A Creed in Stone Creek

by Linda Lael Miller

  Instead of sitting down, Melissa went to the back door and looked out through the screen. Mabel, clad in plaid Bermuda shorts and a red T-shirt instead of the Flamenco dress she’d worn last time, held a rose in her teeth as she and Herbert tangoed their way across the patio.

  “Amazing,” she muttered. “I need to find out if those people take vitamins and if so, what kind.”

  Ashley laughed, moving to stand beside her. “They are pretty incredible,” she agreed mildly. Then she nudged lightly with her elbow. “I hear your wild side has been coming out lately.”

  Melissa narrowed her eyes at her sister, who walked away to attend to the now-whistling teakettle. “Who told you that?” she demanded, though quietly.

  Katie had curled up on the soft bottom of the playpen, and she was sleeping like an angel, with one thumb in her mouth.

  Ashley poured hot water into the china teapot that had belonged to their grandmother on the O’Ballivan side, after scooping in some loose tea leaves. “I never betray my sources,” she said primly.

  Melissa chuckled. “Tom Parker,” she said, making a not-so-wild guess. “He’s been emailing updates all along.”

  “Texting,” Ashley corrected.

  “I swear he’s a worse gossip than his aunt Ona,” Melissa fretted. “What did he tell you?”

  “That he thinks you’re sleeping with somebody named Steven Creed,” Ashley said, without missing a beat.

  With anyone else, Melissa might have fibbed, and with a lot of protestation, too. But lying to her sister was just plain useless; they knew each other too well. “He has his nerve,” she said, hedging. That didn’t usually work, either, but sometimes she could pull it off.

  Maybe Ashley was jet-lagged.

  No such luck. “Is it true?” she asked.

  Melissa double-checked to make sure Katie was sleeping and the white-haired guests were still tangoing to the music only they could hear before she answered, “Not in the ongoing sense, however Tom might have made it sound.”

  Again, Ashley giggled. She would have looked like a Victorian lady, standing there in front of the cupboard, waiting for the tea to steep, if it hadn’t been for the shorts and top. “The ‘ongoing sense’? What the heck does that mean, sister mine?”

  Melissa sank back into her chair at the table again. She felt weirdly agitated and, at the same time, crazy-happy. “It means it happened once,” she said, in a whisper. “Last night. We’ve known each other for all of five days. He’s a lawyer and his name is Steven Creed. Do you have any other questions?”

  “Only about a million,” Ashley said.

  Outside, voices rose on the warm summer air, and a plaintive meow rang out. Jack was back, with Mrs. Wiggins.

  “Guess they’ll have to wait for a while,” Melissa said.

  “Guess so,” Ashley agreed, pouring tea.

  Jack opened the screen door and came inside, the family cat a fluff of white inside its plastic carrier, and Ashley put one index finger to her lips and pointed toward the sleeping toddler with the other.

  The man’s face fairly glowed with love for his wife and daughter, it seemed to Melissa. He nodded, kissed Ashley smartly on the mouth and carefully released Mrs. Wiggins from the carrier.

  With all that, he still managed a brotherly wink for Melissa. He mouthed the word hi.

  Ashley, an animal lover, stooped to pet the cat.

  Mrs. Wiggins, no doubt indignant over her people’s long absence, twitched her tail, gave one petulant meow and vanished through the dining room door.

  Melissa sneezed.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ashley said. “You’re not allergic.”

  Melissa sneezed again.

  Jack, a dark-haired, outdoorsy type, agile and fit, cocked a thumb over one shoulder, evidently indicating the backyard. “Mamie Crockett just waylaid me in the driveway,” he told Ashley in a be-quiet-the-baby’s-sleeping voice. “She said our guests have been raising three kinds of hell ever since they got here.”

  “Mamie,” Ashley said, “is a sweet old thing, but she’s also a curmudgeon.”

  “It’s true,” Melissa said.

  Jack grinned admiringly and shook his head. “I sure hope I’m still getting into that much trouble when I hit my nineties,” he said. “If somebody calls the cops because the tango music is too loud, I’ll count that as a real accomplishment.”

