Free Baseball and Other Lessons (Devil's Ranch Book 2) by Aubrey Gross Page A

Mom, I have it ready. But I really don’t have any more room for more MREs. Or anything else, really. This house is kind of small, remember?”
    “Oh, pshaw. You have plenty of room. What about your spare bedroom? No one’s in it, so you might as well use it for your preps.”
    Jenn closed her eyes and let her head fall to the desk. “Mom, seriously, I know you care about me and that’s why you do this stuff, but you know I’m not a prepper nor will I ever be one.”
    Rebecca sniffed and continued on with her usual blithe attitude. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jennifer, it’s not like it’s a big deal. It never hurts to be prepared, and you never know when the shit will hit the fan.”
    “Mom, the only shit hitting a fan is in the monkey pen at the zoo.”
    “Do they have fans in the monkey pen at the zoo?”
    Oh, for crying out loud. “I don’t know, Mom. Why don’t you have Kyle research that for his next paper that’s due?”
    “Oh! That’s a wonderful idea! And I can have him further research primate feces, diseases and how to prepare for them. I’m going to go right now and get him to get right on that one.”
    Great. Now her youngest brother (and Lacey’s twin) was going to want to kill her. Knowing there was no convincing her mom otherwise, though, Jenn followed the advice of the girls from Frozen and just let it go. “That’s great, Mom. I’ll talk to you later. Love you. Bye.”
    “Love you too, dear.”
    Jenn quickly tapped “end” before her mother could come up with any other ways to drive her nuts today. Knowing Reece, her other brother, was probably next on Rebecca’s to-call list, Jenn picked up her phone and shot him a quick text.
    Jenn: Heads up. Mom alert. Dad’s using a chainsaw on the truck battery and she’s making Lacey stir shit for a science project.
    It took all of five seconds for Reece to text her back.
    Reece: Seriously? If Lacey’s stirring shit, what’s Kyle doing?
    Jenn: Researching monkey shit and diseases.
    Reece: I’m so glad I’m getting my MBA.
    Jenn: I’m so glad they pulled this crap after we were eighteen.
    Reece was eight years her junior, and had just graduated from high school when their parents decided to sell their house in Del Rio, buy some land out in Terrell County close to Sanderson and build the ultimate prepper’s paradise. Unfortunately their two younger siblings weren’t old enough to be on their own yet, and had been dragged out of Del Rio with Rebecca and Richard McDonnell.
    The first year was spent building what Jenn could only describe as a west Texas Doomsday fortress. While the idea of using shipping containers to build a house was a bit weird, she had to admit that they’d actually done a great job and had truly created a home out there. A heavily armed and booby-trapped home, but whatever.
    Once the shipping containers had been properly assembled, the next phase had been what Rebecca called their “preps.” Jenn had asked as few questions as possible—she’d had a bit of a hard time wrapping her brain around her parents’ sudden turn into crazy land—but one Sunday afternoon curiosity had gotten the best of her and she’d found herself watching a marathon of Doomsday Preppers .
    She was pretty sure her parents hadn’t gone that far off the rails, but she wasn’t entirely sure so she hadn’t asked any questions. Besides, after watching that marathon she’d come to the conclusion that it was kind of silly to prep for something as specific as an EMP, a New Madrid Earthquake or a massive polar shift. If you were going to prep for the end of the world as we know it, shouldn’t you play some REM and prepare for just a general collapse of society? That made a lot more sense to her than preparing for something that had a one in a bazillion chance of happening.
    So she hadn’t asked any questions, and had basically just nodded and smiled as her parents had talked about their preps, their storage container house, and the arsenal