Montana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  Eloise didn’t answer. She was too busy seething.

  Lily rummaged through her handbag for her key, and she and Hal and Tess said hello to the doorman, Salvatore—aka Sal—as they entered the building. Eloise’s driver left the bags with Sal and made a hasty exit.

  Inside the familiar elevator, Lily tilted her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, and ordered “ Nobody say anything .”

  The condo felt strange when Lily stepped over the threshold, flipped on the lights. There was dust on every surface, and she nearly tripped over the pile of mail just inside the door.

  Hal went to the windows, opened the drapes and took in the semiview, while Tess plunked herself down on the sofa, folded her arms and stuck out her lower lip, obstinacy personified.

  “Nana,” she said, “is in a snit .”

  “So is somebody else I know,” Lily commented. “Go to bed, Tess.”

  “We’ve been gone a long time,” Tess said, though she did get off the couch and meander toward her room. “What if there are cooties in the sheets?”

  “There are no cooties,” Lily said, exhausted.

  “There could be.”

  “Good night, Tess.”

  “Let me know when you’re jammied up, kiddo,” Hal told Tess, “and I’ll come and tuck you in.”

  Jammied up. It was a phrase Lily remembered from her own childhood, when she’d hated to go to bed, so even putting on her pajamas seemed like a trial. Hal had jollied her into “jammying up,” just as he had Tess.

  “Thanks,” she said, when Tess finally went into her room.

  Sal’s arrival with the bags coincided exactly with the eloquent slam of Tess’s door.

  Hal handled the tip while Lily, sighing, went to have a little chat with her daughter.

  Tess was sitting on the side of her bed, stony faced, arms folded.

  “What’s gotten into you?” Lily asked, with as much patience as she could muster.

  “She’ll make us stay here,” Tess fretted. “Nana, I mean. We’ll never get to go back to Montana and marry Tyler.”

  Hiding a smile, Lily sat down beside Tess and slipped an arm around her stiff little shoulders. “We’re going back, Tess,” she said.

  “You promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  Tess relaxed a little, let Lily hold her close against her side, something she allowed less and less often, the older she got. “Do I have to go to Nantucket with Nana?”

  “Probably,” Lily said. “But only for a few days.”

  Tess made a face.

  “You love Nantucket,” Lily reminded her gently. “ And you love your grandmother. Be nice to her, sweetie—she adores you, you know that.”

  Tess gave a tremulous little sigh that bruised Lily’s heart. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll be nice to Nana.”

  “Thank you,” Lily said. “I appreciate that.” She stood up, crossed to Tess’s bureau and pulled out a favorite pair of pajamas and brought them to Tess. “Better jammy up,” she added, bending to kiss the top of her daughter’s head, “so Grampa can tuck you in.”

  Tess took the pajamas, examined them with forensic care.

  “No cooties,” she said, sounding almost disappointed.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  L ILY WAS IN HER ROBE the next morning, squinting at the sticky-note her father had fixed to the cupboard above the coffeemaker— Just push the button. Tess is showing me the neighborhood—we’ll bring breakfast back with us—bagels? Home soon. Dad —when Orlando, the day doorman, buzzed from downstairs to announce Eloise’s arrival.

  Grateful to Hal for getting Tess out of the line of fire, not to mention ferreting through the freezer for coffee beans, grinding them and setting up the pot, Lily mimicked the smiley face her dad had drawn at the bottom of his note.

  “Send Mrs. Kenyon right up, please,” she said cheerfully, because she knew her mother-in-law would be standing practically at Orlando’s elbow, ears perked for any nuance of reluctance or irritation that might be evident in her tone of voice.

  Lily felt both those things—more like pissed off and for God’s sake, not now, in fact, but she didn’t want to hurt Eloise, either deliberately or by accident. In her own snooty way, Eloise had been generous from the very beginning.

  It would have been nice to have time to get dressed, though, Lily thought sourly, as she took her finger off the intercom button and tried to hand-comb her tangled hair. She’d barely slept the night before, tired as she was, and when she did, she had red-hot dreams about Tyler that left her aching for things she couldn’t have.

  A quick peek in the refrigerator told her what she already knew—no food until Hal and Tess returned with bagels and whatever else they could find in the plethora of well-stocked delis the neighborhood boasted. Unless, of course, she wanted a tasty mix of baking soda, Dijon mustard and wrinkly green olives for breakfast.

  The repast might, she had to admit, have suited her mood.

  A minute or so after she’d reached this conclusion, the doorbell rang.

  Lily started the coffee, left the kitchen and headed for the front door, smiling as happily as she could, given the ordeal she was about to face. God bless her dad—he’d keep Tess out of range as long as he could, but time was of the essence, just the same.

  “Coffee?” Lily asked, stepping back to admit Eloise. The brew wasn’t ready, but she knew her mother-in-law would refuse the offer.

