Page 8 of When Sparks Fly

Feeling completely caged in after funeral prep, I decide to stop by the grocery store for a few staples. A short drive through town may help clear my head.

Everything looks exactly as it was a few months ago. The old library, which was turned into a cute café about thirty years ago, has its front entrance propped open, encouraging passersby to stop in. All of the best restaurants are hole-in-the-wall places owned by local families, with rickety ceiling fans, outdated fluorescent lighting, and not nearly enough parking on their caliche lots. The majority of which are Bar-B-Que or taco joints. Nostalgia alone makes the food better in those unassuming places.

Traffic slows to a crawl at the new high school, just inside the city limits. Only recently has Bull Creek been big enough for two. Now they can boast an in-city rivalry.

Football is an expected staple in any Texas town. The next best thing here is the annual Christmas festival. Every Christmas season, the town organizes a three-day event which hosts carolers in period attire, a Polar Express ride made of fifty gallon drums, and the largest hot chocolate bar ever. Everything is bigger in Texas, right?

Best of all, faux snow is pumped into the skies each night of the event. The irony being that in Texas, you are just as likely to be sweating to death in December as you are to be iced in.

The picturesque streets embody a quaint Christmas town and the residents fully embrace it. Halloween never had a chance here. Not that anyone asked for my opinion, but the architecture of the historic German buildings is also perfect for creepy decor. Their loss.

Nana has always loved living here and I’ve always wanted to be closer to her again. Yet, small town life feels so oppressive. Intrusive. Unlike Austin, I have a memory from some point or another in almost all of the buildings on the main roads. I just can’t decide if that’s comforting or not.

I’ve been to the grocery store here with and without Nana a countless number of times, but I’m still surprised by the memories the aisles hold. In the produce section, I recall being taught how to choose the best cantaloupe and avocado around age ten. My eyes well with tears and I attempt to blink them away, rubbing my cheeks furiously to catch the ones managing to escape. Thankfully, no one else is loitering around apples and bananas so my impromptu cry fest goes unnoticed.

Get your shit together. You’re crying over fruits and vegetables.

Determined not to completely lose my shit, I hurry through the rest of the store, grabbing must-haves for a few days, and head back to Nana’s house.

The lights are on when I return. I rush through unpacking my grocery haul to avoid dealing with Stephanie or Alan. In my room, I switch on the small bedside lamp. The books from Nana’s room are on the bed, not far from my well-loved Pooh bear, who appears in need of some additional stuffing. I flop onto the bed and pull his faded body into one arm, playing with the hem of his shirt absently. “You look like you could use some additional honey, my friend,” I tell him quietly.

Pooh has called these pillows home since Nana took Liv and me to the happiest place on Earth when we were six or seven years old. We rode every ride our tiny bodies were allowed on, ate way too much ice cream, stayed up well into the night to watch the famous fireworks show, and did it all again the very next day. On the second day, while we took refuge from the brutal Florida heat in a souvenir shop, I found Pooh and was not willing to negotiate on the matter.

A tear rolls down my cheek and drops into my ear. I shift onto my side and wipe more away, but it’s no use. The dam has broken. I clutch Pooh as tightly as I can and let the waves of sorrow I’ve kept at bay consume me. Myheart aches deeply for the most loving person I’ve ever known and the loss that has altered my entire make-up already.

Chapter 5

Sutton

I’ve kept my conversation with Terrence under wraps since yesterday. Dad is going to have plenty of questions and I’d rather have as many answers as I can before going to him. This is the perfect opportunity for me to prove he’s making the right decision in choosing me to carry on his legacy.

This morning, I check in with Jason, Kelly, and Cody, making sure they can handle the usual, then head back into my office to work. With assessments out of the way, the focus will be on property clean up and prepping for all the cows that will be delivering in the coming weeks.

Dad and I remodeled the area of the house Sammi and I shared after she headed off to Baylor. She was pretty clear, come Hell or high water, that she wasn’t coming back to the ranch. At least not to stay. Our Jack and Jill suite and adjacent hallway became their own entity, accessible only through a new exterior door on the back of the house.

Sammi’s old room transitioned into an office. It’s not a place I spend much time in, but it comes in handy when I need to work things out without baying cows, hollering ranch hands, or my dad’s critical thinking skills. It's the same reason my dad has an office in the house versus using the one in the stable.

Seated at the desk my grandfather built, with maps of the property and surrounding areas spread before me, I have a bird’s eye view of whatadding Terrence’s ten-thousand acres would look like. A few years ago, we completed an extremely detailed survey that identifies every important aspect of the property, including water access, permanent blinds, pasture lines and numbers, buildings and names, and several other key pieces of information.

Terrence’s property line runs along our west. I imagine he has something similar completed for his, much more extensive, land. At twenty-five hundred acres, we’ve always been small fries compared to them.

For this to work in our favor, not only do I need to attempt to get this land at a steal, while also posing that as a win for Terrence, but I need to have a rock-solid plan in place for monetizing the land. From past discussions, I know Terrence leads guided hunts, which is something I had planned to begin on a much smaller scale for Strickland Ranch.

I think about his offer to discuss and wonder how forthcoming he would be about what’s worked and what hasn’t through the years. All of the information is set on a very large variable, which is that they raise quarter horses and we raise cattle.

I spend the next couple of hours finding comparable properties, looking at the current average cost of land, and taking into account what’s already established next door as well as what I hope to gain. Once I have the best computations I can, without having an appraisal yet or talking numbers, it’s time to bring it to my dad.

Mama is hanging up the house phone when I walk in the front door of The Big House. Her face is damp and she sniffles as I reach the kitchen.

“What the hell’s going on?” My eyes pinball around the room, searching for the cause of her distress. Dad’s heavy footsteps head our way from his office.

“Ms. Ruthie passed away, honey.” She struggles to get the words out and additional tears threaten to escape her bright eyes. I wasn’t extremely closeto Ruthie, but she’s been a staple in the community since before I was born. She and Mama hosted gatherings through the years and she was comforting to Mama when Sammi was sick.

“I’m sorry, Mama.” I open my arms for her and she falls into my chest as I wrap her up. I’ve been taller than her since I was eleven, but her sweet annoyance over that dissipated the first time I swooped her up in comfort, the same way she always had me.

She doesn’t stay long, pulling back and bouncing around the kitchen again. “I’m stopping by there shortly. I’m sure Randi is just devastated.”

“Was she sick?”

---