Tragic Secrets

1. Pitt

1

Pitt

Mornings at the ranch never failed to amaze me. Pinks, yellows, purples, and blues mixed with the snowy white mountain peaks of the Rockies that surrounded our land; that’s the view that greeted my eyes each sunrise.

Nestled between those mountains, our two-thousand-acre spread was home to six-hundred cattle, fifteen horses, three dogs, five cats, twenty chickens, and our family.

Leaning on the horn of my grandpa’s saddle that had been handed down to me, I gazed at the horizon as the cattle began their day of grazing in the back pasture. Old Pete, one of our oldest geldings, had greeted me in the horse barn that morning, and his soft neigh persuaded me pick him to be my companion and coworker for the day.

“Pete, would ya’ look at that?” I always talked to our animals like they were people. When you grow up surrounded by them, they have a tendency to become friends. “Five minutes ago it was dark and cold out here. Now look how beautiful and light it is. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in this whole world, Pete. How ’bout you?”

He softly neighed his agreement; I understood him completely.

“Yep, I thought that’s what you’d say.” Sighing as I took in all the grandeur, I watched as the sun’s light began to fill first one crevice in the mountains and then another and another until the whole mountain range lit up. “This never gets old. Does it, Pete?”

The horse blew out through his nostrils, letting me know he once again agreed with me.

“Time to head to the lodge for breakfast. Cookie will have the coffee and hotcakes ready for me and all the other guys. I’ll get you a big ol’ cup of oats and some fresh water, too.” Moving my right leg a bit to put slight pressure on his ribcage, I pulled the reins to turn him around so we could head home for a couple of hours before coming back out to check on the herd.

My mind always wandered during the ride back home, and like so many other mornings, it settled on thoughts of my father. We’d lost him to lung cancer a little over a year ago, and I was beginning to wonder when it would stop hurting.

Mom seemed to be doing better with the loss than I was. Not that I was bedridden with grief or anything like that. Working on a ranch didn’t give a man much time to wallow in sorrow. Cattle still needed to be fed, watered, doctored, and watched, after all.

Dad hadn’t been a rancher—a fact my grandpa, my mom’s father, didn’t much care for. In the beginning, he didn’t care for my father much at all, so the story goes. Dad married Chester Brewer’s twenty-one-year-old daughter, Fannie Brewer, behind the rancher’s back.

At first, Grandpa had disowned Mom, who’d already been warned of such an eventuality if she went against his wishes and married Jody Zycan. My father had been an inventor even then, though he hadn’t yet struck it rich. He made a modest living working for his uncle as a car salesman. His passion was engines, though, and he revised and reworked them until he could make one purr like a kitten while being as powerful as a lion.

For two years my mother and father lived in a small house inside the Gunnison, Colorado, city limits. Chester Brewer’s ranch, Pipe Creek, lay on the outskirts of town.

I was born in that little house thirty-two years ago. One day during my childhood a young man showed up to meet my father. Galen Dunne had heard word of my father’s knack with engines and asked him if he’d like to collaborate on a marine engine he wanted to make.

Dad agreed. One thing led to another. The engines he helped create were sold to the United States military. Galen Dunne had helped make my father into a billionaire.

Jody Zycan had finally earned Chester Brewer’s respect—and a place on his ranch, the place my mother felt most at home. Dad and Mom built a sprawling ranch-mansion, as my grandpa called it, in the southernmost corner of the two-thousand acres. They also had three more babies—my three little sisters—two who followed the ranching side of the family and one who followed my father’s inventing ways.

Lucy took care of the chickens, Janice took care of the dogs and cats, and we all took care of the cattle. The youngest, Harper, was in town attending Western State Colorado University, studying physics. We didn’t see much of her as she kept her head in the books or was at some lab doing experiments most of the time.

As I approached the barn, I saw that everyone had converged there, putting horses away and getting ready to head in to eat breakfast at the original house my grandpa had built. Janice came out of the feed room, dragging an enormous bag of dog food behind her.

“Mice have taken over the feed room from my dogs and cats, Pitt.” She blew a chunk of dark hair out of her blue eyes. “Think you can help me set out traps after breakfast?”

“I think I can do that for ya’, sis.” I climbed off Old Pete and led him into a stall to give him his breakfast. “So, this mornin’ ain’t been too good to ya’, huh?”

With a roll of her eyes, she huffed, “Not at all. First, I opened the barn door and out ran a raccoon. He scooted right over my boot, and I jumped fifty feet into the air, screamin’ like a banshee.”

“Fifty feet!” I teased her as I filled Old Pete’s water bucket. “I guess we got us an Olympic star on our hands now, don’t we, Pete?” Patting him on the head, I swore the old gelding smiled at me.

Janice tugged the heavy bag outside while snarling at me. “It was very high, I can promise you that, Pitt. And ain’t it about time to retire that damn straw hat you got on? Dad threw that thing out three years ago. How’d ya’ even find it?”

Pulling the hat off, I looked at it. “I found it in the toolbox in the back of the four-wheeler when I took it over to Grandpa’s this morning. I figured I’d wear it today and think about Dad.”

“Don’t you think that’ll make you sad, Bubba?” Janice asked, looking a little concerned. “You don’t want to cry out there in front of the cows, now do ya’?”

