Home is where the heart is [Rip Wheeler]

4

A week had passed by since Briar found out the secret of how her dad wasn't who she had known him to be. A week of silence towards her siblings. A week of passive aggressive cold shoulder towards Lee. A week of staying the bunk house with the wrangler's. A week of feeling totally and completely alone.

"I understand that you're not talking to your sibling's but you haven't said more than two words to me in a week." Rip said from beside Briar as the pair moved cattle from one pasture to the next. She turned her head and glared at him.

He was right she hadn't talked to him but it was mostly because she didn't know what to say. She didn't know if he knew and just hadn't told her. She didn't trust herself anymore and she honestly didn't trust anyone else either. Lloyd had been there the longest. He most likely knew but when she asked him he didn't say a word one way or another. And obviously Lee, Beth and Jamie knew so that left her and maybe Kacey who didn't know.

"I don't know what you want me to say?" Briar gave a passive shrug.

"I don't care. Just talk to me. Scream at me if ya want but the silence is killin me."

Briar just nodded her head as she moved a stray cow into the appropriate pasture. She rode Spartan, a six year old all black gelding who stood at sixteen hands high, back towards the main part of the ranch. She dismounted and walked him into the barn. She took off his bridle and replaced it with a halter. Hooking him to the cross ties, she removed the saddle and saddle pad. Briar brushed him out and then took some peppermints from a hide-e-hole. She unhooked the cross ties from his halter, replacing them with a lead rope instead. She showed him the peppermint and had him stretch for it. Once that was done she let him out to pasture.

She sighed, running a hand over her face. She needed to decide what she was gonna do about the anger she felt. She couldn't ignore her family forever. Hell they lived on the same ranch and in the same house. Briar walked up to the main house and walked in. She hung her hat and her coat on the rack by the door, before she kicked off her boots and walked into the kitchen.

-

A while later she had dinner in the oven and decided she would call Kacey so she might get his take on it.

"Hello who is this?"

A women picked up the phone, much to Briar's surprise.

"Hi is Kacey Dutton there?"

"This is his wife, Monica, may I help you?"

Briar's eyes felt huge as she glared at a spot on the table. She had known Kacey had gotten a women pregnant but she hadn't know he had married her.

"Hello?" The women asked again.

"Oh I'm sorry I zoned out for a second there. My name's Briar, I'm Kacey's little sister. I was hoping he'd be able to talk for a bit." Briar tried her damndest to sound cheerful even though all she really wanted was to cry. She had missed so much being gone like she was.

"Who is it?" She heard distantly from the other line. Before the phone was shuffled around.

"Your sister." She heard the women tell someone.

Kacey looked at his wife surprised when he heard a kitchen timer going off and wood scraping on wood. Then heard the creak of a weathered floor. Who ever it was, was headed into the kitchen at his father's house.

"Beth?" Kacey asked into the phone.

"Wow, I'm wounded. I can't believe you thought Beth would cook for herself let alone call you when she didn't know what the fuck she was gonna do."

"Damn my bad Hopper. I thought you were in Dallas."

"More like Dallas was in me." Briar mumbled as she looked in the oven, moving the pan over so was able to fit a pan of funeral potatoes beside the chicken. "Anyways I am fixin dinner and I was wantin to know if you knew that Lee is my biological father?"