Big Sky Mountain(3)

CHAPTER SEVEN



THE MANSION ON Rodeo Road seemed strangely hollow the next morning when Kendra stepped through the front door, even though most of the original furniture remained and there were painters and other workers in various rooms throughout.

Standing in the enormous entryway, she tipped her head back and looked up at the exquisite ceiling, waited for a pang of regret—some kind of sadness was to be expected, she supposed, given that she’d spent part of her life here. She’d wanted so much to live in this house, long before she’d met and married Jeffrey Chamberlain, and after her marriage a number of dreams had lived—and died—right here in these rooms.

Somewhat surprisingly, what Kendra actually felt was a swell of relief, a healthy sense of letting go, of moving on, even of becoming some more complete and authentic version of herself.

There was comfort in that, even exhilaration.

When she’d first set foot in the place, as an awestruck little girl recently dumped on the porch of a rundown double-wide on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, Joslyn had been the one who lived here, along with her mom, Dana, and stepfather, Elliott, and, of course, Opal.

To Kendra the place had seemed like a castle, especially at Christmas, with Joslyn as resident princess.

During her childhood and her teens, the mere scope of that house had amazed Kendra—there were rooms not just for sleeping or eating or bathing, like in most homes, but ones set aside just for plants to grow in, or for playing cards and watching TV, or for reading books and doing homework or simply for sitting. Her grandmother’s trailer had closets, of course, but here there were dressing rooms, too, with glass cubicles for shoes and handbags, and what seemed like a million bathrooms. There had even been a nook—several times larger than the living room in the double-wide—set aside for wrapping gifts, tying them up with elaborate bows, decorating them with small ornaments or glittery artificial flowers.

To a child who was handed money and told to buy her own birthday and Christmas presents, the mere concept of such finery had been magical.

Alas Kendra had been quick enough to realize, once she became the mistress of this monstrosity of a place, that it was never the structure itself, or any of its fancy trappings, that she’d wanted.

Instead it was the family, the sense of fitting in and belonging somewhere, of being a valued part of something larger.

Seen from the outside, Joslyn’s life had certainly seemed happy in those early days, even enchanted, although a shattering scandal would eventually erupt, leaving everything in ruins.

Before her stepfather’s financial fall from grace, when he’d ripped off friends and strangers alike, Joslyn had had it all—and while some people had been jealous of her and thought of her as spoiled and self-centered, Kendra had seen a different side of Joslyn. She’d shown empathy for Kendra’s very different situation, but never pity, and she’d been willing to share her toys and her skates and, later on, her beautiful clothes.

More importantly, Joslyn had shared her mom and Opal and the little cocker spaniel, Spunky. Elliott Rossiter, the stepfather, had come and gone, funny and affable and generous, but always busy doing something important.

Stealing, as it turned out.

As an adult, Kendra had hoped to fulfill at least a part of her own dream with Jeffrey—the formation of a family—and in a roundabout way, she’d succeeded, because she had Madison now.

“Hello?” The voice startled Kendra out of her musings, even though she’d known she wasn’t alone, having seen the painters’ and cleaning service’s vans in the driveway.

Charlie Duke, who ran Duke’s Painting and Construction, stepped into view, clad in splotched overalls and wiping his hands on a shop rag. He grinned, showing the wide gap between his front teeth.

“Mornin’, Ms. Shepherd,” he said. “Here to see how the place is comin’ along, are you?”

Kendra smiled. “Something like that,” she replied. She’d known Charlie and his wife, Tina, for years and in the post office or the grocery store or over at the Butter Biscuit Café, either one of them would have addressed her simply as “Kendra,” but the Dukes were old-fashioned people. When Charlie was on the job, all exchanges were formal, and Kendra was “Ms. Shepherd.”

“We’ve about finished up in the main parlor,” Charlie told her, with quiet pride, leading the way along the corridor. He wore paper booties over his work boots, and his T-shirt had a hole in the right shoulder, only partially covered by one of his overall straps.

Kendra followed, like someone taking a tour of some grand residence in an unfamiliar country.

It was almost as though she’d never been inside the place before, which was crazy of course, but such was her mood—reflective, calmly detached.

The parlor had been her office, as well as the main reception area for Shepherd Real Estate, and what furniture she hadn’t moved over to the storefront was still in place, though covered by huge canvas tarps. The walls, formerly a soft shade of dusty rose, were now eggshell, neutral colors allegedly being the way to go when a house was on the market, in the hope of appealing to a broader spectrum of potential buyers.

Kendra did a quick walk-through—no small undertaking in a house the size of the average high school gymnasium—greeted Charlie’s two sons, who were busy painting the kitchen a very pale yellow, and various members of the cleaning team, perched stoutly on high ladders, polishing window glass, and then went back to her car, where Daisy waited patiently in the passenger seat. They’d dropped Madison off at preschool first thing, the two of them, and the next stop was Kendra’s office.

Upon arriving there, she took Daisy for a quick turn around the parking lot and then they both entered through the back way.

While Daisy explored the space—she’d been there before but, in her canine brain, there was always the exciting possibility that something had changed since the last visit—sniffing at silk plants and file cabinets and windowsills, Kendra booted up her computer, unlocked the front door and turned the Closed sign around to read Open.

She was in the tiny, closed-off kitchenette/storage room, starting a pot of coffee brewing, when she heard someone come in from the street. Daisy’s low, almost inquisitive growl made her hurry back to the main part of the office.

The man standing just inside the door was strikingly handsome, wearing the regulation jeans, boots, Western-cut shirt and hat, as most men in Parable did.

He removed the hat, acknowledging Kendra with a cordial nod, and grinned down at Daisy, who by then must have decided he didn’t represent a threat after all. Far from growling at him, she was nuzzling the hand he lowered for her to inspect.

It was a moment or two before Kendra placed the man—not a stranger, but not a resident of Parable proper, either. Of course, some new people could have moved into town while she was traveling, somehow managing to escape her notice, but that didn’t seem very likely. After all, it was her business to know what was going on in the community, who was moving in and who was moving out, and she’d kept pretty close tabs on such local doings, through Joslyn, even while she was away.

The visitor smiled and recognition finally clicked. His name was Walker Parrish, and he was a wealthy rancher with a place over near Three Trees. Besides raising prize beef, he bred bulls and broncos for rodeos, as well.

And he was brother of the almost-bride, Brylee Parrish, Hutch’s latest casualty-of-the-heart.

Surely, Kendra thought, a little desperately, he didn’t think she’d been a factor in the wedding-day breakup? Everyone knew she’d been involved with Hutch at one time, but that had been over for years.

Still, what other business could Parrish have with her? He already owned a major chunk of the county, so he probably wasn’t looking to acquire property, and since his place had been in his family for several generations, she couldn’t imagine him selling out, either.

She finally gathered enough presence of mind to smile back at him and ask, “What can I help you with today, Mr. Parrish?”

“Well,” he said with a grin that cocked up at one side, “you could start by calling me by my given name, Walker.”

Daisy, by that time, had dropped to her belly in what looked like a dog-swoon, her long nose resting atop Walker’s right boot, as though to pin him in place so she could stare up at him forever in uninterrupted adoration.

“All right,” Kendra said. “Walker it is, then.” As a somewhat flustered afterthought, she added, “I’m Kendra.”

Again, the grin flashed. “Yes,” he said. “I know who you are.” He cleared his throat. “I came by to ask you about the house on Rodeo Road. I understand you’re getting ready to sell it.”

Kendra nodded, surprised and hoping it didn’t show. Maybe she’d been wrong earlier, deciding that Walker hadn’t come to buy or sell real estate. “Yes,” she said, at last summoning up her manners and offering him one of the chairs reserved for customers while she moved behind her desk and sat down. “What would you like to know?”

Daisy sighed and lifted her head when Walker moved away, then wandered off to curl up in a corner of the office for a snooze.

Once Kendra was seated, Walker took a seat, too, letting his hat rest, crown to the cushion, on the chair nearest his. There was an attractive crease in his brown hair where the hatband had been, and it struck her, once again, how handsome he was—and how, oddly, his good looks didn’t move her at all.

She reviewed what she knew about him—which was almost nothing. She didn’t think he had a wife or even a girlfriend, but since the impression was mainly intuitive, she couldn’t be sure.

Wishful thinking? Perhaps. If he was single, the question was, why? Why was a man like Walker Parrish still running around loose? Evidently the good ones weren’t already taken.

“I guess I’d be interested in the price, to start,” Walker replied with a slight twinkle in his eyes. Had he guessed what she was thinking in regard to his marital status? The idea mortified her instantly.

Her tone was normal when she recited the astronomical numbers.

Walker didn’t flinch. “Reasonable,” he said.

The curiosity was just too much for Kendra. “You’re thinking of moving to Parable?” she asked.

He chuckled at that, shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of a friend of mine. She’s—in show business, divorced, and she has a couple of kids she’d like to raise in a small town. Wants a big place because she plans to set up her own recording studio, and between the band and the road crew and her household and office staff, she needs a lot of elbow room.”

Kendra couldn’t help being intrigued—and a little wary. It wasn’t uncommon for famous people to buy land around Parable, build houses even bigger than her own and landing strips for their private jets, and proceed to set up “sanctuaries” for exotic animals that didn’t mix all that well with the cattle, horses, sheep and chickens ordinary mortals tended to raise, among other visibly noble and charitable efforts. Generally these out-of-towners were friendly enough, and the locals were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but in time the newcomers always seemed to stir up trouble over water rights or bounties on wolves and coyotes or some such, alienate all their neighbors, and then simply move on to the next place, the next adventure.

