by how good that smells, I don’t think you have to worry about us not eating,” Alex said, walking into the room. Liam and Cain weren’t far behind.
“Lane,” Finn said, noticing that his tone was more than a little bit surly, but not able to correct it, “this is my brother Alex, and my brother Liam. You met Cain yesterday. Kind of.”
Lane waved. “Hi. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to eat with you. Because this really is enough to feed a small army.”
“You cook,” Cain said with a crooked smile, “you make the rules. And based on the meal I ate last night, let me just add that you can cook for us anytime.”
“I am fairly amazing,” she said, putting her hand on her chest, her expression turning overly sincere. “Just don’t fall in love with me.” She threw a stack of paper plates next to the food. “And dig in.”
“I’m going to go see if Violet wants dinner,” Cain said. “Though I’d probably have better luck if I texted her.” But he turned and walked out of the room anyway.
They began to fill their plates in silence, and a few minutes later Cain reappeared with Violet, who hung back against the wall. Finn studied her for a moment. She was petite. Short and narrow. But her face was pure Donnelly. From the brown hair that hung into her blue eyes, to the firm set of her jaw and mouth. It almost made Finn feel sorry for his brother. Because Donnellys were not easy people to deal with.
“You remember your uncle Alex,” Cain said, gesturing. “And your uncle Liam.” He said Liam’s name with a slight edge.
“Hey,” Violet said, barely nodding her head.
“That’s teenager for I love you and miss you and thought about you every day since I last saw you,” Cain supplied.
That earned a snort from Alex. Neither of them moved to hug Violet, and Finn had a feeling the teenager was only relieved by the lack of forced contact.
Suddenly, Finn was feeling a little bit embarrassed. That Lane was witnessing all of this. The strange, brittle family dynamic. He felt like he was walking across a lake that had frozen over. The ground cracking beneath his feet, and he was never sure which footstep would send him straight through and down to his freezing watery death.
The rest of them were at least all living the same hell. But Lane... Well, to her they must look like a bunch of dysfunctional idiots.
“So,” Lane said, her tone a little too bright, which confirmed Finn’s suspicions, “Violet, what grade are you going to be in?”
“A junior,” she said. “Unless I end up having to repeat a grade because I’m not prepared for advanced tractor mechanics and cow-tipping.”
“I doubt you’ll have to take those classes. They probably fill up early,” Lane said, keeping her tone chipper. “Then again, I can’t speak from experience. I didn’t actually go to school at Copper Ridge High.”
“How much has the town changed in the past ten years?” Alex asked. “I figure that’s relevant since we are going to be living here now.”
Finn knew that Alex was just poking him now. It didn’t make the sinking in his gut any less real.
“Oh,” Lane said, shooting Finn a look of surprise.
“He was our grandfather too,” Liam said. “And this matters. It means something. God knows we’ll never get anything from our father. But we got this, and not him. For that reason alone, I want to stay.”
That hit Finn somewhere vulnerable. Somewhere he didn’t want to examine too closely. It made Liam’s reasoning seem almost justified. And that wasn’t what Finn wanted at all.
“Well, things actually have changed quite a bit here,” Lane began. “Just in the past few years we’ve been really revitalizing Old Town. For my part, I bought the old Mercantile, and I sell specialty foods.”
“Oh, that boutique food stuff is doing well right now,” Liam said. “If I was still doing start-ups, that would be something I’d look to invest in.”
Lane sent Finn a triumphant look. “Interesting.” She turned her focus to his brothers, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what she had to say next, “I’ve been trying to talk Finn into expanding the ranch’s dairy products so that I can sell them in my store.”
“Lane,” Finn said, his tone full of warning.
“Sorry,” she said, licking some sauce off of her thumb, which momentarily distracted him from his irritation. And that was even more irritating. “The business is just on my mind and it slipped out. Especially because I’m going to be starting those subscription boxes soon.”
“Smart,” Liam said. “I think it’s always a good idea to branch out beyond the local economy if you can.”
“See?” Finn asked. “Beyond the local economy. That’s why I have contracts with a larger dairy.”
“I didn’t mean it’s not good to be part of the local economy,” Liam said. “In fact, there’s such a big movement for local food, it’s a great area to invest in.”
“You don’t want to work on a ranch,” Finn said, pointing at his brother.
“Maybe I want to bring what I already do to the ranch. Did you ever think of that? I’m good at building businesses, Finn.”
No, he had not thought of that. Because that would mean giving Liam some credit, which he realized in that moment he never really did. Stupid, since he knew that Liam was successful in his own right, and that he wasn’t the sullen teenage boy that Finn had always known him best as.
“I think you should see how things actually run before you start trying to make changes,” Finn said, looking at his brother hard. Then he looked at the rest of them. There was no point arguing this out, he knew it. But, truth be told, he thought—no, he believed deep in his gut that a few weeks, maybe months, of the ranch life grind, and they’d be gone.
“All of you. My offer to buy you out is going to stand from here on out. This isn’t fun work. I know that you all spent some summers here, and I know you have a vague idea of how it all goes. But to do it year in year out, day in day out, spending your life up to your elbows in literal bullshit is not something any of you know about. So, if at any point it proves to be too much for you, I’ll buy you out. But, hell. Don’t let your pride stop you if after a couple of weeks your bones ache and you just want to sleep in and it proves to be too much for you. But don’t think you can stay then either.”
Violet made a face and glared at her father. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not doing any of that. Just because you’ve gone country and dragged me along with you doesn’t mean I’m getting involved in this.”
Cain looked at his daughter. “I’m sorry. I missed the memo that you were calling the shots now. If I give you chores, you’re going to damn well do them.”
“There are child labor laws, you know,” she said, taking a bite of pasta and shooting her dad an evil glare.
“Do you think anyone cares much about that out here in the country?”
“You’re
