The Parent Plan

by Paula Detmer Riggs

  The fourth of six sisters, Wanda June Peavy lived on a nearby ranch with her parents and grandparents. She had been Vicki’s companion and substitute mom for the past three years, ever since Karen had graduated from medical school and started at Vanderbilt Memorial, first as an intern, and now as a resident.

  “Is…I mean, I saw Mr. Gallagher talking to you,” the distraught girl said in a trembling voice when she reached them.

  “He thinks it won’t be long now,” Karen hastened to reassure the girl whose face was now tear-stained and ashen.

  “It’s all my fault, Dr. Sloane. I told Vicki to stay back from the edge, but I was trying to see if the clouds were moving back toward us. I heard Vicki scream, and when I t-turned back to look, she was g-gone.”

  “Stop blaming yourself right this minute,” Karen declared in a fierce tone as she took Wanda June’s cold hand in hers. “I know how stubborn Vicki can be when she’s got her mind set on something.”

  The teenager blinked hard. “I should have been watching her closer.” She dropped her gaze and shifted her booted feet. “I keep thinking, if I close my eyes and wish hard enough, I could make this all into a dream and everything would be okay when I woke up. But…I can’t ever make it go away.” Casting an agonized look at Cassidy, she burst out, “You hate me, I know you do! And I don’t blame you. I deserve to die!”

  “Don’t ever say that again. Don’t even think it,” he rasped, his voice rough. “Accidents happen.”

  “But—”

  “Enough!” He reached out to enfold Wanda June in a clumsy bear hug, his big hand awkwardly patting her back as though she were six instead of sixteen. When he lifted his head to look at her, Wanda June offered him a watery smile.

  “Okay now?” Cassidy asked when the sitter’s breathing evened and the trembling eased off.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  The girl lifted her head and took a step backward. “Honey, you need to rest,” Karen told her gently. “Why don’t you go on home?”

  “I’d rather stay here until…you know.”

  Karen drew a breath. “Okay, but I want you to wait in the truck where it’s dry.”

  Wanda June nodded. “Call me if…when…?”

  “I will. I promise.”

  Karen watched until Wanda’s slender silhouette blended into the darkness, then shifted her gaze to Cassidy once more. “Thank you for that.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping her to forgive herself.”

  “She’s just a kid, doing the best she knows how. I knew better, and I let Vicki go out in this weather, anyway.” Because he’d never been able to say no when she’d sugared him the way he’d taught her to sugar her pony.

  “Cassidy, don’t.” He jerked free of her touch. “Let it be, Karen.”

  “No, not this time.” Karen took a deep breath “You couldn’t have known that cave was there. No one knew, not even the old-timers. And a mud slide can happen anytime, to anyone.”

  “But it happened here! On land I thought I knew as well as my hand.”

  “Cassidy, what happened was a freak occurrence, a one-in-a-million accident. If you need to blame someone, blame Mother Nature, because it’s not your fault any more than it’s Wanda June’s.”

  “Bullshit. We both know it’s because of my weakness that our daughter is down in that cold hellhole, fighting to stay alive.”

  “Stop beating up on yourself. You were on the other side of the ranch when she fell. Besides, you’re the strongest man I know.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m strong, all right. So strong I gave in and let you go back to your precious job when I knew you belonged at home with our daughter.”

  Karen’s mouth fell open. He knew he’d hurt her, but the resentment he’d bottled up for too long came tumbling out. “Oh, yeah, I knew better, all right,” he went on mercilessly, his fists knotted, “but I kept thinking you’d come to your senses.”

  “I…see,” she murmured carefully. “Yes, I understand how you could come to blame yourself.”

  She took two steps backward before stumbling over some unseen obstacle. Cassidy was at her side instantly, his strong arm wrapping around her waist to keep her from falling.

  “Kari, I didn’t mean…I don’t—”

  “Cassidy! Karen! Come quick!” It was Gallagher’s voice. And his tone was urgent—and exultant! Karen was already fighting tears of relief when he added excitedly, “We have her! Hot damn, she’s safe!”

  Chapter One

  March 18

  As Karen turned onto Gold Rush Street where she’d lived for most of her childhood, she couldn’t help smiling to herself. In one of Grand Springs’s oldest neighborhoods, the thoroughfare was wide enough for four cars and lined with huge, gnarled oaks and towering cottonwood trees that covered the generous front lawns with glorious red and gold leaves in the fall and wisps of white every summer.

  After parking the car in her mom’s driveway, Karen propped her arms on the steering wheel for a moment and gazed through the windshield at her childhood home. Built in the twenties for a bank president, the house itself had an oddly disjointed style and a seemingly random mix of red brick and shiplap siding, which always reminded her of a slightly eccentric but sweet-tempered dowager taking her ease in the sunshine.

