Whiskey Moon

“Here.” Mama grabs my arm and leads me to the couch. “Sit down.”

She takes the cushion beside me.

“Wyatt, I’m so sorry,” she says.

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

Her lips press flat and she lays a hand on my forearm. “No, actually …”

She gathers a hard breath and runs her palms along the tops of her thighs.

“I’ve actually got a secret of my own,” she says.

“What are you talking about?”

“A few months before your father’s heart attack, I started replacing his blood pressure medication with sugar pills.”

I study Mama’s face, the way her head hangs in shame and she can’t bring herself to look in my direction.

“You might have left him to die,” she says. “But Wyatt … you didn’t kill him. I did.”

Just like that, my saint of a mother, who never shed a single tear in front of me in twenty-eight years, bursts into tears. I wrap my arms around her and let her sob into my shoulder.

“We did what we had to do,” I tell her.

Deep down, on some unspoken level, I’m quite certain we both know he never would’ve let her leave this marriage alive. And if he did, he’d have taken her children, her good name, and every last shred of dignity she had. She stood up to him the only way she could.

The day you fight back is the day you take back your power.

I hold my crying mother, but my thoughts turn to Oliver Abbott.

33

Blaire

* * *

I poke my head into my father’s study Sunday afternoon only to find it empty. A warm, half-consumed mug of tea rests on a coaster next to a stack of paperwork. His top left desk drawer is open, as if he was in the middle of something and got distracted.

I take a seat in his chair, remembering when I was a little girl and I’d visit him in his office where he’d sit me in his giant leather wingback chair at his shiny mahogany desk with the gold and black pens embossed with his name and the bank’s logo. He felt so imperial, so larger than life.

This morning over breakfast, he was nothing but supportive when I told him my plans to fly back on Tuesday, though I think he was mainly relieved that I’m not turning my back on my dreams and letting that acting degree go to waste.

Getting out of here and back to some semblance of normalcy will be good for me, though I happened to run into Cash a few hours ago at the gas station and he seemed disappointed that I was taking off so soon. He told me Wyatt’s been different since I’ve been around. “Better” was the word he used, but he didn’t give me more context than that.

Sinking back, I cross my legs and rap my fingers against his study desk … waiting.

But something catches my eye from the stack of paperwork in front of me.

In bold black ink is the word DEED.

It would make sense if he’s getting his affairs in order given his recent health scares … I imagine Odette’s been on him to make sure everything is divvied out accordingly, and knowing my father, he’ll ensure that we’re both properly provided for—not that it matters to me. I’ve got the rest of my life to work and take care of myself, but Odette’s spent the last twenty-five of hers making their marriage her full-time job.

Scanning the top document, I fully expect to find the address to this house further down the page on the address line—only it isn’t ours …

It’s the address to the Buchanan Ranch: 492 Cottonwood Road.

Why would my father have this?

I flip to the next page, searching for any clue that would explain what the deed to their farm is doing in my father’s home study.

Nothing prepares me for what I find on the next page: my father’s name and signature along the “owner” line.

I read it again to be sure I’m not imagining this, and then I sort through the rest of the documents in the stack. It’s nothing but land deeds and pink slips and transfer certificates all showing Oliver Abbott as the sole owner of all the Buchanan land and machinery and property.

“Blaire,” my father’s figure fills the doorway.

“Dad, what is this?” I ask. “Why is your name all over these?”

With a casual confidence, he strolls to the desk, stacks the paperwork into a neat pile, and says, “Remember when I told you the Buchanans had fallen upon hard times after Ambrose’s death?”

“Yes …”

“Well, it turns out they were so under water they couldn’t get a bank to so much as consider them,” he says. “Even my own underwriters refused. Given that I knew the family personally, I approached Renata and offered to buy the entire thing and lease it back to them so they could stay.”