Sage Creek

by Jill Gregory

  “Oh God, no. No.” Horror engulfed Sophie. She shook her head feebly. But even as she tried to deny it, she knew it was true. The truth glittered in Crenshaw’s eyes. In the hatred she saw in them. And in what she already knew of her father.

  The truth shivered in her heart.

  “You know what happened to me, after she died? After that bastard killed her? I got sent away to my uncle’s house in Missoula. They didn’t want me there much, ’cept to work around the place every minute I wasn’t in school. My uncle liked to beat on me whenever anything didn’t go his way. And things didn’t go his way a lot of the time. You know what I mean, Miss Filthy Rich Spoiled Rotten Sophie McPhee? Do you?” His voice rose to an enraged roar, dulled only by the throb of the music.

  “Guess that’s a dumb question, huh? How would you know?” he shouted, with a derisive snort. “You grew up on that big ranch, had everything handed to you on a solid-gold platter. I reckon no one ever screamed at you, much less smacked you around. But I spent five years getting the shit beat out of me because of what your daddy did to my mama. You don’t think ol’ Hoot deserves a little payback for that?”

  “Slitting my tires—that’s how you’re paying him back? Smashing my car’s windows . . . gouging my Blazer? That’s crazy. He’s dead and I never did one thing to you.”

  “Well, Hoot ain’t here, is he, so you’re the next best thing. And you know what? He’s probably rolling in his damned grave because I’m messing with his precious little girl. The one who grew up at that big important ranch, who got to have anything her little heart wanted. Hoot’s probably madder’n fire that I’m getting back at you and there ain’t a damned thing he can do about it! And if you’re smart, you won’t tell anyone about any of this—”

  “Hey! Take your hands off her. Right now!”

  A man’s voice, breathless, shouted from behind her, and she heard pounding footsteps over the hammering of her heart. They got louder as Crenshaw stared past her in sudden alarm.

  “Help me!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, and then gasped as Crenshaw shoved her aside and took off running. She caught herself against the side of the Blazer in time to keep from falling, and managed to straighten just as Doug Hartigan skidded to a stop beside her.

  At the same moment, she heard brakes screech from somewhere nearby.

  “Sophie! Are you all right? Your mother sent me to look for you—” Doug Hartigan was breathing hard, his face flushed in the bright September sunlight.

  “He . . . didn’t hurt me. But we need to call Sheriff Hodge right now—he broke my phone—”

  Hartigan was no longer listening. He was bolting after Crenshaw, his boots slamming against the pavement.

  Suddenly Sophie realized that Hartigan wasn’t the only one giving chase.

  Rafe’s truck was at a standstill twenty yards away, the engine still running, the driver’s door wide open. Rafe was barreling toward Crenshaw with fast, powerful strides, closing the gap and heading him off as he dodged between cars.

  Hartigan ran to the right, Rafe slightly left, and Crenshaw was cornered between the two. With a desperate burst of speed, Crenshaw tried to make a break for his rig, but Rafe hurtled toward him like a torpedo. He dove at him in a flying tackle perfected at football practice at Lonesome Way High and knocked him to the ground with a sickening thwack.

  Crenshaw groaned and tried to roll free. Rafe slammed a fist into his jaw, then hit him again, this time in the eye. Crenshaw’s head lolled to the side just as Hartigan reached them.

  “Rafe, don’t. Stop!” Sophie had been rushing toward them, but she faltered to a standstill as she saw Buck Crenshaw sprawled on the pavement. Out cold.

  “Calling . . . the sheriff,” Hartigan panted, quickly punching buttons on his phone.

  Scrambling off Crenshaw, Rafe ran to Sophie and pulled her close. “Are you all right?”

  He held her as if she were made of fragile china, his handsome face pale beneath his tan. “Did he hurt you?”

  “N-no. I’m not hurt. I’m—” She buried her face in his chest, struck by the huskiness of his tone, but mostly thankful to have his arms around her. “I caught him keying my car with a pocketknife . . . and he told me why.” She leaned back, looked up at him with dismay. “Rafe, it’s horrible.”

