The Perfect Cast Read online

  The Perfect Cast

  By:

  T.K. Chapin

  www.tkchapin.com

  Copyright © 2015 T.K. Chapin All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.

  Claim a free gift from T.K. Chapin at the end of this book!

  Version 2015.04.14

  ISBN: 1511718226

  ISBN-13: 978-1511718226

  Dedicated to my loving wife.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 ~ Jess

  Chapter 2 ~ Roy

  Chapter 3 ~ Jess

  Chapter 4 ~ Roy

  Chapter 5 ~ Jess

  Chapter 6 ~ Roy

  Chapter 7 ~ Jess

  Chapter 8 ~ Roy

  Chapter 9 ~ Jess

  Chapter 10 ~ Roy

  Chapter 11 ~ Jess

  Chapter 12 ~ Roy

  Chapter 13 ~ Jess

  Chapter 14 ~ Roy

  Chapter 15 ~ Jess

  Chapter 16 ~ Levi

  Chapter 17 ~ Jess

  Chapter 18 ~ Roy

  Chapter 19 ~ Levi

  Chapter 20 ~ Jess

  Chapter 21 ~ Levi

  Chapter 22 ~ Jess

  Chapter 23 ~ Levi

  Chapter 24 ~ Roy

  Chapter 25 ~ Jess

  Chapter 26 ~ Roy

  Chapter 27 ~ Levi

  Chapter 28 ~ Jess

  Chapter 29 ~ Levi

  Chapter 30 ~ Jess

  Chapter 31 ~ Roy

  Chapter 32 ~ Levi

  Chapter 33 ~ Roy

  Chapter 34 ~ Levi

  Chapter 35 ~ Jess

  Chapter 36 ~ Levi

  Chapter 37 ~ Jess

  Chapter 38 ~ Roy

  Chapter 39 ~ Jess

  Chapter 40 ~ Roy

  Chapter 41 ~ Jess

  Chapter 42 ~ Levi

  Chapter 43 ~ Jess

  Chapter 44 ~ Roy

  Chapter 45 ~ Jess

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek

  Other Books

  Bonus

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Each of us has moments of impact in life. Sometimes it’s in the form of love, and sometimes in the form of sadness. It is in these times that our world changes forever. They shape us, they define us, and they transform us from the people we once were into the people we now are.

  The summer before my senior year of High School is one that will live with me forever. My parents’ relationship was on the rocks, my brother was more annoying than ever, and I was forced to leave the world I loved and cared about in Seattle. A summer of change, a summer of growth, and a summer I’ll never forget.

  Chapter 1 ~ Jess

  Jess leaned her head against the passenger side window as she stared out into the endless fields of wheat and corn. She felt like an alien in a foreign land, as it looked nothing like the comfort of her home back in Seattle.

  She was convinced her friends were lucky to not have a mother who insisted on whisking them away to spend the entirety of their summer out in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Washington. She would have been fine with a weekend visit, but the entire summer at grandpa’s? That was a bit uncalled for, and downright wrong. Her mother said the trip was so Jess and her brother Henry could spend time with her grandpa Roy, but Jess had no interest in doing any such thing.

  On the car ride to grandpa’s farm to be dropped off and abandoned, Jess became increasingly annoyed with her mother. Continually, her mother would glance over at Jess looking for conversation. Ignoring her mom’s attempts to make eye contact with her, Jess kept her eyes locked and staring out the window. Every minute, and every second of the car ride, Jess spent wishing the summer away.

  After her mother took the exit off the freeway that led out to the farm, a loud pop came from the driver side tire and brought the car to a grinding halt. Her mom was flustered, and quickly got out of the car to investigate the damage. Henry, Jess’s obnoxious and know-it-all ten-year-old brother, leaned between the seats and glanced out the windshield at their mom.

  “Stop being so annoying,” Jess said, pushing his face back between the seats. He sat back and then began to reach for the door. Jess looked back at him and asked, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to help mom.”

  “Ha. You can’t help her; you don’t know how to change a tire.”

  “Well, I am going to try.” Henry climbed out of the car and shut it forcefully. Jess didn’t want this summer to exist and it hadn’t even yet begun. If only she could fast forward, and her senior year of High School could start, she’d be happy. But that wasn’t the case; there was no remote control for her life. Instead, the next two and half months were going to consist of being stuck out on a smelly farm with Henry and her grandpa. She couldn’t stand more than a few minutes with her brother, and being stuck in a house with no cable and him? That was a surefire sign that one of them wasn’t making it home alive. Watching her mother stare blankly at the car, unsure of what to do, Jess laughed a little to herself. If you wouldn’t have left Dad, you would have avoided this predicament. Her dad knew how to fix everything. Whether it was a flat tire, a problematic science project or her fishing pole, her dad was always there for her no matter what. That was up until her mother walked out on him, and screwed everybody’s life up. Now he’s gone and out of the country on a three month hiatus. Jess figured he had a broken heart and just needed the time away to process her mom leaving him in the dust.

