“She’s probably dead,” Livie said with a sigh.
Since Della’s existence couldn’t be called living, Brad agreed. “Probably,” he replied. Except for periodic requests for a check, which were handled by his accountant, Brad never heard from their mother.
“It’s why I don’t want to get married, you know,” Livie confided. “Because I might be like her. Just get on a bus one day and leave.”
Just get on a bus one day and leave.
Like he’d done to Meg, Brad reflected, hurting. Maybe he was more like Della than he’d ever want to admit aloud.
“You’d never do that,” he told his sister.
“I used to think she’d come home,” Livie went on sadly. “To see me play Mary in the Christmas program at church, or when I got that award for my 4-H project, back in sixth grade.”
Brad slipped an arm around Livie’s shoulders, felt them trembling a little, squeezed. His reaction had been different from Livie’s—if Della had come back, especially after their dad was killed, he’d have spit in her face.
“And you figure if you got married and had kids, you’d just up and leave them? Miss all the Christmas plays and the 4-H projects?”
“I remember her, Brad,” Livie said. “Just the lilac smell of her, and that she was pretty, but I remember. She used to sing a lot, hanging clothes out on the line and things like that. She read me stories. And then she was—well—just gone. I could never make sense of it. I always figured I must have done something really bad—”
“The flaw was in her, Livie, not you.”
“That’s the thing about flaws like that. You never know where they’re going to show up. Mom probably didn’t expect to abandon us.”
Brad didn’t agree, but he couldn’t say so without revealing way too much. The Della he knew was an unmedicated bipolar with a penchant for gin, light on the tonic water. She’d probably married Jim O’Ballivan on a manic high, and decided to hit the road on a low—or vice versa. It was a miracle, by Brad’s calculations, that she’d stayed on Stone Creek Ranch as long as she had, far from the bright lights and big-town bars, where a practicing drunk might enjoy a degree of anonymity.
Coupled with things Big John had said about his daughter-in-law, “man to man” and in strictest confidence, that she’d hidden bottles around the place and slept with ranch hands when there were any around, Brad had few illusions about her morals.
Livie got to her feet, dusting off her jeans as she rose, and Brad immediately did the same.
“I’d better get Willie settled in,” she said. “I’ve got a barn full of sick cows to see to, down the road at the Iversons’ place.”
“Anything serious?” Brad asked, as Livie headed for the Suburban parked next to his truck, and he kept pace. “The cows, I mean?”
“Some kind of a fever,” Livie answered, looking worried. “I drew some random blood samples the last time I was there, and sent them to the university lab in Tempe for analysis. Nothing anybody’s ever seen before.”
“Contagious?”
Livie sighed. Her small shoulders slumped a little, under the weight of her life’s calling, and not for the first time, Brad wished she’d gone into a less stressful occupation than veterinary medicine.
“Possibly,” she said.
Brad waited politely until she’d climbed into the Suburban—Willie was curled comfortably in the backseat, in a nest of old blankets—then got behind the wheel of his truck to follow her to the house.
There, he was annoyed to see a black stretch limo waiting, motor purring.
Phil.
Muttering a curse, Brad did his best to ignore the obvious, got out of the truck and strode to Livie’s Suburban to hoist Willie out of the backseat and carry him into the house. Livie was on his heels, arms full of rudimentary dog equipment, but she cast a few curious glances toward the stretch.
They entered through the kitchen door. Olivia set the dog bed down in a sunny corner, and Brad care fully lowered Willie onto it.
“Who’s in the big car?” Livie asked.
“Probably Phil Meadowbrook,” Brad said a little tersely.
“Your manager?” Livie’s eyes were wary. She was probably thinking Phil would make an offer Brad couldn’t refuse, and he’d leave again.
“Former manager.”
Willie, his hide criss-crossed with pink shaved strips and stitches, looked up at Brad with luminous, trusting eyes.
Livie was watching him, too. There was something bruised about her expression. She knew him better than Willie did.