“Nah,” I said with a grin as I put the cowboy hat back on top of my head. “Big strong cowboys like me don’t cry, little sis. And I like to remember Dad.” I walked over to her, taking the bag out of her struggling hands, then draping it over my shoulder. “Where is it you want this?”

She smiled and pointed at the back of the four-wheeler she’d driven over. “On the back of that, please, and thank you very much.”

The other three ranch hands came up to the barn, heading inside after tipping their hats to my sister. “Mornin’, Miss Janice,” they all said in unison.

“Mornin’, boys,” my little sister called out to them. “See y’all at the breakfast table.” She nudged me with her shoulder. “Beaux Foster certainly is growing up to be a handsome man, isn’t he?”

Tossing the dog food onto the back of the four-wheeler, I nodded and said with mock enthusiasm, “Oh, girl! He is, right?” I made a high-pitched giggle, then tossed my little sister over my shoulder. “You are such a freak, Janice. Those boys should be more like brothers to you, not potential boy toys.”

“I’m only a year older than him. He’s already twenty-four, you know.” She pounded my back with her little fists. She may twenty-five, but she’d always been a tiny thing. “Pitt, put me down! I don’t want them to see me like this.” Her cowboy hat fell off, and I put her back on her feet so she could retrieve it to cover up the mop of dark curls that had spilled out from underneath it.

“s**t, Janice,” I said as I laughed. “Did you even brush that hair before you put that thing on and came on out here?”

“Hush up, now.” She tucked her unruly curls back under her hat, then hurried inside.

The cowhands came out of the barn, surrounding Lucy, one of my other sisters.

“Let me get that bucket for ya’, Miss Lucy,” Joe Lamb said as he grabbed the bucket she’d used to carry the chicken feed.

“Thank you, John,” Lucy said as she batted her green eyes at him. “Such a gentleman, you are.”

The youngest of the hired hands at a tender twenty-years old, Rick Savage shoved his hand through thick blonde hair after taking off his hat and using it to swat the nearby Beaux on the a*s. “There’s a lady present, Beaux. Get that hat off your head.”

The three young men all had eyes for my way-too-old-for-them sister. At twenty-nine, my sister had yet to find Mr. Right. It was my opinion that all three of the much younger men who hovered around her didn’t have a chance in hell. Lucy had never been the easiest to get along with—but maybe that was part of the appeal to these young pups.

Lucy wrinkled her nose as she looked at me. “Pitt Zycan, where did you find that awful hat?”

I took the stained, bent, and somewhat holey straw hat off and held it out to her. “I found it in the toolbox on the back of the four-wheeler I drove over here this mornin’. It belonged to Dad.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean you should be wearin’ it. You look like a damn fool.” Lucy walked past me as Rick opened the screen door for her.

John moved fast to get right behind Lucy. “Thanks, Rick.”

“You d**k,” Rick hissed as he went in behind him, leaving Beaux and me with a slamming screen door in our faces.

Beaux grabbed the handle before it closed all the way. “Jackasses.”

“I agree.” I followed him inside, stopping to hang my hat on the hat tree just inside the door.

The smell of coffee led me like a cartoon character into the kitchen, which bustled with activity as Cookie moved around, trying to get everything on the table as everyone helped themselves to coffee, juice, or milk.

I stood back for a moment to take everything in. My life had been so full with work and all these people that I’d had little to no time to do much grieving over my father.

The truth was that I’d shut down, emotionally speaking. For the most part, I was there for my family, but I’d lost myself along the way.

Trying to maintain a happy-go-lucky attitude for Mom and my sisters, I never took the time to reflect on how my father’s loss affected me. I’d stopped dating. I’d ended things with my long-time girl, Tanya Waters, only a month after my father found out he had cancer. That had been two years ago.

For two years, I’d been alone. No dating. Nothing.

Man, what the hell happened to you, Pitt Zycan?

After breakfast and a short nap, I woke up to a knock on my bedroom door. “Pitt, it’s Mom. Galen Dunne is on the phone for you.”

Getting out of bed, I went to the hallway to pick up the landline phone, my mother nowhere to be seen. “Hey Galen. How’re things goin’?”

“Well,” he answered me in his lilting Irish accent. “Look, I don’t want ya’ to be gettin’ mad at your mother, Pitt.”

“What would I be gettin’ mad at her for?” I replied, confused.

“For callin’ me and tellin’ me that you’re in need of some time to get your life back in order.” He sighed. “It’s been over a year since your father passed. I wouldn’t be much of a friend to the man if I didn’t try to help ya’ get on with your life, now would I?”

I wasn’t opposed to figuring out how to get back to being myself. “And just what do you suggest I do, Galen?”

“Come to my island resort, Paradise. Be my guest for the next three months. It’s all on the house. I’ll take care of all the arrangements. All you have to do is pack and get on your jet. Have it take you to Aruba, and I’ll take it from there. And I’m not really askin’ ya’. I’m tellin’ ya’. You’re coming for a long visit. Your dad would want you to do this.”

I was silent for a moment, thinking it over. What there anything holding me to the ranch for the next few months? “I found an old cowboy hat of his today, Galen.” I thought that might’ve been an omen. I wasn’t usually one to look for meaning in small things, but something felt different this time. “I’ll head out tomorrow.”

“Good,” he sounded happy that I’d agreed so easily. “See ya’ soon, Pitt.”

Well, this should be interesting—a cowboy in Paradise.