Authors: Kay Keppler
“A buyer?”
Two million and the winner has a buyer already.
“I believe a global corporation that specializes in destination entertainment,” Joseph Sharp said.
Destination entertainment? The buyer wants to build a Disneyland in the middle of the Nevada high plain?
“Of course, you are welcome to make a counter offer. Mr. McNaughton insisted that you have first right of refusal.”
Hope felt sick. The bad news was moving much too fast, running her over. “Well, thank you, Mr. Sharp. I’ll just have my lawyer draw up those purchase papers.”
“Let me know if I can help. I also know an excellent moving service.”
They talked about it over supper. Faith had come in from the greenhouse and made the meal—a big carrot salad, the carrots shaved to cut out all the dark spots and bug nibbles—and a comforting chicken casserole. Amber, Faith’s daughter, who would turn eleven in a few days, sat silently, her food untouched on her plate, watching them.
“I don’t understand this, Mom,” Faith said now. “I thought you owned the ranch.”
“Well, no.” Suzanne still looked pale. Amber had a glass of milk in front of her, but the rest of them were drinking beer. Suzanne took a long swallow of hers.
A little extra grain for the humans, too,
Hope thought.
“When we divorced, Derek got the ranch and I got what cash there was. I needed the money to support you girls until I could get on my feet. At the time, the value was about the same. Your father said we could stay here for as long as we wanted, or he’d give us a chance to buy him out. He’s been more than generous. The rent has been very reasonable over the years.”
Dad welshed on the deal, like always,
Hope thought.
“He wasn’t more than generous,” she said flatly. “We paid rent. We paid utilities. We paid upkeep and repairs. We’ve done a ton of improvements. The greenhouse. The barn.” She knew all about the expenses they’d paid. She’d written the checks herself.
“Well, we live here, Hope, sweetie. We should be paying for those things.”
Hope was silent. She didn’t want to argue with her mother. It wasn’t Suzanne’s fault that Derek, king of the losing hand, hadn’t kept his end of the deal.
“But why is he forcing us off now?” Faith asked.
Simple,
Hope thought. Derek had gambled and lost, and now the land, the house, the horses, the greenhouse—everything would have to be sold, their home would be sold.
The McNaughtons were welcome to buy it all back, of course.
For two million dollars.
The McNaughtons, who couldn’t afford to put a new roof on their old house, were offered first refusal on a two-million property—their own. That was the kind of luck the McNaughtons had.
“It’s not your father who’s forcing us off,” Suzanne said. “The letter mentions a corporation. Passaic Holdings.”
“Yes,” Hope conceded, nodding to Faith. “Technically, that’s true. Passaic Holdings—or the person who owns it, the guy Derek lost the card game to—does not want to own one hundred fifty acres of land in southern Nevada. Dad, once again, gets away scot free while the rest of us get wiped out.”
“Now that’s not really fair, Hope,” Suzanne said. “Your father is basically a good person. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt us.”
“And yet, here we are. Hurt and forced off, just the same.”
Amber’s anxious eyes followed her grandmother, her aunt, and her mother as the conversation bounced around the table.
“There must be
something
we can do,” Faith said, seeing her daughter’s distress. “Can we pay rent to the corporation? Or make a down payment to buy? I know you’re paying the lion’s share here, Hope, but I could increase the size of the greenhouse, get more customers. That might be enough. What do you think?”
The fortunes of the McNaughtons had never been robust. While Suzanne had worked a couple of miles away at the Mesquite Springs diner ever since they could remember, earning minimum wage, Faith had stayed at home with Amber and tried to make a living from the ranch. So far they’d had a hot air balloon business, a children’s riding school, and now, her latest effort, an organic farm. She’d built a greenhouse at enormous expense, and she served forty residential customers and one commercial account, who received a delivery of organic vegetables twice a week. With all the hours Faith put into her greenhouse, plus the costs of building the structure, improving the ventilation and irrigation systems, buying certified plants, getting the permits, and maintaining her equipment, Faith’s organic farming venture barely broke even.
And they were still paying off the two loans from the failed hot-air balloon business and the failed children’s riding school, loans that had been secured by Hope’s salary and stock options at the software startup. With her job, they were just getting by.
The McNaughton women didn’t have two million dollars to buy their place. They couldn’t beg, borrow or steal it, either. They were tapped out. They would have to move.
Where could they go? They probably couldn’t afford even to
rent
a place big enough to pasture three horses and have a greenhouse. They might have to move to a house—even an apartment—in town somewhere.
Damn
Derek. Damn her father.
Hope thought of Banjo, how he came to her for affection and treats, about Ralph and his crazy two-step, about the patient, loving Blondie she’d owned for nineteen years and who had taught her how to ride.
They’d have to be sold. Her home would be sold.
Faith would have to give up her farm and her dreams of making the ranch pay. All her work, wasted.
For her mother, being forced off the ranch would be just one more disappointment in a life that had been filled with them.
And Amber. That kid, already much too serious, whose family would be further fractured by this move.
“I don’t know, Faith,” Hope said, a catch in her voice. “It’s sweet of you to think of expanding the greenhouse for us. But I don’t think we can get enough returns from the vegetable business fast enough to buy the place in a month.”
“I wish organic vegetables were addictive, like nicotine,” Faith said. “We could run a flashy television ad campaign directed at teenagers, and with all the discretionary spending kids have these days, they’d get hooked early and stay hooked for life. You’d need one of those stick-on patches to kick the habit. A stick-on cabbage patch.”
Hope grinned at her sister. “That would be fantastic,” she said. “But practically speaking, rent on a two-million dollar property, or a down payment, would be incredibly expensive. I don’t think you can expand fast enough to do it.”
