“Why the fuck did no one tell me that we have a sister?” Jimmy broke the silence in an uncharacteristically harsh tone.
Jimmy was the most laid-back, easy-going, good-natured human being on the planet. He was the “flirt” out of the Fs used to describe us. He didn’t get riled up easily, but looked downright pissed off now. I didn’t blame him, but I also didn’t have an answer for him. It might sound ridiculous, but I’d never thought to bring it up. The day of the funeral, I’d locked away all my emotions and memories and thrown away the key.
It wasn’t just Cheyenne that we didn’t talk about. We never discussed Mama either.
Hank’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Family meeting. At the house.”
Family meetings were held in one of two places, the bar or the house, depending on where Pop was holed up drinking. If he was at the bar, we’d meet at the house and vice versa. It was strange not having to take that into consideration.
An unwanted emotion began to fill my chest. To be fair, any emotion other than pleasure was unwanted. I tried to live my life maximizing the good and ignoring the bad. It had worked out pretty great for me so far, but I was beginning to think I might need to start facing some of the not-so-pleasant aspects of life. Still, the last thing I wanted to do was relive any more of the past than we already had today. “I’ve got things to do,” I said.
At the same time, Jimmy piped up with, “What food ya got?”
The phrase the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach was more true of Jimmy than any man I’d ever known.
Hank looked at both of us, his expression flatter than a stretch of Kansas highway. Finally, he intoned, “I ain’t askin’.”
With that, he turned and marched to his truck, never looking back once to see if we were following. It wasn’t necessary. He knew that if he used that tone, we listened. It was the way things were.
Hank had stepped up after we lost our mom to a car accident and our dad to the bottle. He’d made sure that we went to school, had clean clothes, and ate. He’d gone to parent-teacher conferences, rushed us to the emergency room when we broke bones or were running high fevers, and bailed both our asses out of jail. Jimmy was picked up when he was seventeen for trespassing when he and his friends broke into the high school to play a senior prank. I got arrested at age sixteen for public indecency when the police chief caught me having sex with his daughter behind the Dairy Queen.
Hank had more than earned the right to call a family meeting and us to show up.
Jimmy and I exchanged looks, and then he flashed a wry smile. That was just how Jimmy was. It didn’t matter the situation, he’d find some way to grin at it. It wasn’t like he thought everything was flat-out funny. But, there was always some angle for the smile to latch onto.
If there was a way to laugh about something, even if there was a mountain of sadness or fear or whatever the hell else underneath it, then that’s the road Jimmy would take.
He raised his brow. “Well, damn, looks like his panties are in a bunch.”
I grinned, still a little too shell-shocked to joke around. Sure, I’d put on a good show in the office, making it seem I wasn’t bothered. I didn’t want Cheyenne to see how shaken I was, and I definitely didn’t want our very attractive attorney thinking I was thrown for a loop.
In front of just my brothers, though, it was a different story. We had pretty well-calibrated bullshit meters when it came to each other and pretending with them just wasn’t realistic.
“Seriously, though,” Jimmy said, his demeanor becoming somber. “I do have one question for you before we head out to Hank’s. And I need you to be totally honest with me.”
I braced myself, hoping that I would find the words to explain why in the hell I’d acted as if Cheyenne was never born. “Shoot.”
“Should I rely on Hank to feed us or should I get a burger on the way?”
I shook my head as I headed to my truck, answering him over my shoulder as I went. “Do what you want. Just get your ass out to the house. Hank was serious, and you know how he gets when he’s serious.”
As I pulled out of the parking lot and headed down the long road that led through downtown and then out into the country, I let the truck meander at a leisurely pace. Back roads were normally what one would take for a short-cut, I was doing the opposite. This was my long-cut.
There was no hurry. If I knew Jimmy at all—and I sure as hell did—he’d be getting food before heading out to Hank’s. He’d figure, what was the harm? It would be a win-win situation. If Hank didn’t provide us with food, he’d already be full. And if Hank did have lunch for us…well, hell. Eating twice in one afternoon never killed a man.
And since I had no desire to sit in silence with a seething Hank while we waited for a carefree Jimmy to come waltzing in twenty minutes late with beef on his breath, I was taking my sweet time.
CHAPTER 6
Reagan
As we entered my office, I couldn’t help but notice Cheyenne’s nerves. It wasn’t hard to read, they were radiating off of her. She sat in one of the two chairs facing my desk and wrung her hands in her lap, clearly anxious, and I put all thoughts of Billy to the side and began to wonder what this impromptu meeting might be about.
“So what can I do for you?” I finally asked when she didn’t speak.
“Um, well. I was wondering if you know who handled my mother’s will?”
“Your mother’s will?”
“Yes.”
“No. I have no idea.” When I’d looked over the Comfort file it was noted that Sabrina Comfort died in a car accident twenty years ago, but that was the extent of my knowledge.
“I only ask because I heard my grandparents mention that there was some sort of a trust.”
That was news to me. “What did they say?”
She was quiet once more and I could sense her discomfort in discussing the topic mounting.
“I only heard bits and pieces, but from what I gathered, my brothers are entitled to the inheritance.”
I hadn’t seen anything about any sort of inheritance but I’d solely been working with Mr. Comfort’s affairs. Her phrasing was interesting, though. “Your brothers? Not you?”
She blinked at me as if that was the first time she’d thought about that. “Oh…I don’t know. They just mentioned my brothers.”
“Did you ask them about it?”
Cheyenne’s baby blues widened. “No.”
My impulse was to ask why not, but I curbed it. Although I’d taken an immediate liking to Cheyenne, this wasn’t two friends getting to know one another. This was a professional setting and I was being paid for this conversation.
“We’re not exactly close,” she offered in way of explanation.
Again, I had questions. I found it strange that she wasn’t close to the people that had raised her, but again, it was none of my business.
“Okay,” I answered evenly.
Her lips flattened into a straight line as she inhaled through her nose. This was obviously a topic she was uncomfortable with and for some reason, I felt protective of Cheyenne. Which was odd since she was only a few years younger than me.