He parked next to the small porch and killed the engine. He had a feeling he was going to be there for a while. It just always seemed to happen that way at Tyler homesteads. Whether Joel wanted it to or not.
The door opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a white tank and faded jeans stepped outside. His hair was thinning and gray, and his eyes showed years of hard living, but his body was tough and lean. He looked like a hundred other weathered ranchers Joel had seen through the years. “What’s wrong?”
His voice was roughened and harsh, but unthreatening. Joel cataloged the man quickly. A man just trying to get by in a world that wasn’t always easy to navigate. Like so many others in Masterson County. “You Phil Tyler?”
“Yes.”
“I have your boy in the back seat. Got into a brawl at Dan’s Tavern in Masterson. I was going to book him in, but to be honest, I have to deal with the approaching storms. I don’t have time for underage drinking, and my deputies are all spread over the county.”
“He facing charges?”
Joel thought for a moment. “I’m not sure yet. Have him at my office Tuesday at ten, and we can discuss it.”
He pulled the teenager from the back seat, and the kid came awake, swinging and swearing.
His father stepped off the porch and grabbed the boy by the shoulder. “Phoenix, shut your mouth before it gets you into deeper trouble.”
The boy cursed his father up one side and down the other. The older man never lifted a hand to hit him, at least. If anything, the father looked more embarrassed than angry.
The kid’s tirade went on for a good fifteen minutes before the front door opened again and six more bodies came tumbling out.
Joel studied them quickly. Young. Three were female, small, slim, startlingly pretty in the bright porch light, and—if he wasn’t mistaken—two were identical. The rest were boys, younger than the one still cursing. Hell, the youngest had to be under eight or nine, didn’t he?
The rest of the Tylers?
Joel turned back to the boy when the kid started swinging. The father, no more than five nine or five ten, was a few inches shorter than his son. And a whole lot soberer.
Joel didn’t have time to suffer fools gladly. Or wait for a father to gain control of his son. He grabbed the back of the kid’s shirt and lifted him off his feet. While Phoenix Tyler was close to six feet tall, Joel dwarfed him. At six foot four, two hundred and fifty pounds, he was twice what the boy weighed.
He used that to his advantage now. He turned Phoenix toward him. “Get your shit together now. Or I will run you into town, and you can hang out in the drunk tank for the next seventy-two hours. How would you like that?”
“You can’t do that. I have school tomorrow,” the boy sneered.
“You could just be truant then. We’ll see how well that goes over with the school.” Masterson public schools had a zero-tolerance truancy policy that was strictly enforced. Every parent knew that. Jail wouldn’t be an excuse.
The boy continued to kick and fight. Joel continued to hold him. He could do this all night if he had to.
Phoebe Tyler saw the lights and knew something was going on. Something that shouldn’t be. She didn’t even bother trying to listen, as she’d lost the ability to distinguish most sounds when she’d been six years old. She wasn’t fully hearing-impaired and could speak, but there was a lot she missed. Especially without the hearing aid currently sitting on her bedside table. She’d tried to sleep with it in before, but it just didn’t happen.
A fact a lot of her siblings took advantage of. Especially the younger ones. They’d better not be up wandering the house. Not this late.
She was the oldest of eight, and she didn’t take that role lightly. Her father busted his butt trying to turn a profit on the small ranch that had been in their family for generations. But it wasn’t easy. Especially since her mother had passed two years earlier in a car wreck that had two of her siblings injured. Leaving a mountain of debt bigger than the mountain that she could see from her window. The loss of their mother left the day-to-day care of the ranch house, and her youngest siblings, up to her.
Well, up to her and her sisters, Pip, Perci, and Pandora. The girls had their own responsibilities, though. Pip was doing her best to build a horse ranch out of their small stable of cutting horses. A few more years, and she’d be able to sell off some of the horses she’d bred and trained herself. Perci helped Phoebe with her Angora goat herd when needed—and worked extra twelve-hour shifts as a nurse at the county hospital whenever she could. Perci made a point of taking every bit of overtime she could get. Pan spent most of her time helping their father and Phoebe. When she could, Pan did virtual-assistant work and cleaned houses for some of their cousins and uncles. Phoebe’s responsibilities around the house made it impossible for her to have a full-time job. She supplemented what her sisters brought in with her goats. She sold the mohair yarn she created herself. Money was tight, but they were holding on.
In her spare time, Phoebe tended her little drove. After she had finished with that, she would sit at her loom and weave blankets from the yarn she kept back for that purpose. When those sold, she’d bring in a few hundred dollars each.
Every penny their branch of the Tylers could bring in helped their family of nine survive.
If something was wrong with one of the children, it was Phoebe’s job to take care of them. She didn’t bother with a robe or slippers. She grabbed the hearing
