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"Uh, yeah," I said. I glanced at Xavier who seemed as confused as me.
"Good," Uncle Curtis said. "Been getting kind of tired of hauling around all those damn boxes."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
Uncle Curtis got up and left the kitchen without a word. I glanced at Xavier who shook his head at me. "Not a clue," he said.
I was about to follow my uncle when he returned. He had a laptop in his hands, but it wasn’t mine. He set it down on the table. "Password is Del4Ever<3."
"Aww," Jules said from by the stove where he was still making pancakes. "You even included the heart emoji characters."
"Heart emoji?" I asked. "What are you talking about?"
"I think it's the last two things in the password," Xavier said. "When you type them, they create a heart or something."
I looked at him and said, "How did you know that?" Then I shook my head. "Never mind." I looked at Uncle Curtis and said, "How did you know that?"
"Everybody on Facebook knows that," Uncle Curtis said as if I were the dumbest person on the planet.
"Facebook? You're on Facebook?"
"Yeah, aren't you?"
"No, I don't have time—" I began to say, then realized how off track we'd gotten. "What is this?" I asked as I pointed to the computer. I opened it up and automatically smiled when I saw that the wallpaper was a picture of Del and Curtis at their Elvis-themed wedding. I felt myself tearing up. Xavier's hand appeared at my back to soothe me.
It never failed to amaze me how he could read me so easily and know what I needed from him. I entered the password Curtis had given me and the computer quickly loaded. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw all the shortcuts on his desktop. "Why, you bastard," I said as I looked at him. My uncle had the sense to look guilty.
I spied the banking software on his computer and opened it. I sat in stunned silence as the program ran and began downloading transactions. There were multiple accounts linked to the software. I recognized all of them but one. The one that I didn't recognize had hundreds of thousands of dollars in it. The amount matched the withdrawals Uncle Curtis had made from the accounts I’d been working with. I folded my arms on the table as it began to register what I was looking at.
"Talk fast," I said.
"Your mother and I needed a reason to get you out here," Uncle Curtis said. He motioned to the computer and said, "Reason."
"My mother was in on this with you?"
I could hear Xavier laughing next to me as he realized what my uncle had done. But I still needed to hear it from the man himself.
"So you were never in financial trouble," I said.
"Nope," Uncle Curtis said. He stole another pancake from me, but at that point I didn't care. "Del would've rolled over in his grave if I'd let all his hard work with the books go to hell."
"So you concocted all this just to get me to come out here? You and my mom?"
"Yep," my uncle responded easily. The man had absolutely no guilt or shame.
"Why?" I asked.
"Your mother thought you could use a change of scenery. Said you and your dad were like oil and water and that the only time you ever really seemed happy was when you’d been out here visiting me and Del. And the times you stayed with us when you’d been a kid. I needed a reason to make sure you stuck around a bit so you and Xavier could get past all that crap you've been dealing with since you were kids."
Xavier's chuckling abruptly stopped. "Wait, what?" he said.
Uncle Curtis waved his fingers. "When I found out you’d gotten paroled, I knew you belonged here, son. I also knew that you and Brooks hadn't had the chance you needed when you were kids. Anyone with any sense would've known when they looked at you two, that you were meant to be together. So I just helped things along a little."
"You've been planning this for months now?" I asked.
"Had some free time," he said with a grin.
"But you’ve been selling off equipment and assets," Xavier said.
"Times are changing, son. People are going to start modernizing, no matter what. Eden needs to change in a lot of ways. Their time as being known for hard-to-find quality beef is coming to an end. All the stuff they were doing ten and twenty years ago, more places are doing now. Black Hills Ranch is making changes now. We’re not going to wait until we’re in the red."
"What kind of changes?" I asked.
"Him," Uncle Curtis said as he pointed at Xavier. "He's the change." My last pancake disappeared into Uncle Curtis’s mouth before he added, "Black Hills Ranch will still raise quality quarter horses, but it's time to make the training program the foundation of this place. Xavier has a lot to teach people about the right way to treat a horse."
