Chapter 3 – The Argument at the Hospital
The conflict reached its most damaging point in a hospital hallway, six weeks before Henry’s death, during a heated argument neither Colin nor Audrey managed to keep quiet enough to avoid Henry overhearing from his room.
“You want the ranch because you’re desperate,” Audrey said, her composed professional demeanor finally cracking under months of accumulated strain. “I want it because I actually understand how to run a business properly, unlike you, who couldn’t even hold onto a job you’d had for nineteen years.”
“That layoff wasn’t my fault,” Colin said, his voice rising despite his awareness of where they were standing. “The entire industry collapsed. You have no idea what that’s actually like, sitting in your stable Dallas office judging me for something completely outside my control.”
“I have plenty of idea what it’s like to actually earn financial stability instead of expecting it to be handed to me through an inheritance,” Audrey shot back, the words landing with a cruelty neither of them fully intended but neither immediately walked back either.
Henry, listening from his hospital bed, heard considerably more of the exchange than either of his children realized, the argument confirming a fear he’d been quietly developing for months about what the ranch’s inheritance might do to the relationship between his only two children once he was no longer present to mediate it.
He made a decision that night, alone in his hospital room, that would shape the rest of the family’s story far more than either Colin or Audrey could have anticipated.
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