Homecoming Ranch by Julia London

Madeline said.
    “I don’t.” Emma disappeared into the kitchen again.
    Emma, Madeline thought, was a bitch. And Libby was too… eager. But of the three of them, Madeline was the one who had no real business here at all, no ties, no feelings, no history, not like these two apparently had. She wanted only to do what had to be done and leave before Grant could mess up her life any more than he already had. He could have left everything to Libby and Emma, and Madeline would never have known, would never have been the wiser.
    “Then
go,”
Libby called out to Emma, her feelings clearly hurt. “How stupid of me to think that maybe three sisters could make something of this place.
Together
.”
    Madeline felt awful. She hadn’t come here to hurt anyone’s feelings. “I’m sorry, Libby. I am. But I don’t know how we can be… partners,” she said, discovering that she couldn’t even say
sisters.
“We don’t know one another. Grant must have known it would be a difficult situation for us, so I don’t know why he left it to us like this.”
    “There is nothing here!” Emma shouted, and that was followed by the banging of a cabinet door. “Nothing!”
    “Because he was our father,” Libby said. “Isn’t that what parents do? Don’t they leave their worldly possessions to their children? And besides, he couldn’t sell it, not with the contract.”
    “The what?” Madeline asked.
    “What contract?” Emma asked, appearing again with a glass of water.
    “Jackson didn’t tell you? There’s a contract Dad’s heirs must honor, and we can’t do anything before we meet the terms of it.”
    Madeline’s pulse began to quicken. If she’d come all this way to find out it was even more complicated and impossible…
    “The Johnson family reunion,” Libby said, enunciating a little more than was necessary, looking at them both. “The contract has been signed. The deposits have been paid and applied to the event. Two hundred Johnsons are going to show up in a matter of days and they are expecting one long weekend of happy family reunion, and we have to honor that commitment.”
    For some reason, Emma actually laughed. “Well if that’s not the topper on the cake.”
    Madeline thought she might pass out. She preferred to know what to expect, and she did
not
expect a family reunion. “I don’t understand,” she said, and rubbed her temples against the pounding in her head.
    “I can’t believe Jackson didn’t tell you. It was Mr. Kendrick’s idea, a way to make some money. He and Dad were setting this ranch up tohost family reunions. The family will camp here, and they will use the kitchen, and the showers in the bunkhouse, and they will do all the things that make Pine River so attractive in the summer, only on private property with private guides. That’s why the Port- A -Johns.”
    Two hundred Johnsons
. And just like that, Grant Tyler had complicated Madeline’s life even more.
    Emma laughed again. “He’s dead and he’s
still
a prick. God, I need a drink.”

NINE
    Luke felt a surprising swell of nostalgia when he turned into the ranch’s entrance. He and little brother Leo, separated by three years, had spent their childhood in a patch of heaven. In the winter, they would ski and snowboard, or, if necessary, use trash-can lids to careen down the grassy slope behind the house. Their summers consisted of hiking, fishing, building forts, and bear tracking, the latter much to their mother’s chagrin.
    When they were older, they’d joined their father in working cattle. It’s what the Kendricks did—they were, and had long been, high altitude cattle ranchers.
    But the rhythm of their lives had revolved around Luke’s mother. She’d been there to feed them home-cooked meals after a hard day of play or work, to remind them to bathe when they had more important things on their mind, and to soothe the injuries, both emotional and physical, two boys tended to suffer. She kept the books for the ranch,