Kids These Days

Chapter 43: Ronan

Finn's dad and uncle are arguing in the kitchen. Something about how much the ranch costs to maintain and if it would be better to sell it to a rancher who can actually use the land. 

I'm sitting on the porch, sketching the gnarled branches of the juniper tree and trying not to eavesdrop -- until their voices start filtering through the screen door.

" -- I don't care who made you the offer!" Floyd shouts. "I thought I made myself clear when I said I'm not selling outside of the family --"

"This ranch has been unprofitable for years. You're just too nostalgic to realize --"

"Unprofitable? Is that all you care about, how much money you can squeeze out of this place? You can't even pay your child support, but you're worried about how unprofitable the ranch is --"

"Don't you dare bring my kids into this --"

A breeze gusts across the porch, and I have to pick Floyd's next words out of the melody of wind-chimes. "Then don't try to make deals behind my back, Billy. You know this isn't what dad wanted --"

"Dad died twenty years ago, and you still want to be his favorite so fucking badly --"

The screen door slams open, and I nearly fall out of my chair.

"We were looking all over for you," Finn says, tossing a set of car keys to Becca. She grins and jogs over to the mud-splattered Dodge. "Do you want ice-cream?"

"Uh, sure." The last I checked, the temperature had spiked into the hundreds. Driving to get ice-cream definitely beats baking in the sun and listening to Finn's family yell at each other.

"Great. I've gotta get out of this house." He glances at my sketchbook before I can close it. "Gee, that's cool. Did you know that junipers can be trees or shrubs?"

"There's a difference between the two?"

"Duh. I could talk for hours about the biodiversity of the genus Juniperus --"

Becca honks the horn at us. "Stop talking about plants and get in the car! If they run out of mint chocolate chip before we get there, I'm burying both of y'all in the desert."

***

The rest of Dusty Valley must've had the same idea as us, because the ice-cream shop is overflowing with customers when we arrive, the line snaking out the door and around the block. Finn wanders away to pet someone's dog -- typical -- leaving Becca and I to hold our spots.

"So," I say, lifting a hand to block out the sun, "that was some argument."

Becca sweeps her hair out of her face, her blue and brown eyes attracting quite a few stares from the other people in line. "I saw the business card Finn's dad left on the counter. Leigh Real Estate. Rachel must be desperate to get her hands on the ranch."

"Desperate isn't a word I'd use to describe Rachel Clairvaux," I say. Becca shrugs. "What? Do you think the ranch is a loose end?"

"I think it's the last original property on her list." Her expression turns grim. "Last night, Andy called me to say that the bank doubled her family's mortgage. They blamed it on the interest-only loan, but it's pretty obvious who was really behind the increase. The Hill's house was built in the eighteen-hundreds. Rachel is trying to price them out."

"That's terrible," I say. I feel guilty about going out for ice-cream when Andy's family is on the verge of losing their home, but it's not like there's anything I can do to help. Sure, I might be able to find some useful connections through Sabrina's company, but then what -- I convince them to stop doing business with a highly profitable real estate agency? All because I feel bad for a friend? Talk about desperate.