Chapter 2: Chapter 2: The Inheritance

I spend the rest of the morning avoiding people, which in a small town like Fredericksburg is about as easy as avoiding the sun. I drive out to the far end of the ranch, past the old pecan grove, past the crumbling stone wall that marks the boundary of the original Cooper homestead—the land my great-great-great-granddaddy Ezekiel Cooper claimed back in 1847 when he walked here from Tennessee with nothing but a horse, a rifle, and what Granddaddy calls "more grit than sense." I park under a live oak that's older than Texas itself and kill the engine. The silence hits me like a wave—just wind through the grass, the distant call of a red-tailed hawk, and the soft hum of cicadas. This is my favorite spot on the whole ranch—where the Hill Country opens up and you can see for miles. Rolling hills of live oak and cedar, fields that go golden in summer, red dirt that stains everything it touches. Cooper land. My land. Except it's not, is it? Not really. I don't own a square inch of this property. I live in a trailer on the back forty by the grace of my granddaddy and the pity of my family. My phone buzzes. An unknown number. Against my better judgment, I play the voicemail. "Good morning, Ms. Cooper. This is Marcus Webb with Mercer Development Group. I'm following up regarding an exciting opportunity for your family's property—" I delete it. Mercer Development Group. They've been calling me for two weeks now, which is weird because I'm not exactly the decision-maker in this family. Unless they already got to somebody. Unless the reason Granddaddy called this meeting is because Mercer got to somebody first. I look out at the land. The cedar breaks, the limestone outcroppings, the creek…