“And he works at the insurance company with your dad, right?” Doc asked.
“Yes. He’s an agent. Sells policies. I’m surprised you haven’t heard from him yet trying to sell you guys something.” I’d said it as a joke, but I noticed the two older men share a quick glance. “Oh, maybe he has?”
Doc shrugged and looked down at his plate. “Well, we told him the truth. Weston’s been working with a friend of his in Dallas for years on the ranch’s policies.”
I reached out and squeezed Doc’s arm. “Doc, you don’t have to justify your decisions to anyone, least of all me. It’s none of my concern. John and I aren’t that close anyway. Hell, I think he’s closer to Jolie and Tisha than anyone since Cody and Tisha spend so much time together.”
We moved on to other topics and away from the subject of family. They talked about traveling to Monaco soon to visit with Felix and Lior, and discussed the likelihood of Otto’s parents, Bill and Shelby, returning to the States for a visit anytime soon. Apparently the chances were slim to none. It seemed they were happy there.
“That reminds me, Otto, they were talking about selling off the house, but wanted me to ask you if you’d rather have it,” Doc said.
“Why are they thinking about it now?” he asked.
“Apparently, someone’s interested in it.”
Otto looked at me with furrowed brows before looking back at his grandfathers. The house Otto had grown up in bordered my parents’ ranch. “Isn’t is part of the Wilde ranch?”
“No. We separated it out and signed it away to them when the house was built. And now that we’re no longer ranching cattle, we don’t much need all the land we once had. It’s more a question of whether or not one of you kids wants to live there.”
Otto looked at me again with a raised brow this time. “Do we want to live there?”
I felt a warmth flood my chest and placed a hand there before realizing what I was doing.
“Can… can we think about it?”
“Sure. I’ll tell the Realtor to tell the interested party to simmer down a little,” Doc said with a smile.
Within forty-eight hours, it was a moot point.
The house was torched and burned straight to the ground, taking decades of Otto’s family memories with it.
Chapter 20
Otto
Otto,
I drew my firearm in the line of duty for the first time today. Scared the piss out of me. A teenager was whaling on his mother in a domestic disturbance. She had allegedly bought his younger brother the wrong kind of basketball shoes which led to an argument which led to a screaming match which led to him smacking her. When she smacked him right back, he went to town on her with his fists.
Thank god the drawn weapon was enough to make him stop. But the whole thing was such a reminder of how quickly one small thing sets off a series of escalating events, you know?
Wherever you are, Otto, please be safe,
Walker
(Unsent)
The day before I got the call that my childhood home was on fire, I had a simple plan. I wanted to buy Tisha a pair of cowgirl boots for her birthday. She was turning nine in two days, and I knew she would flip out if Walker gave her a nice pair of boots for riding.
He already had several gifts for her. A new pair of sunglasses she’d wanted and a gift card for games on her iPad among other things. But he wanted to give her something that would really make her lose her shit. There was a western wear shop on the edge of town that would have ropers in her size, but the problem was, he couldn’t remember what her size was. So he’d sent me to Jolie’s house to check. He’d texted Jolie first to ask her, but she couldn’t remember offhand either. Then he asked his mom, who was looking after Tisha for the day while her parents were at work. But she said Tish only had a pair of cheap rubber flip-flops on that didn’t have the size listed.
Jolie had agreed to let me go over to the house to check the closet. Things between us weren’t good necessarily, but ever since I’d let Jolie come over with Tisha a few times to ride the horses, we’d found a mutual neutrality that worked for us. We didn’t talk overmuch or spend any time alone, but she’d smile nervously at me and I’d nod my head back politely. It wasn’t much, but it was ten times better than it could have been.
In the meantime, Tisha went back and forth between Jolie’s house and Seth’s lake house. The issue of him being alone with her wasn’t brought up again except when Cody or Eliza wanted to stay over, and then everyone so far had just tried to keep sleepovers to the nights Tish was at Jolie’s. I knew it was killing Walker, but he told me he wanted to keep the family strife down as much as possible right now by not making waves.