It was as though their lives were movies and Parable was just another set, instead of a real place populated by real people.

“Anybody I might have heard of?” Kendra asked carefully.

Something in Walker’s heretofore open face closed up just slightly. “You’d know her name,” he replied. “She’s asked me not to mention it right away, that’s all. In case the whole thing comes to nothing.”

Kendra nodded; she’d had plenty of practice with this sort of thing. Most celebrities were private nearly to the point of paranoia, and not without reason. Besides the paparazzi, they had to worry about stalkers and kidnappers and worse. Safety—or the illusion of it—lay in secrecy, and safety was usually what made places like Parable and Three Trees attractive to them.

“Fair enough,” she said easily. “There are always a few upscale properties available in the county....” She could think of two that had been standing empty for a while; one had an Olympic-size indoor pool, and the other boasted a home theater with a rotating screen and plush seats for almost a hundred. The asking prices were in the mid-to-high seven-figure range, not surprisingly, but it didn’t sound as though that would strain Walker’s mysterious friend’s budget.

But Walker was already shaking his head. Being a local, he knew as well as anybody which properties were for sale, what kind of shape they were in, and approximately what they’d cost to buy, restore and maintain—and he’d asked specifically about the house on Rodeo Road. “She wants to be in town,” he said. Then a frown creased his tanned forehead. “Is there some reason why you don’t want to show your house just yet?”

“No, no,” Kendra said, “it’s nothing like that. We can head over there right now if you want. It’s just that—” She stopped in the middle of the sentence because she couldn’t think of a diplomatic way to go on.

“Show business people are sometimes unreliable,” Walker finished for her. The frown had smoothed away and he was grinning again. “I remember that rock band a few years back—the ones who built a pseudo haunted house, trashed the Grange Hall in Three Trees one night when they were partying and then nearly burned down a state forest, conducting some kind of crazy ritual. But it wouldn’t be fair to hold that against everybody who sings and plays a guitar to earn a paycheck, would it?”

Kendra let out a long breath, shook her head no. Walker was right—that wouldn’t be fair—and besides, hadn’t he said this woman wanted to raise her children in a small town? That gave her at least one thing in common with Kendra herself, and with most of her friends, too.

Parable had its problems, like any community, but the crime rate was low, people knew each other and down-to-earth values were still important there. In a very real sense, Parable was a family. And it was cousin to Three Trees.

The two towns were rivals in many ways, but when trouble came to one or the other, they stood up to it shoulder to shoulder.

“If you have time,” she reiterated, “I can show you through the house right now.”

“That would be great,” Walker said, rising from his chair. “I was there a few times when I was a kid, for parties and the like, but I don’t remember too many of the details.”

Kendra stood, too, simultaneously reaching for her purse and Daisy’s leash. She blushed a little, imagining the state of the Volvo’s interior. Pre-Madison and pre-dog, she’d kept her vehicles immaculate, as a courtesy to her clients, but now...

“I’m afraid my car needs vacuuming. The dog...”

Walker laughed. “Given my line of work,” he said, “I’m not squeamish about a little dog hair. Matter of fact, I have three of the motley critters myself. But I’ll take my own rig because I’ve got some other places to go to this morning, after we’re through at your place.”

Kendra nodded, clipped on Daisy’s leash and indicated that she’d be leaving by the back way, so she’d need to lock up behind Walker after he stepped outside.

“Meet you over there,” he said, and went out.

She nodded and locked the door between them.

Daisy paused for a pee break in the parking lot, and then Kendra and the retriever climbed into the Volvo and headed for Rodeo Road for the second time that morning.

* * *

“AT THIS RATE,” Hutch grumbled good-naturedly, surveying the meal Opal had just set before him—a late lunch or an early supper, depending on your perspective, “I’ll be too fat to ride in the rodeo, even though it’s only a few days away.”

Opal laughed. “Oh, stop your fussing and sit down and eat,” she ordered.

She’d been busy—had the ironing board set up in the middle of the kitchen, and she must have washed and pressed every shirt he owned because she’d evidently been hard at it all day. Except, of course, for when she took time out to build the meat loaf she’d just set down in front of him. The main dish was accompanied by creamed peas and mashed potatoes drowning in gravy; and just looking at all that food, woman-cooked and from scratch, too, made his mouth water and his stomach growl.

But he didn’t sit, because Opal was still standing.

With a little sigh and a sparkle of flattered comprehension in her eyes, she took the chair indicated and nodded for him to follow suit.

He did, but he was still uncomfortable. “Aren’t you going to join me?” he asked, troubled to notice that she hadn’t set a place for herself.

Opal’s chuckle was warm and vibrant, vaguely reminiscent of the gospel music she loved to belt out when she thought she was alone. “I can’t eat like a cowboy,” she answered. “Be the size of a house in no time if I do.”

Hutch was fresh out of self-restraint. He was simply too hungry, and the food looked and smelled too good. He took up his knife and fork and dug in. After complimenting Opal on her cooking—by comparison to years of eating his own burnt sacrifices or his dad’s similar efforts, it seemed miraculous they survived—he asked about Joslyn and the baby.

“They’re doing just fine,” Opal said with satisfaction. Her gaze followed his fork from his plate to his mouth and she smiled like she might be enjoying the meal vicariously. “Dana—that’s Joslyn’s mother, you remember—is a born grandma, and so is Callie Barlow. Between the two of them, Slade, Shea and of course the little mama herself, I was purely in the way.”

“I doubt that,” Hutch observed. Opal, it seemed to him, was more than an ordinary human being, she was a living archetype, a wise woman, an earth mother.

And damned if he wasn’t going all greeting-card philosophical in his old age.

“I like to go where I’m needed,” she said lightly.

Hutch chuckled. “So now I’m some kind of—case?” he asked, figuring he was probably that and a lot more.

Opal’s gaze softened. “Your mama was a good friend to me when I first came to Parable to work for old Mrs. Rossiter,” she said, very quietly. “Least I can do to return the favor is make sure her only boy doesn’t go around half-starved and looking like a homeless person.”

That time, he laughed. “I look like a homeless person?” he countered, at once amused and mildly indignant. Living on this same land all his life, like several generations of Carmodys before him, letting the dirt soak up his blood and sweat and tears, he figured he was about as unhomeless as it was possible to be.

“Not exactly,” Opal said thoughtfully, and in all seriousness, going by her expression and her tone. “A wifeless person would be a better way of putting it.”

Hutch sobered. Opal hadn’t said much about the near-miss wedding, but he knew it was on her mind. Hell, it was on everybody’s mind, and he wished something big would happen so people would have something else to obsess about.

An earthquake, maybe.

Possibly the Second Coming.

Or at least a local lottery winner.

“You figure a wife is the answer to all my problems?” he asked moderately, setting down his fork.

“Just most of them,” Opal clarified with a mischievous grin. “But here’s what I’m not saying, Hutch—I’m not saying that you should have gone ahead and married Brylee Parrish. Marriage is hard enough when both partners want it with all their hearts. When one doesn’t, there’s no making it work. So by my reckoning, you definitely did the right thing by putting a stop to things, although your timing could have been better.”

Hutch relaxed, picked up his fork again. “I tried to tell Brylee beforehand,” he said. He’d long since stopped explaining this to most people, but Opal wasn’t “most people.” “She wouldn’t listen.”

Opal sighed. “She’s headstrong, that girl,” she reflected. “Her and Walker’s mama was like that, you know. Folks used to say you could tell a Parrish, but you couldn’t tell them much.”

Hutch went right on eating. “Is there anybody within fifty miles of here whose mama you didn’t know?” he teased between bites. He was ravenous, he realized, and slowing down was an effort. Keep one foot on the floor, son, he remembered his dad saying, whenever he’d shown a little too much eagerness at the table.

“I don’t know a lot of the new people,” she said, “nor their kinfolks, neither. But I knew your mother, sure enough, and she certainly did love her boy. It broke her heart when she got sick, knowing she’d have to leave you to grow up with just your daddy.”

Hutch’s throat tightened slightly, making the next swallow an effort. He’d been just twelve years old when his mother died of cancer, and although he’d definitely grieved her loss, he’d also learned fairly quickly that the old man believed in letting the dead bury the dead. John Carmody had rarely spoken of his late wife after the funeral, and he hadn’t encouraged Hutch to talk about her, either. In fact, he’d put away all the pictures of her and given away her personal possessions almost before she was cold in the grave.

So Hutch had set her on a shelf in a dusty corner of his mind and tried not to think about the hole she’d left in his life when she was torn away.

“Dad wasn’t the best when it came to parenting,” Hutch commented belatedly, thinking back. “But he wasn’t the worst, either.”

Opal’s usually gentle face seemed to tighten a little, around her mouth especially. “John Carmody was just plain selfish,” she decreed with absolute conviction but no particular rancor. To her, the remark amounted to an observation, not a judgment. “Long as he got what he wanted, he didn’t reckon anything else mattered.”

Hutch was a little surprised by the bluntness of Opal’s statement, though he couldn’t think why he should have been. She was one of the most direct people he’d ever known—and he considered the trait a positive one, at least in her. There were those, of course, who used what they liked to call “honesty” as an excuse to be mean, but Opal wasn’t like that.

He opened his mouth to reply, couldn’t think what to say, and closed it again.

