Big Sky Secrets

by Linda Lael Miller

  A couple of minutes later, the girl meandered into the kitchen, hair tamed by a quick brushing, face pink from splashes of cold well water. She took the coffee Ria offered with a little moan of beleaguered thanks, raised the mug to her mouth with both hands and sipped.

  “It can’t be morning,” she complained, after licking her lips and squinting at the nearest window. “It’s still dark.”

  Ria laughed. “It’s morning, all right,” she answered. “Are you hungry?”

  Quinn shook her head, blinking the sleep from her eyes. By now, Bones was scrabbling at her right knee, demanding a greeting, and the girl giggled and bent to pat his head. “I make it a rule never to eat unless I’m fully conscious,” she told Ria.

  Again, Ria smiled. “Good idea,” she said. “I usually get breakfast at the farmers’ market, after setting up for the day,” she said. “There’s a concession wagon, and you can have pancakes, bacon or sausage, scrambled eggs or cereal. Even French toast and crepes. The coffee’s good, too.”

  Quinn drank more of the brew Ria had just given her, looking more alert after every swallow. Bones, having finished his kibble, lapped up some water and bid his mistress an enthusiastic good morning, was at the back door again, wanting to go out.

  “Hmm,” Quinn said noncommittally, crossing to open the way for Bones to hit the yard. “I guess I should hurry,” she added, watching the dog through the screen door. “What was it Uncle Frank used to say? ‘We’re burning daylight’?”

  Ria felt a soft, bittersweet stab at the memory. “That was it,” she confirmed.

  Being a firefighter/EMT, Frank had worked four days on, three days off. When he didn’t have to be at the station, ready around the clock for the inevitable calls that summoned him and his colleagues to action, he liked to get out of the city, go fishing or hiking or, in summer, water-skiing, and, since they were apart when he was on duty, he wanted Ria right there at his side. Once in a while, if it was raining, for instance, he could be talked into visiting an indoor flea market or taking in a movie, but for the most part, Frank had needed to be doing something physical, preferably in the open air.

  And Ria had gone along. Not that there weren’t plenty of times when she would have preferred to do something else, but she mostly hadn’t minded. Even-tempered and perennially cheerful, sometimes to an irritating degree, Frank was good company, and he was smart, not to mention funny. Old-fashioned as it seemed in retrospect, Ria had loved making her husband happy.

  Oh, yes, she thought now, biting her lower lip. She’d definitely been in love with love back then.

  But had she really and truly loved Frank?

  Yes, she decided, in the space of an instant, but no marriage was perfect and she’d stopped trusting him, consciously or unconsciously, after the slipup. He’d been away from home, attending a special two-week training seminar, and one night, when he’d had too much to drink with some buddies in the hotel bar, he’d been a little lonely and a lot depressed. He’d wound up in bed with a classmate, a paramedic from another state, named Carly.

  Back home, he’d told Ria what had happened—they’d agreed never to keep secrets from each other, no matter what—and sworn he’d never cheated on her before and would never do it again. He’d pleaded, with tears in his eyes, for a second chance.

  Of course Ria had been hurt—not just hurt, she’d been wounded to the core of her spirit—but she’d known that Frank didn’t have it in him to lie. He’d proved that by telling her what he’d done. A lot of men wouldn’t have confessed, fearing the fallout, perhaps even coming to the convenient conclusion that it would be kinder to say nothing.

  Slowly, painfully, she’d forgiven him. Or, at least, she’d thought she had. Now, as the old ache pulsed like a bruise to the heart, she wondered.

  She and Frank had moved on, put the incident behind them as best they could, but something in Ria had been fractured, irreparably. Without the bedrock of trust, she’d found, love changed, eroded—little by little, in her case.

  And that distrust, that subtle cynicism, was part of the reason she was so wary, even testy, around Landry Sutton, in spite of—or was it because of?—the breathless, cliff-edge attraction between them. Very possibly, she thought, with a sense of aching sadness, she’d never be able to trust any man, Landry or anyone else.

