Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
This bedroom has been mine since the day I was born. Second floor, east wing. From my vantage point, the Ashby mansion looms over our expansive property. Three stories of reclaimed wood and glass, every beam hand-selected by my great-grandfather, every window positioned to frame the mountains like they belong to us.
Which they kinda do. Everything here belongs to us.
Forty-seven thousand acres of Montana that answers only to my last name.
The pastures stretch toward the horizon, dotted with Black Angus cattle that have better nutrition than ninety-nine percent of the humans on this planet.
The dark brown fences cut shadows through green fields and the barn stands in a magnificent contrast of red paint weathered to rusty-rose. The doors alone tell a story. Tall and wide, with more windows than most homes, you can drive a wagon right in to the fifteen thousand square feet our horses call home.
My first pony lived in the third stall. A dappled gray named Moonstone. My cart with the yellow wheels is still hanging from the rafters.
The whole fuckin’ place feels like a museum with me, and my life, as the centerpiece. Choreographed moments, carefully curated for public display.
There are twenty-seven cameras in the barn. Every moment.
Even to this day, the cameras still function, though Mama has been gone seven years already.
I've been photographed in this barn close to seventy-thousand times.
Even so, the barn was the beginning of my freedom. The moment I was allowed to ride Moonstone alone, I left the Ashby mansion. The backs of my ponies and horses through the years were just as public as any playhouse or stall—but ya see, to a child on a ranch, having a pony is much like having a car.
You can go anywhere.
All by yourself.
And I did.
Running away into the hills was the only way I got through my childhood under the lens of notoriety. Precious hours spent being myself. No perfect smiles. Just dirt under my nails and hay in my hair.
It was the only way I survived.
So I love the barn. But that’s not what I’m lookin’ at right now. It’s the white tent just to the right of the barn that has captured my attention. This tent swallows up everything else. Not really the size of it—though there are three hundred chairs perfectly positioned around tables draped in linen. It’s the… gravitas of the whole thing. There are crystal chandeliers hanging from canvas peaks and the dozens of waitstaff move like ants between the kitchen and the lawn in their black and white uniforms.
My engagement party.
A real Ashby production sponsored by “Marry Respectable”.
The kind of event that gets a twelve-page spread in Vogue.
The kind of party where people fly in on private jets just to say they were there.
In the glass, I check my outfit. Smoothing my hands down my cream pencil skirt as the fluttery blouse with its tangerine floral pattern catches the last light. Lucchese boots—off-white with hand-stitched detail—peek out beneath the hem of my skirt. I’m not sure everyone would agree that cowboy boots and pencil skirts go together, but these boots were made to last, unlike most things in my life.
Turning from the window, I face the wall of photographs. My whole life, documented frame by frame. Baby Savannah in a sunbeam. Toddler Savannah with cake-smeared cheeks. Teenage Savannah on horseback, long blonde hair streaming out behind her like a banner.
All of them perfect.
None of them real.
Mama's work. Eleanor Ashby's greatest creation.
Me.
It’s funny, because I miss her with an ache that feels like hunger, but I hate her with a clarity that rings like crystal. In the same moment, I miss her again because grief isn't linear and neither is love.
"There you are." Colt leans in the doorway, dressed in a tailored suit that makes his shoulders look broad and strong. My brother. Only a year older. The only one who knows what it was like to grow up as Eleanor's second-favorite project.
"You look beautiful," he says, stepping into the room. His eyes—a dark and deep Ashby blue, just like mine, sweep over me with approval. "But people are starting to ask questions, Savannah. Marcus is looking for you."
Of course he is. Marcus is always lookin’ for me when I'm not where he expects me to be.
"I know Legion is out," I say, instead of answering. The words taste dangerous on my tongue. Like saying his name might summon him. If only. "I went by the trailer. It's empty."
Even Mercy is gone. That skinny little ghost of a girl with her too-old eyes and her too-young face. Gone with her brother, I suppose.
"So he came back and got her," Colt says, not asking. "Took her where?"
That's what I wanna know. Where did he go? Did he leave Drybone? Did he find someone while he was inside? Some woman who writes letters and waits for men who've done terrible things?