“You’re not going anywhere,” Tyler told Davie.
Jim took a little memo book, the kind that comes with its own pencil, from the pocket of his spiffy uniform shirt. “If I were your mother, and I was on my way to Vegas,” he mused thoughtfully, “where would I light when I got there?”
“The guy might have moved by now,” Davie said, looking at Tyler again, but without so much defiance this time.
“Or not,” Jim said mildly.
Davie, it turned out, had a remarkable memory for names and addresses.
Jim wrote down the lead the kid gave up.
“Marty,” Tyler prompted, when Davie didn’t volunteer the story about the boo-hoo guy.
Davie looked furious again, but he spilled that, too.
“Is Roy gonna die?” he asked Jim, looking as though he expected to be slapped into a pair of handcuffs when the sheriff closed the notebook and stood to go.
“No,” Jim answered.
“Too bad,” Davie said.
Jim and Tyler exchanged weary glances.
“I was young once,” Jim said, with a philosophical sigh.
“Me, too,” Tyler answered.
“What was that supposed to mean?” Davie asked carefully, the minute Jim had gotten into his squad car and started backing down the dirt driveway. Until then, he’d stayed stubbornly silent. “All that stuff about being young once, I mean?”
“It meant,” Tyler said, rising from his chair to gather up the remains of the chicken dinner, shaking his head once when Kit Carson gave him a hopeful muzzle-nudge to the knee, “that we both understand what it means to be a thirteen-year-old smart-ass and are therefore willing to cut you a little slack by not assuming you think watching a man die at the supper table is funny.”
“It wasn’t funny,” Davie said. “It was awful.” After a few beats, though, a grin quirked up a corner of the kid’s mouth, so familiar that it gave Tyler a pang. He grinned like that, and so did his brothers. “Can we talk about an allowance now?” he asked.
“Sure,” Tyler replied. “I’ll even write the script for you. You say, ‘Can I have one?’ and I say, ‘Hell, no, not until you find the lawn.’ There. Conversation over. Wasn’t that easy?”
“Are you always such a hard-ass?”
“Pretty much. Today, I happen to be having one of my cordial days.”
Davie didn’t grin this time. “Did you mean it when you said I’m not going anywhere?”
“I meant it,” Tyler confirmed.
Davie was almost giddy with relief, but some of the glow faded as he watched Tyler wedge the pair of chicken buckets into a fridge meant to hold bait and a six-pack and not much else. “What’s going to happen to my mom?” he asked. There was no bravado now, no tough guy with piercings and a major attitude.
Tyler knew Davie was asking if Doreen would be going to jail and, upon further reflection, that seemed unlikely, especially if Roy made a full recovery and became his normal whiskey-drinking, woman-beating self again. On the other hand, if rat poison, for example, turned up in the lab results after the tests the folks down at the clinic would inevitably run, the attempted-murder rap might stick.
Tyler shoved a hand through his hair. “The truth is, Davie, I don’t know.”
As far as it went, that was the truth, but Davie had asked what was going to happen to his mother, and the answer to that was a whole lot more complicated and a whole lot less encouraging.
Given her history, Doreen would probably run through all the money Tyler had given her, with the help of a bad boyfriend or two, and end up either dead or shacked up with some new version of Roy Fifer.
“I don’t want to be like her,” Davie murmured, and then looked startled, as though he hadn’t meant to voice the thought at all.
Tyler’s mind shifted to Jake. He remembered one of the many occasions when the old man had come home stinking drunk, long after supper was over and the dishes were washed, and demanded a meal. Tyler’s mother had filled a plate for him earlier, kept it warm in the oven, carefully covered with foil, even brought it to him at the table. Anxious to avoid a fight that Tyler and Dylan and Logan had all known couldn’t be avoided, she’d said something like, “It’s your favorite, Jake. Pork chops.”
Jake had lifted the foil off the plate, gingerly, like he expected something to jump out at him, then bellowed that a man shouldn’t be expected to eat shriveled-up food after a hard day felling trees in the woods to support his family, and flung the whole works, plate, food and silverware, all over the kitchen.
Then he’d scraped his chair back so hard it tipped over, Jake had, and stood. He’d started toward Angela, now cowering against a counter, but Logan, barely older than Davie was now—had stepped square in front of him, fists clenched at his sides.
“No,” he’d said, and his voice had been the voice of a man, not a boy. He’d looked straight into Jake’s eyes, like he’d have a prayer against him in a fight, and repeated, “No.”
Dylan and Tyler, huddled in the doorway, had been terrified.
Miraculously, after a long interval of heart-stopping suspense, Jake had suddenly laughed, turned on one heel and said he was going somewhere where people appreciated him.
Where was that, old man? Tyler asked silently, back in the present again. Skivvie’s, maybe? Some whore’s bed? Was that where people “appreciated” you, you evil old son of a bitch?
