STUCK WITH THE COWBOY

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

I was still standing in the mud in my designer heels, with one suitcase and no signal on my phone. Catalina stood next to me, holding her phone up in the air like that would somehow help.

“There is no network,” I said again, my voice shaking.

“Probably,” she said, but she kept walking in circles, searching for a signal.

I felt tears coming and I hated it. I never cry in front of people. I walked up the sagging porch steps of the main house and held my phone high. One bar flickered. Then two. It was enough for a call, but I already knew browsing would be impossible out here. My iPhone 17 felt almost useless in this place, its sleek screen mocking me with weak service.

I called my mom so fast my fingers slipped on the screen.

She picked up on the third ring. “Samantha? Honey?”

The second I heard her voice, I started crying. Fat Ugly crying. “Mom, it’s gone. Everything is gone,” I sobbed. “The driver lost all my luggage, the truck was a death trap, and the farm is not a resort, it’s a dump. It’s falling apart, Mom. The paint is peeling, the windows are broken, and it smells like rot. There’s mud everywhere, and I have no clothes and no car.”

My mom was quiet for a second. Then she used her calm mother voice. “Sam, breathe. Are you safe?”

“No!” I yelled. “I’m standing in a swamp in a coat!”

“What is going on?where is cat?”

“Cat is here mom, the farm is a junk yard. I can't stay here I want to leave.”

“Okay. Call Mr. Henderson,” she said. “The lawyer. He handled Grandma’s will. Tell him you want to leave. He will know what to do.”

I wiped my face with the back of my hand. “Fine.”

“I will send the number to you okay.”

I hung up and turned to Catalina. She was still holding her phone up. “Find the nearest hotel,” I told her. “Five-star. I don’t care how much.”

She typed for a minute, then made a face. “The closest hotel with rooms is The Clover Inn. It’s forty-seven miles back toward the airport.”

“Forty-seven miles?” I repeated.

“And there’s no Uber out here. And we have no car.”

That was it. I screamed. I just stood on that broken porch and screamed as loud as I could until my throat hurt. Birds flew out of a nearby tree. The sound echoed across the overgrown fields where I could now see the outlines of small cabin houses scattered in the distance. Grandma had always talked about the farm resort with its luxury cabins nestled along the creek and among the trees. This was supposed to be a place people paid good money to experience authentic Texas ranch life with modern comforts. Instead, everything looked abandoned and forgotten.

Catalina just watched me. “Feel better?”

“No,” I said, my voice hoarse.

“We have to go inside,” she said. “It’s getting dark.”

I didn’t want to. But the sun was going down fast and the mosquitoes were coming out in swarms. I grabbed my one surviving suitcase and dragged it through the front door, the wheels catching on the uneven threshold.

Inside smelled like old wood and dust. Catalina found a light switch by the door and flipped it. The lights buzzed and came on, yellow and flickering, but they worked.

“Oh thank god,” I said. “At least there’s electricity.”

I went to the kitchen sink and turned the faucet. It coughed and sputtered, then nothing came out. No water. Not a drop.

“There is ligh but no water,” Catalina said, copying the way the that annoying driver talked.

I wanted to laugh but I wanted to cry more. As a clean freak, the thought of going another night without a proper shower made my skin crawl. I could still feel the grime from the truck clinging to me.

My mom had said this was a resort, so I walked down the hallway to find the guest rooms. Grandma’s will said “farm and resort.” The resort part was real. There were doors on both sides of the hall, six rooms on the first floor, maybe more upstairs. Through the dusty windows at the end of the corridor, I could see more small cabin houses dotting the property in the fading light. They looked like they were meant for guests seeking privacy and nature, each one with its own little porch. But everything was overgrown and neglected.. Now it felt like a ghost town.

I opened the first door. It was disgusting. The bed had a stained mattress, the sheets were gray with dust, and there was a dead spider in the corner. The second room was worse, with water stains on the ceiling. The third room smelled like mildew and regret.

“They’re all dirty,” I said. “Every single one.”

Catalina opened another door and coughed. “Yeah. All of them.”

