by BJ James
Cat smiled into the fire, her head bowed. “A not so uncommon phase for an American teen. Most of us cope, in one way or another. We either outgrow the desperation to be part of the crowd, or we change.”
“I was years away from the maturity and understanding that being different wasn’t disastrous.” Merrill didn’t elaborate that in her family it was worse. Settling back in her chair, encouraged by Cat’s gentle observation, she found it easier to put her family and the disappointment she’d been from her mind. This was ultimately about Catherine Carlucci and how she came to be an indelible influence in the life of an uncertain adolescent.
“But you coped? I think you would always cope, Merrill Santiago.”
“I did, by choosing change. I began by buying the fashion magazines, trying to learn about hair and makeup, and clothing. All of which were low priorities in our home. I hid them under my bed.” She could smile now at the callow, almost teen, and the secret cache of slickly elegant publications her father branded nonsense. “Your covers were my favorites. I wanted to look exactly like you. I spent hours pretending I could and would if only I had the right makeup, the right clothes, the right hairstyle.”
An astute gaze considered Merrill again, slowly, thoroughly. “Not such a great stretch of the imagination in any case. The eyes are different, but the hair is the same, the skin tones.” Without a modicum of regret she corrected herself. “The skin tones of my younger days, before Montana.”
Merrill remembered the sophisticated, yet innocent beauty. Six feet tall, rail thin, though shapely, with tawny skin and tawny hair, and eyes like emeralds. Carlucci the cat, every young girl’s dream, her allure and celebrity enhanced by mystery. No one knew who she was, or where she came from. But no one cared. All that mattered was that she was young and beautiful, the brightest star. The most desirable, courted by sheiks and princes and movie stars.
There had never been anyone like her. Never one so perfectly suited for the camera. But one day it all ended in tragedy.
A would-be suitor fell from the balcony of her penthouse, taking Catherine Carlucci’s bright world with him.
A tabloid was first to reveal her connection with the Mafia. From there rumors escalated. There were whispers of deceit and deception. Of drugs and orgies. Gutter journalism had a field day, feeding off the tragedy of another to fill their own pockets. In a twisted headline and a heartbeat a once heralded beauty became a malevolent weapon. Innocence, sordid. A foolhardy stunt by a silly, lovesick young man became murder.
Carlucci, the glorious, magnificent cat became Catherine Carlucci the criminal, offspring of criminals. Depraved, corrupt, immoral.
Each story was more lurid than the one before. Modeling jobs vanished. No one wanted a fallen idol representing their product. She had become a pariah, yet through it all, she went on with her life, day by day. Proud, beautiful, silent.
Then, on another day, she wasn’t there. Catherine, whoever she was, whatever she was, simply disappeared.
The press couldn’t find her. Those closest to her, those trusted few who knew where she’d gone, weren’t talking.
Without fodder for more rumors, the stories dwindled, died. In less time than it took to destroy the life and reputation of a beautiful young woman, the destructive attention of the unscrupulous turned to newer, fresher tragedy.
Catherine Carlucci was yesterday’s sensation. Stale, boring news.
“Twenty years ago.” Merrill did some basic arithmetic. “Casey would have gone away to school this fall. That means he had completed high school. That would make him seventeen or eighteen. You came to Montana that long ago?”
Cat nodded.
“Quite a change from your other life.”
“Quite.”
“Did you miss it? The modeling, the glamour.”
“Not for a minute.”
“Then you wouldn’t go back? You wouldn’t have your life as it was?”
A small laugh sounded like a sigh in Cat’s throat. “It was never really my life anyway. And never so wonderful and glamorous. Most of what the public saw and read was hype. Not even close to the truth.
“I came from a strict Italian family, with a paternal grandmother from Spain. A little digression in the lineage, to complicate the complicated and pepper the family with a few throwback blondes. Certainly the discipline was nothing to rival a dedicated military family, yet rigid in its own traditions. Contrary to public outcry, my mother had rejected her father and all he stood for. I never knew him. Because I was only seventeen when I began modeling, there were always chaperones. Finally one in particular. Years later, she was still with me.
