Page 1 of Everyone Loved Her

Chapter 1

“I’m so incrediblysorry for your loss, Beth.” Pastor Frank shook my hand, his grip cold and clammy as he stood in the threshold of our old farmhouse. “Your father was one of the best men I’ve ever known—and I mean that. He’d give a man the shirt off his back. It’s just tragic what happened. All because of a wasp. Who would’ve thought?”

Someone who’s allergic to them.I bit the inside of my cheek, holding back my hurt. “He was the best,” I told the elderly man in his black suit and cowboy hat. “Thank you for putting on such a great service for him. I’m sure he would’ve been really happy with it.”

His smile caused an unsettling ache in my chest. “Anything for your family, and you let me know if you need something while you’re here, Beth. You, too, Andrea,” he added, turning to my mom as she held the front door open for him. He ran his fingers through his white handlebar mustache. “You know the church is here. If you need us, just holler.”

“Of course, thank you.” Mom’s lips twitched upward as the cowboy pastor tipped his hat. I couldn’t tell if she was on theverge of tears or anger. “I’ll see you Sunday.” She shut the front door and spun around, resting her back against it, her dark, gray-tinted hair splayed out across the chipped cherry wood.

With a sigh, her gray eyes met mine. “I amsoglad that’s over. I know your father was a social man, but my word, I didn’t expect the whole town to show up to our house. We were all crammed in here like a bad black Friday sale at Walmart.Miserable.Too many people.” She wrung her hands in front of her, and then wiped them on her black slacks.

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. Dad was the kind of man who never met a stranger.” My voice faltered, but I cleared my throat before the lump turned on a waterfall of fresh tears. I brushed some of my auburn hair from where it was matted to my forehead. With all the warm bodies, and a less than top notch air conditioner in the ancient house, it had grown inexplicably stuffy.

“You know,” Mom frowned, hesitating as she spoke. “There wasn’t anyone from you or Sam’s class here. I really thought some of them would show up.”

“Well, I’m glad they didn’t,” I said carefully, not wanting to broach another grief-riddled topic. There was no need to go there—not now. Not ever. “I don’t want to see anyone, and by the time I left here, I don’t think I had any friends, anyway.”

“I don’t know why you say things like that, Beth,” Mom gave me a side eye as she passed me, heading toward the old, faded dining room table. “You had plenty of friends here. You still would if you came home more often. Hardly anyone left this place, though they don’t go to church with us anymore like they used to. Seems like the younger generation either go to that big church in Gale or spend Sundays shooting up withwhatever drugs they can find.” Her tone had grown irritable, and so while I nodded, I didn’t add any commentary.

I mean, I had nothing to say on any of it anyway. I didn’t know what took place in this tiny world anymore. I tried to avoid this town, the people, and all the memories attached to it. It was just better for everyone. My footsteps creaked across the scuffed hardwood floors as I joined my mother at the table. Letting out a sigh, I grabbed up a casserole dish lid and started trying to fit it to one of the many glass pans strewn about.

“We need to make sure we take one or two of these out to Blaze,” Mom remarked, her shoulders slumping as she joined me in the hunt. “There’s no way you and I will eat it all.”

“Blaze? Is that the new ranch manager Dad hired?” I racked my brain, trying to remember which one he was at the funeral. I had barely made it in time to drop my things off at the house and jet off to the service, and besides that, I was bad with names and faces. Though, I wasn’t exactly taking inventory, either.

“He hired Blaze nearly three years ago, honey.” Mom gave me a knowing look, her dark eyes flashing with grief. But, she didn’t expand on the thought, and I was thankful that she avoided chiding me for not having been home in over five years. “Would you mind taking this out to him?” She held out two glass dishes, mostly full of unappealing Southern cuisine. “When you get back, I’ll help you finish unpacking, and I’m sure we can find a movie to watch or something. Your dad and I cancelled cable, but we got a subscription to one of those streaming channels, finally.”

“About time,” I forced a weak smile as I took the dishes from her. “The apartment over the barn is where he’s at, right?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. The same one that our ranch managerhasalwaysstayed in—foryears.” Her smile felt a little forced. Maybe even a little contentious.

But I didn’t go there. After all, I was in the same place, coercing expressions that didn’t exactly line up with how I was feeling in the moment. We had that in common. She was grieving the loss of my dad, and so was I. There was no point in starting a fight or disagreement. There was enough pain as it was, and now, we were all each other had left. That thought alone was enough to make my stomach churn.

Mom opened the front door for me, and I headed out into the humid early October air. It was suffocating, my lungs feeling heavy as my boots thudded across the painted white porch. Spending the last five years in Chicago had been less than pleasant, but I didn’t miss this southern heat.

I did miss these cowboy boots though.

My eyes drifted down to my shoes, a pair of dark brown custom-made stovetops that my dad had gotten me as a gift my senior year of high school. I’d left them behind when I started law school out of state, never thinking I’d need them again.

A pang of regret hit me in the chest.

Maybe I should’ve come home more.

Swallowing hard, I pushed it out of my mind. That was the thing about harboring regret—there’s nothing you can do to change it. I might not have been home in five years, busy working as a defense attorney in Chicago, but Ididcall home once or twice a week. My dad knew that I loved him, just as much as he knew being home hurt worse for me than being gone.

I paused at the end of the porch, the toes of my boots hanging over the edge. I took in the quaint ranch, built six generations ago—back when North Texas was wild and full ofgunslingers, pioneers, and people just trying to escape the chaos ensuing back east. The sun hung low in the evening sky, just hours from setting. Our rolling hills were dotted with horses and cattle, and the silver barbed wire that marked the pastures looked new, glimmering from T-post to T-post. I zoned out for a moment, realizing that very fence was the task my father had been tackling when it all happened.

When he couldn’t get to his EpiPen.

Where was Blaze then?

I pursed my lips and then headed down the creaky old steps, making a note to take a closer look at them at some point. The last thing I needed was for my mom to get injured because of rotted wooden steps. I made my way across the small, freshly mowed yard to the red metal barn a hundred or so feet away. It was nicer than the house, but that was always how Dad had been. Well, for the last sixteen years, anyway. I stepped through the open sliding door, and gazed up to my right, a stairwell entrance there, alight only by the sun shining in through the doors.

Huffing as I climbed the stairs to the apartment, I cradled the casserole dishes in my arms. I gazed down at the welcome mat, surprised to see such a thing for a ranch hand apartment. I studied the niceness of it for a few seconds, and the gawdy “Howdy!”etched across it. Finally, shifting the pans’ weight to the left, I knocked on the heavy wooden door.

It swung open, a tall, dark headed, hazel-eyed cowboy looking down at me. He appeared confused to see me standing there, glancing behind me before meeting my gaze. “What can I do for you, Beth?”

“These are for you,” I held out the pans, surprised he knew who I was—even though I shouldn’t have been. I was certainmy dad probably talked the poor man’s ear off, blabbing about my uptown, big-time lawyer job.

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