Opal smiled and reached across the table to lay a hand briefly on his right forearm. “I had no business saying that, Hutch,” she told him, “and I’m sorry.”

Hutch found his voice, but it came out gruff. “Don’t be,” he said. “I like a reminder every once in a while that I’m not the only one who thought my father was an *.”

This time it was Opal who was taken aback. “Hutch Carmody,” she finally managed to sputter, “I’ll thank you not to use that kind of language in my presence again, particularly in reference to the departed.”

“Sorry,” he said, and the word was still a little rough around the edges.

“We can either talk about your daddy and your mama,” Opal said presently, “or we can drop the whole subject. It’s up to you.”

His hunger—for food, at least—assuaged, Hutch pushed his mostly empty plate away and met Opal’s gaze. “Obviously,” he said mildly, “you’ve got something to say. So go ahead and say it.”

“I’m not sure what kind of father Mr. Carmody was,” she began, “but I know he wasn’t up for any awards as a husband.”

Offering no response, Hutch rested his forearms on the tabletop and settled in for some serious listening.

When she went on, Opal seemed to be picking up in the middle of some rambling thought. “Oh, I know he wasn’t actually married to your mother when he got involved with Callie Barlow, but she had his engagement ring on her finger, all right, and the date had been set.”

Hutch guessed the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, as the old saying went. He hadn’t cheated on Brylee, but he’d done the next worst thing by breaking up with her at their wedding with half the county looking on.

“That was hard for Mom,” he said. “She never really got over it, as far as I could tell.”

Opal nodded. “She was fragile in some ways,” she replied.

Hutch felt the sting of chagrin. He’d loved his mother, but he’d always thought of her as weak, too, and maybe even a mite on the foolish side. She’d gone right ahead and married the old man, after all, knowing that he’d not only betrayed her trust, but fathered a child by another woman.

A child—Slade Barlow—who would grow up practically under her nose and bear such a resemblance to John Carmody that there could be no doubt of his paternity.

“I guess she liked to think the whole thing was Callie’s fault,” Hutch reasoned, “and Dad was just an innocent victim.”

“Some victim,” Opal scoffed, but sadly. “He wanted Callie and he went after her. She was young and naive, and he was good-looking and a real smooth talker when he wanted to be. I think Callie really believed he loved her—and it was a brave thing she did, barely grown herself and raising Slade all by herself in a place the size of Parable.”

Hutch recalled his encounter with Callie at the hospital, how happy she was about the new baby, her grandson. And his heart, long-since hardened against the woman, softened a little more. “I reckon most people are doing the best they can with whatever cards they were dealt,” he said. “Callie included.”

“It’s a shame,” Opal said after a long and thoughtful pause, “that you and Slade grew up at odds. Why your daddy never acknowledged him as his son is more than I can fathom. It just doesn’t make any sense, the two of them looking so much alike and all.”

Hutch considered what he was about to say for a long moment before he actually came out with it. Opal knew everybody’s business, but she didn’t carry tales, so he could trust her. And he didn’t want to sound as if he felt sorry for himself, because he knew that, for all of it, he was one of the lucky ones. “When it was just Dad and me,” he finally replied, “nobody else around, he used to tell me he wished I’d been the one born on the wrong side of the blanket instead of Slade. I guess by Dad’s reckoning, Callie got the better end of the deal.”

Opal didn’t respond immediately, not verbally anyway, but her eyes flashed with temper and then narrowed. “Slade is a fine man—Callie did a good job bringing him up and no sensible person would claim otherwise—but he’s no better and no worse than you are, Hutch.”

Hutch just smiled at that, albeit a bit sadly. Sure, he wished his dad had shown some pride in him, just once, but there was no point in dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed. To his mind, the only way to set the matter right was to be a different kind of father himself, when the time came.

He pushed back his chair, stood up and slowly carried his plate and silverware to the sink.

Opal was right there beside him, in a heartbeat, elbowing him aside even as she took the utensils out of his hand. “I’ll do that,” she said. “You go on and do whatever it is you do in the evenings.”

Hutch smiled. “I was thinking I might head into town,” he said. “See what’s happening at the Boot Scoot.”

“I’ll tell you what’s happening at that run-down old bar,” Opal said, with mock disapproval. “Folks are wasting good time and good money, swilling liquor and listening to songs about being in prison and their mama’s bad luck and how their old dog got run over when their wife left them in a hurry.”

“Why, Opal,” Hutch teased cheerfully, “does that mean you don’t want to go along as my date?”

“You just hush,” Opal scolded, snapping at him with a dish towel and then giving a laugh. “And mind you don’t drink too much beer.”





CHAPTER EIGHT



AFTER TAKING A quick shower and putting on clean clothes, Hutch traveled a round-about road to get to the Boot Scoot Tavern that night—a place he had no real interest in going to—and the meandering trail led him right past Kendra Shepherd’s brightly lit rental house.

In simpler times, he wouldn’t have needed a reason to knock on Kendra’s door at pretty much any hour of the day or night, but things had certainly changed between them, and not just because she had a daughter now. Not even because he’d almost married Brylee Parrish and Kendra had married Sir Jeffrey, as Hutch privately thought of the man—when he was in a charitable frame of mind, that is.

No, there was more to it.

The whole time he’d known Kendra, she’d coveted that monster of a house over on Rodeo Road. As a kid, she’d haunted it like a small and wistful ghost, Joslyn’s pale shadow. As a grown-up, she’d found herself a prince with the means to buy the place for her and after the divorce she’d held on to it, rattling around in it all alone for several years, like a lone plug of buckshot in the bottom of a fifty-gallon drum.

Now all of a sudden, she’d moved into modest digs, rented from Maggie Landers, opened a storefront office to sell real estate out of and switched rides from a swanky sports car to a Volvo, for God’s sake.

What did all of that mean—beyond, of course, the fact that she was now a mother? Did it, in fact, mean anything? Women were strange and magnificent creatures, in Hutch’s opinion, their workings mysterious, often even to themselves, never mind some hapless man like him.

Kendra had, except for staying put in Parable, turned her entire life upside down, changed practically everything.

Was that a good omen—or a bad one?

Hutch wanted an answer to that question far more than he wanted a draft beer, but since he could get the latter for a couple of bucks and the former might just cost him a chunk of his pride, he kept going until he pulled into the gravel-and-dirt parking lot next to the Boot Scoot.

The front doors of that never-painted Quonset hut, a relic of World War II, stood open to the evening breeze, and light and sound spilled and tumbled out into the thickening twilight—he heard laughter, twangy music rocking from the jukebox, the distinctive click of pool balls at the break.

With a smile and a shake of his head, Hutch shut off the headlights, cranked off the truck’s trusty engine, pushed open the door and got out. The soles of his boots crunched in the gravel when he landed, and he shut the truck door behind him, then headed for the entrance.

Once the place would have been blue with shifting billows of cigarette smoke, hazy and acrid, but now it was illegal to light up in a public building, though the smell of burning tobacco—and occasionally something else—was still noticeable even out in the open air. He caught the down-at-the-heels Montana-tavern scent of the sawdust covering the floor as he entered, stale sweat overridden by colognes of both the male and female persuasions, and he felt that peculiar brand of personal loneliness that drove folks to the Boot Scoot when they had better things to be doing elsewhere.

Hutch nodded to a few friends as he approached the bar and then ordered a beer.

Two or three couples were dancing to the wails of the jukebox—he thought of Opal’s description of the tavern and smiled at its accuracy—but most of the action seemed to center around the two pool tables at the far end of the long room.

Hutch’s beer was drawn from a spigot and brought to him; he paid for it, picked up the mug in one hand and made his way toward the pool tables. By the weekend, when the rodeo and other Independence Day celebrations would be in full swing, the crowds would be so thick in here, at least at night, that just getting from one side of the tavern to the other would be like swimming through chest-deep mud of the variety Montanans call “gumbo.”

Finding a place to stand without bumping elbows with anybody, Hutch watched the proceedings. Deputy Treat McQuillan, off duty and out of uniform but still clearly marked as a cop by his old-fashioned buzz haircut, watched sourly, pool cue in hand, while another player basically ran the table, plunking ball after ball into the appropriate pocket.

Never a gracious loser, McQuillan reddened steadily throughout, and when the bloodbath was over, he turned on one heel, rammed his cue stick back into the wall-rack with a sharp motion of one scrawny arm and stormed off.

A few of the good old boys, mostly farmers and ranchers Hutch had known since the last Ice Age, shook their heads in tolerant disgust and then ignored McQuillan, as most people tended to do. Getting along with him was just too damn much work and consequently the number of friends he could claim usually hovered somewhere around zero.

For some reason Hutch couldn’t put his finger on—beyond a prickle at the nape of his neck—he was strangely uneasy and getting more so by the moment. He watched the deputy shoulder his way toward the bar, evidently impervious to the good-natured joshing of the people he passed.

Hutch had never liked McQuillan, and he certainly wasn’t in the minority on that score, but in that moment he found himself feeling a little sorry for the man, if no less watchful. The very air had a zip in it, a sure sign that something was about to go down, and it probably wasn’t good.

Halfway across the sawdust-covered floor, McQuillan stopped at a table encircled by women, put out his hand and jerked one of them to her feet, hard against his torso and into a slow dance. At first, Hutch couldn’t make out who she was, with folks milling in between.

A scuffle ensued—the lady evidently preferred not to participate, at least not with Treat McQuillan for a dancing partner—and the other females at the table rose as one, so fast that a few of their chairs tipped over backward.

