Page 1 of The Auction
PROLOGUE
JULIETTE
My daddy,Herb Clarke, was a mean sonofabitch. There just wasn’t any other way to describe him.
My momma left him when I was five years old. I’m sure every neighbor we had within a hundred miles wondered why she didn’t take me with her.
They didn’t know Herb. He didn’t let anything go, he considered his. I’m sure when the fight happened, that moment in time when my momma said she wanted out and wanted to take me with her (at least that’s how I always imagined it in my head, her screaming at him that she was going to take me with her), he would have told her that she was free to pack her bags and go. But that I was his and so I was staying.
An ultimatum would have been given. Stay and raise your daughter. Or leave and never come back.
But there wasn’t any option that had us leaving together.
I don’t remember crying back then. I must have. But I was five and so long as I had food, a warm bed to sleep in, and some toys, maybe I didn’t miss her all that much.
Did I miss her even now?
Would she have stopped what he was about to do?
Doubtful.
When Herb got a bee in his bonnet it was hard for him to let go.
“Juliette!” he barked from the bottom of the steps downstairs. “Let’s go!”
I sighed and considered my options. I could probably crawl out my bedroom window, but my ankles and/or legs wouldn’t survive the fall without breaking. There were no trees to climb up or down to safety. Daddy had seen to that a long time ago.
Can’t run on a broken leg or foot.
I could maybe make a break for it on our way into town. Open the truck door and launch myself out of it. Our ranch was about a hundred miles south of Riverbend, Montana. A middle of nowhere town in a middle of nowhere part of the state. Closest real town would be Jefferson, I imagined.
Not that we ever spent much time in either place.
My days, my nights, my seasons, all of it was spent on the farm.
Herb was a big believer in homeschooling.
Although his idea of homeschooling was telling me to read the Bible over and over again.
Except here was the challenge about our farming operation. It required information in order to make it profitable.
Herb Clarke owned just over four hundred acres of land that he used to raise crops. Our primary being sugar beets, which we rotated with barley. I convinced him some time ago that in order for us to improve the crop, keep up with market prices, and just make sure we understood who was buying our crop, we needed something more modern than the Bible for our source of information.
That’s when we got the…INTERNET.
Herby almost shot the man who had to run cable to the property the first time he came. Fortunately, I was able to intervene.
The only computer in the house was in Herb’s study, which he locked up tight, of course. Not wanting me to be overly influenced by the outside world.
One of the first things I learned on the internet was how to pick a lock.
What Herb didn’t know didn’t hurt him.
“Juliette! You don’t get your ass down here now…”
He let the threat trail off. Or what? I wanted to ask. Or he wasn’t taking me to the horse auction?
Did I mention there was an auction in town this week?