His throat shut tight against the recollection of that night and so many others, so tight it hurt. He closed his eyes, dealing with it, opened them again.
I don’t want to be like her, Davie had said.
Now, belatedly, Tyler answered him. Answered himself. “You don’t have to be like your mother,” he said. And he didn’t have to be like Jake. “All you have to do is make the best choices you can, and your life can be anything you want it to.”
Davie looked so hopeful that Tyler wanted to go out and clear a path through the world for the kid. He supposed that made him a father, and DNA be damned.
He waited until Davie had gone outside with Kit Carson to sit at the end of the dock with a fishing pole, gathered his composure a little and got out his cell phone.
Lily answered on the first ring. “Tyler?” she said, instead of hello.
It was one word, but it poured over his spirit like a warm, soothing balm. “Yeah,” he said, wishing he could bounce up to the satellite, along with the signal from his phone, and bounce down again in Chicago, stand face-to-face with her. “It’s me.”
“I miss you,” she said softly.
Tyler closed his eyes, let the tenderness of that statement penetrate every part of him. It felt like healing light, slipping through some crack between heaven and earth. “Two weeks is too long,” he told her.
“Don’t I know it,” she replied. “I’ll start packing things up tomorrow, and the real estate agent will be by in the afternoon—probably armed with a list of things I’ll have to do to the place.” She paused. “Did you choose a trailer?”
He smiled at the word trailer —it didn’t accurately describe the structure, but it was the easiest word, the one country folks used most readily. “Sure did,” he said. “Dan’s going to bulldoze the cabin day after tomorrow, and set up some kind of temporary foundation, so Davie and I will be moving into the Holiday Inn for a couple of days.”
When Lily didn’t ask if he’d had the bedroom soundproofed, he knew for sure she was with her dad and Tess.
Sure enough, she said, “Wait a second,” and Tyler listened as she asked Doc some question, her voice just hushed enough that he couldn’t catch the words.
“Dad says to stay at his place. The key’s under the pot with the dead flowers in it, on the back porch.”
Tyler knew he couldn’t accept, any more than he could move in with Dylan and Kristy, or Logan and Briana, but the offer meant a lot. He and Doc hadn’t always been on the best terms. “Thanks,” he said, “but we’ll be okay at the hotel.”
“I want you to be more than just okay, Tyler.”
“Not possible, with you in another state,” he said. Then he smiled to himself. Another state? Hell, another room would have been too far away.
“Is Davie all right?” Lily asked. “And Kit Carson?”
“They’re okay, too.” There was no point in telling her about Doreen’s shenanigan—she’d only worry that they were all going to wind up on an episode of Forensic Files . “Right now, they’re down on the dock, fishing.”
That sounded normal, didn’t it? A dog and a boy with a fishing pole, braving the mosquitoes to sit out under a blanket of stars splashed across a navy sky?
“Just okay,” Lily repeated fretfully.
Tyler chuckled. “Lily?”
“What?”
“We’re fabulous. We’re so happy, Davie and Kit Carson and me, we can’t contain ourselves. Is that better?”
She laughed. “No,” she said. “I want you to miss me a little .”
“No problem there,” Tyler answered, and his voice sounded gruff again. “Come home soon, okay?”
“It can’t be soon enough to suit me,” she answered.
“Of course I’m going to take you down, or bend you over something and screw your socks off, the minute we’re alone.”
“No fair,” she said sunnily.
He could just see her squirming, maybe blushing a little.
The image did a lot to cheer him up.
It also gave him an instant hard-on, which meant a cold shower or a header into the lake, if he didn’t want to suffer the whole night.
“Oh, trust me,” he said, “I’m paying the price.”
“Good,” she replied brightly, as though they’d been discussing carpet colors for the triple-wide or something. “That’s wonderful, Tyler.”
He laughed. “You’ll pay,” he promised.
“So will you, ” she chimed in response.
He didn’t want to let her go, but the conversation had about run its course, unless he went on to tell her that Kit Carson had barfed in the truck twice that day and Sheriff Jim had stopped by to question Davie about what might turn out to be an attempted murder. And he wasn’t about to do that.
There was one thing he wanted to say, but you didn’t tell somebody you were ninety-nine percent certain you were in love with them over the phone. Best wait until she was home again, and he had her alone and could peel off her clothes and lick everything he uncovered.
The hard-on progressed from uncomfortable to downright painful. Tyler bit back a groan and asked, “Can I call you tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Lily answered. “If you think you can behave yourself.”
“No phone sex? You don’t want me to tell you everything I’m going to do to you, and then do again until you lose your mind and come like you’ve never come before?”
Her answer made him laugh.
“I didn’t say that, now, did I?”
“What time, Lily?”
“What time?” She was flustered, then.
