Page 28 of Opposites (Never) Attract
I slid my phone out of my tote and did just that.
“You’re here!”Harmony squealed as soon as she answered the phone.
“Here is relative,” I said, hopping up into the passenger side of Tag’s black Ford F150. “I suppose we’ve got another hour or so drive to the ranch. I want to see this will, Harmony.”
“Really?”
“What do you mean, really? Of course I want to see it. Leroy McGraw calls me out by name and tells me from the grave I’m supposed to save his ranch? Yes, I would like to see that for myself.”
“Uh. Well. Yes. Of course. You should. Of course you should. I’ll call everyone to come over and put something together for an early dinner. We should all be here. When you read the will.”
I hadn’t seen my sister in person in years, but Iknewmy sister. “Harmony? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m not telling you what I’m cooking. Just come and we’ll have a proper family meal.”
She disconnected the call. I glanced over at Tag, who’d put on his aviators and was pulling us onto the access road that led to the highway.
“She sounded weird,” I said. “Why do you think she sounded weird?”
“Maybe marriage, in addition to killing women, turns people weird,” he offered.
“I didn’t say marriage killed women. Just that statistically…never mind. And, no, I’ve talked to her plenty of times since the wedding, and this was different. Tag, is there something else? Something you haven’t told me yet?”
“My job was to get you to come home,” he said. “I did that.”
Which very clearly didn’t answer my question.
FIVE
KAITLYN
The viewout my childhood bedroom window growing up was of the Swinging D in the far off distance. Not the Lodge, of course – but the arch of the gate announcing the start of the property.
But I always knew the Lodge was there. Behind that arch. The two story, seven million square foot stone and beam house where generations of McGraws grew up to terrorize generations of Calloways.
Every year, the McGraws had big Christmas parties and branding parties and post round-up parties. The whole town would be invited, except for us. Or maybe we were invited, but Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear of us going.
And I got to watch all of the comings and goings from my bedroom window.
But I’d never been inside of it.
Crazy how one spunky Calloway widow in eighteen hundred-whatever, who wouldn’t sell her land to the asshole McGraw cattle baron, started this whole thing. Add in some duels, some romances gone wrong, a bootlegging showdown, a couple of attempted murders, and a fewkidnappings, and here we were. Hundreds of years into a hostile feud.
Now, Leroy McGraw was trying to change it all from the grave.
I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t living it.
Harmony must have heard Tag’s pickup truck pulling into the gravel that framed the front of the house, because by the time we got out of the truck, both families had poured out onto the porch.
I stopped in my tracks.
Mom.
Honestly, I hadn’t expected the sight of her to hit me so much.
She stood in front of everyone, wringing her hands. Her once bright red hair was a little more grey, but everything else about her was exactly the same. The green eyes that all my sisters had. The compact body capable of making wild art, fixing fences, and herding alpacas in the same day.
She’d always been a fun mom. Zany and loving. But somehow…distant. With me, anyway. I watched the way she seemed to know my sisters. Anticipate their needs and moods and be right there to comfort or share in some joyful, dumb moment. But I always felt outside of all of that.
