Page 21 - Homestead By Ann Newhouse

“No, I was just hoping to come across a nice town to settle in. My parents are passed, and I have no siblings, that I know off,” I tried to sound light-hearted, and mature, although, I was feeling a little fragile.
“Well you may have just found a place to stay, although it’s not a town, but a small settlement we call the Homestead that my father has built up over many years. It will be his choice if you can stay.” Sofie gathered up the bowl and went to the sink to wash it. I got a chance to study her . . . she was tall and slim, from what I could see under her open white coat. She wore white t-shirt teamed with a pair of blue cut-off jeans. Her waist-length blonde, plaited hair hung down her back. A very confident young woman.
Sofie disturbed my thoughts . . . “Coffee?” . . . she asked, handing me a tin mug, piping hot.
“Thank you, Ma’am,” I replied, listening to her conversation on how the ‘Homestead’ had come about. She told me she was born in New York, twenty- three years ago. Her father and mother met in medical college there and married. Her mother was a nurse, and her father had qualified as a surgeon. Her brother was born soon after and was now twenty-one. From what she could remember, they’d had a good life in New York, but that had ended when her grandfather, not in the best of health, had requested that her father came home, with the family, to take over the family ranch in Texas. It was the place where her father had grown up and my grandparents lived. Sissy Tirrell (Sofie’s mother) had not been happy to leave New York, and there had been a cloud over her parent’s marriage from that day on. Just over a year after arriving, there was a very bad fire at the ranch.
The fire had a devastating effect on the family and the twenty ranch hands who had worked there. The ranch was completely destroyed and everything on it. The worst part was, Sophie’s mother, and both her grandparents, had, tragically, lost their lives. It had happened in the early hours of the morning. John had managed to save his children.
Not long after the funerals, John had packed up what was left and, taking his children and as many of the ranch hands who wanted to follow, he set off on a quest, with the promise he would build a safe settlement for them all with what he could sell and salvage from the fire. That is how they ended up here, and they named it the Homestead.
I was lost for words by the time Sofie finished her sad story. I was looking forward to meeting this giant of a man. I hoped he would like me enough to allow me to stay and give me a chance to thank them for saving me from the buzzards. My eyes were beginning to close as the light was throwing shadows on the ceiling and walls.