I punch a button on the steering wheel. “Call Bowen.”
An electronic voice echoes my command, and the sound of a ringing phone fills the cab.
“Cross,” my brother answers.
“Cross.” I can’t help pointing out how he answered when he knew damn well it was me.
“I’m the better Cross.”
I grunt. Rubbing the back of my neck, I suppress a yawn. “Where are you?”
“I have an investor’s meeting on Monday, then I’m flying out. You there yet?”
So Bowen’s still in Las Vegas, while Landry is who knows where. I’m the only Cross within Scandal’s city limits. Rolling my shoulders, I regret not taking off my suit coat.
“I stopped at Jules Creek first.”
There’s a moment of silence. “How was it?”
Disconcerting. Uncomfortable. Sad. “Shewas there.” Bowen knows who I mean.
Dad and I talked more over the past few years. Bowen mentioned Dad’s calls to him had also increased recently, but as for Landry, Dad told me my youngest brother rarely answered. Will Landry regret that now?
That’s not my concern. I have my own emotions around my falling-out with Dad to deal with.
“He always gushed about her. Sawyer too,” Bowen says with more than a hint of resentment.
Dad told me that regardless of our feelings toward his relationship with Holly, Meredith was as good as gold. Heclaimed he couldn’t run the brewery without her. Meredith is a genius when it comes to brewing, and she manages the employees and the taproom better than he ever could. He adored Sawyer Booth, too, and hired her on for the ranch. He claimed they had an arrangement, but he wouldn’t tell me all the details. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think I’d be back so quickly.
My knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. Ultimately, Dad chose Holly Winslow over his own sons. Every single day, every year, he made his choice. We were left homeless. I scrambled to get a job to support myself, and I took Bowen and Landry in. We all worked, and they finished college. Some days, we fucking starved.
Dad never apologized, and now he never will.
Acid burns its way up my throat. “Call me when you get to town.”
“Will do.” The line disconnects.
I fly by green pastures teeming with grazing cattle. Black Angus are scattered on one side, and red Simmental on the other. In the distance, the peaks of windmills rise above the rolling hills. A few miles later, I pass an oil well on Sterling land, our closest neighbors. The pump isn’t moving. A few miles farther, there’s another well, the arm slowly moving up and down with a mesmerizing rhythm. Finally, I reach the road that’ll take me in the opposite direction.
“Fucking Sterlings,” I utter, as if muscle memory kicked in and I couldn’t not say it.
Dad and Gil Sterling never got along. Same with the boys of each man. I don’t know about Gil’s daughter. She’s ten years younger than Landry. From what Dad said, she manages the Sterling ranch, while her brothers profit from the oil money.
Growing up, it was a case of the haves and have-nots, and back then, it was all about who had the oil and who did not. The Sterlings ensured everyone knew they possessed it and proudlydisplayed their Pedigree Oil merchandise. Our land did not yield, but in this region of the state, there’s still a unique beauty in a stretch of land without windmills or oil wells. Dad used to call us “happily Pedigree-free.”
Being Pedigree-free also meant we did not get the payouts for mineral right for Pedigree to drill and put wells on our land, or for running pipelines through our property. If our parents suffered for the lack of extra income while I was growing up, I didn’t know it.
I glance at the empty pastures. It’s only June. The Crossroads Ranch manager will move the cattle any day now and introduce the calf-cow pairs into these pastures for the summer.
After two more turns, I approach a long gravel drive with a log arch over the entrance. “Crossroads Ranch” is carved into the highest log, and our brand is burned into the adjacent wood. A “C” seamlessly blends into an “R,” with the ends of the “R” tipped with arrows.
I’m home.
Stepping on the gas, I lurch down the drive. The house comes into view.
“Are you fucking serious?” The old white two-story farmhouse Mama cherished is now painted robin’s-egg blue. The black shutters remain the same, but the sprawling porch is new. Newer. Hell, Dad could’ve built it the day after I left, for all I know.
A shadow moves by the shrubs next to the house. A dog? It’s too big to be a cat, but it slips through the lilac bushes. Are the coyotes getting bolder than when I was younger? Regardless, it’s gone, and I’m not getting scared off by wildlife on my first day back in the country.