Good.
“What time shall I call you and make love to you with my voice,” he clarified. “Remember that day in Wal-Mart? It’s going to happen again, Lily, only long-distance this time.”
There was just the slightest tremor in her voice when she answered. “Dad and Tess are going to the Museum of Natural History tomorrow morning,” she said. “Suppose I call you? ”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A FTER A PLUNGE INTO THE LAKE , long after Davie had fallen asleep on his cot downstairs, Kit Carson balanced on the teetery rigging right along with him, Tyler’s raging body calmed down.
Mostly.
But his mind just wouldn’t stop; it was like a bronc at the rodeo, evading the pick-up men the way broncs-on-adrenaline sometimes did, still bucking, reins dangling, long after the buzzer sounded and the cowboy had scrambled over the fence to safety.
Davie had said he and Doreen hadn’t set him up for a scam and the story had some credibility with Tyler; after all, he’d been the one to do the paternal math and then hogtie the obvious conclusion and run with it. Doreen had denied that Davie was his, that night at the casino, when they discussed the situation, and with considerable regret. She’d said she wished it was true, but Davie’s biological father was some truck driver, long out of the picture.
It had sounded reasonable at the time, even a little noble, given that Doreen could have been collecting child support for the past thirteen years—money she’d obviously needed. But con artists made a specialty of seeming reasonable, didn’t they?
Of course they were convincing. They were masters of the art of bullshit—they had to be.
Tyler couldn’t overlook that possibility. It was all too easy to imagine Doreen following his career on ESPN, in the tabloids, where he’d kicked up a deliberate fuss more than once, and in the movies. At some point, she might have decided to bide her time and go for lump sum when the opportunity was at its prime.
It seemed likely now that he’d been carefully led, managed, from the time he came back to Stillwater Springs. And it wasn’t inconceivable—it wasn’t even all that big a stretch—to think Roy might have been in on the whole thing, too.
He could just hear the planning they must have done—Doreen and Roy and possibly Davie, gathered around some scratched-up table, somewhere in the wonderful world of low-income housing.
You act scared, Doreen might have told Davie. Tell Tyler Roy beats you up, regular. Roy, I’ll call you when the right moment comes. You put on a show for the pigeon. Act real mean. Tyler will buy that, it’s a hot button with him, after all he went through with his old man—
Lying there in his loft bed, with Lily conspicuously absent, sleepless and feeling like a rube, it was no trick at all to believe he’d been suckered, taken in.
And yet whenever Tyler was around Davie, he definitely picked up Creed vibes. He’d learned to trust his instincts over the years, rarely had a hunch that didn’t prove right—and several of them had saved his life. Deep down, he’d still have bet his share of the ranch that Davie was his son.
Or was that just wishful thinking, plain and simple? His childhood had been hell, and after the old man died, he’d been estranged from Dylan and Logan for five long years. And he’d lost Shawna—his best friend if not the love of his life, like she should have been.
Back then, still broken, Tyler hadn’t been able to love a woman full-out, no holds barred, the way he was starting to love Lily. He hadn’t had a clue what was going on in the da
rk recesses of his psyche, when it would have counted, when he might have given Shawna a fighting chance to get past all the walls he’d put up.
Tyler rolled onto his side, slammed a fist into his pillow, as if pounding it to fit his thick-skulled Creed head would make a difference.
Nothing was going to make a difference now—not to Shawna. She’d been anything but stupid, so she must have known the score from day one, but she’d carried on anyhow, cowgirl-style. Put a brave face on things, done everything she could to make him happy, and to be happy herself.
I’m sorry, Shawna. God, I’m so sorry.
The best—and worst—part was knowing Shawna would have forgiven him if he’d ’fessed up, said she knew he’d been doing the best he could. Shawna’s family, hardscrabble ranchers, had been so much healthier than his, and she’d grown up whole. In a better world, he would have been the one to slide off the side of a slick Nevada mountain, not her.
Shawna would have mourned, but those folks of hers, parents and brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, would have gathered her in, too. Kept her safe in the center of a warm circle, seen her through the worst of it, encouraged her to go on with her life when she’d had time enough to grieve.
By now, she’d be remarried, with a couple of kids, and he’d only be a memory that gave her a pang to the heart sometimes when it snowed in the night and she woke up to a pristine landscape outside her window, or when she heard their song on the radio….
“Stop,” Tyler growled, thrusting himself onto his elbows.
He’d done everything but cry at his own funeral, imagining the parallel-universe scenario, and that made him feel like the damn fool he was. There was no changing the past, and he had to stop trying.
He’d had his chance with Shawna, and he’d blown it.
Now, he had a chance with Lily.
Twice in a lifetime, cowboy, he thought. That’s two more chances than a lot of people get, so don’t screw this up.
Montana Creeds: Tyler Page 27