Page 12 of Grit

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Abby was a complete nut and he loved her.

“Hey, Ox?”

“Yeah?” Ox wandered around the side of the bunkhouse.

“Have Calvin’s folks been trying to pull shit again?”

“You mean the thing with the horse?” Ox poked his head around the corner. “Or do you mean the house?”

Cary blinked. “What house?”

“You didn’t know about that? They did it years ago. Soon as Calvin told his folks they’d be living over here after they got married. Greg went out and built them a three-thousand-square-foot house on the family ranch, told them it and the land was theirs if they moved back to Paso.”

“Why?”

Ox shrugged. “Calvin was pretty forgiving of his parents, but my impression has always been that they’re control freaks and want to dictate everything about their kids’ lives, even as adults. Melissa drives them crazy.”

“I bet.” She did have that effect on people. “Wait, is that where they were trying to take her after Cal’s funeral?”

“Yeah. If you hadn’t pissed her off so much, she might have agreed. She was really out of it. So was I.” Ox’s face was grim. “Definitely not one of my finest brother moments. But yeah, they pull sneaky shit like this pretty regularly.”

“Kinda goes beyond sneaky at this point. Holding a horse hostage is a dick move.” It had taken everything in Cary to not give Greg and Beverly Rhodes a piece of his mind. Abby’s look of utter elation turning to confusion and disappointment was enough to make him see red.

“Agreed.” Ox put both hands up and tested the trim around the door. “And Abby will see through it all eventually. She’s smart like Melissa.”

“It’s still a dick move.”

“I know.” Ox walked the perimeter of the bunkhouse with his hands slung in his pockets. “This is gonna be good. Might make Mom slow down a little too if she has something to keep busy with close to the house like this. Taking care of paying guests is something she’d enjoy, especially since I’ve moved into town.”

Ox had moved in permanently with his girlfriend Emmie. They lived over their book and tattoo shop in downtown Metlin. It was nice enough, but Cary couldn’t imagine living in town. Too many people. Too many cars. He liked the outdoors, and he liked his privacy.

Then again, he also lived with his seventy-two-year-old mother and had since his father passed away. Some forty-six-year-old men might have considered that a burden, but for Cary it had seemed like a no-brainer.

His dad was gone, and Rumi hated being alone. Plus his mom was hilarious and a great cook. She was also more than opinionated about his love life, or current lack thereof.

Cary looked at the dilapidated old building. “Maybe I should build my mom a guesthouse to keep her out of my hair.”

Ox’s smile was crooked. “Good luck with that.”

“No joke.” Cary’s mom Rumiko was a well-known spitfire. She was an artist who’d moved from Naoshima, Japan, in the 1960s and promptly made Cary’s dad, Gordon Nakamura, fall head over heels for her. They’d moved from Gordon’s childhood home on the Central Coast and planted orange groves in Oakville. There was enough open space and affordable land for Gordon and enough eccentric company for Rumi.

Oakville was a tiny town in the foothills east of Metlin, full of ranchers and farmers, sprinkled with a healthy population of old hippies, artists, musicians, and odd ducks. There was a bluegrass festival in the spring, a car show in the fall, and a guy who spent all his time making wrought iron dinosaur sculptures to decorate the hills around his house.

Because why not?

Their Fourth of July parade consisted of mostly 4-H kids on horses, and a livestock auction for those same kids was held at the end of every summer vacation.

There were conservation groups and organic farmers, transplanted city people, and lots of folks passing through on their way to the national park.

Oakville residents were passionate about keeping the town rural and original. They didn’t want new restaurants or microbreweries like the people in Metlin. They didn’t build fancy houses or drive expensive cars. Residents took more pride in their gardens or studios—or dinosaur sculptures—than they did in their bank balance.

Cary couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It was one of the reasons he was still single.

He’d been married in his late twenties, to a chef from the East Bay. She’d tried to start a restaurant in Oakville since Cary refused to live anywhere else. They’d poured time, money, and passion into the place, but it never took off the way his ex wanted it to.

The restaurant had failed. The chef became resentful. She’d moved back to Oakland and the divorce had been amicable—perfunctory, even—leaving Cary to wonder whether they’d been marriage partners or just business associates. They’d never had kids, which Cary was grateful for, and his older sister got to say “I told you so” at all family events in perpetuity.

Ox came to stand next to Cary again. “You know a contractor she could use?”