AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Um, yeah. Eve. Evelyn.”
“Right. EvelynHunter.”
I wasn’t following. “So?”
“Hunter, as in Hunter Valley.”
What? “The town is named after her family?”
“I forget you’re not from here. No, her family practically owns the valley.”
“Youforgot?” Impossible. She probably remembered what shoes she wore to her first day of kindergarten.
“Her great, great, great something founded the town. It was her grandparents who created the resort and where the real money came in.”
“So her parents run it?” I needed to look into that company.
“No. Her aunt. Her son, Eve’s cousin, is named Hunter. He’s the town sheriff.”
Strange, but whatever.
“Okay, so what about her parents?”
“They don’t work.”
“Because of the family money?” I asked.
“Because of the family money,” she repeated. “I’ve known Eve since we were kids. Her parents stay up on the mountain. Live the posh lifestyle wholeheartedly. I met them once. I was maybe… eleven. Eve and I were in 4H and helping out with the show chickens.”
“What the hell is a show chicken?” I grew up in Denver. A big city. I ate chicken. The only ones I came across were on my plate or under plastic at the grocery store. Which I never went to because I was never fucking home.
“They’re entered into contests at the county fair. They’re judged and ribbons are handed out. Not just chickens. Rabbits. Cows. All the animals.”
“What does this have to do with Eve?”
She sighed. “Her parents found out she was having fun. With chickens. Yup. It was actually fun and it’s an interesting area of science–”
I dropped back onto the couch, my hard on gone after the talk about fowl. “Okay, focus please.”
“They yanked her from 4H and shipped her to boarding school.”
I flopped back, stared at the ceiling. “Oh. That kind of parents.”
I knew them all too well. I grew up with families like that, where kids were ignored and shipped off to school. Or pranced about like show ponies.
Or, in Eve’s case, probably both. No Hunter would get her hands dirty in a pole barn and the only way to ensure that was to move. God forbid the parents up and relocated. No, she ended up in some far-flung school for rich kids with shitty families.
“Now do you see?”
“No.”
“She has money. Or her family does. Yet she applied to James Corp for one of the local loans.”
“Okay.” I was trying to figure out where she was going with this.
“Silas, don’t you see?”
“Obviously not.”
