by Lisa Jackson
Her fingers were suddenly clammy over the wheel, her heart a drum. The bitter taste of bile rose in the back of her throat, and she clenched her jaw tight and tried to concentrate on driving into the heart of Bad Luck and the clinic where she’d once been treated for everything from bronchitis to pink eye.
The building hadn’t changed. It rose four stories from side-walks where bits of glass winked in the sunlight. The windows were paned, the glass reinforced by wire. An ash canister stood near the front door as it always had. Air-conditioning had been added; inside the once-linoleum hallways had been carpeted with a brown industrial weave. On the second floor, the glass door that had once been the portal to Pritchart’s office now was lettered with the name of an insurance company.
Disappointment settled over Shelby’s shoulders, but she twisted the knob and stepped inside to a cool reception area decorated in shades of blue. A pert receptionist with hair that matched the silvery blue of the walls and enough jewelry to put Mr. T to shame, looked up from her computer as Shelby entered. The name plate on the desk read Roberta Fletcher.
“I’m looking for Dr. Ned Pritchart,” Shelby said, before the woman could ask to help her. “I was a patient of his years ago, when he occupied this office.”
The woman’s smile was sugary sweet, though her eyes, wide with contacts, held little warmth. “Doc Pritchart? He’s been gone a long time, nearly ten years, I think. We’ve been here six and before that there was a lawyer—a Mr. Blackwell. Arthur Blackwell.”
“Do you know who took over his practice, or where I might find him?”
Ms. Fletcher shrugged, rolling her palms to the ceiling. “No idea. But I heard he’d quit working, moved away, though I can’t recall where. I never really knew him, at least not to speak to him. Just saw him around town occasionally.” She paused for a second, her eyes appraising. “Say, aren’t you Judge Cole’s daughter? Shelby? I remember you ... oh, my but you’re the spitting image of your mama, may she rest in peace.”
“Yes. Thank you.” So this was how it was going to be; everyone in Bad Luck would recognize her.
“A pity about her. You know, honey,” she said, suddenly Shelby’s friend, “she was a wonderful woman.”
“Yes. I do know. I remember.”
“How’s your father? I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“Fine. He’s—uh, fine,” Shelby said.
“How long are you in town?”
“A while,” Shelby hedged, remembering one of the pitfalls of a small town: everyone knew everyone else’s business. “I’m not sure exactly.”
Realizing she was getting nowhere on her quest and not wanting to answer any more questions, Shelby thanked the receptionist, made her way downstairs and threw open the front door to the scorching heat of mid-afternoon. Across the street was the only pharmacy in town, originally a Rexall drugstore complete with soda fountain in the back. She’d hung out there as a preteen in that netherworld between childhood and adolescence. Shelby hated to think how many cherry Cokes she’d sipped there while rotating on the red-topped stools, swinging her legs and dipping french fries in catsup laced with lemon and Tabasco sauce, while dreaming of some teen idol or TV heartthrob whose name she could no longer remember. It seemed a lifetime ago, a carefree time before all the trouble began.
She jaywalked as there wasn’t much traffic and rounded the comer to the side entrance where the hitching post, battle-scarred and glorious, stood guard. Cigarette burns marred its smooth, time-worn wood, and as she felt beneath the log, she traced the etched-in heart with the tips of her fingers—stiil there after all these years.
God, she’d been a fool over him. She’d been in high school at the time but he’d been older, home from a short stint in the army when she’d fallen for him.
“Not the smartest move of your life,” she reminded herself now as she straightened and dusted her hands. She wasn’t about to be caught up in silly reminiscence, not when she was pressed for time. And pressed she was. Each day that slipped through her fingers was another twenty-four hours gone without meeting her daughter.
Setting her jaw, she crossed an alley to a solitary phone booth and flipped through the torn and crinkled yellow pages of the directory, searching through the listing for physicians, hoping to find Dr. Ned Pritchart’s name.
No such luck. She ran her fingers down the columns of names, hoping that she might remember a partner or underling, or someone connected with Pritchart, but none of the listings rang any bells in her mind. The wind kicked up, hot as a blast furnace, pushing scraps of paper and dry leaves down the street. A mottled gray cat slipped from a doorway to the shade beneath a sun-baked Chevrolet that looked as if it had been parked in that same spot for the last twenty years.
