It wasn’t possible. “How old is that will?” he demanded.
“It was written in 1992.”
Before the rest of his siblings had been born. It had to be a mistake. “Is there a newer one?”
Darcy’s face was pale, but slowly his mouth closed and his eyes narrowed. Of course he would be pissed off.
Lara’s quiet voice asked, “Do we have to move, Dad?”
Darcy glared at Brandon. “I don’t know, pumpkin. We’ll sort something out.”
Hell. He didn’t want this; he didn’t deserve this. Georgie went through what was left in the safe, and he prayed she would find another document.
She turned. “There’s nothing else here.”
“Dad mentioned once that the station passed down to the eldest sibling,” Ed said. “I guess we never really thought much of it.”
“So the land goes to Brandon, but everything else is split between us?” Georgie asked. “How the hell does that work?”
It didn’t. There was no way the farm equipment could be split or for him to afford to pay his siblings their equal share. His chest tightened and it was hard to breathe. “I’ll call a lawyer,” Brandon said. “Get everything clarified.” He walked out.
Chapter 5
Brandon bypassed the phone in the kitchen and headed straight outside, his heart racing like he was under fire. He needed to breathe.
The heat hit him and the lazy breeze was like a hairdryer on low but he kept walking, distancing himself from the house, the accusations, the obligations.
His father had left him the Ridge. A mistake. Amy said the will hadn’t been updated since the nineties, but Bill would have disinherited him straight after Charlie died. He’d said Brandon wasn’t fit to run the station.
Had he not remembered to change the will? His father wasn’t normally forgetful, not about things relating to the Ridge. He knew the history of the place by heart, like which Stokes had erected the windmill to the east of the homestead, and who had gathered the names of the ship passengers to inscribe on the plaque by the ocean. But when was the last time he’d actually spoken to his father? Brandon had never called home and Bill had never emailed or called him. Was it simply a matter of tradition? The eldest son always inherited the Ridge and his father was loyal to tradition.
Brandon remembered days with his father out on the station, just the two of them, and Bill would tell him about the land, and their history all the way back to the boat which gave Retribution Ridge its name. He’d felt like part of something so much bigger, a legacy, a dynasty with ancestry tracing to an English lord and he’d wanted to be part of it. He’d loved the land as much as his father had, as much as Darcy did, had dreamed of running it side-by-side with them. Had even pictured bringing up kids here. He and Darcy had chosen where they would build their own houses, far enough away from each other for a bit of privacy, but close enough that they were still in view.
Walking in that direction, he noticed the frame of a house on the spot Darcy had chosen. Darcy must have started building it when he married Sofia, but maybe she’d left him and Lara before Darcy had a chance to finish it. The marriage hadn’t even lasted a year. Shame filled him. He should have been there for his brother, only eighteen with a newborn baby and a wife who’d left him rather than be stuck with a child on an isolated station.
A door slammed behind him and Darcy shouted, “Running away again?”
The accusation hit him like a punch, and he stepped back, biting his tongue to stop the retort. His brother’s anger was understandable. He waited until Darcy was close before he said, “I needed air.”
“Bullshit. You always run when things get hard.”
Darcy had no idea the shit he’d seen, the number of times when running away was not an option. “It’s not my fault Dad left the station to me.”
“You don’t deserve it. You’ve done nothing for this family.”
“I know.”
Darcy blinked rapidly, confusion on his face, still clasping his anger. “Are you going to sell it to the highest bidder?”
Outrage rushed through Brandon so fast he lost his breath. “Hell no. Is that who you think I am? I would never sell this land. It’s our legacy.”
Darcy panted. “How am I supposed to know who you are now?” he demanded. “We’ve barely spoken in a decade. You didn’t come to my wedding, didn’t write when I got divorced, you’ve barely seen my daughter.”
The raw hurt in Darcy’s eyes twisted Brandon’s gut into a knot. “I couldn’t.”
“Don’t give me the military obligation bullshit, Bran. Tell me why you abandoned our family when we needed you the most.”
No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t put his deeds into words. Darcy would hate him even more than he did now. “It doesn’t matter.” He turned.