  His arms tightened around her and she rested her head against his chest, so hard and solid and comforting. She was dimly aware of Hartigan on his cell phone a few yards away and knew she’d have to thank him later for coming to her aid. She owed him that much. Probably more. Perhaps even an apology, she thought, as something that might have been forgiveness opened like a flower in her heart and pushed the old weeds of anger away.

  She looked straight at Rafe.

  “It was my father,” she said quietly. “Rafe, it was all because of my father.”

  Diana hovered over her, looking worried, but Sophie continued setting out brownies and cinnamon buns.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” her mother asked. “You must be in shock or something.”

  “I think you should sit down and take a break,” Gran suggested, watching her with concern.

  Martha and Dorothy bobbed their heads in—for once—silent agreement.

  “Not a bad idea,” Doug Hartigan put in mildly, but Sophie shook her head.

  “I’m fine.”

  They were back at the bakery tables, and she was dealing with what had happened in the only way she knew how—by throwing herself into work. Teddy Hodge’s deputy had handcuffed Crenshaw in a police cruiser while the sheriff had taken Sophie’s and Doug’s initial statements, then the wrangler had been hauled off to lockup.

  We don’t need to worry about him anymore, at least not for today, Sophie thought. With any luck, we won’t have to think about him again until his hearing and his trial.

  “I’m all right, everyone. You can stop looking at me like I’m going to disintegrate. I’m just sorry that . . . well, I thought we knew everything there was to know about my father . . . and now this,” she muttered, meeting her mother’s eyes.

  “Nothing about Hoot surprises me anymore.” Diana’s face was pale, but set. “Nothing about him hurts me either,” she added unexpectedly, as Hartigan slipped an arm around her waist.

  They looked so comfortable together. Easy. Close. For once, Sophie found herself feeling happy for her mother and, to her surprise, couldn’t muster even the slightest whiff of resentment toward the man at her side.

  “I’m only sorry your father still has the power to hurt you,” Diana told her softly. “You and Wes both.”

  “Well, maybe what Wes doesn’t know can’t hurt him. We don’t exactly have to call him up and tell him about this, do we, Mom?”

  Sophie watched Karla hand over cookies and napkins to Lila and Tom Benson, then slide the money Tom handed over into the cash box. “No,” her mother replied. She looked relieved. “Right this minute, no, we do not.”

  “Where did Rafe go?” Gran asked Sophie. Boppity and Boo exchanged knowing glances.

  Great, does everyone know now about me and Rafe? They’ve probably known for weeks, ever since Roger Hendricks claimed we were out on a date. Even though we weren’t.

  But somehow the thought of people knowing about the two of them didn’t bother her anymore. In fact, she’d been hard put lately not to want to shout it from the bakery rooftop.

  Sophie and Rafe. Sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

  Lame, she thought, deciding she was turning into a mushy-headed idiot. But there was a warm glow inside her as she realized that baby made three.

  Or, actually—even better—with Ivy and the baby, they would be four.

  Or possibly two . . . and two.

  She swallowed. She had to tell Rafe. And then deal with his reaction, whatever it might be.

  “Rafe went to look for Ivy,” she told Gran. “He wants to make sure she’s okay—and to let her know about Shiloh. But she’s not answering her cell phone.”

  “The music was s
o loud for a while, she probably couldn’t hear it,” Gran suggested.

  “Or she’s too busy with her friends to bother answering.” Dorothy nodded sagely, drawing on her extensive knowledge of young people as a former school principal.

  “The last time I saw her,” Martha put in, “she and a bunch of other girls were gathered near where the band was setting up. From the way those girls were looking at the boys and their guitars, you’d think every one of ’em was Elvis returned to life.”

  But the band was taking a break now, thankfully. And in another few hours, Sophie realized, the fund-raiser’s decorating committee would be frantically setting up in the gymnasium for the dance tonight and Lee Ann Hollows’ performance, followed by the singer personally auctioning off Brad Paisley’s cowboy hat.

  She pictured herself dancing on the crowded wood floor with Rafe, the gymnasium bright with candles and streamers and balloons. Maybe after a little while they’d duck out alone under the stars and she’d slip her arms around him, tilt her head back, and tell him about the baby. . . .

