Chapter Thirteen

Collin

It had been a month, and I hadn’t left the house again.

Luke called it. He had stopped by a couple of times, knocking on my door and trying to talk me into going into town with him or some such errand he needed to do. I politely declined each time, preferring to stay at the ranch and work on something there. To keep him off my back, I usually had some project the ranch needed doing that I was working on, so he couldn’t complain too much about me spending my time doing it.

That said, I’d gotten a lot done around the place. The barn had been painted, the new crop had been mostly planted and begun to sprout already, and the new horse barn had been mostly built. Jesse and Logan had done a lot of that with me, but I was the constant, and in less than a month, we had the structure done, the roof finished, and had laid the flooring down on the bottom floor. We still needed to make the second floor for the hayloft, but otherwise, it was almost done.

I knew that I was avoiding going into town, though. It wasn’t some big lie from myself. I didn’t want to subject myself to people or the possibility of the awkwardness of running into Brandy. Or, even worse, if I ran into Eugene. Eugene was still on the payroll for the county, though I was told that he was under investigation and that my charges had been dropped. But the Anderson brothers had been under investigation plenty of times, and nothing had ever come of it. I wasn’t going to hold my breath that Officer Walker was going to be able to do much of anything.

As usual, my mornings started off with helping with the livestock, then making my way into the kitchen to rustle up breakfast. If nothing else, my cooking had gotten somewhat better as I really hadn’t had much else to do once sundown hit but experiment with different dinner recipes.

Cowboys had a specific kind of breakfast they liked, though. Plenty of eggs, plenty of bacon, and the rest was where you could get creative, as long as that creativity involved sausage or steak. This morning, I decided to go for broke and cook some T-bones I had in the cooler, and my brothers were rather pleased about it.

A big upside to cooking was that I didn’t have to clean up. I went upstairs and spent a little time putting on music and enjoying the peace of the mid-morning and the contentment that came with a good meal in your stomach. At some point, I dozed off.

When I woke up, it was to a knock on my door. Startled, I sat up, checking the time on my phone and seeing I’d been out for over an hour.

“Come in,” I said, rubbing my eyes.

“Hey, boss,” Owen said as he made his way into the room, ducking so he didn’t whack his head on the doorframe.

“Hey, Owen, what’s up?”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up,” he said. “I can come back later if you want.”

“No, no, it’s fine. I didn’t realize I nodded off there. What’s going on?”

“I just thought you might want to know what’s going on down at Madie’s.”

I peered back at my brother, wondering what the hell he was talking about before the cobwebs made their way out of my mind and were replaced by an image. Brandy’s face, looking up at mine as we slow danced together, just before I dipped my head and pressed my lips to hers…

“Madie’s? What’s going on down there? Is everything okay?”

Panic was beginning to rumble in my stomach, and I was driven almost to jump to my feet and start running for the door. I had no idea what the problem could be, but I was willing to find out through shouts as I made my way to the car. Thankfully, Owen was quick to respond, keeping me on my bed and still trying to blink my eyes into working correctly in the mid-day sunshine.

“They’re shooting a reality show there,” he said. “Been going for a couple of weeks now, but I think no one wanted to tell you. I thought you should know.”

“They’re doing a what? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me?”

He shrugged. “Sore spot? I don’t know. Jesse just said it might not be the best idea to tell you.”

“I’ll have to talk to him about that,” I said. “So, wait, a reality show?”

Owen nodded. “They’ve been getting people to sign waivers, and they have a sign on the door that says anyone coming in would be filmed. It’s been a big deal in town.”

“Well, that’s odd,” I said. “I mean, good for Brandy, I guess. I’m glad she’s got something going on. But a reality show?”

“Some of the people in town are really unhappy about it,” Owen said. “They want to petition the mayor to get her to stop.”

“Mayor? Who even is our mayor?”

“Mayor Crockett,” he said.

“Bob?”

Owen nodded. “We vote every four years, Collin.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Not for local stuff. I stay out of that. But Bob is our mayor?”

Owen nodded again. “You missed the signs up at the bar every election season?”

