by Sloan Archer
Donna reached over and patted Vanessa’s hand. “I think she understood. She knew what your mother was like. She did grow up with her.” She dabbed under her eyes with a tissue she’d pulled from her behemoth handbag. “That’s why she left you this house. I think it was—”
“What, a consolation prize for having to grow up with my mother?”
Donna shook her head and offered Vanessa a sad smile and a soft chuckle. “No, I think it was her final way of taking care of you. If you had this house, you’d never be without a home.”
Guilt clenched Vanessa’s insides. Now was definitely not the time to reveal that she was planning on putting the house up for sale. But she could hardly be expected to stay in Dunblair Ridge, could she? This wasn’t where she had a life.
Yah, well, you don’t have much of one back in New York, either, do you? the annoyingly practical voice inside her head chided her.
“How did you get the letters?” Vanessa asked.
Donna said, “Oh, I thought that I’d mentioned that. Guess not. Jeanie asked me to hold them for her. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away—she said it was like giving up—but it also hurt her too much keeping them around here. Each time she got one back, she’d give it to me to add to the stack. Eventually, she stopped handing them over, so I took that as I sign that she’d finally stopped sending them. She was so hurt over the whole thing that I didn’t want to press her.”
“Thank you for giving them to me. I really appreciate it.”
Donna made her excuse to leave after they finished up their lemonades, which Vanessa was grateful for. She wanted to be alone.
On her way out, Donna said, “Oh, before I forget—my daughter is going out later for a girls’ night. She asked me to invite you.”
“That’s nice of her,” Vanessa said, and before she could stop it from happening, her eyes were dropping to the puppy dog t-shirt.
Donna barked out a laugh and flapped a hand. “Don’t worry, she doesn’t dress like me!”
“No, I wasn’t—”
“No need to make excuses. I’m well aware that nobody—including my daughter—likes my animal shirts, but I don’t care.” In a haughty voice, she added, “They’re my signature.”
Vanessa chuckled. She was starting to warm to Donna. A lot. There was something about the woman that was so genuine and no-nonsense. Like any strong woman, Donna didn’t give a damn what the world’s opinion of her was. Vanessa loved that.
“Anyway, they’re all meeting for cocktails downtown at a place called Snowies around eight, which for Violet—that’s my daughter—is really eight-thirty.”
“Have I met you daughter before?” Vanessa asked in an attempt to stall. She really wasn’t feeling up to socializing.
“No. She was away at soccer camp during the summer you were here.”
“Oh. Okay, maybe I’ll join them.”
“Maybe?” Donna gave Vanessa a knowing look. “What are you planning on doing, staying in with a tv dinner, maybe watching some crappy movie on TV?”
Yep. That’s exactly what she was planning to do. Except she was thinking more along the lines of a frozen pizza.
“You really don’t want to mope around this old farmhouse by yourself all night, do you? It’ll do you some good to get out and mingle. Meet some new people. Put on something pretty, get your groove on.” Donna shook her arms out at her sides and wiggled her rump, which made Vanessa smile. “You don’t know anyone in town, do you?”
“Just Cash from next door.”
“Oh, really?” Donna raised her eyebrows. “He’s single, you know.”
Is he? There was some news that lifted Vanessa’s spirits, though it shouldn’t have. It wasn’t like she was going to fall in love with the guy and move to Dunblair Ridge permanently. Not a chance in hell.
“He’s nice, too. And smart. Before he came back here to take over his daddy’s farm, he was some big-time photojournalist. Travelled all over the world covering wars and things. Won a few big awards, even, for his work.”
Vanessa was taken aback. Most of the men she’d encountered would’ve wasted no time working such a grand accomplishment into the conversation. “Wow. I had no idea. He’s so modest.”