  “Not to mention just making it to that age,” Ashley added, slapping Jack’s hand when he reached for the brownies and grabbed three of them in one swoop.

  “I wonder if they skydive,” Jack teased. “And ride mechanical bulls.”

  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” Melissa replied.

  Just then, Katie awakened, hauled herself upright by gripping the rails of her playpen, and let out a wail. “Potty!” she yelled.

  “Your turn,” Ashley told Jack, helping herself to a brownie before carrying the plate to the table and setting it down in the middle.

  Jack swept the toddler up and kissed her on the cheek. “Too late,” he said, after patting Katie’s diaper-cushioned bottom.

  With that, he and Katie disappeared through the dining room doorway, headed upstairs.

  It was hard to believe that Jack McKenzie, able diaper-changer, had so recently headed up a top-notch security company, personally rescuing men, women and children from South American jungles and other politically volatile environments. Although he still owned the firm, and occasionally met with clients and with his key employees, always somewhere far from his wife and child, he seemed content to live in Stone Creek. Riding the range with Brad and Tanner, Olivia’s husband, seemed to be all the adventure he needed these days.

  “Now we can talk about the new man in your life,” Ashley said to Melissa. “He’s not ‘the man in my life,’” Melissa insisted. “I barely know Steven.”

  Ashley, sitting across the table from her now and nibbling at one of the brownies, raised an eyebrow. “You know him well enough to sleep with him,” she said.

  “Be quiet,” Melissa whispered, as the screen door creaked open and the first of the guests entered into the kitchen.

  “I smell brownies!” Herbert whooped.

  THEY’D WALKED THE PROPERTY, checked out the ram-shackle old house and the ruins of the barn, now partially removed by the work crew that had been there earlier, but Brody still hadn’t answered Steven’s question. Still hadn’t said where he’d been since he and Conner got into a fistfight in a parking lot in Lonesome Bend one night, two weeks after graduating from college, and parted ways.

  Brody hadn’t even gone home to pack up any of his belongings, as far as anybody knew. His old dog, always riding shotgun, was with him, and the two of them just lit out without so much as a “Go to hell” to the rest of the family.

  Now, watching as Matt and the dog played tag in the softening afternoon light, Brody hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his threadbare jeans and smiled to himself. “You gonna tell me how you happened to come by a kid, Boston?” he asked, his voice low-pitched and gruff with some private emotion.

  Steven explained about Zack’s and Jillie’s deaths, and how he’d adopted Matt when they were both gone.

  “That’s doing things the hard way,” Brody commented, and Steven couldn’t be sure whether he was referring to Zack and Jillie, for dying, or Steven himself, for stepping up to raise a child.

  But sympathy flickered in Brody’s eyes as he watched the boy and the dog playing their games. He was one tough cowboy, and that was as true a thing as any statement ever had been, but deep down, he was a sucker for kids and critters. Always had been.

  He slanted a glance at Steven, slapped him hard on the back. “I figured you’d be married by now,” he said.

  Steven laughed. “Why?”

  Brody gestured toward Matt. “Because you’re the marrying kind,” he said. “Unlike me.”

  “‘The marrying kind’?” Steven repeated. “Excuse me?”

  “Face it,” Brody said, and another gr
in splashed across his face. “You were born to be a husband and a father.”

  “Unlike you?” Steven prodded lightly.

  “Unlike me,” Brody affirmed. “No good woman would have me, and while I might sleep with a bad one, I’d never put a wedding ring on her finger.”

  Steven couldn’t stand the wondering any longer. “Brody,” he said, his tone firm now, his gaze direct. “Where have you been?”

  “It’s like that old Johnny Cash song,” Brody said. “I’ve been everywhere, man.”

  “Not good enough,” Steven challenged. “Do you have any idea how much Dad and Kim worry about you?”

  Something changed in Brody’s face; he looked older than his thirty years, and sadder than a man that young ought to be. “I thought about going home a million times,” he said gruffly. “But my pride always got in the way, and I couldn’t seem to find a way around it.”