“Stop it, Treat,” one of them said.

And then, as people shifted and pressed in on the scene, Hutch recognized the woman who didn’t want to dance. It was Brylee.

He plunked down his mug on another table and instinctively headed in that direction, ready to take McQuillan apart at the joints like a Sunday-supper chicken just out of the stewpot. But right when he would have reached the couple, an arm shot out in front of his chest and stopped him as surely as if a steel barricade had slammed down from the ceiling.

“My sister,” Walker Parrish said evenly, “my fight.”

Hutch hadn’t spotted either Walker or Brylee when he came in, so he hadn’t had a chance to square away their presence in his mind. He felt a little off-balance.

In the next instant, Parrish shoved McQuillan away from Brylee, hard, hauled back one fist and clocked the deputy square in the beak.

That was it. The whole fight. Though in the days to come it would grow with every retelling, eventually becoming almost unrecognizable.

McQuillan’s eyes rolled back, his knees buckled and he went down.

Walker, meanwhile, gripped Brylee firmly by one arm, barely giving her a chance to retrieve her purse from the floor next to her chair, and propelled her toward the exit.

“We’re going home now,” he was heard to say in a tone that left no room for negotiation.

“Damn it, Walker,” Brylee yelled in response, struggling in vain to yank free from her brother’s grasp. “Let me go! I can take care of myself!”

In spite of everything, Hutch had to smile a little, because what Brylee said was true—she could take care of herself and in the long run she’d be just fine.

Oh, the woman had spirit, all right. Life would have been so much simpler all around, Hutch thought, if only he could have loved her.

Moments later, the Parrishes were gone and somebody was helping McQuillan back to his feet. He was rubbing his jaw and had one hell of a nosebleed going, but he looked all right, otherwise—no obvious need for any wires, stitches or casts, anyhow.

“I’m pressing charges!” McQuillan raged. “You’re all witnesses! You all saw what Walker Parrish did to me!”

“Ah, Treat,” one man drawled, “let it go. You put your hands on the man’s sister, and after she told you straight out she didn’t care to dance—”

McQuillan’s small, beady eyes flashed fire. He was trying to staunch the nosebleed with the sleeve of his shirt, but not having much luck. Some of the sawdust on the floor would definitely have to be shoveled out and replaced.

“I mean it,” he insisted furiously. “Parrish assaulted an officer of the law and he’s going to face the consequences!”

Hutch, standing nearby, flexed his fist slowly and waited for the urge to drop McQuillan right back to the floor again to pass.

Presently, it did.

The show was over and Hutch turned, meaning to go back for the beer he’d set aside minutes earlier. He nearly collided with Brylee’s best friend, Amy Jo DuPree in the process.

“You have your nerve coming in here, Hutch Carmody!” Amy Jo seethed, standing practically toe-

to-toe with him and craning her neck back so she could look up at him. Five-foot-nothing and weighing a hundred pounds soaking wet, Frank and Marge DuPree’s baby girl was a pretty thing, but feisty, afraid of nothing and no one.

Montana seemed to breed women like that.

Hutch arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?” he countered, raising his voice a little as the jukebox cranked up and Carrie Underwood took to extolling the virtues of baseball bats and kerosene-fueled revenge.

Maybe that was what was making the whole female sex seem more impossible to deal with by the day, Hutch speculated fleetingly. Maybe it was the inflammatory nature of the music they listened to on their iPods and other such devices.

“You heard me,” Amy Jo all but snarled through her little white teeth, and gave him a light but solid punch to the solar plexus.

Intrigued and, okay, a little pissed off at the injustice of it all, Hutch took Amy Jo by the arm and squired her outside.

The parking lot was hardly quieter than the interior of the bar, what with Walker and Brylee yelling at each other and then peeling away in Walker’s truck, and then Boone arriving with his lights flashing and his siren giving a single mournful whoop in case the blinding strobe left any doubt he was there.

“Hell,” Hutch breathed, watching as the sheriff climbed, somewhat wearily, out of his cruiser and came toward the doors of the Boot Scoot. “McQuillan’s really going to do it—he’s going to press charges against Walker.”

“Somebody ought to press charges against you,” Amy Jo huffed out, but she wasn’t quite as steam-powered as before. “How could you, Hutch? How could you let things go so far and then humiliate Brylee in public the way you did? Do you even know how much a wedding means to a woman? She looks forward to it her whole life, from the time she’s a little bit of a thing, and then—”

Boone passed them, nodded in grim acknowledgment as he went inside the tavern to investigate the scene of the crime, as McQuillan, who must have gotten right on his cell phone to report the event, would no doubt term it.

By now the damn idiot had probably taped off a body-shape in the sawdust, to mark the place where he’d fallen.

Hutch turned his attention back to Amy Jo. “Just exactly what is it,” he asked, exasperated, “that you people want me to do, here?”

Amy Jo jutted out her spunky little chin. “‘You people’? You mean Brylee’s friends?”

“I mean,” Hutch bit out tersely, “that all this Team Brylee crap is getting old. I’ve always lived here and I always will, and I will be damned if I’ll stay away from the Boot Scoot or anyplace else I want to go, just because you and the rest of Brylee’s bunch think I ought to be ashamed of what I did.” He leaned in, and Amy Jo’s eyes widened. “Here’s a flash for you—pass it on. Post it on that stupid website. Print up T-shirts, put fliers on windshields, whatever. I’m not going anywhere. Deal with it.”

Amy Jo blinked. She wasn’t a bad sort, really. It was just that she and Brylee had grown up as close friends, the way Kendra and Joslyn had. The way he and Slade might have, if it hadn’t been for the old man’s cussed determination to ignore one of them and browbeat the other.

Loyalty was an important quality in a friend, even when it was the bullheaded kind like Amy Jo’s.

“Nobody expects you to move away or anything,” Amy Jo said belatedly and in a lame tone.

“Good,” Hutch sputtered, as another ruckus of some kind erupted inside the Boot Scoot. “Because when hell freezes over, I’ll still be right here in Parable.”

Amy Jo swallowed, nodded and went back into the tavern to find her friends.

Although Hutch’s better angels urged him to get in his truck and go home, where he should have stayed in the first place, he figured Boone might need some help settling things down, so he followed Amy Jo inside.

McQuillan was out of control, waving his free arm and guarding his gushing nose with the other, yelling in Boone’s face.

Boone, for his part, calmly stood his ground. “Now, Treat,” he reasoned, amiable but serious, “I would hate to have to run one of my own deputies in for drunk-and-disorderly and creating a public nuisance, but I’ll do it, by God, I’ll throw you straight into the hoosegow if you keep this up.”

At the periphery of his vision, Hutch saw Amy Jo and the rest of the Brylee contingent quietly gather their purses and other assorted gear and trail out of the tavern. Probably a wise decision, given the incendiary mood McQuillan was creating.

“Arrest me?” the deputy bellowed. Treat never had known when to keep his mouth shut, which was part of his problem. “I’m the victim here! I was assaulted!”

“We’ll discuss that,” Boone assured him, “but not until you calm down.”

“I’d have knocked you on your ass, too, McQuillan,” a male voice contributed from somewhere in the dwindling crowd. “You can’t expect any different when you grab on to a woman in a goddamn cowboy bar!”

“Harley,” Boone said, recognizing the speaker immediately, and without looking away from McQuillan’s bloody, temper-twisted face, “shut up.”

Hutch, looking on, privately agreed with Harley. Manhandling a lady was asking for trouble pretty much anywhere, but square in the middle of cowboy-central, it was close to suicidal.

Just the same, he positioned himself at Boone’s left side, not quite in his space but close enough to jump in if the shit hit the fan.

Boone slanted a brief glance in his direction. “You involved in this?” he asked.

Hutch folded his arms, rocked back slightly on his heels. “Now Boone, I am downright insulted by that question. I just happened to be here, that’s all.”

Boone’s expression remained skeptical, but only mildly so. He sighed heavily. “Come on, Treat,” he said to his disgruntled deputy. “I’ll give you a lift over to the hospital, get them to check you out, and take you home. No way you’re in any condition to drive.”

Treat was all bristled up, like a little rooster with his feathers brushed in the wrong direction. “I’d rather walk,” he replied coldly. Boone might have been McQuillan’s boss, but he was also the man who’d trounced him at the polls last Election Day and he clearly wasn’t over the disappointment. McQuillan had wanted to be sheriff from the time he was little, never mind that he was constitutionally unsuited for the job.

“Whatever you say, Treat,” Boone responded. “But leave your rig right where it’s parked until morning.”

“I’ll be filing charges against Walker Parrish as soon as the courthouse opens,” McQuillan maintained, but he was on the move as he spoke, headed for the doors.

The onlookers finally lost all interest and dispersed, going back to their pool playing and their beer drinking and their armchair quarterbacking.

Boone turned to Hutch. “What happened here?” he asked.

The incident, though it had already drifted into the annals of history, still chapped Hutch’s hide a little. He wasn’t in love with Brylee Parrish, but standing around watching while some drunken bastard strong-armed her into something she didn’t want to do went against his grain in about a million ways.

Hutch told Boone the story, leaving out the part about how he’d meant to go after McQuillan himself but Walker had stepped in and thrown a punch of his own.

“Well,” Boone said on a long breath, “that’s fine. That’s just fine. Because if McQuillan doesn’t cool off overnight—and experience tells me that won’t happen—

I’ll probably have to charge Walker with assault.”