Faith looked downcast, like she was going to cry. Hope thought she probably looked the same.
“How much time do we have?” Faith asked.
“We have to be out in a month.” Hope knew she sounded grim.
“I suppose we need to start looking now,” Suzanne said.
“But we don’t know when it will sell, right?” Faith asked. “Who knows how long it will be before they find a buyer.”
Hope was silent. They lived on one hundred fifty acres of land with water and a hot springs. The commute to Las Vegas was fairly easy. The ranch had everything, and the area was booming. The ranch could be sold in a week. Or less.
“Who’s ‘Dad?’” Amber asked. “Do I know him?”
Hope looked at Amber and her heart broke all over again. Derek had never seen his only granddaughter. Probably didn’t even know she existed. Faith had had some bad luck in the bed of a Chevy two-ton truck one weekend about eleven years ago, and when Amber’s father learned that he had a child coming, he took off before Amber was born. Derek was long gone by then.
The McNaughton women don’t have much luck with men sticking,
Hope thought.
She looked around the table at her family, saw the mingled fear, hopelessness, and confusion. The way her family had felt way too often. Amber had about as much notion of what a father was as she had about particle physics. Suzanne had too much experience with settling for what she could get. Faith always saw the good in things, no matter how bad they looked. And she herself—she was focused, heads down, and hemmed in. The reliable one. The problem solver.
Their problem right now was that they needed two million dollars. And right now she didn’t see how she could solve that one.
Chapter 2
After they’d eaten supper and cleaned up the kitchen, Hope went to her room. She threw open the big patio doors and let in the sage-scented air, breathing deeply. She looked out into the dark Nevada night and made a decision. Then she walked over to her desk, unlocked the bottom drawer, took out a metal lock-box, and unlocked that, as well.
The box contained a small stash of papers—her will, some certificates of deposit, her passport. And a small black book.
She didn’t know why she still had the black book. She hadn’t opened it for seventeen years, and she didn’t want to open it now. She hated what the book represented.
But the black book was her last chance. Her only chance. It might have the key that could save the ranch. Save their futures.
The black address book contained the phone numbers of her father’s old friends, acquaintances, enemies, and gambling buddies—people on the right or wrong side of the law who made their living by risking everything on cards, dice, slots, ponies, dogs, cars, or sports. A few of the people in this book, the special ones, had always been more than friends. She’d called them her honorary uncles—people she’d seen all the time, people she’d enjoyed and respected.
People she’d loved.
Whenever Derek had taken her along with him to the casino, the track, the cardroom, the private parties—there they were. They bought her ice cream and sodas and treated her like a mascot. They sent her to bed when it was late and protected her from the darkness that hovered just beyond the bright lights. They taught her everything they knew, and she’d been awed by their knowledge, the vast sums of money that passed through their hands, how generous they were when they won, how gracious they were when they lost. When school sucked and her mother struggled and her father disappeared, the honorary uncles made her life bearable. Fun. Even cool.
On her fifteenth birthday—the day she realized Derek was gone and never coming back—she’d phoned Marty the Sneak
.
She’d been afraid Derek had been killed by somebody he’d cheated or by a jealous husband,
something
. At fifteen, Hope knew all the ways her father could meet his end. Marty had stumbled around, making excuses for Derek. And that’s how she found out that her father wasn’t coming because he would rather play cards, or throw dice, or run numbers than see her. Marty had felt so sorry for her that he’d offered to drive out for her party. The toughest poker player on the circuit, a guy who’d once bluffed an unsuited ten-seven against a full house, had gone sentimental.
Hope said no. She didn’t want Marty’s pity. She was done, finished, with all of it. She’d never played another hand of poker, never bet another nickel. And she’d never seen or heard from her father again. She’d never talked to Marty the Sneak again, and she’d never called the other honorary uncles, either, although they’d tried off and on for months, even years, to call her.
Derek was addicted to gambling. She understood that now. And she understood that if she went back to that world, she could become an addict, too. Seventeen years ago, she’d liked the life too much.
She was terrified of what she would become if she picked up the phone and made those calls, setting those wheels in motion. But what choice did she have? Today things had changed. Today she needed to save the ranch. Today she would do what she had to do to save her family.
And she realized that now that she wanted to ask for Marty’s forgiveness and help, she didn’t have much right to either.
The information in the book wasn’t current. She might not reach the uncles. But she had to try. It was time. Now or never.
Taking a deep breath and easing it out slowly, she picked up the phone and dialed the number. The voice that answered on the second ring hadn’t changed a bit.
“Marty,” she said, clearing her throat. “It’s me, Hope. Hope McNaughton.”
Marty the Sneak was from Brooklyn, a slight man with a sprinkling of acne scars and thinning hair who would by now be in his late fifties. In the old days, he’d always worn a dark jacket and pants that were too big on him. He’d been more crooked than straight and lacked a formal education. But he’d always had a tremendous memory, which helped him at cards, and he’d known every player, crook, and cop on the east coast and many on the west. Hope prayed that none of that had changed.
“
Hope?
” Marty said. “It’s you? Little Hope? No kidding?” He raised his voice and called out to someone in the room. “Eddie, put down that hand and get on the extension right now! It’s Little Hope I have here!”
Hope rolled her eyes, feeling seventeen-year-old exasperation and, now, a brand-new affection for her former nickname. She and her sister had been named after the two qualities Derek had said every gambler needed—Hope and Faith—and the honorary uncles had liked to tease her about her name. She heard a second phone lift. Sharp Eddie Toombs, another honorary uncle.