Big Sky River

by Linda Lael Miller

  “We’re going to live here now,” Griffin observed, and, though it was a statement, there was a question underlying his words.

  “Yes,” Boone said. He wasn’t sure exactly when he’d made the decision—he’d waffled a lot, inside his head—but he knew it was final. “I’m your dad, and you’re my sons, and we belong together.”

  The dog jumped up onto the bed just then and snuggled in beside Fletcher, who closed his eyes without another word. Just that quick, exhaustion caught up with the little guy and pulled him under.

  Mildly surprised that his youngest hadn’t raised hell about staying in Parable for good, Boone winked at Griffin, who was watching him with a broad grin and big, hopeful eyes.

  “I love you, Dad,” he said.

  The announcement nearly brought Boone to his knees.

  He bent over the bed, kissed his son’s freckled forehead, and replied hoarsely, “I love you, too, buddy. Sleep tight.”

  After shutting out the light, Boone walked quietly down the corridor toward the kitchen, aching with emotions he’d managed to keep under wraps for a long, long time.

  He felt restless, happy and terrified at the same time, and the double-wide seemed too small to contain him, so he stepped outside, under a giant yellow moon, and surveyed the familiar landscape with new eyes.

  He ached, and yet he wanted to shout for joy, too.

  He strode the several dozen yards to the site where he and Corrie had planned to build their house. The stakes, marking off corners and future rooms, were still there, though almost swallowed up by time and grass and shifting dirt.

  Boone paced off the living room, the kitchen, the master bedroom, the dining area, the rooms where the boys would sleep, the spaces meant for other children, expected later.

  He stood in the center of the invisible house, tilted his head back, and looked up at the star-spattered sky. His throat seized again, painfully, and he had to blink a couple times to keep his eyeballs dry.

  “Corrie,” he said in a gravelly whisper, when he finally managed to find his voice and put some breath behind it, “I loved you as much as any man ever loved a woman or ever will, but I’m still here and you’re gone, and, well, the hard truth is, I’m lonesome as all get-out.” He stopped again, choked up, then went doggedly on. “The boys are asking for a mother—maybe you heard them tonight, I don’t know. I’m not sure who they’ll wind up with, but I guess I ought to start looking for somebody, for their sake as well as my own. Just know this, sweetheart—we’re not meaning to replace you. That would be downright impossible. I’ll make sure our sons remember you, always, and you’ll always be their mother, no matter what. It’s just that—” He hesitated as his voice broke again, like an engine throwing a rod, and he finished what he wanted to say in his mind instead of aloud. I’ll always love you, Corrie. But I’m ready to love someone else—I need to love someone else—and I guess I’m asking you to understand.

  Boone was quiet for a long time after that, just standing there, not expecting an answer or anything, just imagining the house into existence, building it, board by board, wall by wall, in his head. He could almost smell the drywall and the sawdust, hear the buzz of electric saws and the rhythmic tattoo of hammers pounding nails into good Montana timber.

  Yep, he was definitely alive, and it was wonderful, a jubilation that almost took his breath away.

  But it hurt like hell, too.

  * * *

  “YOU LIKE SHERIFF TAYLOR,” Erin said, when she and Elle and Lucy were all back inside the farmhouse.

  Had there been a note of accusation in her voice?

  Tara smiled, feeling strangely jangled and mellow. “Boone’s nice enough,” she said lightly. An understatement for sure, and quite a shift, considering that she’d disliked Boone intensely almost from the moment they had met, many moons ago, at the glamorous backyard party Kendra, as her real estate agent, had thrown in Tara’s honor after she’d finally made a firm offer on the chicken ranch and signed on all the dotted lines.

  A glance at Elle showed that she was, one, scratching mosquito bites garnered on the fishing expedition and, two, scowling with disapproval and hurt. Angry tears glinted in her eyes. “He’s all wrong for you,” she said. “If you marry him, you’ll never come back to live in New York.”

  Tara was jarred, though she tried not to show it. Obviously, the child was upset enough. So she put both hands up, palms out, and said, “Whoa. Who said anything about marriage?”

