Chapter 1
The List That Wasn't
Falon
Iwas going to kill him. It wasn’t funny. Five o’clock in the morning was not morning. At five o’clock, someone had better be dying. I scowl at the window where, currently, Frank, my time-impaired rooster, is crowing at the top of his lungs.
“Frank,” I yell and throw a pillow at the window, which does absolutely nothing. I put my other pillow over my head and manage to drown out enough of the noise that I can almost pretend I’m not imagining he is a yummy pot of soup. Just twenty more minutes. That’s all I want, plus or minus an hour or two. I groan in relief when he stops, and the house goes quiet.
Or at least I thought, but as luck would have it, Frank was the least of my noise issues. Because the moment he finally decides to stop, the fire alarm goes off.
“Really, it’s five-thirty in the morning,” I yell to no one.
It isn’t the gentle beep of a low battery or the tentative chirp of a system test. No, this is the full-throated, ear-splitting shriek of a smoke detector convinced the house is burning down.
It isn't.
I knew it isn't, because I'd installed the stupid thing myself last night after watching a YouTube video titled "Fire Safety for Beginners." The electrician had done the wiring. I wasn't that brave, but I'd been so sure I could handle the rest. Mount the brackets, connect the units, test them, call it a win.
Except I must've wired something wrong, or breathed on it the wrong way. Or offended it in some past life, because now it was screaming like I'd set the kitchen on fire when all I'd done was exist in my own house.
I jolt upright, tangled in my blanket burrito, and promptly trip over my slippers trying to get out of bed. My knee hits the floor. My elbow hits the nightstand. The lamp wobbles but, miraculously, and thankfully, it doesn't fall.
Aries, mom’s 12-year-old hound with an inch and a half overbite, who wanted to sleep in the house last night, whines and scratches at the door, wanting to get away from the chaos and noise.
“I know, Aries, I’m on it.” I manage to open the bedroom door without another incident and let her out. For a geriatric dog, she is fast when she wants out. I hear her pound down the stairs and out of the doggie door as if her life depends on it.
"Okay, okay, I'm coming!" I shout at the ceiling, as if the alarm cares about what I’m doing.
I stumble down the hallway, one slipper on, one slipper somewhere back in the bedroom doing its own thing. The old Anderson farmhouse creaks under my feet, the floorboards groaning in solidarity.
The alarm blares in the kitchen. The one room I hadn't finished painting yet, where half thecabinet doors are still leaning against the wall because I'd decided to sand them "this weekend" three weekends ago.
I drag a chair over, climb up, and jab the reset button.
Silence.
Blessed, beautiful, ringing-in-my-ears silence.
I stand there for a second, gripping the back of the chair, my heart still pounding. My hair is tragic. My T-shirt, an old ranch supply freebie that said, "Got Hay?" is twisted halfway around my torso. And I am pretty sure I've just aged five years.
"You're doing great, Falon," I mutter. "Really killing it."
The house just sits there with its peeling wallpaper and unfinished projects, silently reminding me that I'd taken on way more than I could chew.
But I don't have time to spiral about it.
I have two ranches to run, a to-do list that has grown sentient and demanding, and approximately zero margin for error. The Williams Ranch, my parents' place, still needs me even though Dad keeps insisting he is "fine" and "doesn't need help." Spoiler: he does. And the Anderson Ranch, my ranch now, the one I'd bought on a sweetheart deal from Miss Donna before she moved back east, needs me even more.
Which meant no time for existential crises about smoke detectors or whether I'd bitten off more than I could chew.
I climb down from the chair, find my other slipper, and grab my phone from the counter.
One missed call. Mom.
And a voicemail.
I press play, already pulling my hair into a ponytail.