  Steven thought of Zack and Jillie as he watched their child, and of how unlikely it seemed, even now, that they could be gone. “You gonna wait until somebody dies, Brody? Trust me, if that happens, you’ll be a long time regretting it.”

  Brody’s look was sharp as he turned his head toward Steven. “Is one of them sick—Davis or Kim, I mean?”

  Steven shook his head. Was Brody implying, by deliberately omitting a third name, that it would be just fine with him if Conner were sick? “No,” he said. “And neither is your brother. But you ought to know as well as I do how fast things can change.”

  Before Brody could reply, Matt rushed them, head back and arms out like airplane wings, as good as flying. Zeke ran, barking, behind him.

  “I’m starved!” Matt declared loudly.

  Brody reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Me, too,” he said. He looked at Steven again. “What’s for supper, Boston?”

  “Leftover meat loaf and canned ravioli,” Steven said, leading the way toward the door of the bus.

  “How come you call my dad ‘Boston’?” Matt piped.

  “’Cause that’s where he’s from,” Brody said. “Steven’s too formal for me—can hardly bring myself to say it—and he won’t answer to Steve. So I call him Boston.”

  They were inside now.

  Matt picked up Zeke’s empty bowl, ready to hike back to the little room where the water heater and the washer and dryer were, that being where the kibble was kept. So far, he’d kept his promise to look after the dog.

  “I’m from Denver,” Matt said to Brody, “that’s where I was born. But nobody calls me that.”

  Brody pretended to size up the little boy, take his measure the way he might do with a grown man.

  It made Matt throw back his shoulders in pride and puff out his chest a-ways.

  “I don’t reckon Denver suits you all that well,” Brody said, after some time had gone by. “Nope. If I was going to give you a nickname, I’d pick the Colorado Kid.”

  Matt’s face lit up. “Like Billy the Kid?”

  “Yeah,” Brody said, grinning. He’d never met the man, woman or child he couldn’t charm straight into next week.

  “Feed the dog,” Steven told Matt.

  Matt nodded and started down the hallway, followed by said dog.

  “Do me a favor,” Steven said to Brody, keeping his voice down.

  Brody’s grin faded. “What?”

  “Don’t set Matt up for a fall, okay?”

  Brody took offense, which was more like him. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he rasped, glaring at Steven.

  “You said it yourself. You’re just passing through. So go easy on the avuncular charm, because I don’t want Matt to get too attached to somebody he might never see again.”

  Brody didn’t get the opportunity to respond, because Matt and Zeke reappeared. Matt set the bowl down in its accustomed place and the dog began to crunch loudly on his supper.

  Steven, who could do with some supper himself, washed his hands and then went to the full-size refrigerator and took out the leftover meat loaf. There was a lot, because Melissa hadn’t eaten much and, as for him, he’d wanted second helpings of something else entirely.

  “This is quite a rig,” Brody said, looking around.

  “It belongs to Brad O’Ballivan,” Matt said. “And he’s famous.”

  “I figured that,” Brody replied, “from the big head painted on the side, along with his name airbrushed in letters three feet tall.”

  Steven put the meat loaf in the microwave and took a family-size can of ravioli, the old standby, out of the cupboard. He was annoyed, and he was worried, but he couldn’t help the grin that tugged at one corner of his mouth.

  “It’s just like a house,” Matt said, raising his voice to be heard over the dog chomping on kibbles. “There’s even a washer and dryer. And I’ve got my own room, with bunk beds.”

  Brody gave a low whistle of appreciative exclamation. “Is there a shower? Because I’ve been on the road for a while, and I could sure use a good sluicing off and a close shave.”

  Steven opened the ravioli can and dumped the contents into a saucepan. Turned on the gas underneath.

  “Yep,” Matt said. “There’s a shower. Did you know Brad O’Ballivan is famous?”

  Brody grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I like his music. Looks like you and him must be pretty good buddies.”

  “He’s a grown-up,” Matt responded, as though that precluded friendship. “His son, Mac, is my friend, though. I slept over last night, at Mac’s, I mean. We rode on his pony before and after supper.”

