He fell silent, shook his head once.
Casey stepped into the breach, the way she always did. In a one-parent household, a person had to be ready be both father and mother at a moment’s notice.
“You want to get to know your dad. That’s natural, Shane.” She paused, glanced up at the lighted windows lining the back of the gigantic house. Weary wistfulness overtook her for a second there, but she was quick to shake it off, because she had to be strong. “How’s your sister doing?”
Shane sighed, shoved his hand through his hair in a way that was so like Walker that Casey’s breath snagged in her throat. “She was okay while we were with Brylee, riding horses and eating supper at the burger place and stuff, but now she’s all revved up in another major snit.” He paused. “Why isn’t Clare happy about this, Mom?” he asked, plaintive in his confusion. “We’ve always wanted a dad, and a kid couldn’t have a better one than Walker, so why is Clare acting like somebody just detonated a nuclear bomb?”
Casey laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezed lightly. Maintaining her smile took more of an effort than before but, then, everything did. “I think she’s confused, and maybe feeling cheated, too.” That was a hard thing to get out, opening the door as it did to similar things that Shane might be feeling.
“I agree that you should have told us the truth, Mom,” Shane said manfully. “But I know you must have had your reasons.”
Casey stood on tiptoe and kissed her son’s smooth cheek, blinking back tears. “I did have reasons, honey,” she told him. “Lots of them. But I was still wrong, and I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Shane said, awkwardly gracious. “Everybody does things they wish they hadn’t.”
“You know what?” Casey asked, mock-punching him in one shoulder, the way she did when she was proud of him, which was often. “You’re sounding pretty grown-up, all of a sudden.”
He beamed. Like most kids, few things pleased him more than being told that he was behaving like an adult. Why was that? Why were children so anxious to stop being children?
“Thanks, Mom,” he said.
They went inside together, mother, son and dogs.
Clare wasn’t in the kitchen, of course. That would have been too easy, made her too accessible to her worried mother.
“Get some rest,” Casey said to her son as she locked up and set the alarm. “This has been a big day.”
Shane grinned indulgently and went up the back stairway, surrounded by dogs.
Casey waited awhile before heading upstairs herself, debating whether she ought to make another attempt to talk to Clare tonight or wait until morning.
Either way, she supposed, the girl would still be furious with her, and not without reason. This wasn’t a brat fit, or teenage angst, after all—Clare had a legitimate gripe.
Five minutes later, Casey rapped lightly at her daughter’s bedroom door.
“Go away,” Clare called immediately—and predictably.
“Sorry,” Casey chimed in reply. “No can do.”
She waited, by no means certain that she wouldn’t have to barge in.
After a few moments and a lot of bustling around, Clare opened the door a crack and peered out, none too pleased at the interruption. “I’m serious, Mom,” she said. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Well,” Casey replied evenly, “it just so happens that I have a few things to say to you, Clare Elder.”
“That’s Clare Parrish, if you don’t mind,” Clare snapped. She wasn’t giving an inch, but she didn’t shut the door in Casey’s face, either.
“I don’t mind, actually,” Casey said. “That’s up to you and Walk—your father.”
“Elder is just a made-up name anyhow,” Clare pointed out, staunchly petulant even in the face of peacekeeping forces. “A show business name.”
The girl made the phrase show business sound like something to be ashamed of, which nettled Casey a little, but she wasn’t about to take the bait. Besides, the part about their surname was true enough; the one she’d been born with was Eldenberry, which was not only a mouthful, but apparently an ample reason for the other girls at boarding school to make fun of her. In retrospect, it was hard to believe such a silly thing had ever mattered to her in the first place.
But it had.
She’d been lonely and homesick back then, admittedly for Lupe and Juan rather than for her grandparents, and even one friend would have made a huge difference in her life.
“Okay,” Casey responded, agreeing to nothing, easing her way forward so that Clare had to either body-slam her or step out of the way and let her pass.
Fortunately, Clare wasn’t the type to get physical.
