Homecoming Ranch (24 page)

Dante is sixteen, and he’s got Stage IV cancer, and the Make-A-Wish people want him to make a wish. He said he couldn’t do Disney, he’d rather die than do Disney. I don’t think he meant it like
that,
but, you know, like he really didn’t want to go to Disney. So I said, “Dude, you gotta shoot higher! Go big or go home! You gotta go for something that makes you want to do the chemo every day, right?” And he said he didn’t know what that was. But I know this kid, he’s always there when I am. I know he’s like me, and he
loves
sports. So I suggested, “How about a Denver Bronco’s game in a skybox?”

You should have seen Dante—he lit up like Rockefeller Center at Christmas time.

So we’ve been working on a deal where we are trying to convince Make-A-Wish to grant him that wish, along with a close, personal friend. That’s me, the color commentator. I can tell him everything
there is to know about every player on the Broncos’ roster and then some.

I wanted to introduce Luke to Dante so Dante would add him to the list, too, because again, we’re talking the
Broncos
in
premium
seats.

So anyway, Luke said he couldn’t go, and then he said he’d be late because he’s picking up Blue Eyes in Denver and taking her back to Homecoming Ranch, and I’m like, “The ranch? I thought you didn’t want them out there!”

And he said, “I don’t. But it’s okay, we’ve worked it out for now.”

Listen, I may be tied to a chair, but I am no slouch in the perception department. But lately, I can’t read Luke at all. One minute he’s “thinking” about Julie, and the next, he’s got this funny look on his face telling me he’s giving Blue Eyes a ride. I observed, and very casually I might add, “You seem to be running into Blue Eyes a
lot.
”

Luke knows he is, because he didn’t try to argue. He just laughed and said, “Don’t wait up, loser.”

Well, the joke is on buddy boy, because I
will
be up, because tonight is
The Walking Dead
marathon, and I am
not
missing that.

So okay, Luke went on his way, as happy as a kid in a bouncy castle, and I bet he hadn’t even hit Sometimes Pass when Julie showed up. She stood at the screen door with her baby, all smiles, and yeah, her baby is supercute. She said “Hey, Leo, is Luke around?” Like she didn’t dump him for Brandon. Like she hasn’t called him every time she gets worried and then dumps him all over again. She’s like one of those bounce back paddleballs, just keeps hitting him and waiting for him to bounce back, then hitting him again.

I said, “No. He went back to Denver.” I didn’t say he was coming back, and Julie looked kind of shocked, like, “What-am-I-going-to-do-with-this-baby” shocked, but then Marisol comes in with my medicine and she says, “What are you doing here, Julie?”

Julie said, “I’m looking for Luke.”

Well, Marisol, she’s not a fan of Julie, but she’s also not a fan of lying, and she said, “He went to Denver, he’ll be back later.”

And I said, “
Way
later. Like next year later.”

Marisol squeezed my shoulder really hard and she said, “Maybe you should come back tomorrow, Julie. It will be late before he gets back.”

Of course Julie was all sweet smiles and thank-yous to Marisol, and she went bopping down the steps, her baby on her hip, looking back at me.

I swear, I think that baby gave me the stink eye.

Luke—I tried, bro, I tried.

Luke’s day in Denver was not what he’d call a towering success.

The first thing he did when he arrived was to drive to his little two-bedroom bungalow in an older part of Denver. He’d bought the rundown piece of crap and had restored it with some money his mom had left him. Since then, the market had come up. Luke liked knowing that if anything ever happened, he had some equity in this house. Anything, like needing an attorney. The equity in his house was what he planned to use to fight the loss of Homecoming Ranch.

But before he spoke to an attorney, Luke had to see about his housing starts. He left the Bronco, switched to his work truck, and drove to the outskirts of Denver to check on the first three Kendrick Custom Homes. With the help of Stuart Homes, where he’d apprenticed the last few years, and who owned a minority share in his business, Luke had purchased three lots in a new subdivision. It had taken some time to get the deeds and permits set up, but in the last month, they had finished the site prep, had poured three slabs, and if all had gone well last week, the framing would have begun by now.

As he turned the corner onto Mountain View Street, he grinned at the sight before him. The framing on the first house looked almost complete.