Yep. The lazy pace of Bad Luck was a far cry from the bustle of Seattle, where pedestrians, bikes, cars, trucks and buses clogged the steep streets leading to the waterfront. Sea-gulls wheeled and cried over crowds of tourists, harbor seals threatened the salmon runs and huge ferries chugged through the choppy gray waters of Puget Sound as sailboats, their sails filled with a rough, northern wind skimmed across the surface. That city was alive, filled with a raw, vibrant energy drawn from an eclectic blend of citizens who inhabited, worked or visited that Northwest town where skyscrapers clustered near the shoreline knifed toward the sky. The air there was fresh, smelling of the brine of the ocean, the streets often rain-washed, pedestrians huddled in raincoats and parkas as they walked briskly, heads bent against the brace of the wind, in stark contrast to the slow tempo of summer in Bad Luck.
As she stepped out of the phone booth and walked to the pharmacy, she wiped the sweat from her forehead with her fingers and sensed eyes watching her. She looked down the length of the street to a far comer, where a battered pickup was parked and a man tossed a bag of grain into the bed. But his eyes, hidden by sunglasses, were focused directly on her.
She’d recognize him anywhere.
Her breath was lost for a second, stopping as memories, some bitter, some sweet, seared through her brain like flashes of lightning. Nevada Smith. He didn’t so much as smile, just started walking her way in that same easy, athletic gait that was so deceptively quick. In worn, sun-faded Levis, dusty boots, a frayed, once-dark green T-shirt, he didn’t stop until he was standing in the shade thrown from the pharmacy, just inches from her. Sweat dampened his hair.
“Shelby Cole.” Distaste laced his voice. “Well, well,” he drawled, giving her a slow once-over. “I heard a rumor you were comin’ back here.”
“Did you?” Why was her heart pumping so wildly? What they’d once shared was over. A long time ago. And that was the way she intended to keep it. This rugged cowboy was a stranger to her.
“Bad news travels fast in Bad Luck.” He rested a lean, jean-clad hip against the hitching post.
“Bad news travels fast anywhere.”
“S’pose so.” Behind his lenses he surveyed her. His chin was still strong, blackened by the stubble of a few days’ growth of beard, his arms muscular, covered with bronzed skin, his attitude still irreverently sarcastic. “What brings you back to Bad Luck?”
She’d actually considered confronting him. After all, he had the same right to know that she did. Somewhere he had a daughter, one he’d never known existed, a nine-year-old he hadn’t had the chance to love or reject. At least she’d convinced herself over the years that the child was his. There was a slim chance ... Her stomach roiled at the horrid thought, the unthinkable possibility.
A minivan cruised past, windows open, a frustrated mother yelling at her children, and farther up the street a crow with shiny black wings was nervously strutting along the gutter, looking for a morsel.
He was still waiting. Insolently. She cleared her throat. “I came back for a couple of reasons,” she admitted, squinting up at him and deciding it was now or never. “One involves you. When you’ve got a minute, we should talk.”
“That all it’ll take? A minute?” He regarded her through
those damned glasses and she wanted to rip them from his face.
“Ten ... twenty at the most.”
“How about now?”
Her throat closed for a second. So many nights she’d wondered if she’d ever approach him, tell him the secret she’d buried in her heart for nearly ten years. She’d never come up with a viable answer. Until now. Probably because she had no choice. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. Better to get this off her chest and let the chips fall where they may. “Okay. Yeah, why not now?” she said, then glanced down the hot asphalt street.
“I’ll buy you a drink. You’re legal now, right?”
“Well past,” she said.
Hitching his chin toward the White Horse Saloon, he started walking and Shelby screwed up all her courage to tell him the truth. He held the door open for her; it creaked on ancient hinges and she walked into a dark, tomb-like room where the exposed cross beams were black from years of cigarette smoke, and the antiquated air-conditioning system hummed and wheezed noisily as it fought a losing battle with the heat. Overhead a few lazy paddle fans pushed the thick, warm air around while tinny music flowing from hidden speakers vied with the distinctive click of pool balls in the back corner. Ice cubes rattled in glasses, and the stale odor of smoke and booze filled Shelby’s nostrils. As she passed the length of the bar, she felt more than one set of interested eyes follow her to a back booth.
