“Derrick, you’re dripping mud all over my floor!”
“It’s a working ranch, baby, I’m a hard-working cowboy.”
“Wash up before you come any further.”
Dad ignores Mom’s words entirely, crossing the room in four easy strides and bending to capture her lips in a kiss that is entirely too passionate considering their adult son is sitting in the same room. He breaks the kiss, then presses one more chaste one to her lips before tipping his hat and leaving, whistling as his bootsteps echo down the hall.
Mom looks at me, slightly dazed.
“What were we saying?”
I can’t help it. A cackle leaves my lips, torn from my chest.
“You were thinking, apparently.”
“Oh… oh! Yes. Have you been into town recently?”
“Not for about a month… why?”
“I went out there yesterday. It’s quiet, Ev. Miss Celia said it hasn’t been this quiet for years. Decades, even. Ellison had leftovers at the end of the day—that doesn’t happen. It’s never happened, until now.”
“It was pretty quiet,” I agree. “What are you plotting?”
“Angie and I were talking…”
“Go on.”
“We want to make the ranch adestination,” she says, emphasising the last word. “The ranches. Ours, and the Fishers’. I mean, we already cooperate on a lot. It’s not like they’re competition.”
It’s true enough. We’re a cattle ranch, where the Fishers’ land is almost more of a farm in the traditional sense, and they specialise inagriculture and crops. With neighbouring land, and families who have been friends for decades, we complement rather than compete. We’ve always helped each other out. It’s rare, but that’s how it’s always been.
“Yeah, so…”
“Glamping.”
“Glamping?”
“Glam camping. It’s a trend, it’s all over the internet. We could host parties—maybe even weddings. Everett, if we can get people out here to the ranch—ranches—we could get a minibus, have one of the ranch hands drive it into town a couple times a day for the guests. We can boost Skillett. Put it back on the map. Who knows what businesses might want to move in? Angie said Mick has a great plot right on the fence line that would be great for some cabins, and we could look into those fancy tents too—”
“Yurts, Mom. They’re called yurts.”
“What?”
“The fancy tents. They’re yurts.”
“Well, we could look into yurts. What do you think, Ev?”
Mom is almost pleading with me. Her hands are clasped together, pushed across the desk towards me as she leans forward, face earnest. For a second, I wonder if she thinks I’m about to shoot her down, tell her it’s an awful idea. Forget that Mom owns the ranch and can do whatever she damn well pleases. She still defers to me half the time.
“I think… it could work. We’d need more people. We’d need…” I break off with a breathy laugh. My mind is already racing, putting together the long list of everything we’ll need to do and source and prepare for a project like this. “We’d need alot. It’s not gonna be an easy job to set this up.”
“Angie and Mick are in. They want in on this. We use their land and ours.Their people, too.”
“Okay, well, that makes some things easier. Some things, not so much,” I say. We’ve never had trouble with the Fishers, and I don’t anticipate any now, but I’ve heard far too many horror stories about neighbouring ranches and families going into business together and somebody getting burned. On top of everything else, I’ll be making sure we have contracts drawn up. “And we’ll probably need to revisit that marketing budget, too.”
“Oh, shoot. Yeah, we will.”
“And if we’re offering camping—outside of the Hamlet, with tents and shit—we’re gonna need to think about other facilities we need, too.”
