my buttons.”
Drake smiled. “You’ve always been a soft touch, Brother and everybody knows it. I told you you’d better watch your step. How long did you say she’s going to be there?”
“Don’t know. If getting me into the sack was her purpose and that didn’t work out, maybe she’ll decide to go ahead and leave.”
“You did the right thing, Pic. If you fucked around on Mandy, you’d regret it for the rest of your life.”
“That’s what I realized. Jesus, I was standing there in a remote place with a hot naked woman—a gorgeous naked woman—and a hard-on. But I kept thinking that if I did anything about that, it would hurt Mandy. I think she’s gotten over me marrying Lucianne, but I doubt she’d get over it now if I cheated on her.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But at least the picture-taking expedition is over. I told Dad at supper that I’ve had it.”
“I meant what are you going to do about Mandy?”