“Come on,” Hutch protested. “I told you what happened—McQuillan brought that haymaker on himself.”

Boone was on his way toward the exit and Hutch, tired of the bar, tired of just about everything, followed. “Walker had the right to defend his sister,” the sheriff allowed quietly, over one shoulder, “but he took it too far. He’s half again McQuillan’s size and whatever my personal opinion of old Treat might be, he is a sworn officer of the court. Landing a punch in the middle of his face, though a sore temptation at times, I admit, is a little worse in the eyes of the law than if Walker had decked, say, for instance—you.”

They were in the parking lot by then. The lights on top of Boone’s squad car still splashed blue and white over everything around them in dizzying swirls.

“He’s welcome to try,” Hutch said, hackles rising again. Did everybody, even his best friend, think he had a fat lip and a shiner coming to him just because he hadn’t gone through with the wedding?

Boone opened his cruiser door, leaned in and shut off the lights, which was a relief to Hutch, who was starting to get a headache. “Go home, Hutch,” Boone said. “I’ve got one loose cannon on my hands in Treat McQuillan and I don’t need another one.”

“I’m not breaking any laws,” Hutch pointed out, putting an edge to the words. There it was again, somebody telling him where to go, what to do. Damn it, the last time he looked, he’d still lived in a free country.

“True,” Boone agreed. “But if Walker hadn’t gotten to McQuillan first, you’d have clocked him yourself, and don’t try to claim otherwise, because I know you, Hutch. You’ve got pissed-off written all over you, and if you hang around town on the lookout for trouble, you’re bound to find some.” The sheriff sighed again. “It’s my job to keep the peace and I mean to do it.”

Hutch’s strongest instinct was to dig in his heels and stand up for his rights, even if Boone was making a convoluted kind of sense. And it still stung a little, remembering how Walker had gotten in his way back there when McQuillan crossed the line with Brylee. He felt thwarted and primed for action at the same time—not a promising combination.

Before he could say anything more, though, Boone changed the subject in midstream by announcing, “My boys are coming for a visit. Spending the Fourth of July weekend with me.”

Hutch went still. Grinned. “That’s good,” he said, pleased. Then, after a pause, “Isn’t it?”

“Hell, no, it isn’t good,” Boone answered, looking distracted and miserable. “That trailer of mine isn’t fit for human habitation. I wouldn’t know what to feed them, or what time they ought to go to bed, or how much television they should be allowed to watch—”

Hutch laughed, and it was a welcome tension-breaker. The muscles in his neck and shoulders relaxed with a swiftness that almost made him feel as though he’d just downed a double-shot of straight whiskey.

“Then maybe you ought to clean the place up a little,” he suggested. “As for bedtime and TV, well, it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure those things out. These are kids we’re talking about here, Boone, not some alien species nobody knows anything about.”

Boone ground some gravel under the toe of his right boot. “That’s easy enough for you to say, old buddy, since you don’t have to do a damn thing except share your infinite wisdom with regard to parenting.”

Hutch slapped Boone’s shoulder. “What if I told you, old buddy, that if you can take a day or two off from sheriffing, I’ll come over and help you dig out?”

Boone narrowed his eyes. “You’d do that?”

Hutch pretended injury. “You doubt me? You, who was almost the best man at my almost wedding?”

Boone eased up a little himself, even chuckled, albeit hoarsely. “I’ll have to deal with McQuillan, one way or the other, but I can take tomorrow off and part of the next day, too.”

“Fine,” Hutch said. “Give me a call when you’re ready to start and I’ll be at your place with a couple of machetes and some dynamite.”

Boone laughed, this time for real. “Machetes and dynamite?” he echoed, taking mock offense. “No flame gun?”

“Fresh out of flame guns,” Hutch answered, walking away, getting into his truck and starting up the engine.

He honked the horn once and headed for home.

* * *

KENDRA, HAVING JUST dropped Madison off at preschool and Daisy at Tara’s for a doggy playdate with Lucy, stopped by the Butter Biscuit Café to buy a chocolate croissant and a double-tall nonfat latte before heading to the office the next morning. She was in a buoyant mood, since Walker Parrish had shown definite interest in the mansion the day before when she’d taken him through it. He hadn’t come right out and said the place was exactly what his mystery friend was looking for, but Kendra’s well-honed sales instincts had struck up an immediate ka-ching chorus.

No offer had been made, she reminded herself dutifully, as she waited at the counter to place her take-out order. And a deal was only a deal, at least in the real estate business, when the escrow check cleared the bank.

Thus focused on her internal dialogue, Kendra didn’t notice Deputy McQuillan right away. When she did, she saw that he sat nearby at the long counter with open spaces on both sides of him, crowded as the Butter Biscuit always was during the breakfast rush, his nose not only bandaged, but splinted and both his eyes blackened.

“I’m pressing charges,” he said to everyone in general, his tone as stiff as a wire brush. He had the air of a man just winding up a long and volatile oration.

The café patrons politely ignored him.

“Don’t mind Treat,” the aging waitress whispered to Kendra when she reached the counter, order pad in hand. “He’s just running off at the mouth because he made a move on Brylee Parrish last night, over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, and Walker let him have it, right in the teeth.”

Kendra winced at the violent image. “Ouch,” she said, keeping her voice down.

“Broke his nose for him,” the waitress added unnecessarily and with a note of satisfaction.

McQuillan must have overheard because his gaze swung in their direction, and Kendra felt scalded by it, as though he’d splashed her with acid.

“Go ahead, Millie,” he growled at the still recalcitrant waitress. “Tell the whole world Walker’s side of the story.”

“It’s everybody’s side of the story,” Millie said, undaunted. “You made a damn fool of yourself at the Boot Scoot and that’s a fact. Ask me, you’re just lucky Walker got to you before Hutch Carmody did.”

Hutch’s name, at least in connection with an apparent bar brawl over one Brylee Parrish, caught in Kendra’s throat like rusty barbed wire snagging in flesh.

McQuillan’s face flamed, and his full attention shifted, for whatever reason, to Kendra. “You’d do well to think twice before you take up with Carmody again,” he informed her. “He’s no good.”

Kendra couldn’t speak, she was so galled by McQuillan’s presumption. Who the hell did the man think he was, talking to her like that?

“Shut up, Treat,” Millie said dismissively. “All these good people are trying to enjoy their morning coffee or catch a quick breakfast. Why don’t you let them?”

A terrible tension stretched taut across the whole café, like massive rubber bands. The snap-back, if it happened, would be terrible.

Chair legs scraped against the floor as men in various parts of the room pushed back from tables, ready to intercede if the situation went any further south.

“All I wanted to do,” McQuillan went on, as an ominous, anticipatory silence settled over the place, “was help Brylee forget about her broken heart. Dance with her a little, maybe buy her a drink.” He pointed to his battered face with one index finger. “And this is what I got for my trouble.”

Just then, Essie, the long-time owner of the Butter Biscuit and a no-nonsense type to the crepe soles of her sensible shoes, trundled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and advancing until she stood opposite Treat McQuillan with only the counter between them. Her eyes, with their Cleopatra-style liner and shadow, were hot with temper.

“I’ve had just about enough out of you, Treat,” she said, her voice ringing off every window and wall. “You behave yourself, or I’ll call Boone and have you hauled out of here!”

McQuillan flushed a dangerous crimson. “You’ll have to call Slade instead,” he retorted bitterly, apropos of who-knew-what, “because he’s filling in for Boone. Guess he didn’t quite get being sheriff out of his system, old Slade.”

“I’ll call the damn President, if I have to,” Essie answered back, “and don’t you sass me again, Treat McQuillan. I knew your mama.”

I knew your mama.

Kendra almost smiled at the familiar phrase, in spite of the tinderbox climate in the Butter Biscuit Café that sunny and otherwise beautiful late June morning. In Parable, the bonds of friendship and enmity both ran deep, intertwining like tree roots under an old-growth forest until they were hopelessly tangled.

“I knew your mama” was enough to shut most anybody up.

Sure enough, McQuillan subsided, spun around on his stool, stepped down and strode out of the cafe, looking neither to the right nor the left.

The chuckles and comments commenced as soon as the door closed behind him.

“I’m not sure that man is entirely sane,” Essie observed, watching him go.

Nobody disagreed.

Kendra ordered her latte and croissant, waited, paid for her purchase and left the restaurant, still feeling strangely shaken by the episode.

Walking back to the office, she got out her cell phone and speed-dialed Joslyn’s number, hoping she wouldn’t wake her friend up from a post-partum nap or something equally vital.

Joslyn answered on the first ring, though, sounding too chipper to have delivered a baby so recently or to be contemplating a nap. “Hi, Kendra,” she said. “What’s up?”

“I’m not sure,” Kendra answered honestly. Why was she calling Joslyn?

Joslyn simply waited.

“I hear Slade is standing in for Boone,” Kendra finally said, reaching her storefront and fumbling with her keys. “As sheriff, I mean.” She was used to juggling purses and briefcases, cell phones and coffee, but her fingers seemed slippery this morning.

Joslyn replied cheerfully. “Boone’s sons are coming for a visit, so he needed some time off to get his place ready. Slade offered to take over the job for a few days.”

“Oh,” Kendra said, opening the office door and practically fleeing inside. What was she going to say if Joslyn wanted to know why she’d bother to ask about something so clearly not her concern in the first place?

