And honestly?
Uncle Tony’s old hobby ranch wasn’t tempting merely because it’saway. It was everything I needed in the event that I have to homeschool Junie while we grow our own food and I work on changing her legal name so no one will ever know who she’s related to, so she can at least start college on a positive note.
This ranch holds so many happy memories for me. Ilovedvisiting when I was a kid.
I hope I can provide the same for her that Uncle Tony gave me. A safe escape where I felt loved everywhere I went and where I knew I could count on him.
“I’ll do my best to stay alive for you, honey,” I tell her.
She rolls her eyes and walks away.
I get it.
I screwed up. Rebuilding this will take time.
Which is pretty much the entire story of my life right now.
Chapter 2
Flint Jackson, a.k.a. a man who wishes he’d stayed in bed this morning
Parsnip is in a mood as I steer her back to Wit’s End, once I’ve finally found her hiding in the sparse woods by the creek, but it can’t be helped.
There’s no way Maisey Spencer can handle what needs to be handled with that cow, and if I don’t deal with it, it’ll only get worse.
Which is why Parsnip and I are headed back to bury the danged thing for Maisey and her teenager.
Might as well. Gonna hurt tomorrow already from getting thrown, so it’s not like burying a cow will make it much worse.
“Simmer down,” I tell my palomino quarter horse, who was really Tony’s old palomino quarter horse, which I won’t be telling Maisey. Care too much about the animal to leave her fate in the hands of a woman who hasn’t been to this ranch in twenty years and whose most recent claim to fame wasnotgetting run over by a lawn mower that she should’ve heard coming on the series finale of that stupid show she did with her even more stupid ex-husband. “Wasn’t a real mountain lion.Don’t see those too often around here. And if it was, it would’ve gone for the cow first.”
Probably.
Fact that the bear was noshing on it suggests it’s past its prime and has probably been there for a few weeks.
At least.
Gross-ass animal.
I probably should’ve found the dead cow sooner, but I’ve been spending more time helping Kory next door and less time checking out all fifty acres of Wit’s End on a regular basis. Ride the fences and check for breaks so we can fix those? Yes. Check in on the mostly empty house that Maisey had cleared out by an estate-sale company instead of tackling herself? Of course. Ride out to the closed-up bunkhouse just in case a wandering cow met an untimely death over there?
No.
Parsnip snorts and keeps trotting. We round the corner of the single-story, dirty off-white building, expecting to see nothing but a cow carcass.
Instead, there’s a denim-clad, heart-shaped ass sticking up in the air while its owner bends over and inspects something on the dry, cracked ground near the dead animal.
Unfortunately for me, I watched enough ofDean’s Fixer Uppersto recognize that ass.
Camera loved to zoom in on her at that angle anytime she was bent over doing any of her handyman work.
’Scuse me.
Handyperson work.
Tony didn’t like to let me forget it either. That man was damn proud of her, no matter what stupid stuff she did on her show and no matter that she never had the time to come visit.
Or even the decency to show up for his funeral.