  Early as it was, the woman was impeccably dressed, in full makeup, high heels, nylons and an expensive navy suit with white piping. Her eyes moved disapprovingly over Lily’s ratty robe, turned bleak when she recognized it as an old one of Burke’s.

  “No, thank you, ” Eloise bit out. Dear God, the makeup. It was perfect, at an hour when Lily wouldn’t have trusted herself to apply mascara without putting out an eye. Had Eloise visited the cosmetics department at Neiman Marcus, her favorite, before breezing on over?

  Lily suppressed a sigh. Kept her smile in place—and it felt like a pair of those wax lips kids wear at Halloween. “Come in,” she said, as Eloise swept regally past, took in the dusty, unlived-in state of the condo and settled herself somewhat warily on the very edge of the sofa cushions.

  “What did Tess mean last night,” Eloise snapped, never one for preambles, “when she said you were going to marry someone named…Tiger whatever-it-was and live in a trailer? ”

  “His name is Tyler Creed.” Just saying the name made Lily feel a little stronger, a little steadier. She tightened the belt of her robe and sat down in the easy chair facing Eloise. “We are planning on getting married.”

  We’ve just been too busy having maniacal sex to set a date yet .

  Eloise closed her eyes and paled a little, as though absorbing a physical blow. Obviously she’d cherished illusions that Tess might have had the wedding part wrong. “I see, ” she said, looking at Lily again. Drilling a hole right into her with her gaze. “And you’re going to live in a mobile home, if I understood my granddaughter correctl
y?”

  Distantly, the coffeemaker chortled busily away.

  It was a comforting sound, and the aroma made Lily’s dry mouth suddenly water.

  “Temporarily,” Lily said mildly, chin up, smile still fixed in place. Inside, though, she wanted to counter with, What’s so terrible about a mobile home? And what gives you the right to be such an insufferable snob? “Tyler and I intend to build a house. The trailer is temporary.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Eloise said, aghast.

  “I’m quite serious,” Lily said evenly. “About marrying Tyler and about raising Tess in Stillwater Springs. It’s a very nice little town, you know.”

  Eloise actually shuddered, perhaps still thinking about the mobile home, or maybe small towns in general. “I can’t believe you would do this, Lily, take my only grandchild— all I have left of my son—so far away—”

  Lily felt a pang of sympathy, and would have reached out to touch Eloise’s hand if she hadn’t expected the gesture to be slapped away. It wasn’t hard to imagine herself in her mother-in-law’s position, at least where Tess was concerned. If she were grown-up, getting married and moving someplace far away, Lily would be devastated.

  The difference was, she’d accept that the decision was Tess’s to make.

  “You can visit as often as you want to, Eloise,” she offered gently. “Montana is on the North American continent, you know.”

  Eloise fanned herself with her tasteful alligator-skin clutch, dyed to match the navy suit. “And stay in a trailer? That would be cozy, with you and your new—husband.”

  Lily bit the inside of her lower lip, something she did when she needed a second or two’s delay before she spoke. “Eloise, Burke has been gone a while,” she said, when she thought she could trust herself to speak in a civil manner, “and we were getting a divorce, remember?”

  Eloise waved off the divorce, along with the decent interval since Burke’s death, presumably. “You would have worked things out,” she said, maddeningly certain of something she knew nothing about. In the next moment, though, she closed her mouth tightly, as if to stanch things she didn’t want to say, and was about to go on when she registered the expression on Lily’s face.

  “No,” Lily said. “We wouldn’t have ‘worked things out,’ Eloise. Burke was having an affair—the latest in a long line of them—”

  “Boys—” Eloise began.

  “Don’t you dare say ‘boys will be boys,’” Lily broke in furiously. No more Mrs. Nice-guy, or whatever. “Burke wasn’t a boy, Eloise. He was a man. He should have acted more like one—thought about how all that self-indulgence might affect his daughter, if not his wife.”

  Eloise reddened, but managed, perhaps by generations of good breeding, to hold her temper. The effort was only partially successful. “If you’d been a real wife to him—”

  Lily stood up, jerked her robe belt even tighter around her waist and then sat down again, because there was no escaping Eloise, or the topic of conversation. “We’re not going there,” she said, deadly calm. “We are not going there, Eloise.”

  Eloise seemed to wilt a little then, even backpedal. “I’m sorry,” she said, with what might have been sincerity but probably wasn’t. “It’s just that I don’t know what I’ll do without Tess nearby, and it will give me fits of anxiety, worrying about what might be happening to her in that godforsaken place—”

  “Stillwater Springs,” Lily broke in, “is beautiful— breathtakingly so. In fact, we call it God’s country.”

  Eloise wasn’t listening; she’d made up her mind about Montana and about Tyler. “This man you’ve taken up with, he’ll be her stepfather—”

  “I happen to love ‘this man I’ve taken up with,’” Lily said. “Very much.”

  The coffeemaker, which always sounded as though it were circling the kitchen, came in for a steamy landing.

