Chapter One
There’s something about death that doesn’t set your mind right. Or maybe it’s grief, rolling in like a thick fog and muffling everything around you, even memories. Sitting here in Uncle Amos’s house.
My uncle’s house, the very heart of Bluegrass Ridge.
I felt both there and somewhere far away.
I hadn’t seen him in years.
I wasn’t talking a few or a handful. I was talking, like, over ten. Heck, maybe even fifteen.
Not since the last time my daddy had set foot in his small Kentucky hometown of Bluegrass Ridge and brought me with him. And he’d been dead for thirteen years, so it was well before that.
Yet here I was, sitting at his old oak table, surrounded by family I hadn’t spoken to in that same amount of time. The smell of worn leather and faint tobacco smoke lingered in the air.
Of course we kept in touch through social media. A like here or there. A comment. Even a private message when Uncle Amos had suddenly passed away from what doctors called a widow-maker heart attack, the same thing they said killed my dad.
But Uncle Amos and I had not audibly spoken to each other in I didn’t know how long. My cousins and I hadn’t spoken either.
Until this week.
The funeral.
And the hurried reading of the will, for which I had no idea why I was even there.
While I was sitting there, thinking of just how I would get my Greyhound bus ticket refunded or even exchanged to later this week, since I’d clearly not made it back on after Uncle Amos’s funeral, I had to look across the old table at my cousin Beau, big and barrel-chested, who was practically buzzing with excitement.
His knee bounced under the table, jostling the wood. I saw the gleam in his eyes every time he looked at the lawyer, as if to speed things along. Beside him sat his wife, Maggie, her mouth set in a determined line, her eyes sharp as flint, taking in every word and side glance as if tallying up what she was owed.
I’d never met her. Since Daddy had died, my mom hadn’t had much to do with the Hollingsworth side of my family.
Across from me sat another cousin, Tassie Ruth Hollingsworth Doyle, Beau’s sister, her dark curls coiled like springs beneath her wide-brimmed hat. She had her arm looped through her husband Hunter’s, who wore an easy smile. Tassie’s eyes, though, were anything but easy. There was an intensity there, an expectation, like she’d been waiting for this day her whole life.
I didn’t blame them. Uncle Amos’s working ranch had to be worth millions of dollars. The land alone was a pretty penny.
But I still had no clue why I had to be at the will reading.
They all thought they knew what was coming, and maybe I did too.
I figured Uncle Amos would leave Beau and Tassie the ranch and whatever was on it, and maybe I’d get this old table.
Sentimental, yes, but meaningful, and that seemed just like Amos.
And if that was the case, there was no way I’d be able to fit the table in my small city apartment. Even though Rowan, my roommate, would flip over this table.
I ran my fingers over the tabletop, tracing the smooth, swirling burl wood, feeling the slight dip and rise beneath my hand, as familiar as my own memories. I could smell the faint hint of varnish and old wood that lingered in its grooves. I closed my eyes for a moment and let the memory of Uncle Amos take me.
Suddenly, I was twelve years old again, back in the deep woods behind the pasture, struggling to keep up with his long strides as we hiked into the shade of towering trees. We stopped in front of an enormous oak with a rough burl jutting out from its trunk, twisting and bulging like a knot made by giants.
“See here, Cussy?” he’d said, resting a big, calloused hand on the burl. His voice was low and a bit scratchy. “This here burl. It’s nature’s way of turning hardship into beauty. The wood grows all twisted up, fighting to survive, and it makes the finest grain you ever saw.”
He’d turned to me with a rare smile, his sun-worn face soft.
“One day, I’m gonna make you a table out of this wood. Something sturdy, so you always have a piece of this place, no matter where you go,” he said.
This place.
I could almost feel the warmth of his hand on my shoulder, the roughness of his work-worn fingers. The smell of pine needles and wet earth filled my senses and blended with the memory of his quiet laughter.
But that place quickly became a distant memory after Dad and I drove off and went back to the city, where my mom had planned out my future of going to college and having this life in the great big world.
To this day, she constantly harped on when I would find a real job and use my degree for real money. Get an adult apartment. Okay, so that one always stung Rowan because she considered her artsy side, like coloring, creating, and writing, an adulting thing.
Me—well, I did the odd jobs to pay my bills until I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
A sharp gasp jerked me back to the present, back to the dim light of Uncle Amos’s dining room. The scent of dust and old wood once again filled my nose. I blinked, and everyone was staring at me with their mouths slightly agape, eyes flickering between the lawyer and me. I looked around, heat creeping up my neck.
“What?” I asked in a hoarser voice than I’d intended.
Tassie leaned forward, her expression caught between shock and disbelief. “Did you even hear what the lawyer just said?”
I shook my head, feeling like I was trying to push through thick fog. “Uh… no?”
Beau let out a disbelieving chuckle, almost a bark, and the sound grated, loud in the quiet room. The eyes in his flushed face blazed as he leaned toward me, the familiar scent of his cologne, something sharp and woodsy, wafting across the table.
“Daddy gave you the ranch, Cussy.” His voice was a low, almost growling murmur. “He left the whole dang thing to you.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the ticking of the old clock on the wall, slow and steady, like a heartbeat, while the weight of Beau’s words sank in..
I studied my cousins’ faces. Beau’s shock, Tassie’s cold and unreadable expression, Maggie’s pinch of irritation, and Hunter’s bewilderment all seemed to blur together as I struggled to catch my breath.
The ranch.
Uncle Amos had left the entire ranch to me. I glanced down at the table, my hand still resting on its sturdy surface. Right then, I knew that whatever dreams Beau and Tassie had come here with had just shattered, as sharply as if they’d been broken over the edge of this very table.
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