I sat down on the dusty floor in the hallway. My mom had sent the number and I called Mr. Henderson. The signal held just enough for the call. He picked up fast.

“Miss Johnson,” he said. “I was expecting your call.”

“I want to sell the farm,” I told him, trying not to cry again. “Right now. Today. I don’t care how much. Get me out of here.”

There was a pause on the phone. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” he said.

“What do you mean, not simple? It’s mine. Grandma left it to me.”

“She left it to you and to the second owner,” he said. “The will is very clear. Green Valley Farm is to be owned fifty percent by Samantha Johnson and fifty percent by the second beneficiary. You cannot sell without his written approval.”

I sat straight up. “What second owner? What are you talking about? No one told me about a second owner!”

“Your grandmother added the clause five years ago,” Mr. Henderson said calmly. “You own half, Samantha. You need his signature for any sale.”

“Who is he?” I demanded. “What’s his name?”

“We can discuss that in person tomorrow morning at my office. For now, I suggest you stay on the property tonight.”

“I can't come to your office, I don't have car so please come to the farm.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah, please be early”

He hung up.

I stared at my phone. “He said I only own fifty percent,” I whispered to Catalina.

She blinked. “Fifty percent of this?”

“Fifty percent of this nightmare,” I said. “And I need some stranger’s permission to sell it. The cabins, the main house, the fields, everything is half mine and half his. Grandma must have lost her damn mind in those last years.”

My stomach growled so loud it echoed down the hallway. Catalina did too.

“I’m going to find food,” she said, standing up. “There’s a little gas station we passed about a mile back on the main road. I’ll walk.”

“You can’t walk a mile in the dark,” I said.

“Watch me,” she said. “You stay here and make this place less… death trap. Maybe check the signal in different spots. Your iPhone 17 might pick up better near a window.”

She left with her phone flashlight on. I was alone in the big creepy house. The silence pressed in, broken only by the creak of old wood settling and the distant sound of wind through the trees outside. I wandered to one of the windows overlooking the property. In the moonlight, I could just make out the small cabin houses scattered across the grounds. Some had shutters hanging crooked, others were half-hidden by vines. This was supposed to be a thriving farm resort, with guests enjoying horseback rides, bonfires, and peaceful nights in those cabins. Grandma had painted such a vivid picture during our phone calls. Now it was all falling around me.

I didn’t want to just sit and panic, so I picked the least disgusting room. It was the one at the end of the hall with one window that wasn’t boarded. I dragged my one suitcase in. I found a broom in a closet and swept a mountain of dust and dead leaves into the hall. My arms ached, but the physical work kept me from spiraling. I shook out the mattress as best as I could and found a relatively clean blanket in a chest. It smelled old but not rotten.

I arranged the room for us to sleep. I put the blanket on the mattress, set my suitcase at the foot of the bed as a table, and lined up the two water bottles Catalina had left in her backpack. The iPhone 17 showed one flickering bar. Enough for emergencies, maybe, but nothing more. No scrolling, no posting, no escape into my online world. The sweetest part is that I could charge my phone.

An hour later, Catalina came back sweating and out of breath with a plastic bag. “I got chips, bread, peanut butter, and six bottles of water,” she announced like she had won the lottery. “The guy at the station said the water to the farm got shut off two months ago for non-payment.”

“Perfect,” I said, my voice flat.

We sat on the floor of our cleaned room and ate peanut butter sandwiches with our hands. We didn’t talk much. We were too tired and too dirty. The reality of the small cabin houses outside and the main resort building falling apart weighed on me. This was Grandma’s legacy, and it was crumbling.

After we ate, we lay down on the one mattress together, still in our travel clothes. The lights buzzed above us. No water, no luggage, no reliable signal, and now no full ownership.

“How am I going to survive?” I whispered to the ceiling.

Catalina was already half asleep. “We survived today, and we will survive tomorrow. she mumbled.

I closed my eyes. Tomorrow I have to meet a lawyer and meet the stranger who apparently owns half my grandmother’s farm. The second owner my grandma chose for me without telling me. The thought made my stomach twist. I fell asleep to the sound of crickets coming through the broken window and the faint rustle of wind around the distant cabins.