Homecoming Ranch (Pine River #1)
Julia London
ONE
Pine River, Colorado
I’ll tell you this story because my brother, Luke, won’t. Even though it is more his story than mine. But you know how it is, the firstborns bask in the adoring light of being first, while younger brothers like me have to figure out where we fit in right from the get-go. Which means we tend to see the big picture while the firstborns see themselves. You younger siblings know what I’m talking about—we’re the glue and they’re the glitter, right? Although I can be kind of glittery, too. I’m an artist—I paint the canvas, I fill in the background of this family. I’m not bragging—it’s just fact.
Okay, so two words for how this story started: Grant Tyler.
He was a fun-loving, adventure-seeking, hard-driving, cigar-chomping, skirt-chasing kind of guy. He’d lost as many fortunes as he’d made in his sixty-plus years. He liked the idea of being married more than he liked being married, and, trust me, he didn’t get high marks from the ladies. Not like me, anyway—I’ve got killer game.
But Grant Tyler, he could always smooth things over somehow, because he was always hooking up with women. I know that from Dani Boxer. She runs the Grizzly Lodge and Café, and she comes around sometimes to have coffee with me and Dad. She’s awesome.
So anyway, Grant could smooth over the ruffled feathers of pretty birds, but he couldn’t smooth over the fact that he sucked at being a dad. I knew he wasn’t much of one way back because I went to school with his daughter, Libby Tyler. She sort of looks like him, but a whole lot better. She’s got these deep blue eyes and crazy curly, dark hair I always liked. I sat behind her in third grade and accidentally touched her hair and accidentally left some half-chewed Chiclets in it. Libby picked up her scissors and cut off a big lock of hair with the gum in it and put it on my desk. I think I kept it till fifth grade.
Anyway, I knew about Libby, but I didn’t know about the kid in California or the one in Florida. That’s right, ol’ Grant Tyler had three kids by three different women. All girls. And he forgot to pay his child support more than he remembered. He swore he never saw a recital or a soccer game. I bet he didn’t know what their favorite color was, or the name of the first boys to break their hearts, or what their dreams were, either. Not like my mom, who knew everything about us. My mom was the greatest mom ever. Except for the breast cancer, which was a deal-killer on the Mom of the Year award. That made her, like, not the best mom of the year because she checked out way before any of us were ready for her to go.
So when the end came for Grant Tyler—and it came at him fast and hard, just like he’d lived—he got a little religion and decided he needed to do right by his kids. Maybe he hadn’t been a good dad, but by God, he’d leave something for those kids to hold onto. Except his Porsche. He wanted to be buried in that Porsche. Can you believe that? Imagine yourself on your deathbed, and what you’re worried about is being buried in a car instead of what you were going to tell the Man Upstairs about all the stuff you’d done.
I know all of this part, because Grant Tyler announced it all to my friend Jackson Crane, his fourth and final business manager. Jackson claims he told his big corporate law office in Denver to screw it one day and came this way. He got on with Grant and worked nine months before the doc said Grant wouldn’t make it. Grant told Jackson to leave everything he had to his kids. Jackson was confused, and he said, “What kids?”
“My kids,” Grant said. “Madeline, Emma, and Libby.”
Like me, Jackson knew only about Libby, and he said he honestly believed Grant was confused with all the drugs they were pumping into him, so he repeated, “Madeline and Emma?”
Grant, who had tubes coming out of every orifice, cocked his head to one side and studied Jackson as if he couldn’t make out how he could be so slow, sort of the way I look at Dad’s old pickup truck. He said, “Do I look like I want to do a lot of explaining right now? Listen up—I want to leave everything to them. All of it. Why the hell are you looking at me like that?”
I can picture Jackson futzing with the knot in his tie like he does when people talk about things he doesn’t get. He also swallows a lot. He doesn’t have much of a poker face, if you know what I mean. He said, “That’s… admirable.” Admirable! Ha! “But as you know, your divorce from your fifth wife is pending. And it’s costing a lot of money.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” Grant scoffed. “What about it?”