Chapter 2

ARIA

I’m sitting cross-legged on a bed I’m probably going to be calling mine only for a couple of days more —if I’m lucky—, staring down at the crumpled bills and coins gathered in front of me on my favorite pink comforter.

The grand total of seven hundred and forty-eight dollars and forty-nine cents constitutes my whole lemons-day stash and it will be probably all gone before the day is over if I can’t get those pencil-pushers at Fields Fargo Capital Bank to see things my way.

I remember the first time Silver Bridle Ranch got in a rough patch like yesterday.

I was barely ten and Alma was fourteen and we had said goodbye to Grandpa only a few weeks before.

Grams was broken, broke and lost and with two little girls to think of she didn’t know what to do, but no matter how sad, she was a strong woman and pulled us through.

After that, every month she would first and foremost pay our workers, pay the mortgage and then squirrel as much as she could away in what she called our lemons-day tin, money to use in case of emergency.

Since she started that tradition ten years ago, that yellow tin saved our backsides more times than I could count, so when Grams passed away Alma and I kept putting as much as we could in it.

I don’t think the tin is going to make much of a difference this time.

I feel a tear slide down my cheek and I dry it angrily with the back of my hand.

I can’t believe this is happening.

I have lost everybody I loved in my life and now I’m going to lose Silver Bridle Ranch.

I fucking love this place, not only our ranch is the heart and blood of Silverbrook City’s economy, it’s the place I grew up in and the only home I’ve ever had.

I can’t wrap my mind around the thought of never stepping foot in here again, but the angry red letters glaring at me from the notice I’ve got from the bank are telling me otherwise.

I doubt I will convince those bastards, but I have to try.

I love this place too much not to risk everything to save it.

I sigh, putting the money away.

I feel so many different things right now, my head is a jumbled mess.

I want to cry, scream, punch someone in the face and break stuff all at once.

I can’t afford to wallow up in misery right now, I can’t be sad, that wouldn’t help, but mad?

Hell yeah, I can definitely be mad: I’ve learned that when the world is trying to screw you over and you feel like you can’t breathe, can’t think and just want to disappear, anger can become the only source of energy you got, especially if you can’t even remember the last time since you had a proper meal.

This emotional state pretty much sums up my entire life right now.

I get up every day, I work hard, I save every cent I can, I get hungry, I get pissed. Wash, rinse and repeat.

And I swear if someone else tries to console me today with some trite saying like ‘When life gives you lemons…’, I’m seriously going to end up breaking a couple of fingers —both mine and theirs— ‘cause only God knows how many freaking lemons I have squeezed in my life, it’s pretty much all I can remember doing since I was little and now I have a fucking mountain of lemons ahead of me. I don’t even know how to climb to the other side now that I have to do it solo, let alone squeeze anymore, but I have to keep on trying, I can’t let them take my ranch.

It’s all I have left now; I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose it.

When Grandpa left us, we were scared and sad and this place kept us together. We could see him in every little thing and were grateful for the memories, even if they were painful sometimes.

When Grams was taken from us as well, we thought the world had come to an end, we were lost, completely alone and pretty sure that they were going to take me away because I was a minor, this ranch was the glue that kept us together, the thing that gave us the possibility to still be a family —even if it was just the two of us— the thing that saved us.

My sister took it upon herself to keep everything together, even if she was just eighteen years old.

She did everything she could to spare me foster care. She postponed college, kept the ranch working and guaranteed a home for both of us.

We finally thought our life was turning a corner and then Alma got sick.

We spent every cent we had for her treatments and even had to let go most of the workers from the ranch because we had no way to pay them, some of them kept on helping us with the cattle and the crops, that’s how great people are in this town and how much they loved our grandparents.

We sold most of our stock and even our own horses and I took two jobs waiting tables to pay the medical expenses that the health insurance did not cover, but it was never enough.

I wouldn’t even care we lost everything if in the end it would have saved my sister, but of course it didn’t, nothing could save her.

Alma left me as well, eight months ago, just like everybody else.

She fought as hard as she could, as long as she could, more for me than for herself when she was nearing the end I’m afraid, but it was not enough.

And here I am, twenty, alone in the world, with no education and no prospects on ever getting one, with more debts than I could ever pay even if I worked for the next fifteen years and lived of nothing but breadcrumbs.

And you know what?

I would have been okay with that as shitty as it sounds.

I would have been okay with forgetting about my dreams, losing my chance to go to college, pulling my shit together, working two jobs —hell, even three— until I could put Silver Bridle Ranch up on its feet again.

But no, of course I can’t get that!

The stupid bank is going to take even this away from me, because I’m behind with the fucking mortgage payments, because I’m still paying the medical expenses the fucking good for nothing health insurance had not covered, because they don’t fucking care, because life keeps throwing freaking lemons at me and forgets to send a fucking juicer along.

I spring up from the bed and start getting ready for the appointment.

Fuck this, I’m not going to let them win easy!

They may think I’m just some dumb chick that is going to stand back and let them walk all over me, just let them take the ranch away without a fight, because I’m chopped liver, nothing but a twenty-year-old orphan with no money, no lawyer, and no one to help her, but fuck ‘em: they are going to have another think coming.

I won’t just simply disappear.

I’ll fight back, I’ll do anything and everything it takes, I don’t care what it is, but I will save Silver Bridle Ranch for me, for Alma and for our grandparents who put every ounce of strength they had in keeping it alive with their last breath.

I can’t let them win: this place means just too much to me, it means everything.

It’s all I have left of them.