  Lucy gave a worried little whimper and plopped down on her haunches, an uneasy witness to the small drama.

  “Adults never say anything about marriage,” Erin retorted, nudging up her glasses with one finger. The lenses were smudged, and she had grass in her hair, Tara noted, with distracted affection. “They just go right ahead and have a wedding and everybody else just has to deal with it!”

  This outburst was, of course, about James and Bethany, Tara realized, not so much herself and Boone. “Some adults do that,” she conceded gently, silently willing James to develop male-pattern baldness and two left feet on the racquetball court. “But I’d definitely talk to you two before I said ‘I do’ to anybody. You have my word on that.”

  Erin sniffled.

  Elle dashed at her grubby cheeks with the back of one hand.

  There was a short silence during which Tara began to hope that the storm had blown over as quickly as it had arisen.

  No such luck.

  “You like the sheriff,” Elle insisted, though with less bluster than before. “You were just pretending to think he was a jerk.”

  Tara had to grin at that, even though her heart felt bruised. “No,” she said, moving to make herself a cup of much-needed herbal tea, “I wasn’t pretending. I really, one hundred percent, believed Boone Taylor was a jerk.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Erin’s knuckles whiten as she gripped the back of one of the chairs at the table. “But now?” the girl asked.

  “Sometimes we make judgments about people before we really know them,” Tara said, her tone mild, but with a distinct tremor. She certainly wasn’t afraid of Elle and Erin—and how she lived her life wasn’t their call, though she was willing to allow them some input. No, the small quaver in her voice had more to do with her growing attraction to Boone than anything else.

  This development still came as a shock, and she hadn’t begun to make sense of it. Boone? Good heavens, even his name was redneck.

  “If you came back to New York,” Erin said, more moderately now, “Dad might see what a mistake it would be to marry Bethany. He might figure out that it’s really you he loves, and then we’d all be together again, like before.”

  Tara froze. Her movements were awkward, almost wooden, as she set her teacup on the counter to avoid spilling the contents, and turned to face her stepdaughters.

  “Honey,” she said gently, brokenly, addressing not just Erin, but Elle, too, “your dad and I aren’t going to get back together, ever. It’s really and truly over—he doesn’t love me and I don’t love him. I thought you understood that.”

  Both girls looked crestfallen.

  Of course they hadn’t understood, Tara thought with a stab of sorrow. They were children, carrying vestiges of magic and fairy tales in their hearts, and hope, which not only came naturally to them, like breathing, it died hard.

  Tara crossed to them, gathered both girls to her, one in the curve of each arm, and held them. They buried wet faces in either side of her neck, and Erin’s slender body trembled with silent sobs.

  “Shhh,” Tara whispered, kissing the crown of one blond head, then the other, fighting back tears of her own. After all, she was the grown-up here, and somebody had to hold it together. “I know it’s hard right now, because everything is changing, but, trust me, you’re both going to be all right. Better than all right. You’re growing up into smart, beautiful women before my very eyes. You’ll be happy, I promise, if you’ll only trust that there’s a plan.”

  Trust
that there’s a plan. Maybe, Tara thought, she ought to follow her own advice. Simply let life unfold, without any pushing and plotting on her part.

  What a concept.

  Tara managed a wobbly smile.

  “The plan,” Erin all but wailed, “is for Dad to marry Bethany and for Elle and me to rot away in some stupid, swanky boarding school until we’re old enough for college! That way, he doesn’t have to be bothered with us—”

  “Hey,” Tara protested, squeezing them both again. “Have a little faith, will you?”

  More good advice. Are you listening to yourself, Tara Kendall?

  Elle pushed back slightly, not quite pulling free of Tara’s embrace, but stiffening as she looked up at her. Her cheeks, like Erin’s, were awash with tears. “Faith?” she echoed, and there was a stubborn set to her chin while her eyes flashed. “We prayed every night for a year that you and Dad would get back together, that you’d come home and we could all be a family again and—and now look what’s happening!”