“We need you around, Brad,” she said at great cost to her pride. “Not just the twins and me, but the whole community. If the Iversons have to put down all those cows, they’ll go under. They’re already in debt up to their eyeballs—last year, Mrs. Iverson had a bout with breast cancer, and they didn’t have insurance.”
Brad’s jaw tightened, and so did the pit of his stomach. “I’ll write a check,” he said.
Livie caught hold of his forearm. “No,” she said with a vehemence that set him back on his heels a little. “That would make them feel like charity cases. They’re good, decent people, Brad.”
“Then what do you want me to do?” Half Brad’s attention was on the conversation, the other half on the distant closing of the limo door, so he’d probably sounded abrupt.
“Put on a concert,” Livie said. “There are half a dozen other families around Stone Creek in similar situations. Divvy up the proceeds, and that will spare everybody’s dignity.”
Brad frowned down at his sister. “How long has that plan been brewing in your busy little head, Dr. Livie?”
She smiled. “Ever since you raised all that money for the animals displaced during Hurricane Katrina,” she said.
A knock sounded at the outside door.
Phil’s big schnoz was pressed to the screen.
“Gotta go,” Livie said. She squatted to give Willie a goodbye pat and ducked out of the kitchen, headed for the front.
“Can I come in?” Phil asked plaintively.
“Would it make a difference if I said no?” Brad shot back.
The screen door creaked open. “Of course not,” Phil said, smiling broadly. “I came all the way from New Jersey to talk some sense into your head.”
“I could have saved you the trip,” Brad answered. “I’m not going to Vegas. I’m not going anywhere.” He liked Phil, but after the events of the past twenty-four hours, he was something the worse for wear. With his chores done and the overdue visit to Big John’s grave behind him, he’d planned to eat something, take a hot shower and fall face-first into his unmade bed.
“Who said anything about Vegas?” Phil asked, the picture of innocent affront. “Maybe I want to deliver a big fat royalty check or something like that.”
“And maybe you’re full of crap,” Brad countered. “I just got a ‘big, fat royalty check,’ according to my accountant. He’s fit to be tied because the recording company promised to parcel the money out over at least fifteen years, and it came in a lump sum instead. Says the taxes are going to eat me alive.”
Phil sniffled, pretended to wipe tears from his eyes. “Cry me a river, Mr. Country Music,” he said. “I belong to the you-can-never-be-too-rich school of thought. Until my niece suffered that bout with anorexia—thank God she recovered—I thought you could never be too thin, either, but that theory’s down the swirler.”
Brad said nothing.
“What happened to that dog?” Phil asked, after giving Willie the eyeball.
“He was attacked by coyotes—or maybe wolves.”
Livie had lugged in a bag of kibble and a couple of bowls, along with the bed Willie was lounging on now, and she’d set two prescription bottles on the counter, too, though Brad hadn’t noticed them until now. He busied himself with reading the labels.
“Why anybody’d want to live in a place where a thing like that is even remotely possible, even if he is a dog,” Phil marveled, “is beyond me.”
<
br /> Willie was to have one of each pill—an anti bio tic and a painkiller—morning and night. With food. “A lot of things are beyond you, Phil,” Brad said, figuring Olivia must have dosed the dog that morning before leaving the clinic, which meant the medication could wait until supper time.
“He’s pretty torn up. Wouldn’t have happened in Music City, to a dog or a man.”
“Evidently,” Brad said, still distracted, “you’ve repressed the gory memories of my second divorce.”
Phil chuckled. “You could give all that extra royalty money you’re so worried about to good ole Cynthia,” he suggested. “Write it off as an extra settlement and let her worry about the taxes.”
“You’re just full of wisdom today. Some thing else, too.”
Uninvited, Phil drew back a chair at the table and sank into it, one hand pressed dramatically to his heart. “Phew,” he sighed. “The old ticker ain’t what it used to be.”
“Right,” Brad said. “I was there for the celebration after your last cardiology workup, remember? You probably have a better heart than I do, so spare me the sympathy plays.”
