Blood Trail - C. J. Box [21]
Sheridan mumbled a curse under her breath because her sister was right.
“Give me ten minutes,” Sheridan said.
“Five.”
“Ten!”
“I’ll be back.”
Sheridan sighed and uncovered her project. She was writing a letter. A letter! Until recently, she’d never written one and rarely received them. With text messaging, IM, and e-mail, letters, she thought, actual letters that were folded and placed in envelopes with a stamp on them were a thing of the past, like phones with dials. She didn’t even know where to buy stamps until a few months ago. The little booklet of stamps she purchased was hidden in her purse, and the envelopes and stationery were folded into her dictionary, a gift from Grandmother Missy that she never used because she had SpellCheck. But she’d found out the only way to communicate with her mentor was by sending a letter.
THE LAST few months had been tumultuous. In addition to starting her sophomore year at Saddlestring High, her family had moved from her grandmother’s ranch into town. Since Sheridan had grown up isolated from neighbors and traffic, she found the new situation both liberating—her friends were a bike ride away and after all these years she no longer needed to ride the bus to and from school—and stifling. Everyone was so close to everybody else. She no longer saw the mule deer as they floated in the half-dark to the river to drink, or the elk that fed in the shorn hay meadows. It took a month to get used to the sounds outside the house at night—cars racing up the street, dogs barking, sirens. She wasn’t sure she liked it.
Her mother’s company, MBP Management, continued to do well, even though her mom rarely talked about it like she used to. Since her mom had decided to trim back her hours and turn over more of the workload to her employees, she was able to be home more. Which was good, since her dad was gone so much on special assignments around the state. He called every night, though, except when he was in remote areas without telephones or cell service. Several of her mom’s new client businesses were start-ups on the reservation that bordered Twelve Sleep County and was occupied by Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone. The proximity of the new businesses made it easier for her mom to stay close to home. In fact, Sheridan thought, after so many years out on Bighorn Road or on the ranch, their lives were achingly, numbingly dull. When she mentioned this to her mother, Marybeth smiled and said, “Dull is good, sweetie. Dull is good.”
Dull was certainly better than the last few months on the ranch, with her parents and her grandmother battling. Grandmother Missy, who didn’t look or act like a grandmother at all, wanted them to stay so she could keep some control over them. She was into control. She was also into what she had heard her mother refer to as “trading up.” Grandmother Missy, who was still beautiful and petite and looked like a porcelain doll, was on her fourth marriage, this time to rancher and good guy Bud Longbrake. Sheridan liked Bud, who was jovial, hardworking, and kind to her and Lucy. But Missy wanted more, and the rumors of her spending time with a multimillionaire named Earl Alden who had bought a ranch in the area turned out to be true. Everybody in Saddlestring knew about the affair except Bud Longbrake, it seemed. Not that Sheridan was involved in any discussions between her parents on the subject—they weren’t like that. Her mother was THE MOM, not a gossipy friend like some of her friends’ moms. Sheridan’s mom kept a parental distance that used to infuriate her before she realized, slowly, that it was an indication of trust, love, and maturity and not proof of unreasonable shrewishness after all. For Sheridan, this was a revelation, and she was beginning to respect her mother for being a parent and not her best girlfriend. It was the same with her father, although he was easier to manipulate because her moods and tears turned him into the male equivalent of a Labrador.
What she knew she had learned by overhearing,