Page 77 of A Reckless Memory

Just as I reached for the hem of her shirt, a buzzing sound made me stop. “Is that your phone?”

Frowning, she rolled up, and I scooted back to make room for her.

“It’s after midnight.” Alarm passed through her features. She reached behind her and pulled it out of her pocket. “Oh god, it’s Cody.”

I moved to her side so she could sit all the way up. Tears were already filling her eyes when she answered. Cody’s voice drifted through the phone, loud enough for me to hear. “It’s Barns. He’s gone.”

Sixteen

AGGIE

Eliot and I stood in the kitchen. Cody and Wilder, in his various shades of brown deputy clothing, were getting ready to leave, but we were having a last-minute discussion about the funeral the next day. The reception would be at the church. No one felt like entertaining at the house in its faded glory with the faint smell of Daddy’s cigars. The house could still use a good dusting, the kitchen a wipe down, and boots cluttered the floor by each door. A mopping would do wonders.

“I can clean before I go to bed,” I said, still trying to be useful two days after I’d arrived. Yesterday, I’d deleted messages from Lawson asking how I was doing, sending me his condolences, and asking if I needed anything. As tempted as I’d been to reply, “I don’t need anything from you, wasn’t that the problem?” I’d made each communication disappear. Lawson was in the past, and now his obsession with getting into Daddy’s good graces was too.

“There’s a lady coming in the morning,” Eliot said. “I don’t pay her to clean a clean house.”

I’d sat around for two days and watched my brothers rush everywhere. “Are all the arrangements—”

“Done,” Cody said, back to his abrupt self. His in-laws were in town and already offering to take the kids to Helena for the week and up to indefinitely. He was on edge and cranky.

I made another attempt to contribute. “I can pitch in for chores in the morning.”

Eliot brushed that offer away too. “The guys are working as normal. None of them worked under Barns’s time. They don’t feel the need to go to the funeral.”

“Everything’s arranged.” None of it by me. The same antsy feeling from when I’d grown up wove through me, making me want to pick the orneriest mare to ride or sled down the hill straight toward the stock pond after a stretch of forty-degree days. I’d lost one sled doing so and flirted with hypothermia after another attempt—and I’d even seen the open water before I started. Then there was the time I was eight and my brothers wouldn’t let me help work cattle, so I’d ridden out on a green, broken filly—and broke an arm.

“Barns had it all done,” Cody said, residual bitterness in his voice. “Everything’s been planned down to when his lawyer will read the will.”

“Just like Barns,” Wilder said. “Controlling everything with his cold, dead hands.”

His words landed in the middle of us like a heavy emotional load made tangible.

My brothers were tense, probably wondering if Daddy had some surprise up his nonexistent sleeve. An axe waiting to drop. But I was different. I was waiting to see if I’d be forgotten one last time.

I gave myself a mental shake. Enough. Being at home for this long was a subtle mindfuck, making me feel like an impulsive fifteen-year-old all over again. Thanksgiving had been a holiday. A lighter mood had rested quietly over the place. The start of this week had been different. Daddy’s death brought relief. With that came guilt. And being under the roof without him was haunting.

“I gotta get back out there.” Wilder adjusted his utility belt. When I’d first seen him in uniform, I had thought it odd, so different for my country-boy brother who’d rarely been out of ratty jeans, a dirty hoodie, and his cowboy hat. Now, I wondered if that kid was anywhere in this guy who was hardly out of uniform. He hadn’t taken a single hour off since Daddy passed and said he’d be at the funeral in his uniform. To honor Barns. Sutton muttered it would be because he was on the clock.

“I need to get home as well.” Cody ruffled his fingers through his locks like he was making sure every strand was perfect to go with his slacks and stylish cream pullover, or his in-laws would drive off with Grayson and Ivy.

Eliot pushed off the counter after they left. “You okay all by yourself?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Austen won’t be here until tomorrow.” He briefly clenched his jaw. “Have you ever slept here by yourself?”

“I have an entire house by myself.”

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling as if he was sick of my shit when we’d hardly talked since I arrived. “It’s not this place, and it’s not in the middle of nowhere.”

“Eliot, are you asking your thirty-one-year-old sister if she needs a babysitter?”

“Fuck’s sake, Aggie. Barns died in the living room.”

I snapped my mouth shut. Point taken. “I’ll be fine, and you’re in the cabin.” The cabin was on the edge of the property, but Eliot had made a makeshift dirt road by traveling so much between there and the house. The path was no longer the two-wheel trail I’d used when Ansen stayed there.

“And the whole town knows Barns is no longer in the house. I don’t want any lookie-loos thinking they can roam the place because they know I’m in the cabin and the guys are in the bunkhouse.”

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