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Despite the fact that Sawyer was morbidly curious to see the inside of the house, how much it might have changed, how much it was still the same as it ever was, he made a beeline for the barn. If they were all going to get through this, then there needed to be substantial breaks between awkward conversations.
The barn was a fair distance from the main house but walkable, and Sawyer listened to the crunch of dry grass beneath his feet as he made his way over, the barn looking more worse for wear the closer he got. It really did need painting. The boards were weather-worn and sad-looking. The structure still looked sound, but it also looked depressing. The whole place was depressing, but he’d have to ignore that fact for the sake of his sanity.
He swung the door open, the hinges creaking. They’d need oiling as well. He added it to the list on his phone before he forgot. If he was here to work, then he was going towork. What was the point of making the barn look pretty if its doors screeched like banshees?
Inside, however, was not what he was expecting. It was neat and tidy and didn’t smell of mold and dust but of fresh hay and wood shavings. Two of the old stalls were clearly in frequent use, though Sawyer didn’t remember there being horses the last time he checked, with bags of horse feed, leather tack and buckets of grooming gear all lined up neatly in their designated spots.
Okay, so not a total disaster then. After his drive up to the house, he’d been half expecting to have to get a dumpster out here and do some serious scrubbing, but this had him feeling relieved. He breathed in the smell of horses and hay and scratched the back of his head. Where should he even start…
“Hello?”
Sawyer whipped around to find a young woman looking up at him as she walked over from the barn’s open door. She was a tiny thing. Sawyer figured he could scoop her up as easily as he did a football. Freckles covered every inch of her face and arms, with her green eyes looking even brighter because of the contrast. Wearing jeans and a tank top, the heels of her cowboy boots clicked on the concrete floor as she approached.
“Hey there,” said Sawyer, feeling more and more out of place every second and trying not to show it. He just gave his best camera-ready smile and hoped for the best.
The woman inspected him with narrow eyes and a tilted head before breaking out in a wide grin.
“Oh,” she said. “You’re Luke’s brother, aren’t you? Didn’t think you’d be here till later this afternoon.”
She held out a hand and Sawyer folded it away in his own, shaking it gently, afraid that he might end up accidentally crushing her. He towered over most people, but this woman wasthe definition of petite; she couldn’t be more than five feet tall and that included the heels on her boots. How was she working on a farm?
“Sawyer,” he said, releasing her hand.
“Josie. You probably don’t remember me. We went to school together.”
Sawyer quickly riffled through his memories, trying to place her, and apparently the panic showed on his face. Josie laughed brightly and waved a dismissive hand.
“I was in Luke’s grade, not yours,” she explained.
Nowa vague recollection surfaced. A skinny girl, tiny even then, covered in freckles and always laughing louder than everybody else.
“Your family cooked for us,” Sawyer said, his voice slow as he pieced it all together. “When our mom died.”
Josie nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. They’d send me over on my bike to deliver it, and y’all were very polite even when it was burned to a crisp or basically raw.”
She giggled at her parents’ failed attempts at cooking, her freckles looking like they were dancing on her skin as her nose wrinkled up.
“It’s the thought that counts,” said Sawyer lamely, not sure what else to say.
“Well, no one got food poisoning, so miracles do happen, I guess.”
They lapsed into an awkward silence as Sawyer tried to think of things to say, which was proving difficult since he had no cluewhat had been going on in Willow Ridge for the last decade. He had no small-town gossip to give him any sort of safety line to cling on to. Josie, however, stared up at him unashamedly, her big eyes taking him in like she was assessing every twitch and tremble. Which maybe she was. Sawyer cleared his throat.
“So… do you work here?” Surely that was a safe bet? Her clothes were covered in dust and dirt and a piece of straw stuck to her ponytail that she didn’t seem aware of.
“Yep!” she announced proudly. “I guess ranch hand is the best title for it, but really I’m just a jack of all trades. I fix things, feed things, keep an eye on Luke while Sandy’s at the diner, you know, the usual.”
“And does he need a lot of looking after, my brother?” Sawyer asked, his tone joking, but he was suddenly afraid of what sort of answer he would get. Josie just continued joking, though.
“Eh, he’s fine. Most of the time,” she said with a wave of her hand. “You know how he is. He gets too caught up in the little things and makes a mountain out of a molehill, but that’s never going to change.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sawyer made an agreeing sort of sound, but he was struck with the thought that he really didn’t know his brother all that well. Not anymore. He kept oscillating between being delighted by Josie’s general presence, her ability to talk a mile a minute, and then depressed at how far things had fallen elsewhere. What a day… It was already giving him a headache.
“You know him well, then?” he asked, desperate for any more information he could get. “Luke?”
“We’ve been best friends since we were, like, twelve. It’s hard not to know someone well after that long.”
Another wave of depressed guilt hit Sawyer, and this one hit himhard.He was only two years older than Luke; he’d left Willow Ridge for college and his football scholarship at eighteen, so did he really only have a vague memory of Josie when she’d beenbest friendswith Luke since they were little kids? He’d spent most of his time at school and once the bell had rung, he’d been out on the field training, working out all of his grief from his mom’s death, getting so entrenched in the sport that it became his whole world…
