Vetted Again

by K'Anne Meinel

  “The grass doesn’t seem as green or as deep this spring,” Allyssa commented as they made their way back towards the ranch.

  “I think the runoff was too early. We might have a hot summer too, and that’s not good for the range. I hope the rains continue or it might become dangerous.”

  “Not enough feed for the stock?”

  “That and fires,” Fey replied as they rode along, surveying their land. She loved these few precious moments alone with Allyssa—no babies, no siblings, and no clients—just the two of them.

  “Fey, look over there,” Allyssa said softly, pulling her horse to a stop. Fey pulled up beside her and looked where Allyssa was pointing. She caught her breath. It was one of the small herds of Thoroughbreds they allowed out here. They were permanently retired but always up for adoption on the horse rescue site. Allyssa pulled up her camera and used her telephoto lens to take several shots of the draft horse that belonged to the footprints she had seen last fall. “You think it’s a Clydesdale?” she asked.

  “I think it’s a mix; maybe Belgian,” she said as she looked at the behemoth next to the Thoroughbreds and Mustangs mixed in the herd. He looked out of place, but they had accepted him, and the lead mare hadn’t chased him away. He was all bulky muscle and looked breathtakingly beautiful with the feathers that covered his lower legs. He stood about sixteen or seventeen hands and had to weigh at least two thousand pounds.

  “How tall would you say he is?” Allyssa breathed, taking in the beauty of his black and white appearance.

  “I was just thinking he’s about sixteen or seventeen hands,” she said as she watched him, wondering if they could catch him. She really should inspect him and make sure he was healthy if he was mingling with their rescues. Already, the lead mare was eyeing them, wondering if they were about to be herded to the ranch.

  “And a hand is how many inches?” Allyssa clarified.

  “It’s standardized to four inches. It was originally based on the breadth of a human hand,” she showed a length of space between her thumb and her pinkie finger.

  “Why don’t they just say inches?” she wondered, snapping a few more pictures. She was already thinking of the blogs she could write for the rescue. She would ask their followers for opinions on what the breed was. The shoe print had certainly generated a debate.

  “Because English-speaking countries use hands,” she explained with a laugh, as though that was perfectly logical. “Let’s see how close he allows us to come,” she said as she started her horse out slowly.

  Amazingly, the horse allowed himself to be gathered in with the small herd. The only one who objected was the lead mare, but Allyssa headed her off when she tried to escape. She knew others would follow her lead, if they weren’t careful.

  They managed to get him into the corral, but he became upset when they let the rest of the herd go back out. He whinnied to them plaintively, calling them back. They hung around for a while but slowly drifted away, seeking a place out of the wind, away from the noise of the ranch, and with greener pastures.

  “Where in the world did he come from?” Woody asked when he saw the big horse.

  “No idea. Want to help me catch him, so I can examine him? He had to have been domesticated at some point,” Fey commented as they managed to get him into a stall and tie up, so she could examine him. But this was not accomplished without a few well-aimed kicks, one of which hit her upper thigh and caused her to limp painfully for days. Still, he was a healthy animal, solid, and with no outward signs that he had previously been owned by humans. There was no tattoo or brand to show ownership or where he might have come from. She checked for chips and he eyed the scanner distrustfully.

  “Will you look at that?” Allyssa pointed when they released him into the corral. Big Red was cozying up to the larger horse. It was obvious they knew one another when they greeted each other, and the big draft horse started snuffling the smaller foal, which was growing bigger but was still much smaller than he.

  “Interesting,” Fey put in, still favoring her leg. She knew she was going to have a helluva bruise on her thigh, but bruises were a common hazard in her line of work.

  The debates started immediately when Allyssa put up the beautiful pictures of the wild draft horse. Percherons were immediately ruled out, as were Belgians. Boulonnais was suggested but immediately shot down because of his coloring. He was decidedly not a Clydesdale. Finally, those contributing to the concerted conversation agreed he was a Shire. Several people made offers for him, but for now, Fey wasn’t offering him for adoption; he intrigued her too much.

  “That’s a hay burner if ever I saw one,” Allyssa complained as she fed the big horse. He ate a large amount of food in comparison to the horses she kept for riding.

  “He does like his food, doesn’t he?” Fey asked, amazed at his gentleness now that the ‘wilder’ horses were gone. He had Big Red to himself, and he was a faithful companion. The relationships these horses developed always intrigued her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  That spring was busy for everyone, and Fey found herself resenting the time spent away from her family more and more. The babies were growing so quickly and getting so interesting, and she wanted to spend more time with her family. She was also stressed because the lawsuits with Peter and Trever were heating up as they wound their way through the courts. Every time she thought the suit would be struck down in their favor, the brothers came up with some new angle. It was no surprise when the two brothers offered to settle everything out of court for an outrageous sum they felt they were owed for the death of their mother.

  “It’s obvious they don’t want the children and this lawsuit is just a ploy to get at the money, and they don’t mention paying for my fees or the court’s time,” Henry pointed out. “I suggest you refuse this settlement offer.”