“None of the romances were real. Can you imagine they could be, with someone who was the epitome of Spanish duennas never more than a touch away? Most of the dates were arranged anyway. The royalty the press made so much of were usually penniless vagabonds looking for the publicity. The sheik was simply an obnoxious old man shopping for an American to add to his harem.”
She looked at Merrill with neither anger nor sadness in her expression. “I was a commodity to be marketed. Would you believe I was twenty-one before I had a real date? No arrangement. No duenna.”
“Twenty-one? You truly were sheltered.”
“Mind-boggling, isn’t it? Considering the image projected on camera.” Cat laughed. “My father still wanted to choose my suitors. In fact he chose a husband for me. We were to visit once in our parlor, be introduced—with the duenna present, of course. Next would come the ceremony.”
“But there was no meeting, no ceremony.”
“I went to the rodeo instead.”
“And met Carl?”
“I went to scoff, to make fun of the cowboys. Half wild creatures from the uncivilized West. When a bronc dumped Carl on his backside in front of our box, I laughed. He climbed to his feet, dusted himself off, grinned at me and winked. I don’t know what caprice made me to do it, but I took a pink heart shaped medallion from my neck and threw it at his feet. He scooped it up, grinned again, and sauntered off to his next ride.”
“He wore your favor,” Merrill ventured.
“He still does. He calls it his talisman.” There was laughter, again, in Cat’s tone at the incongruity of it. Carl, dark, brawny, whipcord tough—and a pink heart. “He keeps it tucked under his shirt.
“He won that day and every day thereafter. Always with my heart lying near his.” Her expression grew pensive, thinking, remembering. “After the first day, I went back alone. No date, no duenna. Not an easy thing to accomplish, but I did. On the first day that I returned, he wasn’t scheduled to ride and he wasn’t there. On the second, as I left the arena, he was waiting. And each day from then on.”
There was silence between them, as Cat stepped back into the past and Merrill waited.
With a sigh, a lazy chuckle, and a slow wondering move of her head, sending a wealth of golden, silver streaked locks tumbling over her shoulder, Cat murmured, “He was a bold one. All brash and dash and cocky self-confidence with a quick grin. But he was shy and quiet too. And kind, and thoughtful, and gallant. A mix of so many things, so utterly charming. A man like none I’d ever known.”
“You fell in love.”
“Madly. Completely. On the first day, with the first grin, the first wink.”
“Any regrets?”
“One.” There was grief in her voice now, that neither time, nor all Carl’s kindness and love could erase. “For the boy who fell from my balcony.”
Merrill might have been young, but the story was etched in her memory. “Why was he there? What did he want?”
“That’s the sad part, he only did it on a dare as some sort of fraternity stunt. We weren’t lovers. We weren’t friends. In fact, we’d never even met.” Cat looked again at Merrill. “So, you see, it was all fabrication. A world of tinsel and lies. This is real, Carl and Casey are my life.”
Opening her fisted hand, she tapped the corner of her eyes. “I earned the crow’s-feet and the calluses
, and I wouldn’t trade them or a single day of this, for the life I had.” Reaching out to Merrill, she covered a smaller hand with her own. “Life isn’t always what it seems and people aren’t as they pretend to be. Sometimes we’ll be fooled, and make the wrong choices. Other times, we’ll be right. We make the best we can of the first, the errors, accepting no more than our own share of any harm that comes of it.”
Her grip eased, softened as did her tone. “For the last, for the times we choose right, for men of honor and courage like Carl and Tynan, we thank God.”
The shuffle-thump of Carl’s footsteps sounded again in the hall.
Cat listened, and her smile grew tender. “When I was hurt and bitter, he taught me that. Not with words, but with his compassion and his love. Ty would do the same for you, if you let him.”
The halting step grew nearer.