“Don’t let the country boy façade fool you, Vanessa. Cash is as sharp and sophisticated as they come. Any he’s not too bad to look at, either, am I right? Any girl would be lucky to have him.” Donna’s cell phone broke into song inside her handbag. It was the theme song to Golden Girls, sans the lyrics. “Oh, gotta get this! It’ll be Violet. Should I tell her you’re coming?”
Donna was right. Maybe going out would do her some good. She’d drive herself crazy if she stayed out in the sticks twenty-four-seven. “Sure. Okay.”
“That’s my girl.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When most people think of debts collected through gambling, they picture hulking mafia goons in cheap suits. Busted kneecaps and cement shoes. Bodies dumped in the Atlantic. For Cash, nothing could be further from the truth when it came to his dealings with debt collector Duncan Keenan.
But Duncan wasn’t a debt collector in the strictest sense, and he was also no thug. He was a humble, soft-spoken man who happened to work for an establishment that had a substantial sum owed to them by Cash’s father, Roy.
Duncan, like he always was during his professional interactions with Cash, was in good spirits. “Those cattle keeping you busy out there on the ranch?” he asked as his fingers typed nimbly on the keyboard atop his desk.
They’d gone into Duncan’s office at the back of All West Lending to go over some account figures, an act that never failed to produce a few beads of sweat along Cash’s brow. Still, Cash appreciated that Duncan went out of his way to personalize their conversations when he just as easily could have made idle chitchat about sports or the weather. “About as busy as your shirt,” he joked good-naturedly.
Duncan, despite his lowkey nature, had a propensity toward wearing the loudest Hawaiian print shirts known to man. The one he sported today was no exception: bright orange, with emerald green palm trees and coconut shell buttons. Cash always commented on them because it seemed to make Duncan’s day when he did.
Duncan stopped typing momentarily. He grinned up at Cash. “Was wondering if you’d notice the new shirt. You like it?”
“It’s a nice one. You get it on your vacation?” During Cash’s prior visit, Duncan had mentioned that he and his wife were going to Hawaii to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Duncan shook his head as he resumed typing. “Got it off eBay. It’s vintage.”
The way he’d said vintage, the thing might as well have been dipped in gold. Cash found Duncan’s delight endearing. “It’s unique. Bet you’re the only person in all of Dunblair with threads like that.”
“I’ll write down the seller’s information for you. He’s got all kinds of other button-downs like this.”
“Okay, thanks. That’d be great,” Cash said politely, though he couldn’t imagine himself being in the market for a loud palm tree print shirt any time soon.
“Ah, here we are,” Duncan said. He turned the computer screen around so that Cash could see his account information. Duncan tapped the long series of numbers at bottom of the screen and Cash winced. “This is what’s remaining on your balance, minus today’s payment.”
Cash let out a gloomy sigh. “Yah, that’s about what I thought it would be.”
“I could quote you the payoff amount, if you’d like. It’ll be a little less than this if you make the payment in a one-lump sum—it’ll be good for the next ten days.”
Pay off amount? Yah right. Cash had to stop himself from keeling over with laughter, though he found nothing funny about the dire financial predicament his father had left him in. “I’m still a long way from that, but thanks, Duncan.”
Roy Axton’s debt to All West Lending had come about simply enough. During his remaining days, he’d taken out several loans at the credit uni
on to subsidize his gambling addiction, using the Axton Ranch as leverage. This was a detail Cash did not begrudge Duncan or All West Lending. They were in the business of lending money, and his father had needed some. It would have been unprofessional of them not to provide it.
What Cash did have a problem with was the obligation he now had to pay off the debts in full, with his father being dead. It was pay, or lose the homestead that had been in his family for generations. And Cash would almost prefer being dead himself than to see such a thing happen.
Cash had learned to suppress his anger toward his father long ago. If he hadn’t, he would have sent himself to an early grave for chronic suffering of boiling blood. This didn’t mean that it stung any less each month when he provided Duncan with a considerable payment on the loan, plus interest.
It did.
A lot.
