Chapter 19: Warrick

I found my father where Abel said I would, in the main barn, at the top of the loft ladder.

The new ladder was aluminum.

The old one had been burned years ago, and nobody on the farm would say who burned it.

The loft was dim and warm, full of last summer's hay, with a single bulb swinging on its cord.

He sat on a hay bale at the very edge of the boards, where the old ladder had once reached the floor.

He was in the same gray suit he had worn to the Cup.

It had hay on the knees.

There was a flat black tape recorder on the bale beside him, and a bottle of bourbon he had not opened.

"I thought you'd come," he said, without turning.

"Abel thought you'd jump."

"I thought about it."

"You aren't the man to do it."

He laughed, short and dry, and finally looked at me.

He seemed much smaller than he had on the stairs.

"There's a trooper at the foot of that ladder in about an hour," I said.

"I'm not here to stop you from talking to him."

"What are you here for?"

"I want to hear it from you.

"Not a tape.

"Not Renata."

He nodded slowly.

"She told me at supper," he said.

"She said she was going to her lawyer on Monday to put it all in trust for you.

"The land, the stud book, the foundation mares.

"All of it was hers, from her father.

"I'd lived on it for twenty years, and I had never owned a blade of it."

"So you followed her to the barn."

"She went to check on the mare that was foaling.

"I went after her to beg.

"I'd had too much to drink.

"She came up here to look at the loft, because she was thinking of moving the hay, and I came up behind her."

Keep reading free with an account. Start After Being Kicked Out, I Became the Queen My Family Can't Reach from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.