He parked his work truck, hopped out. Refugio, the crew boss, met him on the sidewalk, and together, they walked through the framing so Luke could have a look. Satisfied that things were moving along, Luke was headed back to his truck when he saw Ben Stuart’s king cab pickup truck glide to a halt next to the curb. Ben emerged with a wave for Luke. “Hey buddy!” he said cheerfully. “I wondered when you’d be back.”

“I’m here today,” Luke said. “Framework looks good.”

Ben nodded, then looked back at Luke. “What do you mean, you’re here today? Your dad’s okay, right?”

Luke had told Ben that something had come up with his dad, but he hadn’t explained what. “Dad’s okay,” Luke assured him. “He just needs some help with a couple of things.”

Ben looked at Luke expectantly, wanting more.

Luke glanced at the two empty slabs. “Refugio said he could start framing this one next week.” He glanced at Ben. “But I need to go back home for a week or two.”

Ben’s pleasant expression began to fade. “One week? Or two?”

Honestly, Luke didn’t know long he’d be. He still didn’t know exactly what he was doing in Pine River, other than trying to stick his fingers into a bunch of little holes in the dyke.

Ben guessed as much and groaned. “Come on, man! You have three starts, Luke.
Three
. Someone’s gotta be here to manage it. These houses are clear across town from where I’m working right now.”

“I know,” Luke said apologetically. “I know the timing is bad. I know it’s a pain in the ass. But right now, my dad’s in kind of a bind, and I need to be there. No more than a couple of weeks,” he assured Ben, and sent up a little bit of begging to the heavens that what he was saying was true. He’d worked too hard for this opportunity to let it slip through his fingers, and the way things were going, he would never have the scratch to do this on his own. He needed Stuart Homes, needed them more than Ben would ever know. “Believe me, I don’t want to be in Pine River any more than you want me gone. I’ll come in and check at least once a week.”

Ben frowned. He glanced back at the men across the street hammering on the house frame. “Okay, Luke. I’ll cover you for a couple of weeks. But I can’t cover these houses forever—I’ve got my own work, and my wife is on my ass about the hours I keep as it is.”

“I’m sorry, Ben.”

“Yeah, well, sorry isn’t going to cut it in a couple of weeks, okay? This was all about giving you a leg up, Luke,” he said, gesturing to the housing pads. “We had this trouble with you last fall, always off to Pine River. We haven’t even finished the first frame and you’re doing it again.”

“Come on, Ben,” Luke said coolly. “It’s not like I planned this. It’s not like I haven’t thought of every option and tried to come up with a better one. But you know the situation with my brother. I’m all my dad has.”

That seemed to soften Ben a little. He nodded, turned his head and spit. “Yeah, I know. You’ve got a lot of talent, Luke. But maybe you ought to be using that talent in Pine River.”

“There’s no market for custom homes up there,” Luke said.

Ben nodded. “Okay. Two weeks.”

“Thanks, man,” Luke said. He didn’t tell Ben that not only was there no market in Pine River, but that he needed distance from Pine River. He needed time to himself, away from the constant pressure of disease and financial trouble.

Luke’s day only got worse when he showed up at the door of his economic professor, who held once-a-week open office hours. Professor Whitehall was less friendly than Ben. “Mr. Kendrick,” he said, looking at Luke over the tops of his glasses, “I thought you had withdrawn from school.”

It went downhill from there. Luke had missed too many classes. Professor Whitehall told him that he didn’t know if it was possible for Luke to catch up, but that he had one opportunity in the form of a test the following week. A test that covered material Luke had not even read yet.

His last stop before picking up Madeline was with the attorney Jackson had pointed him to. Dan Broadstreet was a big guy who
wore a bolero tie and a short-sleeved shirt. He took Luke’s hand in his beefy one, shook it vigorously, and then invited him into a conference room. He had a pad of yellow legal paper and pencil, but he made only one note as Luke explained the situation to him.

“This is a bad deal. We might be able to argue coercion or something like it, and at least keep a sale tied up long enough that any potential buyer walks away. That way, you’d have time to get the money together to buy it,” he advised. “But there’s really nothing to fight. If you do, you won’t win. The laws around real estate protect the buyer. Even dead ones.”