“There’s nothing you can say to make this better,” Clare warned. Her TV was on, though the sound was muted, and both cats lay curled in the middle of her glass-and-chrome bed, peering warily over the folds in the comforter in case they had to make a fast exit.
Casey drew back the chair at Clare’s desk, sat down. “I know,” she said when she was darned good and ready. “But we can’t stop talking to each other, either.”
Clare plunked herself on her bed, careful not to sit on the cats, and folded her legs, yogi-style. She looked like an angry goddess about to rain lightning bolts over all the earth until it burned to a cinder and, though she didn’t come right out and argue with Casey’s statement, her message was crystal clear: maybe you can’t stop talking, but I can.
Casey pulled in a deep breath and ratcheted up her smile, the way she did with snarky “reporters” stringing for the tabloids, or condescending interviewers with an obvious prejudice against country music and those who sang it.
“Maybe we could look at this from the bright side,” she suggested. “You’ve always wanted a father, Clare. Now you have one. A very good one, as it happens.”
“You lied to me,” Clare reminded her stubbornly. “And as for Walker, I wanted a father who wanted me, not somebody who couldn’t be bothered to mention that—oh, yes—I just happen to be his daughter.”
“Walker had nothing to do with this, Clare. It was all my idea.”
“‘Nothing to do with it,’ Mom? Get real. I might be fourteen, but I know how babies happen.” She blushed, her brows still lowered, her lower lip protruding slightly. “Other than when some chemist starts them in test tubes, that is.”
“Clare, don’t be mean. Lots of very good people can only have children by turning to modern medicine for help, and those children are as precious as any other human being.”
Clare seemed to pull in her horns a little then—she wasn’t a hard-hearted person—but it was obvious that Casey wasn’t off the hook, and wouldn’t be anytime soon. “I used to wonder what my donor dad was like,” she said. “You know, if he was smart, if his eyes were the same color as mine, if my laugh was just like his mother’s, or his sister’s—”
Casey kept her chin up, but she couldn’t hide her tears, or say a single word.
“And you know what?” Clare went on, remote and withdrawn again, speaking into a space just over Casey’s right shoulder. “People would say I was being silly, because anybody could see that I got my brains from you, that my eyes are like yours, and my laugh is like yours, we have the same hair and even the same voice. No offense, Mom, but it was almost like they thought I didn’t even need a father, because you’d conceived me all by yourself. And that, of course, is ultraweird unless you’re Jesus.”
Casey laughed, sniffled, snatched a tissue from the box on Clare’s desk and dabbed at her eyes. So much for that last application of mascara, she thought. And how was a completely human and therefore imperfect mother supposed to react to a statement like the one her daughter had just made? With a sermon on the Virgin Birth?
Casey didn’t have a clue, but she wanted to keep the conversation going because she sensed that if they stopped now, a door would close between them.
“Besides being angry with me,” she persisted, “what are you feeling, Clare?”
She was taking a chance, she knew that, but Casey stood up then, walked over to Clare’s bed, sat down beside her and slipped an arm around the girl’s shoulders.
Clare stiffened slightly, but she didn’t squirm away.
“I love you,” Casey said very quietly.
“I know,” Clare answered, just as quietly. “But I think I’m going to be mad for a while longer.”
Casey smiled, kissed her daughter’s temple. “That’s okay,” she said, choking up again. “We’ll work through all this together, no matter how long it takes.”
Clare nodded and swallowed hard, but she didn’t say anything.
And that was Casey’s cue to exit.
CHAPTER TEN
“WELL, BIG BROTHER,” Brylee said peevishly the next morning as she set a coffee cup down on the table in front of Walker with so much force that some of the brew spilled over and burned his fingers, “you sure can keep a secret—I’ll give you that.”
Walker tried to smile, fell a little short of full wattage. “Why is it,” he countered, “that you only wait on me when you’re pissed off?”
