Page 67 of 7 Dirty Lies

“From inside,” I said simply.“It’s what I do.I’ve been acting out stories for as long as I canremember.”

And from every actor, painter, and writer I’d ever met who was as driven as I was, it was because those stories erupted from inside us, demanding to be let out in whichever form we were capable oftellingthem.

“I think it’s more than that.”He shifted gears and brought the Jeep over a rise and down a hill toward a second set of fields.“You see that building on thehorizon?”

Probably a good mile or two away, up a much higher hill, sat a large brown building.It was the same adobe architectural style as Colt’shouse.“Yes.”

“That’s the Landry Museum of Art and Music.It’s always been a very artistic community out here.There’s even an artists commune.My great grandmother was one of their original members.My great grandparents were an interesting couple.She was an artist through and through.Art was her life.She was famous for her paintings but she sculpted and did photography as well.She refused to marry my great grandfather for years, which drove him nuts.He was...well he wasn’t an artist,” Coltchuckled.

“He was like you,” Iguessed.

“I guess you could say that to an extent.He was a cowboy.The Landry Ranch had been in his family for decades.He raised cattle, slept under the stars, and was a smart businessman.But there wasn’t an artistic bone inhisbody.”

Unlike Colt the poet.I still couldn’t get overthat.My body hummed with warmth every time I thought about what he said.I wrote themforyou.

“He wanted tradition.Marriage, settling down and babies.She wanted to defytradition.”

“You’re both of them.”I smiled.“I’m guessing hewonout.”

“Sort of.She agreed to marry him and move into his house, but he agreed to never contain her.When she died he was so heartbroken he built that museum to honor her memory.Over the years the endowment has grown right along with themuseum.”

Their love made so much.Including the manbesideme.

“I always wondered how your family business grew in so many differentdirections.”

“The ranch is the heart and soul of everything.The winery was a natural extension of that and has become a significant moneymaker for us.The museum has always supported itself and provides a lot of goodwill with the community.But the ranch is what has been floundering and having the heart pull everything else down has been a drain on the entirecompany.”

“Yourfather?”

“Was sick for a long time.”He pulled the Jeep up along the edge of two fields and stopped, cutting the engine and turning in his seat to face me.“It was lung cancer and yes, he smoked heavily his entire life.He fought it for a while, but he lost.And in those years he made some bad choices in an attempt to turn what was a stable business into more.He wanted to give me more time.He did theopposite.”

“And no one else couldtakeover?”

He shook his head.“This is a family company.Always has been, always will be.Dad was an only child and Christina was already deeply entrenched in her career, getting ready to run for office.Asking her to take on the company would have been too much.We have never been publicly traded.We don’t have a board or stockholders that aren’t members of this family.I knew I could do it, so I did.”He looked over my shoulder.“Come on.I want to show yousomething.”

I took his hand as we wandered through the fields.The sunlight was long at this point in the summer and had a golden glow that turned everything the same shade of yellow.“Wherearewe?”

He turned another corner and beyond the field I could see a magnificent garden.“It’s a ways away from the house, but here we get the best mix of sun and rain.This is the familygarden.”

Fifteen different boxes brimmed with vegetables of different varieties.“This is where you would go everyday and get in trouble for eating, isn’t it?”I laughed, thinking of a young Colt, covered in tomato juice, getting reprimanded for raiding thegarden.

“Yep.Mom and our chef, Mrs.Le Claire, would get so mad.Sometimes they’d have to change recipes and dinner plans because I’d eateneverything.”

“You don’t talk about your mom.”And she hadn’t been by for the summer despite the rumor she spent part of her year at theranch.

“That’s a difficult relationship.”He plucked a dark berry from a bush.“She still hasn’t forgiven Dad for dying.”He popped the berry in his mouth while I waited for more.“You know theirstory.”

“Do I?”I wasn’t sure where fiction met reality in thescript.

He plucked several more berries and offered them to me.“They’re not too sweet.Ipromise.”

He remembered our conversation at the waterfall.My heart beat a little faster as I realized just how much Colt had absorbed, how much he cared.“Thank you.”I took the berries and tentatively took a small bite.The flavor burst over my tongue, but in a pleasant, lovely way that made me crave more.“It’sdelicious.”

He smiled.“They took a lot of liberties in the script but the story is true.Dad met Mom one summer when she came to the ranch with a family friend.They were here to make a deal for our cattle.Mom’s from a pretty prominent political family, as you know, and she’d never spent time around horses.They fell in love while Dad showed her how to break a horse.They eloped.Her parents went ballistic and tried to get it annulled, but they fought it.Her parents even tried to ruin the ranch to force her tocomehome.”

They were some pretty emotional scenes to play, I could only imagine how intense they were to live.I popped the last berry in my mouth, watching Colt move from box to box, checking each plant.He was so natural out here.He looked like hewashome.

And that made my heart ache.He belonged here, not in an office worrying.“The movie ends with them saving the ranch and you and your sister running through the fields.What happenedafterthat?”

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