In essence, Luke had to make his new company work in order to generate enough money to buy back the ranch. Because any other money he had would go toward tying up a potential sale, prolonging it long enough to give him time to raise the money—money he was in danger of losing because he kept getting called back to Pine River. It was a desperate circle.

When Luke came out of the attorney’s office, he noticed that clouds had moved in over Denver, thick and gray, hanging low. The temperature had dropped ten to fifteen degrees.

Madeline was waiting for him at the Economy car lot, shivering in a little sweater that tied up under her breasts and a turquoise sundress with yellow sunflowers dancing around the hem. She had a small bag that hung across her body, looped over her shoulder. And she was holding two bags from Target.

After the day he’d had, it made him strangely happy to see her.

He pulled up alongside the curb and lowered the passenger window of his truck. “Everything squared away?”

She looked slightly taken aback by his question, which he thought was a little odd, but then she smiled and the dimples appeared again. “I think so. Are you ready?”

“I am. Climb in.”

She opened the door, slung her Target bags behind the passenger seat, and climbed up, leaning over just enough to give Luke a nice view of her cleavage. She pulled the door shut behind her and folded her arms tightly across her and looked at him. “I’m freezing.”

Luke turned on the heat. “We have to swing by my house and get the Bronco, if that’s okay.”

“Sure!” She huddled forward, her legs pressed together, her feet still in the hiking boots, but today, thick socks were pulled up to her knees. Her dark hair had been whipped by the wind, and spilled across her back in an appealing tangle of silky strands. “The clouds came from nowhere,” she said. “I was so busy, I didn’t even notice them.”

“Did you finish what you needed to do?”

She smiled at him. “I got a
lot
done. I love days like this when I can tick off my tasks, one by one. What about you?”

“I guess I did what I needed to do,” he said, pulling into traffic. He didn’t care to elaborate. He was trying to forget it. “I don’t feel like I left anything hanging, anyway.”

“See? Organization.
You
don’t know for sure, whereas
I
know I don’t have anything left, because
I
made a list.”

“And I bet you highlighted the tasks as you finished them.”

Madeline laughed. “Am I that obvious?”

She was so pretty when she laughed that he couldn’t help but smile back. “A little.”

“You’re obvious, too, Luke Kendrick,” she said. “I bet you think no one can read you.”

“Of course no one can read me,” he said confidently. “I’m a guy. We are trained from an early age.”

“I knew it!” she cried triumphantly. “And I bet you are one of those guys who shows up to work and looks around and thinks, I should do that,” she said pointing into space. “And maybe that. And maybe that if I have time before lunch, but if I don’t, oh well, I’ll get to it one of these days.”

Now Luke laughed outright. “Construction does not lend itself to tidy little tasks, Maddie. My days are spent keeping lids on boiling pots.”

“And you think selling houses doesn’t have pots?” She snorted at that, and dug one of the Target bags out from behind the seat. She was jubilant as she paused to examine the sack’s contents.

“So in all that highlighting, you still had time for a little shopping?”

“No. I
made
time to pick up a few things I
need
.” She gave him a pert smile. “Important things, like
underwear
,” she said gravely. “And lotion. I’m turning into an alligator.”

It sure didn’t look like that from where Luke was sitting.

Madeline peered into her bag. “I picked up some extra socks, too. My feet have been so cold. Oh, and this,” she said, and pulled out a bear whistle. A cheap, souvenir-type bear whistle that wouldn’t be useful in any situation, except maybe calling a well-trained dog. But Madeline draped it around her neck, and the thing nestled between two mounds of cream. She looked so proud of herself that he didn’t have the heart to tell her that her purchase was useless at Homecoming Ranch.

“And some hair thingies.”

“Can’t have enough hair thingies,” he said.

“You really can’t,” she agreed, and chatted about her day until he pulled into the drive of his house.

Only then did Madeline stop talking. She squinted at his bungalow, which he’d painted a sunny yellow with white trim. “Wow,” she said approvingly. “
Great
curb appeal.”

“I should hope so. I’ve spent a lot of time landscaping.” He opened the driver door. “I just need to grab a couple of things.”

“Mind if I look inside?” she asked, her hand on the door handle. Luke hesitated, but she quickly added, “I like houses, I really do. I just want to see.”