Brylee dropped into the chair directly across from his. Decked out in her usual jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt and sneakers, with her hair twisted into a no-nonsense bun at the back of her head, she was dressed for the warehouse rather than the office, since that was where she spent most of her time. Not for her the high heels and custom-made power suits other lady CEOs probably favored.
Not that there were a whole lot of those running around Parable County, Montana, to provide him with a frame of reference.
“I wasn’t ‘waiting on’ you,” she pointed out crisply. “If you must know, my first and strongest inclination was to empty the cup over your head.” The flush in her cheeks indicated that she was gathering steam. “All these years,” she went on, “I’ve had a niece and a nephew, and you never bothered to tell me?”
Walker took a thoughtful sip of his coffee, grateful that he wasn’t wearing it instead of drinking it. “Casey didn’t want anybody else to know,” he said reasonably. “And, anyway, I figured you’d guessed it on your own.”
Brylee didn’t touch her own coffee, nor was there any sign of breakfast, not that he’d expected her to cook for him or anything. Most mornings, though, she whipped up scrambled eggs or pancakes for herself, and shared them with him.
“I didn’t have a clue,” she said frankly, simmering down a little.
He hoped.
Walker said nothing, since excuses were all he had to offer, and he was having enough trouble with his conscience as it was.
“Why would Casey want to keep a secret like that?” Brylee asked, clearly not ready to let the subject drop, whether her brother had anything worthwhile to say or not.
A man of few words, Walker groped around inside himself for a viable reply. “She was just starting to make it as a singer at the time,” he said finally. “I guess she thought I’d drag her to the altar, bring her back here to the ranch and keep her barefoot and pregnant for the rest of her life.”
Brylee crooked a smile at that, but it was brief. In that getup, with no makeup on her face, she looked more like a teenager than the head of a company worth millions. “Don’t try to put all the blame on Casey, Walker Parrish. You had a say in this, too. You could have spoken up at any time, with or without her blessing.” She paused, and her throat worked visibly as she struggled with some private emotion. “Your daughter is devastated,” she eventually went on. “And once Shane gets past the whoopee-I’ve-got-a-father-after-all stage, he’s going to wonder why you didn’t see fit to claim him and Clare a long time ago.”
“I told you,” Walker said, “Casey—”
But Brylee held up both palms like a referee, and blew the proverbial whistle. “Bull,” she said flatly. “Since when have you ever danced to anybody’s tune, including Casey Elder’s? Nobody calls your shots but you, Walker, and that means that, on some level, you preferred to leave well enough alone instead of taking a stand.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Walker said, but the words sounded lame, even to him.
Brylee didn’t let up. “Isn’t it?” she countered. “Face it, Walker. If you couldn’t have things your own way—you and Casey married, living on this ranch, raising those kids according to some sitcom image of what a family ought to be rattling around in that hard head of yours—you were going to stand back with your arms folded and your back molars clamped together.”
“That was colorful,” Walker observed—once he’d unclamped his back molars so his tongue could function.
“What happens now?” Brylee demanded, cheeks pink with righteous indignation.
“Damned if I know,” Walker admitted glumly.
“Well, you’d better figure something out, don’t you think?”
Walker frowned. “Why are you all fired up about this? Aren’t you even a little bit pleased to find out there’s more to this family than you, me and our now-you-see-her-now-you-don’t mother?”
“I’m delighted,” Brylee snarled, pushing back her chair and standing up so suddenly that she startled her ever-present sidekick, Snidely, in the process, sending him into a brief, skittering retreat. “But my feelings are beside the point right now, frankly, and so are yours and Casey’s. Dammit, Walker, this is about Clare and Shane!”
“I never said it wasn’t about them,” Walker pointed out, getting to his own feet because, by God, when people yelled at him, his only sister included, he didn’t take it sitting down. Not even when they were 99 percent right. “What the hell do you want me to do, Bry?”
Tears filled her eyes. “Give your kids a home,” she said. “Give them a real family.”
