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Chapter Sixteen
After talking to Slate and getting the reassurance she needed, Jill sat down in her bedroom, her laptop open to her banking portal. She had to face the disaster that was her finances a couple of times a month, and she did her best to make the process as enjoyable as possible.
She put on her favorite pop music playlist and let the heavy bass beat pump through her blood. “All right,” she said, only knowing she’d spoken because of the vibrations in her throat. “Let’s do this.”
She looked at the amount she’d been paid from the ranch on Friday, and then switched over to the spreadsheet she’d already opened that listed what needed to be paid. She tried to plan what her next payment would be two weeks in advance, and today, she quickly took the figures she’d written down two weeks ago and put them in her bill pay portal.
Before she submitted it, she checked her math to make sure she’d have enough to buy groceries and put gas in her truck for the next couple of weeks. She could live on very little if she had to, and she did have some protein shakes in the pantry, as well as several boxed mixes.
She had a place to live, and she would be fine for another two weeks. Then two more. Then two more. She’d been doing this for years, and finally, the weight of that settled on her shoulders and clawed its way toward her neck.
She leaned away from the laptop, a sigh hissing from between her lips. Her eyes drifted closed and she murmured, “How much longer do I have to pay for the mistakes of the past?”
She knew how much longer—she had it all planned out in the spreadsheet. A couple more years, if she could stay on track. Drawing in a deep breath, she felt her shoulders straighten and strengthen, throwing off the weight. “You can do this.”
The laptop made a slapping sound when she closed it, and the music silenced. She basked in the stillness and quiet atmosphere of the homestead on a Sunday afternoon. Without Emma, Jess, or Ginger in the house anymore, slow summer afternoons were definitely quieter than they’d been previously.
Emma sometimes still came to use the huge kitchen in the West Wing to make a feast that would feed the remaining women in the house for a week. Today, though, when Jill went into the kitchen, she only found Hannah and Michelle sitting at the bar. They had bowls of something that smelled like pasta in front of them, and Jill put a smile on her face.
“What did you make?” she asked. She found the pot of cheesy orzo and sausage on the stovetop. It was one of Hannah’s favorite foods, and Jill could admit it brought comfort in times where there wasn’t much to be found.
Jill turned to the fridge and took out a bottle of water. Ginger likely kept the Hope Springs bottled water company in business singlehandedly, because she made sure every fridge around the ranch always had water in it.
She stocked the mini-fridges in the stables herself, as well as the large fridge in the equipment shed, the West Wing, and the Annex. In the storage shed, half of it was filled with cases of the bottled water, and anyone could take what they wanted.
“You’re not going to have any?” Hannah asked.
“I ate at my mother’s,” Jill said. She did take a seat at the bar beside Michelle and added, “You cut your hair.”
“Yeah.” Michelle smiled and reached up to her shorter, dirty blonde hair. “I think I went too far.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jill said. “It’s great.”
“It’s a touch too short to pull into a ponytail,” she said, pushing her fork through her orzo without taking a bite. A sigh accompanied the motion, and Jill realized there was something going on here.
“All right,” she said. “Talk to me.”
“Nothing to talk about,” Michelle said at the same time Hannah said, “Charles said he wanted to ‘talk’ when Michelle gets back to town.”
“No.” Jill said, surprise darting through her. “You guys have been dating forever.”
“Exactly,” Michelle said. “If he hasn’t asked me to marry him by now, he’s not going to.”
“You don’t know that,” Hannah said. “He could be planning to ask you when you get back.”
“He’s not,” Michelle said. “You two have met Charles. He’s the most unimaginative man there is. He wouldn’t plan anything for a proposal. He’d simply show up for dinner and show me the ring.”
“Well, maybe that’s what he’ll do,” Jill said, looking past Michelle to Hannah. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, and Jill’s heart squeezed too tight.
“No one’s asking me either,” Hannah said, getting up from the counter. She scooped more orzo into her bowl and kept her back to the others. Her dark hair cascaded down her back, and Jill couldn’t believe no one had snatched her up years ago. She was so positive, and so kind, so smart, so resourceful, and so beautiful.
“You haven’t been off the ranch since Bill broke up with you,” Jill said.
“I signed up for that dating app,” Hannah said, turning back to Jill.
“You did?”
“Five days ago. Not one date.”
