Something clicks in my brain, and I jerk my head to look at her. “Oh my gosh! You’re Charlotte. You did Uncle Tony’s will.”
She nods and gets her head grabbed by her stylist, much like Opal’s grabbing my head and turning me to face forward again too. “He updated it about ten years ago.”
My heart suddenly hurts. Junie was six, and Uncle Tony invited us out so she could ride horses.
Dean didn’t want to go.
He insisted we take her to Disney World instead.
It was fun, if overwhelming, but I wish we’d come here.
Junie never met Uncle Tony. Not in person.
“Bunch of people thought it was interesting he left the ranch to someone most of us have never met,” Opal says.
I don’t sense judgment.
Mostly curiosity.
“He was the black sheep of my mom’s family,” I say.
Junie makes a noise that needs no interpretation. How much worse was he than Grandma if she’s in jail and he was the black sheep?
I shoot her a look, but she’s fully hiding behind a magazine now.
One with a front-page picture of Dean and his girlfriend.
Best of luck to her.
The girlfriend, I mean.
“Now how was Tony Coleman the black sheep of any family?” Charlotte demands. “He was a little . . . eccentric . . . but he was always lovely.”
“He was apparently pretty wild in his younger years.” I smile at some of the stories I’ve heard. Mostly low-key things like marijuana, parking lot racing, and one incident involving cherry bombs in a sewer that I’ve been sworn upon pain of death to never, ever, ever repeat. “When I was really little, I was told he had the mark of the devil on him and that he was an immoral lost soul bound for hell. But then we changed churches, he won the lottery and bought this place, my parents got divorced, and suddenly he was good enough to babysit me out here for a week or two every summer.”
“Mom,” Junie says. “You never told me any of that.”
“I know. I’m sorry, ba—Junie. I’ll tell you more stories now. Promise.”
“Was he wild out here?” Junie asks Opal, who’s shaking out a smock and getting me prepped for my haircut.
“He never met a soul in need he wasn’t willing to help,” she tells my daughter. “Animals. Human. Once, he adopted a cactus that fell off someone’s car as they were heading out of town.”
That sounds like Uncle Tony. I blink back the slight sting that’s basically perpetually threatened my eyes since we got here. “We should’ve come visit more.”
“You talk to him much?” Opal asks.
“He’d call every once in a while. Email more often. But he and my mom had a big fight a few years ago—”
“Mm. Yes.”
I study Opal in the mirror. “I never got a straight answer on why,” I say slowly.
“Something about a new business venture she wanted him to invest in,” Charlotte pipes up. “Your mom doesn’t steal babies and sell them on the black market, does she?”
“Oh my God, no.”
Junie slinks lower in her seat, the magazine so close to her face she can’t possibly read the words.
“Why—why would you ask that?” I ask Charlotte.
“Never saw Tony so angry,” she replies. “All he’d say was Stupid family, stupid ideas—that’s not me.”
“That’s . . . all he said?”
“To any of us,” Opal says.
“Huh.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Charlotte smothering a grin. “I figured it was one of those multilevel-marketing schemes. Only other time I ever saw him that hot was when he took in a guy passing through who got stuck here with car troubles for a couple of days. Two of them were at Iron Moose, having their BLTs and bison roast one minute, and the next, Tony had that table turned upside down and was yelling at the guy to get out of here with his slimy snake oil sales pitch.”
“The man probably shouldn’t have led with the vitamin for impotence problems,” Opal murmurs to me.
If Junie heard that one, she doesn’t react.
I do, though.
And the story gives me the first honest laugh I’ve had since I got here.
“I would’ve thought he’d have been all in with the herbal supplements,” Charlotte says. “He fit the profile in most other ways. But this is why we don’t stereotype, now isn’t it?”
I slide another glance at her while Opal picks up the scissors.
Is she making a subtle inquiry about the things people here have assumed about me?
“I don’t mean you,” she says quickly. “Tony never said a bad thing about you. Actually, when he came in to redo his will ten years ago, he told me you were in a bad relationship, didn’t know it, and one day, you’d need a place to go. He said he wanted to make sure you had it whether he was still here or not.”
Chills race down my spine, followed by a warmth that feels like a hug.
“You’ll hear people say he planned to leave the place to the town, and honestly, he’d make noise about it every now and again,” Charlotte continues, getting her head pointed straight again by her stylist as she talks. “But anytime I’d ask him if he wanted to update his will, he’d say Not until I know my niece doesn’t need a backup plan anymore.”
I will not cry. I will not cry. I will not—
“We got your back, hon,” Opal murmurs. “All of us, even if some of us might have acted like assholes yesterday.”
Crap.
My eyes are getting too hot to handle.
Yep.
I’m gonna cry.
Opal squeezes my shoulder. “Is this your natural part here? Or do you want to part your hair on the other side once it’s short?”
I nod quickly and try to surreptitiously wipe my eyes while pretending I’m brushing a lock of hair out of them.
And I fool absolutely no one.
“We know what Tony wanted, Maisey,” Charlotte says. “We don’t know why you’re finally here or what you plan on doing with the ranch, but Opal’s right. We’ve got you. Especially if you join the PTA.”
Everyone cracks up.
Even me.
“You gonna do a reality show about the ranch?” someone calls.
I shudder and make myself think about the future. “I never want to see another camera again in my life. But I am going to fix up whatever needs it around the ranch. And I woke up this morning thinking about a couple girlfriends I know online who are going through divorces. They don’t have an uncle Tony with a home in waiting when they need it. How many people do? And I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be lovely to add a couple modest houses to the land? Not develop it. Not develop it. Just a couple more places to take in wayward souls.”
“Like Tony used to,” Opal murmurs.
I nod. “In the meantime, I’ll probably renovate the bunkhouse—how fun would that be for an artists’ retreat?—and tear down the barn—”
The stylist at the chair on my other side drops her scissors. Three women and the one guy in the salon this morning gasp.
Junie lifts her gaze from her magazine and gives me the raised brows of What just happened?
“Does Flint know?” the lone guy asks.