  “How do you know he’ll be good to Tess—this Tyler person?”

  Lily seethed. “Do you think I’d marry him if I thought he wouldn’t be?”

  Just then, a key scraped in the lock. Lily heard her father’s voice on the other side of the door, and Tess answering, and then they were both in the living room, Hal carrying a couple of deli bags, their eyes full of trepidation.

  Eloise’s driver must have been circling the block; otherwise, they’d have spotted the limo.

  Hal’s gaze moved warily between the two women. “I guess we weren’t gone long enough,” he said.

  Tess, on her best behavior, remarkably, approached her flushed grandmother, wrapped both arms around the woman’s neck and kissed her loudly on the cheek.

  “If we’re going to Nantucket,” she chimed, “let’s leave right now and get it over with.”

  Eloise flinched. “Get it over with? ”

  Hal cleared his throat and looked away.

  And Lily closed her eyes, waiting for the explosion.

  “I thought you liked going to Nantucket,” Eloise said to Tess, pumping some grandmotherly cheer into her voice and still sounding wounded.

  “I do,” Tess replied philosophically, bouncing once before settling onto the sofa cushions beside her grandmother. “But I’d rather be in Stillwater Springs. My mom’s getting married, and I think there might even be a baby coming. I asked her, and she said ‘maybe sometime,’ but when people get married, they usually have babies—”

  Lily groaned and buried her face in both hands.

  “So that’s how it is,” Eloise steamed, though to give her credit, she was obviously trying not to blow up in front of Tess.

  “Eloise,” Lily said wearily, “that is not how it is.”

  Eloise got to her feet, shaking on her high heels, and gave Tess a distracted pat on top of the head. “We’ll talk about Nantucket later,” she said. “Right now, Nana needs to be by herself for a while, so she can think.”

  “How come grown-ups always want to be by themselves when they think?” Tess asked her grandfather. “I’m only a kid, and I can think just fine, whether anybody else is around or not.”

  “Tess,” Hal said, as Eloise whisked past him, opened the door and stormed into the corridor beyond, “be quiet.”

  “Don’t you think that advice came a little late? ” Lily asked her father miserably. When she’d had a few moments to recover, she turned to Tess and added, “You knew exactly what you were doing, didn’t you, young lady? You wanted to upset your grandmother so you wouldn’t have to go to Nantucket.”

  Tess’s eyes widened in guileless surprise.

  Lily was not fooled. “Go to your room,” she said.

  Tess flung a pleading glance in her grandfather’s direction. “What about the bagels and the strawberries and stuff?” she asked plaintively. “I’ll starve if I have to go to my room.”

  “Not to mention being devoured by cooties,” Lily sniped, and instantly hated herself.

  “Better mind your mother,” Hal responded, after tossing a quelling glance in Lily’s direction. “I’ll do what I can to calm her down, and bring provisions if it looks like you’re going to be stranded for any length of time.”

  Tess fled to her room, slammed the door behind her.

&n
bsp; “Lily,” Hal reasoned, sitting down in the place Eloise had so recently vacated and taking one of her hands, “Tess is six years old . She didn’t set out to upset Eloise—or you.”

  “That,” Lily said, “is what you think.” She could just picture Eloise, whipping down to the lobby in the elevator, sweeping past poor, friendly Orlando without a word of acknowledgment, angrily gesturing for her waiting driver to get out of the limo and open the door for her—if he wasn’t still circling the block while he waited for Madam to appear. As soon as Eloise got back to her mansion in Oak Park, if she didn’t stop off at some private investigator’s office to start the process before then, she’d find out everything there was to know about Tyler—and all the Creeds.

  And so much of it wasn’t good.

  Eloise had contacts, and she had money. She probably had Tyler pegged for some toothless redneck with a drinking problem. Suppose she decided to sue for custody of Tess? Suppose—

  Hal vanished into the kitchen, with the deli bags he’d set on the floor when he sat down, and returned with coffee for Lily—her first of the day, and critically needed—and he held it out to her, didn’t let go of the handle until she’d gripped the mug with both hands.

  “If it wasn’t so early in the day,” he remarked, “I’d have dosed this java with Jack Daniel’s. That woman is something else.”

  “I don’t have any Jack Daniel’s,” Lily said, quite unnecessarily.

  Hal chuckled. “What kind of place are you running here?”

  Lily managed a brief smile, but she was shaken, and there was no hiding it. She didn’t even try—this was her dad she was talking to, after all. “Eloise is going to type ‘Creed’ into some search engine as soon as she gets home and fires up her computer,” she muttered, after a few steadying sips, “and when she sees what comes up, all hell is going to break loose.”

  “Honey,” Hal reasoned gently, “if Tyler were a saint, she still wouldn’t spit on him if he caught fire. He’s going to be helping to raise her granddaughter, and he’s not Burke, and that’s all it takes to piss off somebody like Eloise.”