Cousin Rogan Michaels had taken on the responsibility for the ranch soon after Mina’s father left. He hired and fired cowboys and kept the livestock healthy. But he wouldn’t give Anthea one penny for her lifestyle. He did give her money to spend on Mina. Of course, Mina never saw a penny of it, or even knew about it, until after Anthea was dead and gone.
Anthea’s married boyfriend’s wife finally found out about the affair and threatened to leave him. It seemed that she had the money, and her husband was taking it out of their savings account to give to Anthea. So that was the end of that gravy train.
But soon afterward, her mother had brought home a man who promised to help pay the bills. He turned out to be not only a liar, but a raging alcoholic. Her mother seemed obsessed with him. Mina hated him on sight. He spent weekends getting drunk on whiskey and pills. He went from weekends to every day, and her mother tried to sell off the livestock—until Cousin Rogan found out and threatened litigation and charges of attempted theft. So Anthea quickly decided not to pursue that plan.
She started drinking heavily, too, and locking herself in the bedroom with their new houseguest most nights and sometimes all weekend. She was crazy about the drunk, whose name was Henry. He didn’t work, but he made a good job of turning Mina’s life to hell. She’d complained about him, just once, to her mother. Henry had beaten the hell out of her and dared her to go to the law about it.
Mina, bruised all over and hurting, took the dare, feeling that her life couldn’t be any worse than it already was. She was sixteen and sick and scared to death of Henry. So a sheriff’s deputy, a newcomer to the community, had come out to the house to answer Mina’s call.
Mina’s mother got to him first. She swore that Mina had fallen down the steps and blamed it on poor Henry. Her teenage daughter didn’t like her mother’s boyfriend, she said. Mina called him names and threatened to have him put in jail on fake charges all the time, she added. Anthea cried and sounded so convincing that the sheriff’s deputy believed her and went away. Afterward, Mina caught hell. Henry left more bruises on her, along with a few lacerations from the edge of his belt. Anthea didn’t say a word. She poured herself and Henry another drink.
Cody Banks, the sheriff, read the deputy’s report. He didn’t buy Anthea’s explanation. He kept a watch on Mina. But he couldn’t catch her mother’s boyfriend in the act, and Mina’s mother wouldn’t have testified, anyway. It would be Mina’s word against Henry’s, and Mina’s mother had already spread it around town that Mina was a terrible liar.
Life had been so hard. Mina didn’t do well in school because she was shy and withdrawn and bullied. Her home life was even worse. Her only escape had been her writing, a secret she shared with no one. From the age of thirteen, writing had obsessed her. Cousin Rogan had encouraged her. Her mother wasn’t told, ever.
Mina didn’t date, so she was ridiculed by the other girls. Only one of them, Sassy, had been kind to her. It was why she and Sassy were such good friends. Bart had met Mina when her mother had got her a job after school in the local restaurant as a waitress, to help bring in money, because her mother and her alcoholic boyfriend were too stoned to work. Despite Cousin Rogan keeping the ranch up, there was no food without money, no utilities, either. Her mother had made threats when Mina protested that she didn’t want to work as a waitress. They were sickening threats, and Henry smiled at her while they were made. She didn’t protest again. Henry liked to try and fondle her when her mother wasn’t looking. Not that her mother would have cared. She’d hated Mina her whole life. Mina had never known why.
Mina’s little paycheck took care of groceries and the power and water bill, with nothing left over. Mina gritted her teeth and studied hard so that she could graduate and get away from home as soon as possible. She would have thrown herself on Cousin Rogan’s mercy, but he’d spent a couple of years in Australia, in partnership with the local cattle magnate, McGuire, working on their big cattle station there. He had a man assigned to act as foreman of the ranch in his absence, but the man was cold as ice and Mina was as nervous of him as she was of Henry.
Bart was kind to her. He took the place of the brother she wished she had. He was encouraging, and optimistic. He reminded her that she was almost old enough to graduate and then she could get away from her mother and her mother’s awful boyfriend. He’d help, he added, anyway he could. It had really touched Mina, whose life had been a daily torment.
Then, when Mina turned eighteen, just days before she graduated from high school, her mother’s boyfriend, high as a kite, drove the two of them out to a local bar in the country to buy more liquor. On the way, he ran the car into a telephone pole at a high rate of speed and killed them both instantly.
Mina felt guilty for the relief that overwhelmed her. She and her mother had never been close, and since Henry had moved in with them, nothing had gone right.
She had Bart to help her with the funeral arrangements and finding an attorney to help with the administration of the estate. Luckily, Mina’s cousin Rogan had come home from Australia about the same time, and he was a tower of strength. He was outraged