  Both Fey and Allyssa agreed. They felt Henry had hit the nail on the head. Those greedy men were only after the trust funds set up for their siblings; they were not interested in the kids at all. They had tried to arrange visitation rights but refused to travel, instead demanding that Fey bring the children to Portland, so they could visit with them. Henry had contested that request since Fey was working nonstop and could not be away from her work for long periods. When they amended that request to have Allyssa bring the children as she had in the past, that too was shot down. All the requests and the legal paperwork took time and effort, and it was all wearing on the two women. Fey and Allyssa were trying to keep the details of the lawsuit from Traci and Sean since it was obvious the kids wanted nothing to do with their nasty, older brothers.

  “What if they manage to get a visitation order?” Allyssa had asked Fey.

  “They won’t,” she answered, dismissing the idea.

  “But what if they do?”

  Fey looked up from where she was cuddling Molly, trying to get the child to sleep. She was a squirmer and growing by leaps and bounds. But it was Tom that amazed them most of all. Tiny at birth, he was rapidly catching up to his siblings. “Then we’ll deal with it when it happens. I really don’t want to traumatize the kids, and I think a visit with those two bastards would do just that.”

  Allyssa absolutely agreed, but the stress of hearing from Henry was wearing on them both.

  “You know what Sean told me the other day?” Fey asked her wife. At her wife’s questioning look she continued, “He mentioned how nasty his mother was to me. Naturally I didn’t say anything, but he told me that she was so nasty because she was jealous.”

  “Jealous? Of what?” Allyssa asked, surprised.

  “Jealous of me and any attention my father gave me. He’d overheard one of the fights his mother and our dad had. Isn’t that something? It never really occurred to me that she was jealous. I just thought she hated me.”

  “Well, there is that too,” Allyssa laughed to show she was teasing and Fey grinned. “I think that woman hated life and anyone she couldn’t control.” Fey nodded in agreement, holding their daughter clo
ser, determined to never let anything bad like that happen to her.

  “There is a court date set for June,” Henry informed them one day by phone. Allyssa had answered the phone and caught Fey before she went out on a call with her latest interns.

  “Send over the details, and we’ll be there,” Fey told him dismissively, sick of all the rigmarole.

  “You don’t understand, Fey. They require copies of all paperwork that shows your great-great-grandparents owned the ranch and you earned it by right of inheritance. I’ve already written the courts on this, and I don’t understand why the judge would allow their request, but they want to see the will and the grant.”

  “Jesus,” she said, annoyed. “How do we–?”

  “We have all that information framed on our walls,” Allyssa reminded her, looking at her wife from across the room as they both listened in on extensions. She gestured to the framed documents displayed on their wall.

  “Oh, yeah,” Fey answered, remembering that the large one was in the den.

  Henry chuckled, hearing the humor in Allyssa’s voice. He had admired the old documents many times and thought it clever to have them framed. He had also read the journals and nothing Erin Herriot had done over one hundred years ago was relevant now. The ranch had passed through Timothy and Benjamin Herriot’s hands and directly to Fey, bypassing Keith. He didn’t know why the judge would want them to prove ownership now, years after those estates had been settled. “Just bring them with you then,” he told the women. “I have Ben’s will, and I’ll submit that. I’m also going to file a lawsuit on your behalf for all this frivolous posturing. They are just tying up your time and the court’s time, and for what?” he asked, rhetorically. “The money you should have received from the trust is being delayed by this crap as well.”

  They agreed with him and wanted everything to be over and done with. The stress was becoming a little too much.

  Allyssa headed into Portland for her long-delayed tests. She was staying at a hotel and worried about the possibility of running into the two brothers if they somehow found out she was in town. Portland was big enough that the odds were against her randomly running into the two men, but she still worried and had to work hard to concentrate on her hands-on tests. She passed the tests with flying colors! Fortunately, a lot of the exam procedures were simply reviews of the practical work she did with her wife in the clinic on the ranch. She was now a fully certified veterinarian technician, so ironically, she was now permitted to do the work she’d already been performing on the ranch for years.

  In June, Fey and Allyssa carried the various picture frames into the courthouse. They had been carefully wrapped in bubble wrap by Allyssa, who lovingly taped it around the frames and across the glass. Both women appeared in court wearing their best outfits. Their clothes were still a bit tight, but they were more annoyed that Traci and Sean had to make an appearance in court. The children were expected to testify who they would prefer to live with. Sean was of an age where his opinion could influence the court, but Traci was too young, or so Henry had advised them, so the need for her presence was confusing. They’d had to leave the babies with Juanita, calling in two of the 4-H moms to help her babysit while they went to court.

  “Why are Peter and Trever doing this?” Traci asked, scared they might be awarded custody of her and Sean. They were mean and cruel, and she was genuinely frightened of them.

  “Because they’re jerks,” Sean told her from his place next to her in the back row of the car. The three babies’ car seats took up the entire middle row, so the older children were sitting way in the third row of the Suburban.

