Page 6 of Redemption

“Thank you, Peter. I appreciate that,” I said nicely even though I wanted to scream. It wasn’t everyone else’s fault that they were sorry all the time.

I slammed the door, slightly harder than I meant to but, oh well. I trudged back into the kitchen and decided 11am was the perfect time to have wine. I grabbed a glass from the cabinet and the wine from the fridge, thinking I’d need to switch to box wine soon enough if we needed to start cutting costs. I pulled the cork out of the bottle with my mouth and dropped it into the sink.

Theglug glug glugsound of the liquid pouring into the glass had always been one of my favorites and today I just let it pour. Right to the fucking top. I slurped the rim so none spilled over the side and then drank half of it down in one go, letting out a very unladylike belch but no one was around to hear it. I giggled to myself and covered my mouth. Then giggled again. A full laugh left my body, and I laughed and laughed until my stomach ached, and then I cried.

I heard noises out in the hallway andcovered my mouth, wiping at my eyes.

“Everything okay?” Maddy asked, coming into the kitchen with August right behind her.

“Sure!” I said, too loudly. Was I drunk already?

“You sure, sure?” August asked, raising her brow at my large, half-drunk wineglass.

“Is there some rule about drinking at 11am?”

“Hell no, not in this house!” Leo boomed, coming in behind them. Maddy snickered and I was pleased to see her smiling again.

“I forgot to ask, did Tills get off to school okay?” I asked, suddenly feeling like the worst big sister in the world. It was her first day back and although we were a pretty close-knit community in Reverence, kids could still be dicks.

“Yeah?” Leo looked to Maddy for confirmation.

“Yeah!” Maddy agreed and then when Leo looked away she pulled anehface at me. She was probably trying to protect Leo’s feelings; he’d wanted to be the one to drop Tilly off at school.

“Cool, thanks again, Leo. I’ll shoot her a message at lunch and see how she’s doing.”

“No sweat, happy to help,” Leo smirked, his dimples popping.

“How’d it go with the lawyer? He had a sad face when he left,” August asked, concern dipping her auburn brows in.

Shit. I couldn’t rain all over their parade and stress them out even more. They had enough to deal with. I was the oldest and Daddy trusted me to run this ranch so I would take one for the team.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. Ranch is all ours. No long-lost brothers or sisters coming out of the woodwork trying to claim their inheritance,” I joked weakly.

August cocked a brow at me. “Maybe leave the joking to Maddy, you’re no good at it.”

I stuck my tongue out at her because I’m thirty-one going on thirteen apparently…

“Somebody needs to teach you some manners.” Leo hooked an arm around August’s neck and pulled her into his chest, rubbing his knuckles across the top of her strawberry blonde head until she squealed.

“I’m fwenty-fwo!” came August’s muffled cry.

Leo looked at Maddy with mock fear. “Dang, we might be too late.”

I snorted, rolling my eyes and left them to their silly games. I had shit I needed to think about.

I went to Daddy’s office at the back of the house. The door had remained shut for the last few weeks. None of us wanted to go in there and disturb anything he’d left behind, we wanted to keep it just the way he had left it. However, desperate times called for desperate measures. I needed to learn everything I could about the ranch finances and how the hell I was gonna run this place.

Opening the door, his scent immediately surrounded me. Pine, like Lysol and sandalwood from his cologne. The smell brought up so many memories, in that painful and all too realistic way that scents could, and in that moment I wanted nothing more than to have a hug from my father. Just one more. I paused in the doorway, letting the grief wash over me before I pulled myself together. I had too much to do, too much to figure out and four sisters depending on me to fix this.

His wide desk was made from walnut wood and piled high with paperwork so that felt like the best place to start but when I began shifting through it all, I quickly got overwhelmed. I put the stack of papers on thelaterpile and instead focused on the filing cabinet whichlooked to be in better order.

The smell of mothballs enveloped me as I tugged it open, coughing from the pile of dust I’d disturbed. Rummaging through the first section of papers, I found the deed and title for the ranch, which was handy and I’d be sure to make copies of it at some point. Some legal paperwork about the cabin at the bottom of the yard which was a little rundown. Daddy had moved into it a few years ago and given us girls the main house, it was his safe haven away from the screeching, he’d said. It was old and not in the best condition, he’d been meaning to restore it for a while but just hadn’t gotten around to it.

There was a ton of other stuff that I didn’t understand but I guessed now was the best time to deep-dive into it. I got comfy in the leather wingback chair in the corner next to the floor to ceiling bookcase and started reading. By nightfall I had three piles: stuff I didn’t understand, stuff to ask Mr. Davidson about, and stuff I kinda got.

I stood, yawning and stretching my aching back until my neck cracked. I paused for a moment, letting my muscles adjust. As soon as I hit thirty-one, it was like my body decided to break. I’d wake up after a good night’s sleep and my neck cricked, I sneezed too hard and my back went out. Getting older was tough.

I ventured out into the kitchen where I could smell dinner cooking. Everyone was crowded around the dinner table which was piled with bowls of potatoes, carrots and greens and steam was rising from a beef brisket in the center. My mouth watered.

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