“You have a heart?” Phil countered, raising his bushy gray eyebrows almost to his thinning hairline. Even with plugs, the carpet looked pretty sparse. Phil’s pate always reminded Brad of the dolls his sisters had had when they were little, sprouting shocks of hair out of holes in neat little rows. “Couldn’t prove it by me.”
“Whatever,” Brad said, dipping one of Willie’s bowls into the kibble bag, then setting it down, full, where the dog could reach it without getting off his bed. He followed up by filling the other bowl with tap water. Then, on second thought, he dumped that and poured the bottled kind, instead.
“This is something big,” Phil said. “That’s why I came in person.”
“If I let you tell me, will you leave?” By then, Brad was plundering the fridge for the makings of break fast.
“Got any kosher sausage in there?” the older man asked.
“Sorry,” Brad answered. He’d come up with something if Phil stayed, since he couldn’t eat in front of the man, but he was still hoping for a speedy departure.
Next, he’d be hanging up a stocking on Christmas Eve, setting out an empty basket the night before Easter.
“Big opportunity,” Phil continued. “Very, very big.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care? This is a movie, Brad. The lead. A feature, too. A big Western with cattle and wagons and a cast of dozens. And you won’t even have to sing.”
“No.”
“Two years ago, even a year ago, you would have killed for a chance like this!”
“That was then,” Brad said, flashing back to the night before, when he’d said practically the same thing to Meg, “and this is now.”
“I’ve got the script in the car. In my brief case. Solid gold, Brad. It might even be Oscar material.”
“Phil,” Brad said, turning from the fridge with the makings of a serious omelet in his hands, “what part of ‘no’ is eluding you? Would it be the N, or the O?”
“But you’d get to play an outlaw, trying to go straight.”
“Phil.”
“You’re really serious about this retirement thing, aren’t you?” Phil sounded stunned. Ag grieved. And petulant. “In a year—hell, in six months—when you’ve got all this down-home stuff out of your system, you’ll wish you’d listened to me!”
“I listened, Phil. Do you want an omelet?”
“Do I want an omelet? Hell, no! I want you to make a damned movie!”
“Not gonna happen, Phil.”
Phil was suddenly super-alert, like a predator who’s just spotted dinner on the hoof. “It’s some woman, isn’t it?”
Again, he flashed on Meg. The way she’d felt, silky and slick, against him. The way she’d scratched at his back and called his name…
“Maybe,” he admitted.
“Do I need to remind you that your romantic history isn’t exactly going to inspire a new line of Hallmark valentines?”
Brad sighed. Got out the skillet and set it on the stove. Willie gave him a sidelong look of commiseration from the dog bed.
“If you won’t eat an omelet,” Brad told Phil, “leave.”
“That pretty little thing who sneaked out of here when I came to the door—was that her?”
“That was my sister,” Brad said.
Phil raised himself laboriously to his feet, like he was ninety-seven instead of seventy-seven, and all that would save him from a painful and rapid descent into the grave all but yawning at the tips of his gleaming shoes was Brad’s signature on a movie contract. “Well, whoever this woman is, I’d like her name. Maybe she can get you to see reason.”
That made Brad smile. Meg made him see galaxies colliding. Once or twice, during the night, he’d almost seen God. But reason?
Nope.
He plopped a dollop of butter into the skillet.
Phil made a huffy exit, slamming the screen door behind him.
Willie gave a low whine.
“You’re right,” Brad told the dog. “He’ll probably be back.”
Meg stood as if frozen in the hallway of Indian Rock’s only hotel, wanting to turn and run, but too stunned to move.
She’d just gathered the impetus to flee when her father stuck a hand out. “Ted Ledger,” he said, by way of introduction. “Come in and meet your sister, Meg.”
Her sister?
It was that, added to a desire to commit matricide, that brought Meg over the threshold and into her mother’s simply furnished, elegantly rustic suite.