“I don’t go all that often, Owen. I hardly go anywhere.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess,” he said. “Well, Mr. Crockett has been getting a lot of complaints about the camera crew being around. They’ve been filming everybody and everything. I thought you might want to know that.”

“I do,” I said. “Thank you. What’s Luke think about it?”

He shrugged. “He said it’s probably good for the town,” he said. “But I think he’s thinking more about the hotel he and Amber are going to build. I don’t think he’s really thinking about the common Foley resident.”

“And you are?”

“Yup,” he said. “I’m more in touch, on account of my wr…. my hobbies.”

“I see,” I said, not digging. He almost felt comfortable enough to tell me what it was he did most nights. Eventually, that dam would break.

“Anyway, some folks don’t like the attention, so they are asking around to see if there’s anyone who might be able to talk to her…”

“And you thought that might be me,” I said.

Owen shrugged again. He was a master shrugger. He could convey a million different versions of ignorance or indifference with a shrug, and they would all feel different.

“Jesse and Charlotte are helping, but I don’t know how. All I know is Mr. Crockett said that he needed to talk to Jesse about Madie’s and asked if I could get a hold of him. But Jesse was at band practice, so no one could catch him.”

“Oh, that’s right, he’s going on tour again in a month.”

“To California,” Owen said. “The big time.”

“I think Nashville is the big time for his kind of music,” I said. “But it’s still a big deal. I wonder what they think he could do to help. Maybe to implore on behalf of a local celebrity?”

“Or because everybody knows Jesse,” Owen opined. “If they haven’t dated him, they know him.”

“Look at you with the jokes,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. “Thank you for coming to tell me.”

“Are you going to go talk to her?” Owen asked.

He was a simple kid. Not dumb, not slow. Just simple. He was very direct. Someone he respected asked him to go talk me into saying something to Brandy, and he wasn’t going to leave without audible confirmation that I was either going to do that or that I wouldn’t do it. No middle ground. He didn’t think in middle grounds.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “I don’t know about talking to her directly, but maybe I’ll pay the construction site a visit tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. “So no.”

“I didn’t say that,” I said. “Just, you know what, yes, I will talk to her. Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, standing. “Thank you, Collin. How is your knee?”

“Better,” I said. “I barely feel any pain anymore, and when I do, it’s because there’s a change in air pressure.”

“Arthritis,” Owen said. “I get it in my elbow.”

I nodded. I remembered that day well. It was horrible.

Owen’s first dream in life was to play baseball. He was already so big as a child, we all thought he’d do it, too. He hit mammoth home runs and threw harder than any other kid at school or in regional games. A scout that had come to take a look at an opposing team’s player spotted him and scouted him instead. He said he could have gone in a high round if he continued filling out and improved his stamina.

So that’s what Owen did. He dedicated all his free time to cardio and eating right and building mass. He was absolutely massive by the time he was sixteen, and was firing fastballs at ninety-five miles an hour. The scouts said he reminded them of Babe Ruth. Huge, a hell of a hitter, a hell of a pitcher.

Then he got in the car with Logan one day after practice and some out-of-town asshole came barreling through the four-way stop on Main and plowed into the passenger’s side of Logan’s truck. Logan had a broken leg and cuts and bruises, and Owen, who had his arm resting in the window when they were hit, shattered his elbow so badly it had to be reconstructed, along with a ton of other injuries like broken ribs, torn ligaments in his leg, and a laceration on his scalp that gave him a gnarly scar.

The driver walked away without a scratch on him. But it ruined Owen’s baseball chances for good and put Luke out of action as a firefighter for six months. Even now, he still walked with a limp sometimes. I often wondered what kind of karma that guy incurred, if there was such a thing. I liked to think that he, at the very least, stubbed his pinky toe far more often than any other person would. And lost his keys a lot. Something that would at least annoy him for the rest of his life.

“Well, take it easy, boss,” Owen said.

“I will,” I said. “Thanks again, Owen.”

Owen patted my shoulder and headed for the door, slipping out and closing it so lightly it barely made a sound. I lay back down on the bed, staring at the ceiling. There was no way I’d go back to sleep now, but that was okay. I needed to be up. And I needed to figure out just how I was going to live up to my word to Owen and still not embarrass myself in front of Brandy.