  Discouragement swamped her as she considered the ramifications of it all: no happy family for her. No husband and no babies. Deliberately, and with considerable difficulty, Ria shifted her focus from these dismal thoughts and sent her brain hurrying along another path, though admittedly one that ran parallel to the first.

  Since Quinn had spent a lot of time with Ria during the Portland years, an arrangement Meredith had encouraged, the girl had often accompanied her aunt and uncle on their day trips, grumbling but happy when Frank clapped his hands in the guest room doorway to wake her up at the crack of dawn, declaring in a booming voice that they were burning daylight and vowing to sing every chorus of the National Anthem if he didn’t see some action, immediately.

  Since Frank was no singer, it wasn’t an empty threat. And he’d had other methods of waking up the household, if not the neighborhood, as well. Once, after digging his high-school-band trumpet out of a box in the attic, he’d dusted the thing off, positioned himself in the hallway between the two bedrooms of their apartment and played reveille.

  Reveille. Furthermore, he’d not only played the notes loudly, he’d played them badly, the horn emitting an earsplitting screech throughout.

  He hadn’t pulled that particular stunt again, since Ria and Quinn had yelled at him, and the people living above, below and on both sides of them had pounded on their walls and ceilings and floors in earnest protest.

  Frank had shrugged his powerful shoulders and returned the trumpet to the attic, but he hadn’t really reformed. When the next outing rolled around, and his wife and niece “lollygagged” in their beds, he’d crowed like a rooster. That drew similar complaints, of course, so he moved on to squirt guns, stupid jokes and, in Ria’s case, tickling.

  Noticing that her parallel mental paths had merged, Ria purposefully regrounded herself in the current moment, but she smiled, albeit a bit wistfully, at the memories.

  Quinn, meanwhile, had refilled her coffee mug, gone back to her room and presently emerged again, wearing jeans, a pink T-shirt, sneakers and a lightweight jacket, all things they’d bought together the night before. With Bones frolicking around them, and pink light spilling over the rims of the mountains, Ria and her niece armed themselves with clippers and buckets half-filled with water, and headed into the fields.

  In the dim predawn light, they cut armloads of flowers, choosing the brightest, freshest ones, just reaching the peak of their beauty, arranged them by color and variety in more buckets, topped off the water so the blooms wouldn’t get thirsty on the drive ahead.

  Finally, Ria backed the farm truck out of the shed, engine rattling, exhaust pipe blasting intermittently. She offered the usual prayer of thanks that the rig was still running. She’d bought the contraption from one of the neighbors, when she was still new in the community, with a little money and a lot of faith. The truck ran well enough, unless the temperature dropped below thirty-two degrees, as it often had that past winter, and the odometer, apparently having used up its allotment of numbers years before Ria came along, had ground to a halt at some point, the last numeral forever stuck between a five and a six.

  Quinn laughed when she saw the truck, shouted to be heard over the thundering chortle of the motor. Mysterious things clattered under the hood, and the exhaust pipe popped several more times, like a round of bullets fired in quick succession. “What a relic!” Quinn shouted, grinning. “Is there an actual color under all that rust?”

  Ria pretended indignation; then she laughed, too. She got out of the rig, shaking her head, and teased, “The truck happens to be blue, for your information. What do you say we get the flowers loaded up?”

  Frank’s voice echoed in
her head. We’re burning daylight.

  Quinn pushed up her figurative sleeves and went right to work alongside Ria. When they were done, and the pickup bed was filled with flowers and buckets, the girl asked tentatively, “Bones gets to go with us, doesn’t he?”

  She seemed to be holding her breath, waiting for Ria’s answer. Had Meredith ever said yes to this child? Quinn was clearly braced for a no.

  Ria refrained from comment, since she’d always tried not to criticize Meredith in Quinn’s presence, and nodded in the affirmative. Bones was welcome to come along. “But,” she clarified, holding up an index finger to make her point, “he’ll have to have his collar and leash on at all times. We can’t have him wandering off or bothering the customers or the other vendors.”

  Quinn lit up with delight, promised she’d keep an eye on Bones the whole time they were away from home and dashed inside to fetch his leash and collar, along with two plastic bowls for water and kibble, transporting the latter in a sealed storage bag.