Eve was nowhere in sight, the coward. But a little girl, ten or twelve years old, sat stiffly on the couch, hands folded in her lap. She was blond and blue-eyed, clad in cheap discount-store jeans and a floral shirt with ruffles, and the look on her face was one of terrified defiance.
“Hello,” Meg said, forcing the words past her heart, which was beating in her throat.
The marvelous blue eyes narrowed.
“Carly,” said Ted Ledger, “say hello.”
“Hello,” Carly complied grudgingly.
Looking at the child, Meg couldn’t help thinking that the baby she’d lost would have been about this same age, if it hadn’t been for the miscarriage.
She straightened her spine. Turned to the father who hadn’t cared enough to send her so much as an e-mail, let alone be part of her life. “Where is my mother?” she asked evenly.
“Hiding out,” Ledger said with a wisp of a grin. In his youth, he’d probably been handsome. Now he was thin and gray-haired, with dark shadows under his pale blue eyes.
Carly looked Meg over again and jutted out her chin. “I don’t want to live with her,” she said. “She probably doesn’t need a kid hanging around anyhow.”
“Go in the kitchen,” Ledger told the child.
To Meg’s surprise, Carly obeyed.
“Live with me?” Meg echoed in a whisper.
“It’s that or foster care,” Ledger said. “Sit down.”
Meg sat, not because her father had asked her to, but because all the starch had gone out of her knees. Questions battered at the back of her throat, like balls springing from a pitching machine.
Where have you been?
Why didn’t you ever call?
If I kill my mother, could a dream-team get me off without prison time?
“I know this is sudden,” Ted Ledger said, perching on the edge of the white velvet wingback chair Eve had had sent from her mansion in San Antonio, to make the place more “homey.”
“But the situation is desperate. I’m desperate.”
Meg tried to swallow, but couldn’t. Her mouth was too dry, and her esophagus had closed up. “I don’t believe this,” she croaked.
“Your mother and I agreed, long ago,” Ledger went on, “that it would be best if I stayed out of your life. That’s why she never brought you to visit me.”
“Visit you?”
&n
bsp; “I was in prison, Meg. For embezzlement.”
“From McKettrickCo,” Meg mused aloud, startled, but at the same time realizing that she’d known all along, on some half-conscious level.
“I told you he was a waste of hair and hide,” Angus said. He stood over by the fake fire place, one arm resting on the mantelpiece.
Meg took care to ignore him, not to so much as glance in his direction, though she could see him out of the corner of one eye. He was in old-man mode today, white-headed and wrinkled and John Wayne-tough, but dressed for the trail.
“Yes,” Ledger replied. “Your mother saw that there was no scandal—easier to do in those days, before the media came into its own. I went to jail. She went on with her life.”
“Where does Carly fit in?”
Ledger’s smile was soft and sad. “While I was inside, I got religion, as they say. When I was released, I found a job, met a woman, got married. We had Carly. Then, three years ago, Sarah—my wife—was killed in a car accident. Things went downhill from there—I was diagnosed last month.”
Tears burned in Meg’s eyes, but they weren’t for Ledger, or even for Sarah. They were for Carly. Although she’d grown up in a different financial situation, with all the stability that came with simply being a McKettrick, she knew what the child must be going through.
“You don’t have any other family? Perhaps Sarah’s people—”
Ledger shook his head. “There’s no one. Your mother has generously agreed to pay my medical bills and arrange for a decent burial, but I’ll be lucky if I live six weeks. And once I’m gone, Carly will be alone.”
Meg pressed her finger tips to her temples and breathed slowly and deeply. “Maybe Mom could—”
“She’s past the age to raise a twelve-year-old,” Ledger interrupted.
He leaned forward slightly in his chair, rested his elbows on his knees, inter twined his fingers and let his hands dangle. “Meg, you don’t owe me a damn thing. I was no kind of father, and I’m not pretending I was. But Carly is your half sister. She’s got your blood in her veins. And she doesn’t have anybody else.”
The McKettrick Legend: Sierra's HomecomingThe McKettrick Way (Hqn) Page 34