With that, Brylee grabbed up her purse, snatched her cell phone off the charger over by the coffeemaker and stormed out of the house. Snidely followed, pausing once to look back, sadly, at Walker and Doolittle.
Give your kids a home. Give them a real family.
Walker sank back into his chair. Did Brylee think he wanted to do anything else but that? He loved his children, always had, even before he found out that Clare, like Shane, was his own. Not a day had gone by without his thinking of them, and Casey, too.
But when you got down to brass tacks, he had to admit that Brylee had a point. He might not have been able to persuade Casey to marry him back then, in the thick of things, but he could have asked for—and fought for, if necessary—some kind of joint custody arrangement. He could have played a greater part in Clare’s and Shane’s lives—a much greater part.
He could have told them about their ancestors, shown them pictures in the photo albums, such as they were, let his children see parts of themselves—a smile, a set of the shoulders—in the images of those who had gone before.
He could have given his son and daughter that gift, if nothing else—the sense of continuity, of belonging, of being links in a chain that went way back.
Most of all, he could have loved them, openly, not in secret.
Maybe, Walker thought glumly, as all this came home to him and finally got through his thick skull, he wasn’t so different from his always distant, hands-off mother. Maybe, deep down, he simply hadn’t wanted to be bothered.
Or was it a matter of plain old run-of-the-mill cowardice? A subconscious fear that Clare and Shane, used to private jets and the best of everything, wouldn’t have wanted what he had to offer—the country life, with chores and regular school and the kind of clothes ranch kids wore?
Hell, he thought. He was never going to figure this one out, especially if he stood there in his kitchen stewing about it.
He had to do something.
Walker summoned Doolittle, grabbed his hat from its peg and plunked it down hard on his head as he strode toward the door, still not knowing what that something was.
&
nbsp; *
“HEY, MOM!” SHANE YELLED from the entryway. “Mrs. Dennison is here!”
Standing at the top of the front stairway, holding an armload of towels in need of washing—to her chagrin Casey hadn’t been able to locate her own laundry chute, though she knew there was one, somewhere—she puzzled over the announcement for a moment, before her preoccupied brain translated Mrs. Dennison to Opal.
Being careful not to stumble, since she couldn’t see her feet for the heap of towels, Casey hurried down the steps, dropped her burden nearby and stepped into the echoing foyer.
Opal stood there, grinning from ear to ear, a ratty old suitcase at her feet. She didn’t seem to mind that all three dogs were sniffing at her luggage.
“I guess you must be wondering what I’m doing here, with half my worldly belongings,” Opal said before Casey could manage more than a hello. The woman looked as pleased as a game show host about to award the big prize. “And the answer is, word got back to me that your Doris was called away on a family emergency, so I’m taking over for her.”
In Parable, Opal Dennison was something of a legend. Wherever she went, tangled situations got untangled in short order, and then there were the weddings.
Three of them, so far—that Casey knew of.
Yikes.
“Great,” Shane interjected enthusiastically. “Does this mean we don’t have to eat Mom’s cooking?”
Opal laughed, a deep, rich sound, full of joy. “Now, I’m sure your mother is a fine cook, young man,” she scolded affably, “but she’s probably got better things to do than stand at the stove all day.”
“What about Joslyn and Slade?” Casey managed to ask. After all, Opal worked for them. “Don’t they need you—especially with another baby on the way?” That morning, in an email exchange with Joslyn, she’d mentioned that Doris had left town to look after her injured sister, but she certainly hadn’t expected the Barlows to fork over their housekeeper. She’d been venting, that was all.
“They’ll manage fine. They’ve got a nanny these days, and they’ll have to learn to get by without me anyhow, since I’m fixing to marry the Reverend Mr. Beaumont next month.” Opal slipped out of her colorful spring jacket, hung it neatly from one of the hooks on the massive coat tree opposite the grandfather clock. “Not that I’m planning to lounge around watching soap operas after the wedding,” she added briskly. “Being a preacher’s wife is a full-time job in itself. Now, where should I put my things?”
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