“And that, my dear, is the end of my tragic, and not so tragic, story. And the last of my philosophical sermon.” As she fell silent and as Merrill watched, lifting her gaze to Carl’s as he stood with Casey in the doorway, Cat smiled. Father and son, so much alike, smiled back.
All the tragedy, and all the years faded away. Cat Carlsen was as beautiful as she’d ever been.
Dinner was a lively affair. Neither Casey’s handsome but grave countenance nor his silent presence dampened the high spirits. Carl replaced the spicy cider with a pleasing Chianti, and Merrill found herself with yet another drink in her hand.
The spaghetti was wonderful. The recipe for the sauce one of the few good things Cat attributed to her ancestry. Ty surprised everyone, Merrill most of all, by contributing a loaf of her bread for the meal. Having withstood the trip in his backpack quite well, to her great relief it had been sliced, tasted, judged, and pronounced a fabulous accompaniment for Cat’s sauce and Carl’s wine.
In an offhand manner that didn’t succeed in hiding her pride, Cat announced that the salad of fruit and raisins and nuts was Casey’s contribution. His own specialty, put together in the early afternoon before his enforced rest.
“That leaves you, O’Hara,” she drawled as she leaned both elbows on the table. “What will be your contribution?”
Pushing back from the table, Ty thought for a moment. “I bring good news. The buffalo are grazing on the unfenced part of my lower meadow. Twenty-two of them, all present and accounted for.”
Carl muttered a sound of relief. His dark eyes caught the glitter of the candle smoldering in a wax covered bottle in the center of the table. “I was afraid they were the reason the grizzly took so long to pass through.”
Ty had tipped his chair back, now he brought it very carefully back to the floor. “Then you’ve seen signs of him too.”
A grim quirk of Carl’s mouth signaled that he had. “He spent some time down by the forks of Triple C Crik. But that was over a month ago and there’s been nothing since.”
The only tracker in the country better than Carl Carlsen was Tynan O’Hara, though Ty never admitted it. He didn’t now as he asked, “What could you tell about it? Male? Female?”
“It was either male, or the largest female in history. From the length of his claw prints and the depression of his tracks, I’d say he was the biggest grizzly I’ve ever seen. Male or female. I estimate the weight at more than a thousand pounds. From the marks on the trees, it must stand an easy eight feet.”
“Big enough to bring down a small horse, or a buffalo.” Cat laid a hand on Carl’s arm, her tanned fingers pale against his darker skin. “Or a man.”
Taking her hand in his, Carl lifted it briefly to his lips. “But not this man.”
Rising, Cat busied herself then with the clearing of the table. When Merrill would have joined her in the kitchen alcove, she waved her away. Sensing that the competent and accomplished woman needed a moment to herself more than she needed help, Merrill stayed at the table.
Carl’s worried gaze followed his wife, lingering long on with tender concern before moving away as he returned to the subject of the bear. “He took his time passing through, and I’d put that down to poor hunting ability.” He had been toying with the stem of his wineglass as he spoke. He looked up now. “The grizzly lost half of his right front paw.”
Ty sat a little straighter. “Recently?”
“Recent enough that he left blood in the snow.”
“Are you thinking a trap?” Ty’s focus never deviated from Carl.
“Would be my guess.” The glass spun one last time, then was still. “He either tore it off fighting the claw of the trap, or chewed it off.”
That meant he would be crippled. And mean and hungry. If Ty was concerned before, now he was worried. “When did you first see the sign?”
Carl reeled off a date. “Marked it on the calendar. A week later I tracked him off the range.”
“Merrill?”
Merrill had been listening, as she watched Casey covertly, noting a spark of interest in the discussion. “I found tracks in the lower meadow a week before Carl found his. There was no blood in the snow.”
Ty blew out a harsh breath. “That means we have two bears trailing through our ranges, or one that got hurt between Fini Terre and the Triple C.” To Carl he said, “Have you given anyone permission to trap on your land.”
“Don’t like traps,” Carl groused. “Won’t allow the abominable things on my land. Legal or otherwise.”