  It was the first Steven had heard about the pony ride; Matt hadn’t mentioned it that morning, on the way to day camp. He smiled at the thought.

  “I see,” Brody said.

  The timer on the microwave dinged. Steven let the meat loaf sit while the ravioli heated up and he put three plates and some silverware on the table. Surveying it, he realized he’d forgotten to buy milk again. Good thing there was melted cheddar on top of the meat loaf.

  Brody went off to wash up for supper, and Steven hoisted Matt up so he could soap his hands and rinse them off in the kitchen sink.

  “I like Brody,” he whispered to Steven, as though imparting a confidence.

  “Me, too,” Steven answered.

  Brody came back, and they all sat down to supper.

  Brody told stories about his life on the rodeo circuit, both in the States and north of the Canadian border, all of them noticeably devoid of personal information. His cousin might have been an alien from another planet, posing as Brody Creed, for all the connection Steven felt. Once, they’d been as close as brothers, the two of them.

  Except for Brody’s looks—even in need of a shave and a haircut and decent clothes, he was still a dead-ringer for Conner—he was practically a stranger.

  It bruised something in Steven, even thinking that.

  Brody. A stranger.

  How was that possible?

  After supper, Matt reluctantly agreed to take his shower and get into his PJs.

  Brody cleared the table, and when everything was in the sink, he paused to pick Matt’s drawing of the stick family up from the desktop, pondering it solemnly.

  “Everybody wants the same thing,” he murmured, holding the sheet of paper as though it were somehow sacred. “A family.”

  Steven’s throat tightened. “Yeah,” he managed, when he could get the word out. He went to check on Matt next, because his eyes were burning, and while the boy probably wouldn’t notice, he couldn’t risk letting Brody see.

  When he came back, after toweling Matt off and digging out the pajamas he’d forgotten to bring into the bathroom with him, the door was standing open and Brody was gone.

  Had he left again, already, without even a goodbye?

  Considering the possibility, Steven felt his heart skip a beat or two before common sense overtook him. The dog was outside, and Brody was with him.

  He went to the doorway.

  Brody was hauling a suitcase from under the tarp in the back of his truck. T
hat piece of luggage looked like it was bought at a thrift store, beaten with a tire chain and then dragged down five miles of rough road behind a tractor.

  But, then, so did Brody. Life had used him hard, that much was clear.

  He might want to talk about it eventually, or he might never say a word. Cussed-stubborn as he was and, conversely, unpredictable, it might go either way.

  Brody brought in the suitcase, along with a couple of tattered blankets, the kind they sell cheap in the markets of Tijuana and Nogales, and set everything down on or near the couch.

  Steven didn’t say anything. He just went to the door and whistled for Zeke, who was chasing some kind of flying bug around the yard. It was a comforting sight, somehow, a dog playing in the twilight, with the old house standing watch in the near distance.

  “I’m done with my shower!” Matt announced turning up at the end of the hall. “And I brushed my teeth, too!”

  “Good deal,” Steven said.

  “I don’t need a story tonight,” Matt added manfully. “You probably want to talk to Brody and everything.”

  Steven smiled. “There’s always time for a story,” he said. Ever since Matt had come to live with him, scared and small and confused, clinging to his blanket and his toy skunk, they’d read out of a book every night. Even when Steven wasn’t home, he’d made sure the babysitter kept up the ritual.

  “I’d just like to look at my picture for a while,” Matt said. He sounded mighty philosophical, for a short guy.

  My picture. The photo of Zack and Jillie, skydiving on their honeymoon, Steven thought. He was about to say it was right where they’d left it, on Matt’s bedside table.

  But the boy scampered across the living-room–kitchen and claimed the drawing he’d made at day camp.

  That’s you, and that’s Melissa, and that’s me.

  Steven’s eyes started burning again. “If you change your mind about the story,” he said, his voice hoarse, “just let me know.”

  Matt nodded, then gave a wide grin. “’Night, Dad. ’Night, Brody.”

  Steven just nodded.

  “Good night, Colorado,” Brody said seriously.

  Matt beamed at that. Summoned the dog. “Come on, Zeke,” he said. “It’s time for bed.”