  Soon, the three of them were rumbling along winding country roads toward town.

  “How far away is Parable?” Quinn asked as they passed through Three Trees a few minutes later. All of the businesses and most of the houses were still dark, though a light shone in the occasional window.

  “Are you rethinking breakfast?”

  Quinn shook her head no. “Just curious,” she said.

  “Good.” Ria grinned. “Because none of the diners or the fast-food places will be open before six. And to answer your original question, it’s about thirty miles from here to Parable.”

  They drove on in pleasant silence for a while, each thinking their own thoughts.

  Then Quinn ventured carefully, “Will he be there?”

  “He?” Ria asked, though she already knew who her niece was referring to.

  “Landry Sutton,” Quinn said mildly, in a tone meant to convey the fact that she wasn’t born yesterday.

  Until then, Ria had been keeping thoughts of Landry, and the forthcoming night at the Boot Scoot Tavern, safely at bay. Now here he was, in her face, metaphorically speaking. If she wasn’t careful, she’d start imagining ahead of time what it would be like to dance with him in a dim and crowded bar lit mainly by a jukebox and the neon beer signs that probably hung in every bar in the country.

  A hot tremor went through her at the prospect of being held close against that hard, sculpted chest, those muscled thighs....

  Whoa, Ria told herself silently, sitting up a little straighter in the lumpy, duct-tape-mended seat of that old truck, jutting out her chin a smidgen and squaring her shoulders with such force that they ached slightly. By then, to her chagrin, she’d succeeded so well at distracting herself that she’d forgotten Quinn’s question.

  Grinning, Quinn repeated it. Would they be running into Landry at the farmers’ market?

  “Probably not,” Ria answered, her voice coming out hoarse, like the croak of a frog. She paused to clear her throat, shore up her dignity again. “Sometimes his brother Zane and his wife, Brylee, show up, though. And you might get to meet some of my other friends, too—the market’s a popular place.”

  Quinn’s expression turned thoughtful. “Zane Sutton?” she asked, her voice soft with sudden awe. Bones, blissfully unimpressed by celebrity, it would seem, lay curled up on Quinn’s lap now, catching a nap. “The movie star?”

  “That’s him,” Ria said, enjoying her niece’s obvious amazement. For all their phone calls, emails and texts, she’d never mentioned knowing anyone famous—it would have been wrong, in her opinion. One of the reasons Zane Sutton and Casey Elder had come to Parable County in the first place, after all, was that they wanted to live quietly, out of the limelight. “Turns out, we have several celebrity neighbors. Casey Elder, the country singer—around here, most people either call her by her first name or ‘Mrs. Parrish,’ if they’re not well acquainted—lives just down the road from us, with her husband, Walker, and their children.”

  Quinn’s mouth dropped open, and her eyes went wide. “No way,” she marveled, when she’d recovered a little.

  Ria chuckled. “Way,” she countered. “But don’t expect a lot of razzle-dazzle. Casey and Zane are both down-to-earth types, and they like to be treated like everyone else around here—like ordinary people.”

  “Except they’re not ordinary,” Quinn reasoned.

  “You might be surprised,” Ria replied, thinking with warmth of Zane Sutton, who was considerably nicer, in her opinion, than his brother. And then there was Casey—always smiling, always ready to help when there was a need and as solidly unpretentious as anyone Ria had ever known.

  She told a few stories, and the thirty miles between Three Trees and Parable rolled beneath the wide tires of the old truck quickly, and the sun was up when they pulled into the parking lot at the fairgrounds. The space was already crowded with cars and pickups and people unloading their wares.

  Two boys appeared immediately, and insisted on lugging the heavy buckets, filled with water and flowers, inside the long building that served as an exhibition hall during the rodeo and the county fair, and along the sawdust-covered aisle to Ria’s usual booth. They both wore battered jeans, clean but well-worn cotton shirts and the straw cowboy hats that were so ubiquitous in Montana.

  Ria introduced the teens to Quinn simply as Shane and Nash, saving last names and family relationships for later, and they touched their hat brims in acknowledgment, said “howdy” and grinned shyly.