  Tara kissed the girl’s forehead. No matter how many children she might be blessed with in the future, she knew she would never love any of them more than she did these two. Elle and Erin were a part of her, joined to her soul as well as her heart, the ties unbreakable.

  “Things don’t always turn out the way we want them to, obviously,” she replied carefully, when she’d recovered a bit. “But that doesn’t mean your prayers weren’t answered.” She smiled another wobbly smile. “You’ve heard that old Garth Brooks song, haven’t you? The one about unanswered prayers?”

  “Garth who?” Erin asked, plainly baffled.

  Tara laughed, a ragged sound. “Never mind,” she said. “The point is, we don’t always know what’s best for us, or for the people we love. We have to trust that Someone Else does.”

  The twins looked skeptical, each of their faces a near perfect reflection of the other’s, but they were calming down a little. Even Lucy sensed the change in the atmosphere, leaping up to lick Erin’s cheeks and then Elle’s in a burst of dog-relief.

  “Dad says there’s no such thing as God,” Erin announced, a few moments later. She scratched at a row of pink mosquito bites on her right arm. “He says people invented God because they were scared of being all alone in a big universe.”

  “He’s entitled to his opinion,” Tara said diplomatically. “Suffice it to say, there are lots of us who disagree. Like Opal, for instance.”

  “You believe in God?” Elle asked tentatively.

  “You know I do,” Tara assured her. “Remember how we went to Sunday school every week, at Marble Collegiate Church?”

  “Sunday school is a social form, that’s all,” Erin said, obviously parroting James again. “People think it makes them look good.”

  “Maybe,” Tara allowed, “and maybe not.” She drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Now,” she went on, “let me make you some sandwiches—you missed dinner, in case you’ve forgotten—and then you can take your showers, put some lotion on those mosquito bites—stop scratching, please—and turn in for the night. Tomorrow’s another day.”

  Thank you, Scarlett O’Hara, commented a wry voice in the back of Tara’s brain.

  She’d expected some resistance, even open rebellion, but the twins simply nodded, went to the kitchen sink, washed their hands and splashed their faces, coming away with spiky lashes and pink cheeks.

  They took their places at the table and Tara poured glasses of milk for them and whipped up a trio of grilled cheese sandwiches in a hurry.

  The three of them ate in companionable silence—a relief to Tara, who was fresh out of inspiration—and afterward, while the girls cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, Tara went outside with Lucy, waited on her, and then filled the dog’s bowl with kibble when they were back inside.

  Lucy ate heartily, like any self-respecting dog, and when the twins trooped upstairs, yawning and bantering about plans for the next day, the golden retriever brought up the rear.

  Tara moved through the house, shutting off lights as she went, making sure doors were locked, pausing just briefly at one downstairs window to look toward Boone’s place.

  Without meaning to, she kissed the fingertips of her right hand and pressed them lightly against the glass before turning away.

  * * *

  “IT’S A HEN PARTY,” Hutch Carmody explained bright and early the next morning, while he and Boone and Slade Barlow each tied into a breakfast special at the Butter Biscuit Café.

  “Makes me nervous when women get together like that,” Slade commented drily with a twinkle in his eyes. The planned gathering over at Casey Elder’s place for lunch was evidently a “no men allowed” kind of thing. Kendra, Joslyn and Tara were all going, though Boone wouldn’t have known that if his friends hadn’t told him. It wasn’t as if he was in the loop where Tara’s social life was concerned.

  “I need some deputies,” Boone blurted out. “For the night of Casey’s benefit concert, I mean.”

  Slade and Hutch exchanged amused glances.

  Slade buttered another piece of toast, while Hutch took his sweet time savoring a sip of lukewarm coffee.

  Boone felt himself reddening from the neck up, and his ears started to burn. “What?” he snapped, looking from Slade to Hutch and back again.

  “It seems our friend here has a hot date for Saturday night,” Slade finally commented, grinning across the table at Hutch.

  “About time,” Hutch drawled.

  Boone loved living in Parable—it was home, pure and simple—but there were moments when he wished gossip didn’t get around so fast.

  Tara must have told Joslyn and/or Kendra that Boone had asked her out, and by now, everybody in the county was probably in the know.