“Neither do I.” Ty’s fist crashed down on the table, rattling the glassware. “Poachers.”
“Smells like their kind of rotten stunt. Set an illegal trap, forget it, leave it for an animal to lie in. Suffering, starving, dying a slow death. Or like our bear, making a dangerous cripple of it.” Grasping the bottle of Chianti by the neck, Carl splashed some into his glass. But as he set it aside, he didn’t drink. “Poachers! Damn them!”
Ty had no more anger to waste on poachers. “How far did you track him?”
“Miles.” Carl understood Ty’s disquiet and the concern behind the belabored questions. “Far enough to think he was really moving on and wouldn’t be a threat to the stock. My guess is he came out of the park, and was heading back.”
The park, Glacier National Park, was home to the largest number of grizzlies in the lower forty-eight states. “Going home,” Ty muttered. “To stay.”
“Maybe.” Carl glanced at Cat, who had moved silently to stand at his side. There was little she feared, but the grizzly was among that little. Drawing her hand to his, lacing his fingers briefly over hers, he murmured, “Sorry, honey. None of us can be sure where a bear might go, or where he might stay.”
“Then you think he might come back.” Cat’s tone was calm, her voice steady, but two lines, like flags of worry, deepened between her eyebrows. Hiding what was quickly becoming terror, she gathered up her husband’s plate and returned to the sink.
As Merrill watched, Casey turned his silent gaze from his father to his mother and back again. And then, inexplicably to her. On impact she felt riveted in place by the dormant strength of the boy. If ever she’d thought the lack of speech was an indication of damaged intelligence, this first unfettered look into those keen eyes was enough to shatter any misconception.
Something was bothering the boy. Something he wanted and needed to communicate. Something about the conversation. She’d seen no notepads or pencils around and there had been no mention of any. Apparently he didn’t communicate in any way. Yet he understood everything that was said.
Aphasia, with only the speech center involved. Merrill hadn’t seen it before, but she’d heard of it, read of it. The ability to speak remained, but the words would be wrong.
“Will he come back?” Ty addressed Cat’s question, trying to reassure her. “I can’t think why he would. From what we know, he didn’t find this very successful hunting grounds. And he was very likely injured on your land or mine. Added to that, from what Merrill tells me, Shadow gave him quite a chase. With all those odds stacked against him, chances are he won’t be drawn back here.”
Cat turned back from the sink. “Not true hibernation. His body temperature will stay nearly the same. You know that. Which means he can wake up on any mild day. Or, since he can’t hunt properly, because he’s starving.”
“Honey, this isn’t the same as before. The bear that mauled me was a rogue.” Carl tapped his head. “A little crazy in the held.”
“This one may be a lot crazy in the head,” she countered. “Since he’s crippled.”
“That could be,” Ty admitted. “But it still isn’t likely. We can keep a close watch for a couple more weeks.”
“Then if there’s no sign of him,” Carl amplified the thought. “We can figure he’s long gone. Bears aren’t exactly the smartest creatures in the world, Cat. And it’s not like this is his home territory.”
“He came hungry,” Ty surmised. “He went away hurt and hungry. He won’t be back.”
Merrill was still watching Casey. His face was a replica of his father’s, beneath a thatch of hair as dark. But his eyes were as green as his mother’s, as expressive. As if there were no discussion swirling around her, she concentrated on the boy, willing him to look at her again. Waiting until he did.
There!
Their gazes met, held, amber and gold probed the depths of darkened green. The raw, desperate need she saw there sent a shiver through her like a jolt of silent lighting.
What? She didn’t move, yet a part of her reached out to him, as desperate to understand as he was to be understood.
His struggle drew his mouth into a strained rictus. The softness of youth leached from his face leaving only the hollow eyed gauntness of the strain of a quick and healthy mind trapped in confused silence. His throat worked, a moan he would never allow choked him. His burning stare never turned from Merrill.
“What?” Her whisper was ragged, more resounding than a scream in its own desperation. Sliding her palms over the table, she grasped his wrist. “What is it Casey?”