  Henry stood outside the car next to his mother, looking intently at the tire. Accidently catching eye contact with her mother, Jess rolled her eyes. Henry had been trying to take over as the man of the house ever since the split. It was cute at first, even to Jess, but his rule of male superiority became rather old quickly when Henry began telling Jess not to speak to her mother harshly and to pick up her dirty laundry. Taking the opportunity to cut into her mom, Jess rolled down her window, “Why don’t you call Grandpa? Oh that’s right… he’s probably outside and doesn’t have a cell phone… but even if he did, he wouldn’t have reception.”

  “Don’t start with me Jess,” her mother scowled at her. She watched as her mother turned away from the car and spotted a rickety, broken down general store just up the road.

  Her mom began to walk along the side of the road with Henry. Jess didn’t care that she wasn’t invited on the family trek along the road. It was far too hot to walk anywhere, plus she preferred the coolness of the air conditioning. She wanted to enjoy the small luxury of air conditioning before getting to her grandpa’s, where she knew there was sure to be nothing outside of box fans.

  Jess pulled her pair of ear buds out from the front pouch of her backpack and plugged them into her phone. Tapping into her music as she put the ear buds in, she set the playlist to shuffle. Staring back out her window, she noticed a cow feeding on a pile of hay through the pine trees, just over the other side of a barbed wire fence. I really am in the middle of nowhere.

  Chapter 2 ~ Roy

  The blistering hot June sun shone brightly through the upper side of the barn and through the loft’s open doorway, illuminating the dust and alfalfa particles that were floating around in the air. Sitting on a hay bale in the upper loft of the barn, Roy watched
as his nineteen-year-old farmhand Levi retrieved each bale of hay from the conveyor that sat at the loft’s doorway. Each bale of alfalfa weighed roughly ninety pounds; it was a bit heavier than the rest of the grass hay bales that were stored in the barn that year. Roy enjoyed watching his farmhand work. He felt that if he watched him enough, he might be able to rekindle some of the strength that he used to have in his youth.

  While Roy was merely watching, that didn’t protect him from the loft’s warmth, and sweat quickly began to bead on his forehead. Reaching for his handkerchief from his back pocket, he brought it to his forehead and dabbed the sweat. Roy appreciated the help of Levi for the past year. Whether it was feeding and watering the cattle, fixing fences out in the fields, or shooting the coyotes that would come down from the hill and attack the cows, Levi was always there and always helping. He was the son of Floyd Nortaggen, the man who ran the dairy farm just a few miles up the road. If it wasn’t for Levi, Roy suspected he would have been forced to give up his farm and move into a retirement home. Roy knew retirement homes were places where people went to die, and he just wasn’t ready to die. And he didn’t want to die in a building full of people that he didn’t know; he wanted to die out on his farm, where he always felt he belonged.

  “Before too long, I’ll need you to get up on the roof and get those shingles replaced. I’m afraid one good storm coming through this summer could ruin the hay.”

  Levi glanced up at the roof as he sat on the final bale of hay he had stacked. Wiping away the sweat from his brow with his sleeve, he looked over to Roy. “I’m sure I could do that. How old are the shingles?”

  A deep smile set into Roy’s face as he thought about when he and his father had built the barn back when he was just a boy. “It’s been forty years now.” His father had always taken a fancy to his older brother, but when his brother had gone away on a mission trip for the summer, his dad had relied on Roy for help with constructing the barn. Delighted, he’d spent the summer toiling in the heat with his dad. He helped lay the foundation, paint the barn and even helped put on the roof. Through sharing the heat of summer and sips of lemonade that his mother would bring out to them, Roy and his father grew close, and remained that way until his father’s death later in life.

  “Forty years is a while… my dad re-shingled his barn after twenty.”

  “Shingles usually last between twenty and thirty years.” Roy paused to let out a short laugh, “I’ve been pushing it for ten. Really should have done it last summer when I first started seeing the leaks, but I hadn’t the strength and was still too stubborn to accept your help around here.”

  “I imagine it’s quite difficult to admit needing help. I don’t envy growing old, no offense.”

  “None taken,” Roy replied glancing over his shoulder at the sound of a car coming up the driveway over the bridge. “I believe my grandchildren have arrived.”

  “I’ll be on my way then, I don’t want to keep you, and it seems to me we are done here.”

  “Thank you for the help today. I’ll write your check, but first get the hay conveyor equipment put away. Just come inside the farmhouse when you’re done.”

  Roy climbed down the ladder and Levi followed behind him. As Roy exited the barn doors, he could see his daughter faintly behind the reflection of the sun off the windshield of her silver Prius. Love overcame him as he made eye contact with her. His daughter was the apple of his eye, and he felt she was the only thing he had done right in all the years of his life on earth. He’d never admit it to anyone out loud, but Tiff was his favorite child. She was the first-born and held a special place in his heart. The other kids gravitated more to their mother anyway; Tiffany and he were always close.

