Page 25 of Then You Happened
“Maybe that’s because she showed her true colors and was knocked down a peg.”
“Come again?”
He holds up a finger as he pours another drink and slides it across the bar to another customer before turning back to me. “She was into photography and was writing a travel blog or something like that. She decided to do a piece on Lone Star.”
“That bad?”
“That’s putting it nicely.”
“What was the problem?”
“She definitely has an eye for photography. The pictures they posted of hers were incredible. It made this town look way better than it really is—majestic even. But the article?” He shakes his head. “That article was the nail in her coffin before she even stepped foot in the grave, if you know what I mean. One sec.”
Ginger tends to a customer at the opposite end of the bar as I pull out my phone and search for the article. The Wi-Fi sucks, and it doesn’t download before he comes back. “I can’t remember the gist, but she tried to pull it off as if living here was a step back in time. And, honestly, she’s right. Sometimes it is like that, but the citizens here are a proud people and they didn’t take to it very kindly.”
“And the problem with that is what?” I ask. “Don’t most towns like to be described that way? Quaint and idyllic?”
“Yeah, but there was something about the way she phrased it . . . almost as if she were mocking us or looking down on us for choosing to live life like this.”
“So, basically one person made a comment that they were offended and the rest of the town jumped on board.” I snort, not surprised but still disappointed in people I don’t even know.
Ginger eyes me as if he can’t figure out if he likes me or hates me for the comment. “Something like that.”
“And there was no going back, right?” Growing up in a small town myself, I’ve seen it before. Shit, Tate could make all the apologies in the world, but once the tide turns, there is no turning them back. Sure, she might have phrased something wrong, but . . . Christ. “Everyone makes mistakes.”
“True.” He lets the word hang. “Personally, I didn’t find much fault in what she wrote, but I’m in the major minority. Add in her husband coming in here and buying that ranch right out from underneath the Destin twins, and no one really gave them much of a chance.”
“You mean a normal real estate transaction?”
“To outsiders, yes. But to those who live here, that there land had been their families for generations.”
“Then it would have been passed down to them in a will,” I argue with common sense. “If it was for sale, then it was up for anyone to take it.”
His smile says otherwise. “Fletcher came in here and paid way above the asking price for that land. Rumor has it he stalled the sale by greasing some of the realtors’ palms so they would hold off on taking the twins’ offer and then swooped in and stole the land right out from under them.”
Hence the bitterness. Why it was aimed at Tate and not the sellers of the property was beyond me. The old owners had every right to say no to Fletcher’s offer if they wanted to keep the property with local owners. Though, I know better than to point that out.
“Is that rumor or is that truth?”
The opening and closing of his mouth says he doesn’t exactly know.
“That isn’t her fault.”
“No, not when you look at it in pieces, but when you look at the whole, it is something a lot of people won’t overlook. She stopped coming into town after that article. People went to her at the ranch—hair, nails, shopping—hell, who knows what else. But she made it known that she thought she was better than the rest of us and that was the start.”
“Surely, there were other reasons.”
Like maybe she knew how much you all hated her and didn’t want to deal with it?
“Well, when you’re paying extra for people to tend to you and buying new cars and trailers while also maxing out accounts and never making payments on them, people don’t take too kindly to you.”
“So, she’s shit at running the finances?” I ask, trying to see where he’s going with this.
“Nah, it was Fletcher who was doing that. Her good-for-nothing husband who dealt with the accounts, but she had to have known what he was doing, which makes her just as bad.”
I tuck my tongue in my cheek, lean back on my stool, look around the bar, glancing between the couples at tables with their young kids, the businessmen in their slacks and cowboy boots, and the men on their lunch breaks between transporting livestock.
I understand these people and the simplicity of working with your hands on the land. The way someone looks at you when you walk in somewhere with cow shit still stuck on the heel of your boot, not because you forgot but because you were too damn exhausted to remember to wipe it off.