“Beer?” Nevada asked as she sat.
“Fine.” It didn’t matter. As she dropped her sunglasses into a side pocket of her purse, he walked back to the bar and motioned with two fingers to the bartender, a thin, brittle-looking woman with fried blond hair, exaggerated eyebrows and faded lipstick.
“Two, Lucy.”
“You got it.”
He slid onto the bench across from her and tossed his sunglasses onto the table. In the dim light she noticed that his eyes were slightly different, one pupil larger than the other—the result, she remembered, of his run-in with Ross McCallum a long time ago. “Shoot,” he said. “What is it, Shelby? What’s suddenly so important that you hightailed it back here?”
Anxiously she glanced over her shoulder and told herself that she would have to face this day sooner or later. It was best to get it over with. “There’s something I should have told you a long time ago,” she admitted and saw the cords in the back of his neck tense. “Something important.”
“What?”
Lucy came, dropped a couple of paper coasters decorated with a map of Texas on their table, then placed two long-necked bottles of beer and a couple of glasses in front of them. As an afterthought, she reached across the bar and slid a small basket of peanuts in shells across the battle-worn table top. It stopped a hairsbreadth from the napkin holder. “Anythin’ else?” she asked.
“Don’t think so,” Nevada said.
“Y’all let me know if ya change yer minds.”
“Will do.” Nevada poured his glass as she sauntered off and his eyes found Shelby’s. “Go on.”
She felt her spine stiffen and she kept her voice as low as possible. “You and I. We ... we had a baby,” she admitted.
He was reaching for a peanut, but his hand stopped in midair. Every muscle in his body froze. His eyes narrowed on her with the same intensity as if he was sighting through his rifle. “What?” he demanded, his voice harsh.
“It’s true.” Oh, God. “A ... a girl.”
For a second there was silence. Deafening, condemning silence. His eyes sought hers, looking for a hint of a lie.
“And you didn’t tell me?” he finally whispered, the skin over his face stretched taut Thunderclouds gathered behind his eyes.
“No.”
“Where is she?” His lips barely moved.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” The peanut and his drink were both forgotten. He looked as if he were about to climb over the table and shake her. “What do you mean?”
“I ... I thought she was born dead,” she stammered, trying to stay calm.
“What? You thought? Weren’t you there?” he demanded, stunned, silently accusing her of lying through her teeth.
Oh, it all sounded so feeble now. “That’s what I was told by everyone, but now ... now I think I was lied to, and that she’s alive, but I don’t know where. She was probably adopted through the black market.”
“Wait a minute!” One of his hands shot up, palm out, silencing her. He glanced toward the bar, and Shelby realized that Lucy, obviously eavesdropping, was mopping the long, glossy surface of the bar and had inched closer.
With a silent warning Shelby didn’t mistake, Nevada reached into his pocket, found his wallet and threw a couple of bills onto the table. “Come on,” he ordered, half dragging her from the booth and sweeping up his sunglasses. “Keep the change,” he shot at Lucy while propelling Shelby toward a narrow back hallway wedged between the restrooms and the kitchen. He shouldered the door open.
The heat was a furnace blast; the sunlight blinding. Flies and bees swarmed around a dumpster pushed against the back of the building. A parade of slow-moving cars and trucks rolled along the alley.
Strong, determined fingers surrounded the crook of Shelby’s elbow as he propelled her across a pockmarked asphalt parking lot.
“Where are we going?” She yanked hard on her arm, but his grip only tightened.
“To my place.”
“And where’s that?”
She realized that he was shepherding her toward his truck. “Outside of town a few miles.”
“No way.”
“You’d rather talk here?” he asked, stopping short on the sidewalk where two kids rode their bikes past a row of parking meters and half-a-dozen cars and trucks were pulling away from or easing up to the curbs. Several curious glances were cast in their direction.