  “It’s no big deal,” Boone practically growled.

  “Are you kidding me?” Hutch retorted, mischief dancing in his eyes. “This is news. Sheriff Boone Taylor climbs out of the coffin and rejoins the living. If this town still had a newspaper, that’s what today’s headline would read.”

  Boone felt steam building inside his ears, fit to shoot out and scald somebody.

  Slade reached over and slapped him lightly on the back. “Take it easy, old buddy,” he said. “If Hutch and I josh you a little, it’s only because we’re happy for you.”

  “Damn straight,” Hutch agreed. “You’ve been alone way too long.”

  Boone, embarrassed but not angry, simmered down a bit. “You make it sound like Tara and I are planning to elope to Las Vegas or something,” he muttered, disgruntled. “I asked the lady to a concert, that’s all. But I’m still going to need somebody to cover for me that night.”

  “I’d be glad to help out,” Slade said. A former sheriff himself, he had the know-how and the experience. “Maybe Three Trees will lend us a few officers—Casey’s planning a second concert in their fine community in a week or so, and you could return the favor by sending some of your people over.”

  Hutch grinned. “I’d volunteer,” he said, “but I’m an outlaw now. That water tower incident has ruined my sterling reputation. I barely escaped arrest.”

  Boone almost choked on a sip of coffee. “Your ‘sterling reputation’?” he countered, with a raspy chuckle. “In what universe do you have one of those?”

  Hutch looked hurt, though it was all pretense, of course. He’d always been a rascal and a rounder, even prided himself on it, a born rebel, with or without a cause. Why, before Kendra came back into his life and loved off some of the rough edges, Hutch had been a wild man.

  “And what’s this ‘now’ crap?” Slade wanted to know, echoing Boone’s silent observation on the matter. “You’ve been an outlaw for as long as any of us can remember.”

  Hutch shook his head slowly from side to side, as though disgusted. “When did you two turn into upstanding citizens?” he asked, holding back a grin. “You’re not the only ones around here with a memory, you know. Slade, what about that time you let old man Darby’s milk cows out, and w
e had to spend a whole day and a half rounding them up so Sheriff McQuillan wouldn’t throw the whole bunch of us in the hoosegow?” He turned to Boone, his manner idle. “As for you, old pal, weren’t you the one who used to pull up stop signs all over town, every Halloween night, without fail?”

  “You should know,” Boone said mildly, sitting back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. “You were right there with me.”

  “Only because I’m a true friend,” Hutch said, his expression downright angelic.

  “Or because it was your idea in the first place,” Slade put in. He and Hutch, half brothers though they were, hadn’t been close in those days. Hutch’s late father, John Carmody, had scandalized the whole county by siring Slade outside the bonds of holy matrimony, and they’d grown up brawling like Cain with a twin.

  “Sheriff Wilkes McQuillan,” Boone murmured, recalling the man they’d all both feared and admired. “Parable County’s own John Wayne.”

  “Hard to believe Treat’s any kin to him,” Slade remarked. Deputy McQuillan hadn’t been a favorite with him, either, back when he was wearing the sheriff’s badge.

  “I hear he’s dating Nancy Winchell,” interjected Susan, the waitress, suddenly appearing with a coffeepot and a speculative expression. “Treat McQuillan, I mean. She’s been spiffing up her daddy’s house all this time, and making all kind of noise about selling the place, but there’s no For Sale sign in the front yard yet, I notice.”

  “Why, Susan,” Hutch teased, mock-scolding the woman they’d all known forever, “not only are you a gossip, but an eavesdropper in the bargain.”

  “You shush,” Susan told him, splashing a refill into his coffee cup. “Just because you’ve got a daughter now, that doesn’t mean you can get all full of yourself.”

  “I have two daughters,” Hutch pointed out, more serious than before. As far as Hutch was concerned, Madison was a full-fledged Carmody, and he wasn’t shy about reminding people that he considered the little girl his child, period.

  Susan paused to pat his shoulder fondly. “I know that, Hutch Carmody,” she said, unruffled, “so just pull in your horns.”