“Why do you ask?” Joslyn said, right on cue.

Kendra sighed, dropping her purse onto her desk, then setting down the coffee and the bag with the croissant inside, too. Even with those few extra seconds to think, she didn’t come up with a plausible excuse for the inquiry.

The truth was going to have to do. “Deputy McQuillan was making a big fuss when I stopped in at the Butter Biscuit a little while ago. Going on about how Walker Parrish assaulted him last night and he’s going to see that he’s charged.”

Joslyn sighed. “There was a little scuffle at the Boot Scoot last night, as I understand it,” she said with just a touch of hesitation.

“And Hutch was involved,” Kendra said.

“Indirectly,” Joslyn confirmed.

“Not that it’s any business of mine, what Hutch Carmody does.” Kendra was speaking to herself then, more than Joslyn.

Joslyn gave a delighted little chuckle. “Except that you do seem a little worried,” she observed. “Why don’t you just admit, if only to me, your main BFF, that you still have a thing for the guy?”

“Because I don’t ‘have a thing for the guy.’”

“Right,” Joslyn replied.

“I’m a mother now,” Kendra prattled on, unable, for some weird reason, to stop herself. “I have a dog and a Volvo, and I need to make a life.”

This time, Joslyn actually laughed. “All of which means—what, exactly? That you don’t need a little romance in this life you’re making? A little sex, maybe?”

“Sex?” The word came out high-pitched, like a squeak. “Who said anything about sex?”

“You did,” Joslyn replied with good-humored certainty. “Oh, not in so many words. But you’re feeling a little jealous, aren’t you? Because you have some scenario in your head of Hutch defending Brylee’s honor at the Boot Scoot Tavern?”

“I wouldn’t call it...jealousy,” Kendra finally replied, her tone tentative.

“Okay,” Joslyn agreed sunnily. “What would you call it?”

“You’re no help at all,” Kendra accused, further deflated, but smiling now. Talking to Joslyn always made her feel better, even when nothing was really resolved.

“Let’s do lunch in a couple of days,” Joslyn said, “after Mom goes back to Santa Fe and things return to normal around here. Maybe Tara can join us.”

Still feeling like an idiot, Kendra replied that she’d enjoy a girlfriend lunch, said goodbye and hung up.

She spent the morning noodling around on her computer, carefully avoiding the “Down With Hutch Carmody” webpage, along with the temptation to add a thing or two, and answered a grand total of two inquiries by phone.

By ten forty-five, she felt so restless that she set the business phone to forward any calls to her cell, locked up the office and drove out to Tara’s chicken ranch, intending to pick up Daisy and go home. Madison still had a couple of hours to go at preschool, which she was starting to enjoy, and Kendra didn’t want to disrupt the flow by taking her out early.

Tara was outside when Kendra pulled into her rutted dirt driveway, wearing red coveralls and wielding a shovel. Daisy and Lucy frolicked happily nearby, playing catch-tumble-roll with each other.

“Don’t tell me,” Tara chimed mischievously, approaching Kendra’s car on the driver’s side. “You’re here to help me clean out the chicken coop! What a true friend you are, Kendra Shepherd.”

Kendra laughed. “You wish,” she said. It was a relief to stop thinking about Hutch Carmody and sex for a while. They were two separate subjects, of course, but she hadn’t been able untangle one from the other since her phone conversation with Joslyn.

“Then what are you doing here?” Tara asked, looking like half of “American Gothic,” except young and pretty instead of severe.

“Can’t I visit a friend?” Kendra bantered back, pushing open the door and stepping somewhat gingerly into the muck of the barnyard. She wished she’d swapped out her Manolos for a pair of gum boots before leaving town.

Not that she actually owned gum boots.

Tara laughed at Kendra’s mincing steps, pointed out a relatively clean pathway nearby and paused to lean her shovel against the wall of the chicken coop before following Kendra toward the old farmhouse she’d been refurbishing over the past year.

The woman was the very personification of incongruity, to Kendra’s mind, with her model’s face and figure and those ridiculous coveralls.

They settled in chairs on Tara’s porch, since the weather was so nice and the dogs seemed to be having such a fine time dashing around in the grass, two flashes of happy gold, busy being puppies.

Once seated, Tara nodded in the direction of Boone Taylor’s place, which neighbored hers. “He’s finally cleaning up over there,” she said in a tone that struck Kendra as oddly pensive. “I wonder why.”





CHAPTER NINE



WHEN HUTCH ARRIVED at Boone’s place that morning, he brought along plenty of tools, a truck with a hydraulic winch for heavy lifting and half a dozen ranch hands to help with the work. Opal followed in her tank of a station wagon, bucket-loads of potato salad and fried chicken and homemade biscuits stashed in the backseat.

Boone, standing bare-chested in his overgrown yard, plucked his T-shirt from the handle of a wheelbarrow where he’d left it earlier, now that he was in the presence of a lady.

Hutch grinned at the sight, and backed the truck up to a pile of old tires and got out.

Boone walked over to greet him, taking in the other trucks, the ranch hands and Opal’s behemoth vehicle with a nod of his head. “You always were something of a show off, Carmody,” he said.

“Go big or go home,” Hutch answered lightly. “That’s my motto.”

“Along with ‘make trouble wherever possible’ and ‘ride bulls at rodeos till you get your teeth knocked out’?” Boone gibed.

“Is there a law, Sheriff Andy Taylor, that says I can only have one motto?” Hutch retorted. The Maybury reference had been a running joke between them since the election results came in last November.

“Reckon not,” Boone conceded, looking around at the unholy mess that was his property and turning serious. “I appreciate your help, old buddy,” he said.

“Don’t mention it,” Hutch replied easily. “It’s what friends do, that’s all.”

Boone nodded, looked away for a moment, cleared his throat. “What if Griff and Fletch get here and want to turn right around and head back to Missoula?” he asked, keeping his voice down so the ranch hands and Opal wouldn’t overhear.

“One step at a time, Boone,” Hutch reminded him. “Seems like the first thing on our agenda ought to be making sure the little guys don’t get lost in all this tall grass.”

Boone’s chuckle was gruff. “I laid in plenty of beer,” he said.

“Well,” Hutch replied, heading around to the back of his pickup to haul out shovels and electric Weedwackers, “don’t bring it out while Opal’s around or we’ll get a rousing sermon on the evils of alcohol, instead of all that good grub she was up half the night making.”

Boone’s chuckle was replaced by a gruff burst of laughter. “If she’s brought any of her famous potato salad, she can preach all the sermons she wants,” he answered, and went to greet the woman as she climbed out of her car and stood with her feet planted like she was putting down roots right there on the spot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hutch watched as Boone leaned down to place a smacking kiss on Opal’s forehead.

Pleased, she flushed a color she would have described as “plum” and pretended to look stern. “It’s about time you got your act together, Boone Taylor,” she scolded. Right away, her gaze found the toilet with the flowers growing out of the bowl and her eyes widened in horrified disapproval. “That commode,” she announced, “has got to go.”

She summoned two of the ranch hands and ordered them to remove the offending lawn ornament immediately. Two others were dispatched to carry the food and cleaning supplies she’d brought into Boone’s disreputable trailer.

“If it isn’t just like a man to put a toilet in his front yard,” she muttered, shaking her head as she followed her willing lackeys toward the sagging front porch. “What’s wrong with one of those cute little gnomes, for pity’s sake, or a big flower that turns when the wind blows?”

“Does she always talk to herself like that?” Boone asked, helping himself to a Weedwacker from the back of Hutch’s pickup.

“In my limited experience,” Hutch responded, reaching for a plastic gas can to fill the tank on the lawnmower, “yes.”

The next few hours were spent whacking weeds, and the result was to reveal a lot more rusty junk, numerous broken bottles and the carcass of a gopher that must have died of old age around the time Montana achieved statehood.

Opal occasionally appeared on the stooped porch, shaking out her apron, resting her hands on her hips and demanding to know how any reasonable person could live in a place like that.

“She thinks you’re reasonable,” Hutch commented to Boone, who was working beside him, hefting debris into the backs of the several trucks to be hauled away.

“Imagine that.” Boone frowned, shaking his head in puzzlement. He’d worked up a sweat, like the rest of them, and his T-shirt stuck to his chest and back in big wet splotches.

“And don’t think I didn’t notice all that beer in the fridge!” Opal called out, to all and sundry, before turning and grumbling her way back inside that sorry old trailer to fight on in her private war against dust, dirt and disarray of all kinds.

“Beer,” one of the ranch hands groaned, his voice full of comical longing. “I could sure use one—or ten—right about now.”

Later on, when the sun was high and all their bellies were rumbling, Opal appeared on the porch again and announced that the kitchen was finally fit to serve food in, and the thought of her cooking rallied the troops to trail inside, take turns washing up at the sink and fill plates, buffet style, at the table.

The ranch hands each sneaked a can of beer from the fridge—Opal turned a blind eye to those particular proceedings—and wandered outside to eat in the shade of the trees.

Opal sat at the table in the middle of Boone’s freshly scrubbed kitchen, and Boone and Hutch joined her.

“You’re a miracle worker,” Boone told her, looking around. The place was still scuffed and worn, just this side of being condemned by some government agency, but all the surfaces appeared to be clean.

“And you’ve been without a woman for way too long,” Opal retorted, with her trademark combination of gruffness and relentless affection.