One man wearing aviator sunglasses and an Oilers cap pulled low over his eyes stared with undisguised interest from the open window of his flatbed truck.
Shelby felt suddenly as out-of-place as she looked.
“People do recognize you, you know,” Nevada warned.
“Oh, I know.” She hesitated only a second. “Let me take my car, okay?”
He dropped her elbow. “Follow me.”
She didn’t need any further incentive. As the guy in the flatbed shot a stream of tobacco juice onto the pavement, Shelby hurried to the rented Caddy and unlocked the door. The interior was blistering. Cranking the air-conditioning to high, she rolled down her window, then pulled a U turn. As Nevada’s old truck eased away from the curb, she tucked in behind him.
Right on his tail and swearing under her breath, she donned her sunglasses again. This is insane, she told herself. What do you think you’re doing, going to Nevada’s place, for crying out loud? Teeth clenched, she followed him through town and west into the open hill country, where the air-conditioning finally kicked in.
The surrounding ranch land was guarded by barbed wire, and sumac trees vied with the live oaks. Herds of goats, sheep and cattle roamed the dry, dusty acres grazing on sparse grass and weeds. Miles flew by. Past a dry gulch where there had once been a stream, Nevada turned his pickup into a thicket of live oaks, where a lane of gravel and potholes led to the heart of his ranch.
The Caddy bounced over weeds that grew between the twin ruts and scraped the underside of her car.
“Great,” Shelby muttered under her breath, her hands clenched over the wheel.
So this was where Nevada had ended up. A scrap of a ranch with a cabin that defied the definition of rustic and a few hundred fenced, dry acres. A smattering of longhorns ambled through the fields and a few horses sporting dusty hides tried to graze while their tails switched at the ever-present flies.
Not exactly heaven on earth.
She ground the Cadillac to a stop by a small pump house and rammed the car into park. While the dust from her car was still settling and before her confidence could flag, she dragged her briefcase with her and climbed out of the car.<
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Nevada was waiting for her.
So was the dog. He started barking his fool head off.
Nevada leveled his shaded eyes in the animal’s direction. “Crockett, hush ! It’s all right.” The mutt of a dog stood, legs apart, the hairs at the scruff of his neck bristling, his teeth flashing as he growled low in the back of his throat. “Enoughl” The snarling abated, but dark, suspicious eyes didn’t leave Shelby. Every muscle beneath his rough black-and-white coat was still stiff and taut, ready should he be given the command to spring. “I mean it,” Nevada warned, then reached down and scratched the dog behind his ears. “Come on in,” he said, opening a screen door. The mesh had been patched and the paint was beginning to peel.
Shelby walked into a house that wasn’t any cooler than outside. The furniture was worn and tossed haphazardly around a rag rug that covered a linoleum floor. Nothing matched. Everything was secondhand. If Nevada Smith had a dime to his name, it wasn’t invested in creature comforts. A few magazines were strewn across a coffee table that had seen better days but didn’t have enough class to be called retro.
He walked her past a postage stamp of a kitchen and through a back door. The porch was shaded, enclosed with screens and gratefully cooler by at least ten degrees. A faded Burma-Shave sign that had to be over seventy years old was tacked to the siding on one side of the door, and next to it a thermometer, starting to rust, registered a sweltering ninety-three degrees.
. “Sit,” he suggested, and she slid into a plastic chair near a small table. “Iced tea?”
“You got?” She was surprised. She really didn’t want any bit of hospitality from him, but her throat was parched and she was as nervous as a bumblebee landing on a Venus flytrap.
“I can make it. Instant.”
“Fine.”
He disappeared inside and Shelby had a chance to scan the backyard, where scattered patches of dry grass surrounded a horseshoe pit and a stone barbecue that was beginning to crumble. A clothesline stretched from a comer of the house to a pole in the yard. Beyond the fence a couple of horses, coats gleaming in the sun, were drinking from a cement watering trough. The screen door creaked, the old dog thumped his tail and Nevada emerged from the kitchen. He carried two mismatched glasses filled with ice and a cloudy amber liquid that she doubted most people would consider any relation to tea.