The funny thing was that, while Roy Axton had been plenty of things while Cash was growing up—prideful, stubborn, sharp-tongued—he’d never been much of a gambler. Roy’s betting addiction came much later, around the time doctors told him that he was going to die.
Cash had been away for work in Africa when Harrison Lockwood contacted him with the news. It had taken the ranch hand some time to track down Cash because of the remoteness of his location, but when he finally did, the information he delivered was dire: stage IV non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Cash’s first question to Harrison was concerning how long his father had left; the best answer Harrison could provide was a suggestion to return home immediately, the implication clear. Cash’s assignment, which was to document the civil unrest in rural regions of South Sudan, had already brought him to the brink of physical and mental collapse. Harrison’s phone call delivered the final blow. More frightened and exhausted than he’d ever been in his entire life, Cash left on the next plane out, veering dangerously close to nervous breakdown territory.
Despite his eagerness to return to American soil, Cash had dreaded what would surely be an uncomfortable reunion with his father. Their relationship had been strained for years, and he imagined that not even a terminal illness would quell his father’s bitterness over the past. If there was one thing Roy Axton could carry with an unyielding grip, it was a grudge. Many friends of the family had thought that the death of Cash’s mother, Cynthia, a few years earlier would have helped strengthen their bond, but it had only estranged them further. Over time, the father and son had become like strangers who happened to share the same DNA.
Things might have been different if Cash weren’t an only child. It was a term that had always nettled him because of its insinuation that having a single child was not enough—it was only him, the only child. Nevertheless, even Cash had to admit that the pressure he felt to get the ranch back on track upon his return to Dunblair Ridge would have been alleviated greatly if he’d had siblings to share the responsibility with.
Roy and Cynthia had made it no secret that they’d hoped to make a large family for themselves out on the ranch. Early in their marriage, Cynthia’s heart had broken a little more each month as her body provided her with yet another reminder that a second child was not in the cards. Roy had soothed his wife’s grief with assurances that having one child was still a blessing—that Cash would only receive that much more love, with no siblings to share with.
Roy, like many ranchers of his ilk, had found simple relief in the fact that he’d reared at least one child who’d tend to the land after he was gone. Axton Ranch had belonged to Roy’s daddy after it had belonged to his daddy’s daddy, and, naturally, it would be passed down to Cash’s children and so on. That was just how it went.
If, that was, Cash hadn’t gone and made different plans for himself.
Not too long after he’d been given his first pair of cowboy boots by his father, Cash became certain that he was destined for the big city—which one, he didn’t care, as long as it was far beyond the suffocating confines of Dunblair Ridge. As a teenager, Cash’s want for the outside world only intensified. He kept his nose to the grindstone, worked hard in high school, and avoided dating for fear that he might fall in love with a local girl and get sucked into small town life. In the place of female companionship, he acquired a tightknit crew of homegrown friends—one being his best bud Jared Manning, who said he was crazy for ever wanting to leave the mountainous paradise that was Dunblair Ridge.
Roy and Cynthia had figured that their son’s grand metropolis dreams were only that, dreams. It was only when he applied, and then was later accepted, to Northwestern that they began to fear that their only child was serious about leaving the ranch.
Cynthia had interpreted her son’s news about moving away as a veiled criticism on her skills as a mother: if she’d only loved him harder, given him just a little more attention, maybe he would have never thought about leaving. Cash had assured her that she was the best mother any person could ever hope for, and that his desire for city living stemmed from the simple fact that it would be a better fit for him in the long run. He’d also promised Cynthia that he’d remain a country boy in his heart no matter where in the world he ended up. Though his mother’s disappointment was evident, she ultimately gave him her blessing, along with a guarantee that his bedroom would always be available to him, should he ever want to return.
Roy had not been so understanding. He’d taken his son’s leaving as the ultimate betrayal—it would have been understandable if he’d wanted to go to university to study a useful subject like agriculture, but journalism of all things—and he reminded Cash as much until the very morning he left for college. Roy had always assumed that Cash had been born with an inherent understanding that it was his duty as the only offspring to learn the undertakings of the ranch. That he could turn his back on his familial obligations—well, that was just one huge slap to the face.