Boone loaded up on potato salad—he probably hadn’t had the homemade version since before Corrie got sick—and helped himself to a couple of crunchy-coated chicken breasts. “I’m surprised at you, Opal,” he teased. “To hear you tell it, women are made to clean up after men. If that gets out, militant females will burn you in effigy.”

She expelled a huffy breath and waved off the remark for the foolishness it was. After a moment or two, her expression turned solemn and she studied Boone as though she’d never seen him before, peering at him through the lenses of her out-of-style eyeglasses.

“This isn’t what Corrie would want, Boone,” she said quietly. “Not for you and certainly not for those two little boys of yours.”

Boone put down his fork, still heaping with potato salad, and stared down into his plate in silence. He looked so stricken that Hutch felt a crazy need to come to his friend’s rescue somehow, but he quelled it. Intellectually, he knew Opal was right; maybe she could get through to Boone where he and Slade and a lot of other people had failed.

“We weren’t planning to live in this trailer for more than a year,” Boone said without looking up. “It was just a place to hang our hats while we built the new house.”

“I know,” Opal said gently. “But don’t you think it’s time you moved on—built that house, brought your boys home where they belong and maybe even found yourself a wife?”

At last, Boone looked up. The misery in his eyes made the backs of Hutch’s sting a little.

“I can’t marry a woman I don’t love,” he said hoarsely, “and I’m never going to love anybody but Corrie.”

A silence fell.

Boone took up his fork again, making a resolute effort to go on eating, but his appetite was clearly on the wane.

“It was a hard thing, what happened to you,” Opal allowed after some moments, her voice quiet and gentle to the point of tenderness, “but Corrie’s gone for good, Boone, and you’re still alive, and so are your sons. They need their daddy.”

“My sister—”

“I know Molly loves them,” Opal said, when Boone fell silent after just those two words. “But they’re yours, those precious boys, flesh of your flesh, bone of your bone, blood of your blood. They belong with you.”

Boone pushed his chair back, looking as though he might bolt to his feet, but in the end stayed put. “I truly appreciate your hard work, Opal,” he said, without looking at her or at Hutch, “and I mean no disrespect, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know how good Griff and Fletch have it with their aunt and uncle and all those cousins.”

“I’m sorry, Boone,” Opal said. “You didn’t ask for my opinion and I should have kept it to myself.”

Boone left the table then, left the kitchen, without a backward glance or a word of parting. The screen door, half off its hinges, crashed shut behind him.

“It’s progress, Opal,” Hutch told the woman quietly, painfully aware of the tears gathering in her wise old eyes. “That Boone will let the boys come back to Parable even for a holiday weekend—it’s a big thing. Last Christmas, he went to Missoula, rather than bring them here. Now he’s cleaning up the place and he’s letting us help, and that’s something he’s resisted for a long, long time, believe me.”

Opal sniffled, swatted at Hutch, and stood up to clear away her plate and Boone’s. “When did you get so smart?” she countered. “I’d have sworn you didn’t have a lick of sense yourself, entering rodeos, stopping weddings, living all by yourself like some fusty old codger twice your age.”

“Why sugarcoat anything, Opal?” Hutch joked, and commenced eating again. “Tell me how you really feel.”

The food was good, after all, and there wasn’t a damn thing wrong with his appetite, whatever might be going on with Boone’s.

“The man’s depressed,” Opal fretted, scraping the plates clean and setting them in the newly unearthed sink. “He puts on a fine show, as far as being sheriff, but he’s got to be feeling pretty darn low to let things come to this.”

“Try not to worry,” Hutch said. “Corrie’s death threw Boone for a loop and that’s for sure, but he’s coming around, Opal. He’s finally coming around.”

“I hope you’re right,” Opal fussed, sounding unconvinced.

“You’ll see,” Hutch answered, wondering where he was getting all this confidence in his best friend’s future all of a sudden. He and Slade and plenty of other people had been worried about Boone for years.

Running for sheriff was the first sign of life he’d shown since losing Corrie, and there had been precious little reason to be encouraged since then.

Boone knew his job—even as Slade’s deputy, he’d been a standout, steady, dependable, honest to the bone. His clothes were pressed, his boots polished and he got his hair trimmed over at the Curly Burly salon once a month like clockwork.

But then he came home to a hellhole of a trailer and did God knows what with his free time.

“He’d be a good match for Tara Kendall, you know,” Opal speculated aloud, her tone wistful. “Both of them lonely, with their places bordering each other the way they do—”

“They hate each other,” Hutch said.

“Same way you and Kendra do, I reckon,” Opal shot back, smiling.

Hutch felt a slow flush climb his neck to pulse hard under his ears, which were probably red by then. “I don’t hate Kendra,” he informed his friend gravely. He couldn’t say whether or not Kendra hated him, but he sure hoped not, because that was just too desolate a thing to consider.

“And Boone doesn’t hate Tara, either,” Opal went on, self-assured to the max. “She makes him feel some things he’d rather not feel, and that scares the heck out of him, and the reverse is true, too. Tara’s as scared of Boone Taylor as he is of her.” She paused, probably for dramatic effect, then delivered the final salvo. “Just like you and Kendra.”

Hutch was suddenly too exasperated to eat, even though he was still a little hungry after working like a field hand all morning. Ranching involved some effort, but these days he spent more and more of his time supervising the men who worked for him, driving around in his pickup, riding horseback for the fun of it instead of rounding up strays or driving cattle from one feeding ground to another, or checking fence lines.

If he didn’t watch out, his own prediction would prove true and he’d be too fat to compete in the rodeo by the end of the week.

He excused himself, rose stiffly from the table and carried his dishes and silverware toward the sink. He scraped his plate into the trash, set it in the hot, soapy water Opal had ready, and left the kitchen.

* * *

“GO OVER THERE?” Kendra repeated, peering through the pair of binoculars Tara had brought out onto the porch so they could spy on the doings over at Boone’s place. Heat surged through her as she watched Hutch haul his shirt off over his head, revealing that lean, rock-hard chest—the one she’d loved to nestle against once upon a time. “Are you crazy?”

“It would the neighborly thing to do,” Tara replied, appropriating the binoculars and raising them to her face. Lucy and Daisy, having run off all that energy chasing each other around Tara’s yard and trying to catch grasshoppers, were asleep in the shade of a gnarl-trunked old apple tree nearby.

“Since when are you and Boone on ‘neighborly’ terms?” Kendra countered. Damned if she didn’t want to get a look at Hutch Carmody, up close and shirtless, but damned if she’d indulge the whim, either.

“We’re not,” Tara admitted. “But after all the verbal potshots I’ve taken at the man for maintaining an eyesore, the least I can do is encourage him to stick with the cleanup campaign.” She handed the binoculars back to Kendra, who immediately used them. “Besides, Opal is over there, working her fingers to nubs. Maybe she could use some help from us.”

“Right,” Kendra said, thinking of her business suit and high-heeled shoes. “I’m certainly dressed for it.” She watched, heartbeat quickening, as Hutch used the T-shirt to wipe his forehead and the back of his neck. Muscles flexed in his arms and shoulders, making her mouth water. “You, on the other hand, look like a fugitive from a rerun of Green Acres, so you might as well go right on over there with your bad self.”

“Not without backup,” Tara said.

“Opal is backup enough for anybody,” Kendra replied. It was almost as though Hutch knew she was watching him from afar; he seemed to be overdoing the whole manly thing on purpose just to rile her up.

Take the way he walked, for instance, with the slow, rolling gait of an old-time gunslinger, like his hips were greased, like he owned whatever ground he set his foot down on. And the way he threw back his head and laughed at something Opal called to him from the porch of Boone’s trailer.

“Scared?” Tara challenged.

“No,” Kendra lied, lowering the binoculars with some reluctance. She needed a few moments to process the sight of Hutch Carmody walking around half-naked. “I’m supposed to pick Madison up at preschool. And there’s supper to think about, and—”

“You’re supposed to pick Madison up in two hours,” Tara pointed out.

“Why do you want to do this?” Kendra asked, almost pitifully. She felt cornered by Tara’s calm logic. “You can’t stand Boone Taylor.”

“Like I said,” Tara replied with a self-righteous air, “good behavior should be encouraged. Besides, I’m dying to know why he’s suddenly so interested in all this DIY stuff.”

Kendra sighed, recalling her phone conversation with Joslyn earlier that day. “Well, I can tell you that,” she said importantly. “Boone’s boys are coming to stay with him for the weekend. He’s getting the place ready for them.”

“Boone has children?” Tara looked honestly surprised.

“Two,” Kendra replied, wondering how Tara could have lived around Parable for so long without knowing a detail like that. “They’ve been living with his sister and her family in Missoula since his wife died.”

“I knew he was a widower,” Tara mused sadly. “But kids? The man just packed his own children off to his sister’s place after they lost their mother?”

“Well, I don’t think it was as cut and dried as that....” Kendra began, but her voice fell away. She liked Boone, and felt a need to take his side, if sides were being taken, though like just about everyone else he knew, she could have shaken him for turning his back on a pair of small, motherless boys the way he had.

“He’s even more selfish than I thought,” Tara said decisively. She got out of her chair, still holding the binoculars, and went into the house, returning without them a few moments later. Evidently their spy careers were over. “Who does a thing like that?” she ranted on under her breath as she plunked back into her chair.

Compassion for Boone welled up in Kendra’s chest. “You weren’t here when his wife died,” she said quietly. “It was terrible, Tara. Corrie was in so much pain toward the end and Boone couldn’t do a thing to help her. That would be hard for anybody, but especially for a man who’s been strong all his life.”

