Jasmine passed quickly through the doors of the Olde Saloon—as good a name as was needed for what was, after all, the only watering hole in Dead Paul's Drop. The business had been her father's and, by a stroke of fate or fortune, her father had died shortly before her sixteenth birthday. That had left her Aunt Grace in temporary guardianship until Jasmine herself celebrated her eighteenth summer of running barefooted through the mud and the sand like any of the boys, for—unlike her father, and apparently his father before him—Aunt Grace didn't see a problem with a girl inheriting property.
I'm not sure if I ought to thank her for that, or not. Idle thoughts entered her mind as she laid her hand upon the worn old wood of the swinging doors, just in time to stop them from slapping against her backside. It was a complicated question, whether or not she was really happy here, whether or not her pig-stubborn father or iron-willed aunt had had her better interests at heart in the end, and just how deliberate they were anyway.
Reflow text when sidebars are open.