  “Well, now, there’s Shannon and Val, right over there.” Her grandmother pointed toward Ivy’s best friends. “But I don’t see Ivy with them.”

  Shannon and Val were flipping through the stacks of donated CD’s on sale beside the booth where lemonade, coffee, bottles of water, and soft drinks were on sale. And Gran was right. Ivy was nowhere around.

  “I’ll be right back.” Slipping from behind the table, Sophie skirted Martha and Dorothy, and dodged through the throng of people toward the girls.

  But when she asked them if they’d seen Ivy, Shannon glanced quickly over at Val in a way that stirred a tiny sense of unease in Sophie.

  Then they both shook their heads.

  “Her father’s looking for her,” Sophie told them. “We heard she was hanging out with you earlier.”

  A frozen pause. Sophie thought she saw panic in Val’s eyes before the girl dropped her gaze.

  “She was—but she left.” Val shrugged.

  “We . . . we’re not sure where she went,” Shannon added quickly.

  A little too quickly.

  What middle school drama was this? Had the girls gotten into an argument, and Ivy had gone off on her own? Was she upset, alone somewhere? Crying? Sophie thought, her heart constricting.

  These two were definitely holding something back. She spotted Rafe making his way back toward the bakery table and saw with dismay that Ivy wasn’t with him.

  “Listen to me, both of you.” She kept her voice as calm as she could. “I’m very worried about Ivy right now, and her father’s going to be too. He’s on his way back from searching for her and he’s going to want to talk to you. You need to tell me if something happened. Where did Ivy go?”

  Val’s face flushed bright pink. “We promised we wouldn’t say anything.”

  Tears sparkled in Shannon’s eyes. “Please. Don’t make us tell. She doesn’t want to hurt her dad’s feelings.”

  Hurt his feelings?

  Something echoed in Sophie’s brain. The Double Cross. Ivy mentioning a secret. Worried about hurting someone’s feelings.

  Oh, God. Her fingers shook. How bad was this going to be?

  “Tell me . . . right now.” The sternness of her tone startled them. Both girls stared at her in panic. But not as much panic as was flooding through Sophie.

  “Tell me this minute,” she ordered.

  “We only found out today.” A lone tear slid down Shannon’s cheek. “I swear, we didn’t know before this. She’s . . .”

  “She’s okay,” Val interrupted on a gulp. “She’s not doing anything wrong. We promise.”

  Sophie saw Rafe looking toward her from the far side of the grounds and waved her arm frantically at him. He started toward them.

  “Not good enough.” She turned back to Shannon and Val. “Her father wants to know where she is, and I suggest you tell me right now before he gets here—”

  “She’s with her mom!” Shannon blurted. Tears were now flowing freely down her cheeks.

  Her mom? Sophie felt her body go rigid with shock. “Lynelle?” she gasped in a voice that sounded nothing like her own.

  “Ivy doesn’t want her dad to know. She just wants to talk to her mom by herself.” Val tried to look defiant, but her confidence was fading fast.

  “Where? Where are they meeting?” For a moment Sophie had a horrible vision of Ivy hitchhiking on the highway to get to her mother. “Please tell me she’s here—in Lonesome Way.”

  It was Shannon who answered, her words tumbling now. “Yeah, she’s here. They’re meeting in town.”

  “Where in town?”

  Val spoke up just as Rafe reached them. “They’re at A Bun in the Oven. Right this very minute.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Ivy? Is that you?”

  Slowly, her mother moved from the kitchen doorway into the front part of the bakery, flashing a nervous smile.

  She’s limping, Ivy noticed with a shock. Carefully, she closed the door to Main Street behind her.

  And she looks . . . different. Different from her picture.

  “Come on back here, honey, into the kitchen, where no one can see us from the street.” Lynelle’s voice was high-pitched, almost breathless. “Hurry, baby girl.” She waved a hand with nails painted purple with tiny pink stars on them. “C’mon, what are you waiting for? I don’t bite.”

  Was she trying to make a joke now? Ivy didn’t think anything was funny, not at this moment. Her heart felt like a huge weight taking up all the space in her chest as she scurried around the counter and past the booths into the bakery kitchen.