  Parking in front of the garage that matched the paint of the barn, red with white trim, His daughter Tiffany stepped out from the driver side door and smiled at him. Hurrying her steps through the gravel, she ran up to her dad and hugged him as she let out what seemed to be a sigh of relief.

  Watching over her shoulder as Jess got out of the car, Roy saw her slam the door. He suspected the drive hadn’t gone that well for the three of them, but did the courtesy of asking without assuming. “How was the drive?”

  “You don’t want to ask…” she replied, glancing back at Jess as her daughter lingered near the corner of the garage.

  Roy smiled. “I have a fresh batch of lemonade inside,” he said, trying to lighten the tension he could sense. Seeing Henry was still in the backseat fiddling with something, Roy went over to one of the back doors and opened the door.

  “Hi Grandpa,” Henry said looking up at him.

  Leaning his head into the car, Roy smiled. “I’m looking for Henry, have you seen him? Because there’s no way you are Henry! He’s just a little guy.” Roy used his hand to show how tall Henry should be and continued, “About this tall, if my memory serves me correctly.”

  Henry laughed. “Stop Grandpa! It’s me, I’m Henry!”

  “I know… I’m just playing with you, kiddo! I haven’t seen you in years! You’ve grown like a weed! Give your ol’ Grandpa a hug!” Henry dropped his tablet on the seat and climbed over a suitcase of Jess’s to embrace his grandpa in a warm hug.

  “Can we go fishing Grandpa? Can we go today?”

  Roy laughed as he stood upright. “Maybe tomorrow. The day is going to be over soon and I’d like to visit with your mother some.”

  Henry dipped his chin to his chest as he sighed. “Okay.” Reaching into the back trunk area of the car, Henry grabbed his backpack and then scooted off his seat and out from the car. Just then, Jess let out a screech, which directed everyone’s attention over to her at the garage.

  “A mouse, are you kidding me?” With a look of disgust, she stomped off around Levi’s truck, and down the sidewalk that led up to the farmhouse.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Tiffany asked, which caused Jess to stop in her tracks. She turned around and put her hand over her brow to shield the sun.

  “What, mom?”

  “Your suitcases… maybe?” Tiffany replied with a sharp tone.

  Roy placed a hand on Tiffany’s shoulder. “That’s okay. Henry and I can get them.”

  “No. Jess needs to get them.” Roy could tell that his daughter was attempting to draw a line in the sand. A line that Roy and his late wife Lucille had drawn many times with her and the kids.

  “Really, Mom?” Jess asked, placing a hand on her hip. “Those suitcases are heavy; the men should carry them. Grandpa is right.”

  Henry tugged on his mother’s shirt corner. “I think you should let this one go, Mother.” He smiled and nodded to Roy. “Grandpa and I have it.”

  Tiffany shook her head and turned away from Jess as she went to the back of the car. “She’s so difficult, Dad. I hate it,” Tiffany said slapping the trunk. “She doesn’t understand how life really works.”

  “Winnie,” Roy replied. “Pick your battles.” The nickname Winnie came from when she was three years old. She would wake up in the middle of the night, push a chair up to the pantry and sneak the honey back into her bedroom. On several occasions, they would awaken the next day to find her snuggling an empty bottle of honey underneath her covers.

  “I know. It’s just hard sometimes, because everything is a battle with her lately.”

  “She’ll come around. You just have to give her some time to process everything.”

  Chapter 3 ~ Jess

  Kicking her shoes off on the front patio, Jess noticed a hummingbird feeder hanging from the roof’s corner. A small bird was zipping around the feeder frantically. She smiled as she thought of her friend Troy, back in Seattle. He was a boxer and often referred to himself as the hummingbird.

  Entering into the farmhouse, Jess glanced around and saw that nothing had changed since she had been there five years ago. The same two beige couches with the squiggly designs on the fabric sat in the living room, one couch on each side. The same pictures of all the family hung behind the television. A
nd even the picture of her grandmother, Lucille, which sat on the mantle above the fireplace, right between the wooden praying hands and the shelf clock. Everything was the same.

  Walking up to the picture of her grandma, she looked at it longingly. Why can’t mom be like you were, Grandma?

  Hearing Henry and the rest just outside on the patio, Jess quickly made her way across the living room, through the dining room and through the door leading up the stairwell to her room she knew she’d be staying in. The wood paneling on both sides of the hallway leading upstairs made her laugh. He has the money from Grandma’s life insurance, yet he updates nothing. It was so old and outdated, but then again, everything was in the house.

  Lying down on the daybed that was pushed up against the lone window in the room, she turned on her side and peered out the window. Pushing the curtain back, she could see down the hillside and a faint view through the trees of the creek. She couldn’t help but recall playing in it with Henry and all her cousins, years ago.