  “Maybe they genuinely want you to live with them, so they can care for you,” Allyssa said, trying to be fair. She got a look from Fey that said no one believed that, not even her, although she’d said it. Fey and Allyssa knew this court case was all about money, however little there was, and they knew there would always be speculation that there was more.

  Fey and Allyssa had to testify that an adult was always in attendance to the two minors, and they had to show that they were financially able to support her brother and sister. Sean testified that he preferred to live at the ranch. “We visited the ranch whenever Dad could talk Mom into letting us go,” he told the court.

  “Your mother didn’t want you to visit the ranch?”

  “Mom didn’t want us going anywhere that she didn’t want,” he said in return, not sure how to phrase that. His voice cracked in the middle, and he was embarrassed. His voice was cracking a lot lately, but Fey had explained that was normal.

  “Why didn’t your mother want you to go to the ranch? Wasn’t that where your father was raised?” the judge asked, curious about this odd, little family. Fiona and Allyssa were sitting on one side with their lawyer Henry, and Traci was sitting behind them in case they wanted to ask her any questions. Trever and Peter sat on the other side with their lawyer, a rather nasty-looking woman, who kept glancing over at the two women distastefully.

  “Because she didn’t like Fey,” he admitted, looking at his sister with a sorrowful look.

  “Why didn’t your mother like your sister?” the opposing lawyer asked, jumping on the line of questioning she had hoped to introduce. “Was it because your sister is a lesbian?” she said the word as distastefully as possible.

  “Objection,” Henry stated, rising slightly. “The State of Oregon has recognized same-sex marriage,” he pointed out.

  The judge sustained Henry’s objection and allowed the questioning to continue in a different vein.

  Sean was honest and said how much he loved living there. He liked that it was where his father had grown up, and he hoped he’d be as good a man as his father. Fey smiled proudly at her brother. While she knew her father had been weak, he had been a good father to his children when he could. If not for Rosemary, these two children wouldn’t exist, but if not for Rosemary, the two children might have had a better life. She knew she would have had a better life if Rosemary had never interfered.

  “Does it bother you that your sister inherited your father’s ranch instead of you?”

  “No,” he answered, shaking his head. “It bothered Mom though.”

  “Don’t you think it should have gone to your father?”

  “No, Dad didn’t want it and Fey was raised there, so it should go to her.” He said it with absolute conviction, and while the lawyer wanted to pursue it further, she could tell that the judge was becoming annoyed with her and dropped it. As she brought up the subject of the claims and Fiona Herriot’s rights to the ranch, they brought forth the various framed documents.

  “We should take these documents out of their frames to ascertain their authenticity,” the lawyer stated but Henry objected.

  “These are fragile documents from the 1840s, and they will deteriorate from the oils on our hands and from the air if they are handled too much,” he pointed out. The judge agreed. He was fascinated by the framed documents, which he examined closely. He was in a quandary as to why the various lawsuits had landed on his docket. From what he could see, they had no merit, but he had to go through all the legal motions. Eventually, he ruled in Fey and Allyssa’s favor, ordering that Peter and Trever pay all court costs and Henry’s fees. The two men were furious, and they glared at the two women across the court.

  “I didn’t like that,” Allyssa whispered with trepidation, still feeling the brothers’ looks on the back of her neck. The men had looked positively murderous, and she wondered that Henry hadn’t brought up his suspicions that the two men had somehow gotten to Keith or mentioned that Rosemary’s death was still being investigated as a homicide.

  “Without proof, we have no legal footing, and it’s just supposition,” Henry told her when she asked. “Now, remember to keep your guns out of sight for a while,” he warned her since the opposing attorney had brought up that both Fey and Allyssa wore guns. He smiled as he said it, but it was a serious warning.

  “Should we keep our guns out of sig
ht because of the kids,” Fey murmured, so Traci and Sean wouldn’t hear her, “or within reach because of those two snakes?”

  “Right,” Henry replied, not committing to either statement but sending her a look of warning. “In the meantime, I’ll file to get the monies released from your father’s estate. We can get that settled now that we have this.” He held up the paperwork the clerk of the court had handed him after the judge had signed off on it.

  It was as they were getting in the SUV that Fey and Allyssa distinctly heard someone yell, “DYKE!” They looked around but couldn’t see who had said it. They exchanged looks with each other and the kids as they entered the vehicle.

  They took the kids out to a fast food restaurant, a rare occurrence with all that went on at the ranch but hurried home after that, not willing to leave the babies alone with their friends and housekeeper any longer than they had to.

  “What’s a dyke?” Traci asked them as they waited for their food, proving she had heard the slur.

  “It’s a not very nice word for a lesbian,” her older sister told her. “Just ignore it. I’m sure it won’t be the last time you hear it about me.”

  “That was for you?” she asked, looking concerned.

  “Probably.” Fey exchanged a look with her wife and then smiled at the waitress as she put their plates down on the table.

  “Is there a lot of money in the trust fund?” Sean asked as he bit into his French fries.

  Fey shook her head. “Not really. Dad just wanted to make sure you had enough money to go to college without having to worry about loans.”

  “What if I don’t want to go to college?”