Prologue
~ Carter ~
No one tells you how loud thunder gets in Montana, or how the air changes when the sky cracks open and rain sheets down, angry as hell. Maybe you’re supposed to have family who explains these things, or maybe you’re just supposed to care.
The Steele family, as it turns out, didn’t do a lot of explaining, or caring. If they had, someone would have noticed that I’d slipped out of the house barefoot, pants rolled to the knee, and was standing in the mud with the rain stinging my scalp, squinting at the lightning as it stitched the prairie horizon into sharp black-and-white slices.
“Carter!” my father called from inside, voice ricocheting through the warped floorboards. He sounded more annoyed than worried—one of those inefficiencies of parenting that he resented but endured, like owning a timeshare or buying commemorative plates. I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. Dad’s not the type who expects to be heard, only obeyed.
I yanked the door shut behind me, hard enough that the glass rattled in the frame, and pressed my back against the wet wood. Just inside, the front hall smelled like a hardware store—the sour tang of wet canvas duffels, floor polish, and old cedar.
My family loomed in the foyer like a bunch of wax mannequins that someone had posed for a lifestyle catalog: Dad at the bottom of the staircase, black coat snapped to the neck; Barrett with his laptop open and phone jammed to his ear, too busy closing deals or crushing souls to notice he was thirty miles from cell reception; and Vivian, perched on a packing box with her knees together, like she could contract plague if she let them drift apart.
I had no idea where everyone else was.
Barrett looked up from his call and made a face. “You’re soaked,” he said, as if I’d waded through the river just to inconvenience him.
“Raining,” I said, monotone, and didn’t break eye contact.
He shook his head with a sigh and pivoted his attention back to his phone. “Yes, we’re just about done here. Estate matters, yes. No, it’s not a problem. Just a lot of rain.”
Vivian gave me her practiced, icy once-over. “You’re getting mud everywhere, Carter.”
She was wearing a Chanel suit. It was the wrong shade of blue for Montana and the right one for a corporate boardroom, which summed up her entire aesthetic. Every part of her was correct and unyielding, except for the way her right eye twitched at the edge.
“I’ll clean it,” I said, which was as much a lie as it was a concession.
“Don’t you dare,” Dad said, not looking at me. He was staring out the window at the driveway, where the two town cars idled, red taillights bleeding into the early night. “We’re leaving in ten. Barrett, you’ve got the last will and keys?”
Barrett lifted the battered briefcase in a showy arc. “I’ve got it.”
“Vivian?” Dad said, and she smiled with all her teeth and none of her heart.
“Ready.”
No one asked me anything.
I drifted to the stairs, peeled off my shirt, and left it draped over the banister. My skin prickled from the cold, but it felt better than being inside with them.
I fished in my duffel for the thermal undershirt—black, with holes chewed in the cuffs. It still smelled faintly like home. Or what used to be home. I pulled it on, thinking of the goats out in the barn. No one else would bother to check them, not tonight. Not ever.
Dad herded us out the front door as if the thunder was targeting our bloodline personally. “Let’s go, let’s go,” he barked, and we skidded down the porch steps, shoes slicking against the pooled water. Rain sluiced from the eaves, drenching us all in a single, perfect volley.
Barrett, in tasseled loafers and pale khakis, gave a strangled yell and leaped for the gravel drive. The shoes would never recover. Good.
Vivian swore, the word lost in the wind, and held her Birkin bag over her head like a shield. Dad had his arm around her waist, steering her to the backseat of the first town car as if she was an irreplaceable asset that might depreciate in value if allowed to get wet. The driver, hunched and glowering, scuttled to open the door for them.
I stood at the porch edge, feeling the storm run through me, every flash of lightning reflected in the windowpanes behind. My reflection was a pale ghost in the glass—skinny, wiry, hair a sodden tangle.
No one’s idea of a Steele.
I waited until Dad finished barking instructions at the drivers, waited until Barrett slammed the trunk and sloshed back to the sedan with his precious briefcase, waited until Vivian’s silhouette vanished behind tinted windows.
No one looked back at the house. No one looked for me.
Perfect.
I turned and loped for the side yard, bare feet slapping against the flagstones, the rain cold enough to make my bones ache. The old barn squatted at the far end of the lot, doors half ajar, light spilling out in an uneven triangle. Every step squelched through mud, each stride further from the family I was supposed to mourn and closer to something like relief.