  The only thought spinning through her mind was that this woman with the straggly, nearly waist-length blond hair and huge dangling onyx earrings didn’t look at all like the vibrant red-haired mother she remembered. The woman now facing her, standing beside Sophie’s long spotless worktable, looked like a stranger, a hollowcheeked, nervous stranger who might have been a tourist passing through town. Her big blue eyes looked sad beneath their generous frosting of lavender eye shadow and dark black mascara, and her smile was so big and toothy beneath bright pink lipstick that it seemed fake.

  As Lynelle took a step toward her, Ivy fought the urge to shrink back. She couldn’t really see any resemblance to the beautiful, exuberant woman in the photograph she took out of her dresser drawer now and then and studied when no one was looking and she was missing her mother.

  But this weary-looking woman was her mother. And she should be feeling . . . what?

  Love? Joy? Closeness? The kind of closeness Shannon had with her mom when they both laughed at something at the same time? That Val had with her mom, even though they argued a lot?

  Ivy was sure that the feelings roiling through her were too huge and strange to be normal. They scared her. Longing and anger all twisted together, forming a huge tight knot right in the center of her throat, making it hard for her to even swallow.

  She stopped short of her mother and stood there, trying to think what to say or do. Her mom was skinny, but her jeans were so tight they looked like they were a size too small for her hips, and her lime green sweater with its bracelet sleeves was cut way too low.

  No one else’s mother dressed like that.

  “You look different than I . . . remember,” Ivy murmured, not knowing what to say and wondering too late if that had been a rude comment. She’d never dreamed she’d have trouble talking to her own mother, but she wasn’t sure where to start. What do you say after someone left you on a bench with just Peegee and a bag of Doritos?

  “Yeah, I’m different, baby girl. Old and washed up.” Lynelle gave a sad-sounding laugh, as if she hoped it wasn’t true and wanted Ivy to protest and reassure her. “I dyed my hair blond because it’s supposed to make you look younger. Not sure it really did that,” she added with a rueful smile.

  Then she studied Ivy, top to toe. “But you look different too, sweetie pie. My heavens, you’re so grown up
and beautiful. I’d give up ten years of my life just to be eleven or even twelve again and look like you, with everything in front of me. You’re so lucky—look at you, even prettier than I was at your age. And I was Queen of the Rodeo.”

  Was her mom bragging? Or regretful? Or was she sad? It was hard to tell. There was a wistful look on her face, a longing in her voice. But Ivy flushed. She wasn’t beautiful. She was gawky and plain and she’d never been queen of anything.

  “I didn’t tell anyone I’m here,” she offered at last.

  “That’s good, sweetie, that’s real good. Your dad, well, he’d probably yell his head off if he knew. I’m positive he’s still pissed—I mean, mad—at me, not that I blame him. I probably shouldn’t have up and left the way I did, he has a point, but I just couldn’t stay on that ranch one more hour, much less one more day. I had to go, you understand that, don’t you, baby?”

  Lynelle had taken a step forward, but she paused as Ivy stiffened.

  “I mean, it wasn’t because of you, of course—I love you from the bottom of my heart, precious girl. And you were always so good. Not a crier or a clinger, like some of them, you know? But I just . . . I needed more. You’ll understand some day.”

  No, I won’t understand. Not ever. I’m not like you.

  A flash of something tore through Ivy like a tiny jolt of lightning. Her chest felt like it was going to burst wide open and her heart with all its fury would fly out.

  But she forced herself to take a step, and then another one, closer to her mother. She had to, she didn’t know why. Her mom wasn’t quite as tall as Sophie, and beneath her makeup, she looked kind of tired. She was holding a big shiny silver purse and she set it down on the floor as Ivy approached her, then threw her arms around her and hugged her tight.

  Uncertainly, Ivy hugged her back. She tried not to breathe in the smell of her mother’s perfume. It was too strong, too sweet, and it made her nose itch.

  “Listen to me, Ivy, honey.” Her mom pulled back but held on to Ivy’s hands, clutching them tightly. “I had this great idea. I want to make things up to you. I want us to get to know each other. What do you think about coming to live with me at Aunt Brenda’s for a while? You’ve had all this time with your dad. Years! I want my turn now. What do you say?”