Cash, guilt-ridden but determined to stand his ground, had tried to reason with his father. Ranching may have been the lifestyle that he, Roy, had wanted for himself, but it did not necessarily mean that the rest of the world should share the same outlook. They weren’t, Cash had said, living in the Dark Ages, where a man’s options were few and far between and tied to the land he owned. Cash had additionally pointed out to his father that, if he ever needed additional help on the ranch, he could always hire a ranch hand. What had been intended as a simple, low-key conversation had ended in a shouting match, with Cash fleeing for Illinois and Roy hiring Harrison Lockwood.
Before his mother’s death, Cash had called home regularly, his breath bated uneasily as he waited to find out which one of his parents would answer. Whenever his father picked up, he’d offer a terse hello and in the same tone mutter “I’ll put your mother on” before Cash had a chance to speak further. Cynthia was always pleased to hear from her son, yet she’d never fail to conclude their conversations with a remark about how he never visited. All Cash could do was offer weak platitudes, since he had tried to visit once before. And what a disaster that had been.
It was Christmas break of his freshman year when Cash returned to the ranch for the first and only time as a visitor. Roy treated him to flinty silence when it was just the two of them left in the same room, going as far as walking away whenever Cash attempted to strike up a conversation. Cynthia’s treatment toward Cash was the polar opposite yet almost crueler; she followed him around like a shadow, sighing and dropping sad comment after sad comment about how she’d lost her purpose in life now that she was no longer a mother. Cash repeatedly pointed out to Cynthia that she was still his mother, that all he’d done was grow older—which is exactly what children are supposed to do. She would then provide him a tight-lipped smile and a single nod, her silent version of You think you’re so clever, don’t you?, all but confirming that Roy had been poisoning her against him with his negativity toward “intellectuals.”
The trio hardly spoke during Christmas dinner, and the merriment felt horribly forced the next day while they opened gifts. Cash left New Year’s Day with a promise to visit regularly, though both he
and his parents knew that he wouldn’t be returning home anytime in the near future.
Cash had long since graduated Northwestern and was paying his dues in Baltimore doing fluff pieces for a moderately-sized newspaper when he received news of his mother’s death. Cash booked himself a hotel in Dunblair Ridge and flew back for the funeral, which was volumes worse than he could have ever imagined, and not only for the obvious reason that his mother had passed so unexpectedly. It was the disappointed way everyone at the service regarded him, as if Cynthia’s stroke could have been prevented if he’d only stayed on the ranch.
The tension between Cash and his father swelled, and at the wake the two had an argument that nearly came to blows. Roy didn’t bother to bid Cash farewell when he left the following day. The two did not speak, in fact, until Cash received the fateful call from Harrison that brought him back to Dunblair Ridge for good.
Cash, who’d witnessed enough senseless death to last ten lifetimes in the latter part of his career as a photojournalist, understood better than anyone that the inevitable loss of a man’s own life has a way of changing his outlook. It can turn a once-optimistic soul regretful or even spiteful—and that’s when those soon to be left behind should consider themselves lucky. Because encroaching death also has a way of turning a man reckless, as had become the case with his dying father, which Cash learned would bring him anything but luck.
Roy, not surprisingly, had been far too stubborn to admit to any mishandling of finances. Upon his son’s return, he behaved as if everything was business as usual. Harrison, however, wasted no time disclosing that the homestead was in serious trouble.
Cash couldn’t wrap his mind around the notion of his father ever putting the family ranch in jeopardy, and it took a great deal of convincing on Harrison’s part before Cash was finally a believer. Harrison explained that Roy’s gambling had initially presented like a harmless little snowflake—that it had taken several weeks for it to swell into the sneaky, out-of-control snowball that it ultimately became. And by then it was too late.