“You can bet it was hard for those little boys, too,” Tara pointed out, but her tone had softened somewhat by then. “How old are they?”

Kendra made some calculations, “Probably five and six,” she said. “Something like that. Cute as can be—both of them look just like their dad.”

A deep sadness moved in Tara’s lovely eyes.

Kendra considered the possibility that her own mother might have abandoned her not because she didn’t love her, but because she was overwhelmed by life in general. Maybe she’d suffered from depression, like Boone, and become trapped in it.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“Don’t be too hard on Boone,” she said, deciding it was time she and Daisy headed back to town. “He and Corrie married young, and they loved each other so desperately.”

Tara nodded slowly. She was looking in the direction of Boone’s trailer, although at that distance, with no binoculars to bring them closer, the people appeared tiny and it was hard to tell one from the other.

“Hey,” Kendra said to her distracted friend, preparing to descend the porch steps, call for Daisy and head for her car. “Why don’t you and Lucy come into town later and have supper with us?”

Tara smiled, rose from her chair, came to stand at the porch railing, resting her hands on top of it. “Thanks,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “Maybe some other time.”

Kendra nodded, and moments later she and Daisy were in the Volvo, heading down the driveway toward the main road.

Her thoughts and emotions were jumbled—visions of Hutch, bare-chested in the afternoon sunlight, predominated, but there were images of Boone at Corrie’s funeral, too. It had rained that gloomy late-winter day, and a bitterly cold wind had driven all the mourners from the graveside the moment the last “Amen” had been said—except for Boone. He’d simply stood there, all alone, with his head down, his hands folded and his suit drenched, gazing downward at his wife’s coffin.

Finally Hutch and Slade and a few others had gone out there to collect him, and he’d swung at them, shouting that he wasn’t going to leave Corrie alone in the rain. They’d finally prevailed, but it was a struggle, Boone saw to that.

Since then, he’d never been the same.

He worked hard—it was common knowledge that he sent a lot of his paycheck to his sister for the boys’ support—and then he went back to that sad piece of land he’d once had such great plans for, and that was all.

It grieved the whole town, because Parable was, after all, a family, and Boone, like Hutch and Slade, was a favorite son.

When Boone ran for sheriff, everyone’s hopes rose—maybe things were finally turning around for him—but until today, when the cleanup effort had apparently begun, there had been no further indication that anything much had changed.

At home, Kendra changed into khaki walking shorts, a green tank top and sandals. Then she brushed her shoulder-length hair, caught it up in a ponytail and checked the contents of her refrigerator, considering various supper possibilities.

She’d stopped thinking about Boone’s situation, which was a relief, but Hutch refused to budge from her mind no matter how she tried to distract herself.

And she definitely tried.

She tossed an old tennis ball for Daisy in the backyard for at least fifteen minutes, then collected the day’s mail from the box attached to her front gate. Nothing but sales fliers and missives addressed to “occupant”—everything had to be forwarded from her old address on Rodeo Road.

Not that she received a lot of mail in this day of instant electronic communication.

She chucked everything into the recycle bin and booted up her computer, a streamlined desktop set up in her home office. Nothing there, either.

Finally it was time—or close enough to it—to drive over to the preschool and collect Madison. Daisy rode shotgun in the Volvo’s front seat, panting and taking in everything they passed with those gentle brown eyes, as if there might be a quiz later on what she’d seen and she wanted to be ready for any question.

The preschool occupied a corner of the community center, a long, rambling building that also housed the Chamber of Commerce, along with several conference rooms and a performance area with a stage. The local amateur theater group used the latter, as did the art and garden clubs, and dances, wedding receptions and other events were held there, too. Outside, there was a pool, a tennis court and a baseball field.

The town was justifiably proud of the whole setup, and maintaining the place was a labor of love, done mostly by volunteers.

Kendra parked near the baseball field, her usual place, and walked Daisy around on a leash, poop bag at the ready, while they waited for Madison’s “class” to be dismissed for the day.

The bell rang and children catapulted through the open doors of the preschool, releasing pent-up energy as they laughed and jostled each other, celebrating their freedom.

Kendra, standing beside the car with Daisy, smiled as she watched Madison’s head turn in her direction, watched her smile broaden as she raced over, waving a paper over her head.

“Look what I drew!” she crowed, shoving the sheet of paper at Kendra and then dropping to her knees in the grass to cover Daisy’s muzzle with kisses and ruffle her silken ears.

Kendra looked down at her daughter’s artwork and felt a wrench in the center of her heart. Madison had drawn a house with green crayon, recognizable as the one they lived in, with four distinct figures standing in the front yard—a little girl with bright red hair, a yellow dog, a stick-figure rendition of Kendra herself, notable for an enormous necklace of what seemed to be blue beads, and a tall man wearing jeans, a purple shirt, brown boots and an outsize cowboy hat.

Hutch.

“It’s a family!” Madison said excitedly. “One with a cowboy daddy in it.”

Kendra swallowed. “I can see that,” she said quietly, before handing the paper back to Madison. “That’s a very nice picture,” she added, afraid to say more, lest the sudden tears pressing behind her eyes break free.

“Can we tape it to the ’frigerator?” Madison asked, her huge gray eyes solemn now, as though she expected a refusal and was already bracing to argue the point.

“Sure,” Kendra said with a smile after clearing her throat.

She spent the next five minutes getting Madison, the dog and herself squared away in the Volvo.

“My friend Brooke has a daddy,” Madison announced, once they were in motion. “So do lots of the other kids.”

Give me strength, Kendra thought prayerfully. “Yes,” she said.

“They put daddies in their pictures, so I did, too,” Madison explained. “I made mine a cowboy.”

“Does this cowboy have a name?” Kendra ventured. She couldn’t just shut the child down, after all, and there was no use trying to change the subject before Madison was ready because she’d pursue it.

“Cowboy man,” Madison said in a cheery, who-else tone of voice. “He has lots of horses, and I get to ride one of them sometime.”

“That will be exciting,” Kendra agreed, smiling.

“He said that,” Madison chimed from her place in the backseat, Daisy beside her. “You heard him say that, didn’t you, Mommy? That I could ride one of his horses if you said it was okay?”

“I heard,” Kendra said. Did Hutch even remember making the offer? Or had he simply been making conversation, telling the child what he thought she wanted to hear at that particular moment?

To him, it was probably just small talk.

To Madison it was a promise, sacred and precious.

Kendra bit her lower lip, thinking. She could play the heavy, of course, say she’d rather Madison didn’t get on a horse until she was a little older—conveniently, that was the truth—but one, she didn’t want to raise a fearful child and, two, why should she be the one to disappoint Madison, while Hutch came off as the good guy, the one who’d tried to make the dream happen and would have succeeded, if not for her?

No.

This time, for once in his life, he was going to follow through.

Madison would have her horseback ride; Kendra would make sure of that, for her little girl’s sake.

As soon as they got home, Madison fetched a roll of cellophane tape from Kendra’s office, climbed onto a chair and proudly affixed her “family” drawing to the refrigerator door.

“There,” she said, getting down and standing back to admire the installation.

Kendra admired it, too. “You’d better make some more pictures,” she said thoughtfully. “That one looks a little lonely all by itself.”

Madison readily agreed and ran off, Daisy on her heels, to find her crayons.

Kendra returned the chair to its place at the table, got out her cell phone and bravely keyed through stored numbers until she found Hutch’s. When was the last time she’d dialed that one?

“Hello?” he said after the second ring.

“We need to talk,” Kendra answered, employing a clandestine whisper. “When can we get together?”





CHAPTER TEN



WE NEED TO TALK. When can we get together?

To say Kendra’s words had caught Hutch off guard would be the understatement of the century, but he hoped his tone sounded casual when he replied, “Okay, sure. I’m just leaving Boone’s place—I’ve got some chores to do at home, and I could really use a shower.”

TMI, he thought ruefully. Too much information. The woman hadn’t asked for a personal hygiene report, after all.

Because he disapproved of other people talking on their cell phones while they drove, Hutch pulled over to one side of Boone’s weed-shorn yard and let the men he’d brought over from Whisper Creek pass on by him in their trucks, and Opal, too.

Probably thinking there might be trouble, Opal stopped her big station wagon and started to roll down her window to ask if everything was all right, but Hutch grinned and waved her on.

Kendra sounded a little flustered when she answered, as though she might be wishing not only that she hadn’t phrased the invite the way she had, but that she’d never called him at all. “Tonight, tomorrow—whenever,” she stumbled.

Hutch felt better, aching muscles and ravenous hunger notwithstanding. Obviously, he wasn’t the only one feeling a little out of their depth at the moment and he had to admit, the “we need to talk” part intrigued him in a big way.

“So this is nothing urgent,” he concluded with a smile in his voice. He didn’t need to see Kendra to know she was blushing to the roots of her pale gold hair; practically every emotion showed plainly on the landscape of her face and usually her inner climate did, too.

Kendra Shepherd might look like a Nordic ice queen, but Hutch knew she was capable of tropical heat.

Meanwhile, Kendra struggled bravely on, determined to make her point, whatever the heck that was. “No—I mean—well, I suppose we could discuss it now—”

“That’s fine, too,” Hutch said amiably, relishing the exchange.

“Yes, Madison,” she said to her daughter, who could be heard asking questions in the background, “you do have to wash your hands before supper. You’ve been petting the dog, for Pete’s sake.”