Page 6 of Just (Fake) Married (Calloways vs. McGraws #1)

Instead of getting back in my car, I modeled her actions with the furry beasts. Clucking my best cluck and swatting them gently on their hindquarters like I would if they were horses.

“So, you living back in the Gulch?” I asked her conversationally.

The last time I’d been home, it had been for my brother Carter’s wife’s funeral.

Harmony hadn’t been living with her mom then. I remembered that. Maybe one of my younger brothers had said something about her being in grad school? It had stuck with me, because I didn’t see Harmony as the type who would ever leave this town.

She, unlike me, loved it here.

“I was sorry to hear about your dad,” she said, instead of answering my question.

Leroy McGraw did not care for the Calloway women. Dad had tried many times over the years to get them to sell him their property, just to make them go away. He’d offer double, triple the value, but Monica, the Calloway matriarch, wouldn’t budge. Not even after her husband died.

“Were you really?” I asked Harmony.

She shrugged. “I’m sorry for your family. It’s always hard to lose someone.”

Like she had lost her dad. Like my brother Carter had lost his wife Lilly.

“You always were too nice for our family feud,” I said to her.

“Because our family feud is stupid,” she said.

“Yes, but our feud was legendary,” I said with a smile that she did not return. She stared at me, those green eyes like glass.

“Your mom still in the cabin?” I asked, turning to the west where there was a thin stream of smoke coming from behind a small rise in the distance.

The Calloway cabin was a low, log building surrounded by Monica Calloway’s sculptures and animals.

I’d never been inside, but I imagined it full of witchy girly things.

“Where else would she be?” Harmony asked, shoving the more stubborn alpacas across the driveway. One bleated at her in protest, so I leaned my weight against its other side to get it to move.

“I’m just saying. It’s a tiny cabin, she could sell the land and move into a palace-”

“Now you sound like your father.”

Nothing shut me up faster than being compared to my dad.

The alpacas were finally off the road, and we stood there staring at each other. Jenny and Bruce looking in the opposite directions, like they were a crime-solving duo.

I’m sorry.

I’d said that a bunch of times over the years and I still didn’t know what I was supposed to be sorry for.

You look good .

I could have said that, because it was true. Her pink cheeks, the navy blue coat that made her hair glow and her eyes piercing. Really good. All grown up. She’d been cute back in high school. Now she was…substantial. Real.

Beautiful.

Instead, I rubbed my now numb hands together and asked, “What are you doing with these animals, anyway?”

“Mom…had an idea,” Harmony said.

I laughed. Their mom was great with the ideas, not so much with the follow through.

“Don’t you have a funeral you have to get to?” she asked, trying to get rid of me.

“No funeral,” I said.

“What do you mean, no funeral?” she asked. “You’ve got to…bury him.”

“There’s some stipulation in the will. He’s being cremated, and then we find out what he wants when the will is read.”

“Wow. Your dad was a control freak to the very end.”

I laughed, because it was funny and true. And sad.

“How long are you home for?” she asked.

The wind blew east to west across the driveway, sending snow back up around us in a swirl.

“Just a few days. I have to get back to Seattle.”

“A doctor’s work is never done, I suppose,” she said.

She knew I was a doctor.

“I’m a surgeon, actually.” I said, like I wanted to impress her.

“Just like you said you would be,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Entirely unimpressed. I was categorically impressive. I was performing surgeries only three or four other doctors in the world could perform. I’d saved countless lives.

And Harmony Calloway didn’t care. Why did I love that so much?

The alpacas were now shuffling back in the general direction of her property, and the dog and goose seemed to be herding them.

I stepped closer to her, and without her guard dog and goose there to protect her, her eyes went wide.

A reaction. Honest.

“Tell me why,” I said, pushing her again. Because it was still there, like a splinter I couldn’t get out of my brain. Why had we gone into the pantry? What had I said or done that was so bad she punched me? It was like a memory that was almost there, but not quite.

“Why, what?” She asked, playing dumb so badly I had to smile.

“The pantry.”

“It was a hundred years go!”

It was yesterday. Standing in front of her like this. Seeing her face and her eyes all lit up. That red hair tossed in the wind like it was alive.

“You hated me after that,” I reminded her.

“What makes you think I didn’t hate you before that?” she fired back.

“Just tell me what I did to deserve the punch. If it was something awful, I’ll apologize.”

“How about instead, you don’t get so drunk you don’t remember the awful things you do to women in pantries.”

“I can promise you, you’re the only woman I’ve ever been in a pantry with.”

“Goodbye, Ethan.” She turned her back on me and followed the animal menagerie back across the fence line.

“Just tell me!”

“Learn to live with disappointment!” she shouted back.

Yeah, I thought, watching her go until her red hair had vanished in the snowy landscape. I climbed back into my car to go up to the ranch, and my father’s control from beyond the grave.

When it came to Last Hope Gulch, I had already learned to live with disappointment.