  Quinn was clearly charmed—it would have been impossible to miss the admiring glances coming her way—though as soon as the pair had finished the unloading, gotten acquainted with a very receptive Bones, politely refused to accept payment for their help and finally disappeared, she whispered a comment. “Very cute, but way too young for me.” A pause, a mischievous lift of her eyebrows. “Do they have older brothers, by any chance?”

  Ria grinned, busy rearranging the flower buckets and fluffing out their vibrantly hued contents. “Actually,” she said, “Nash is Zane and Landry Sutton’s younger brother, but that’s it for siblings, as far as I know, so no luck in that quarter, I’m afraid. And Shane just has an older sister and two baby brothers—strike two.”

  Quinn made a face, conveying mock disappointment, and said nothing.

  The crowd was already pretty thick, Ria noticed, early as it was. Not surprisingly, a lot of folks around the county, whether they lived in town or out in the countryside, raised their own flowers, as well as vegetables, but there were enough nongardeners and tourists to sustain the market throughout the summer, and right on to the end of October, when pumpkins were the biggest draw.

  There were other things for sale, too—everything from organic herbs to handmade quilts, soap and candles, beautifully tooled leather items like belts and bridles, vintage and home-sewn clothing, colorful aprons and screen-printed T-shirts, modest antiques, rusty farm equipment and old books. In early spring, seedlings appeared in some of the booths, growing out of cardboard egg cartons and small peat pots, and, even now, shimmering jars of jam and jelly lined some of the improvised counters and shelves.

  Ria loved the place and the people. The money she usually earned, not a lot but certainly enough, by her standards, would add up over the course of the season.

  When Ria heard her niece’s stomach rumble, even over the noise of chitchat and down-home sales pitches, she sent the girl to the concession wagon to buy breakfast, any breakfast, for both of them. She’d sold several bouquets before Quinn returned with foam boxes containing French toast, drenched in syrup, along with link sausages thrown in, as she put it, “for a shot of protein.” There was coffee, too, piping hot when it arrived, but stone-cold long before Ria finally got a chance to take even one sip. And she hadn’t done any better with the food, unlike Quinn, who’d somehow managed to gulp down a fair portion of hers.

  “Phew,” Quinn commented, during a brief lull that felt like an indrawn breath soon to be exhaled, “are there always this man
y people?”

  “No,” Ria replied, after flipping through a mental calendar. “The rodeo starts next weekend. It’s a big deal, a kickoff to Independence Day, which is sacred around here, and visitors come from all over the state—and farther away—to get in on the fun.”

  “Next weekend?” Quinn asked, after selling a bouquet of pink gerberas and making change for a twenty-dollar bill. “Aren’t they showing up a bit early?”

  The lull was over.

  Ria worked, smiling and selling more flowers, even as she answered, “Some of them are on vacation, visiting relatives or camping out. Some of them sell food and souvenirs and stuff, and there are the carnival people who set up the rides and the fireworks specialists, too. Their preparations are fairly complicated. Others come to sign up and compete in one or more of the rodeo events. The motels, here and in Three Trees, fill up fast, obviously, and the early birds get the rooms.”

  Quinn absorbed all this information as she sold more flowers.

  When the foot traffic finally died down a little, Quinn took Bones for a walk, refilled his water bowl from a faucet above one of the horse troughs and came back to the booth just in time to meet Casey and Walker Parrish’s daughter, Clare.

  Clare was only a year or so younger than Quinn, a pretty redhead with her famous mother’s lively personality, arresting green eyes and quick smile and, it was rumored, her talent for music.

  Not the least bit shy, Clare, clad in regular jeans, a ruffled green top and scuffed boots, extended a hand to Quinn, across the buckets of flowers lining the counter, a board stretched between two wooden barrels, and introduced herself by name.

  Quinn tried not to look impressed, Ria noted with amusement, but she’d definitely recognized Clare, probably by her strong resemblance to Casey. Or, perhaps, it was because Clare had made the tabloids herself, a couple of years ago. Early on, she’d been the original wild child, but Casey and Walker were good parents, in for the duration, and as she’d adjusted to living on a ranch instead of in fancy hotel suites and luxurious tour buses, she’d settled down a lot.