  With a weary sigh, Karen closed her eyes for a second, wondering why on earth she’d come here. Although she’d told her mother she would be stopping by to drop off some steaks from a steer Cassidy had had butchered last week, that was only an excuse. The truth was that Karen had needed to come home, if only for a while, to lick her wounds and regroup.

  Back to the womb, so to speak, though, technically, her first home had been a bleak apartment above a pizza parlor. It was all that her parents, Sylvia and Fred Moore, had been able to afford on his resident’s salary.

  After pulling the keys from the ignition, Karen glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes past two. If running true to form, Sylvia would be waiting with a full pot of freshly ground French roast and a tray of pastries she’d picked up from the bakery near the bank where she had worked her way up to the position of vice president. One of the perks of her job was being able to take off unannounced for a couple of hours to spend an afternoon with her daughter.

  Karen slipped from the car and trotted up the shrubbery-lined walkway to the wide front porch, where she pressed the buzzer twice to herald her arrival before using her key. The silence of the huge old house settled over her like a soothing cloak as she slipped off her jacket and slung it over an arm of the antique coat tree.

  “Yoo-hoo, Mom?”

  Sylvia pushed through the louvered double doors that led from the dining room into the large living area adjacent to the tiled entry. In her slender, well-tended hands, she balanced a silver tray, steam rising from the coffee urn to create smoky ribbons before her finely sculptured face.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” she called as she bent to set the tray on the coffee table. “A visit from you today is just what I needed.”

  Karen crossed the living room to give her mother the expected hug and peck on the cheek, her mind strangely detached from Sylvia’s cheerful chattering. Karen accepted a cup of coffee, which she cradled absently between her cold palms as she wandered aimlessly around the living room. Her mother, enthroned in her favorite damask-covered chair near the fireplace, watched her pace.

  Very little had changed over the years. A fire had been expertly laid in the stone fireplace, ready to be kindled the instant her mother felt the slightest chill. Snapshots in silver frames had pride of place on the ornate oak mantelpiece, chronicling her life from infant to bride. Pain shafted through her at the memory of those carefree days. With her life full to bursting these past few years, she’d pretty much lost touch with almost all of those friends smiling at her with the naïve happiness of the young and privileged. Even Eve Stuart, who used to be her “best friend in the whole wide world,” had all but drifted out of her life before leaving Grand Springs for
good six years ago. Though Eve was back now and living with her new husband, Rio Redtree, and their daughter, Molly, Karen never seemed to have a moment to spare for socializing with her.

  She wanted to blame Cassidy for that, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. She had been the one to refuse invitations for lunch or bridge and casual get-togethers, even though it had hurt her keenly.

  “Is something wrong, darling? You look a touch sad this afternoon.”

  At the sound of concern in her mother’s voice, Karen glanced over her shoulder and shook her head in what she hoped was a reassuring denial. “I’m just tired, that’s all. One of the other residents is off sick, and I’m working part of his hours as well as my own.”

  Sylvia Moore pleated her patrician brow in a troubled look Karen knew foreshadowed a bout of maternal probing. “Winter’s officially over in three days. Perhaps you’ve a touch of spring fever,” Sylvia suggested with just a hint of a smile, her cup clinking softly as she returned it to the saucer on the piecrust table at her elbow.

  “Could be. I admit I’ve just about had it with fighting my way from the house to my car in knee-high snow more mornings than not.”

  She gave a dramatic shiver before turning back to continue her study of the framed photos. Since she’d been old enough to climb on a chair in front of the fireplace, she’d been fascinated by the people in those pictures, many of whom had faces very much like hers. Her father’s, especially. Karen always felt a tingle of recognition when she studied his likeness, which reminded her so much of her own.

  She’d been only three when he’d kissed her goodbye that fateful morning and driven off to work. Ten minutes later, his life had ended in a car crash. A broken neck, according to the reports she’d read. Just like that, and her mother had been a widow with a child to raise by herself.

  Kari and I raised each other, Sylvia invariably declared when anyone remarked on the unusually close relationship between mother and daughter.

  Smiling to herself, Karen let her gaze move farther along the display of photographs. Her mother was there, too, as well as a steady progression of photos of Karen. As a bald baby in a flowery headband. As a Brownie and then a Girl Scout, her sash covered with merit badges. As an honor student and valedictorian of her class at Colorado State.

  There were other pictures, too. Silly ones. Special ones. Her first day of medical school with her arms full of bedding and her roommate mugging in the background. Posing in her brand-new uniform as an LPN at Vanderbilt Memorial, where she’d worked double shifts in order to earn the money for the next term. Sunbathing in the backyard with her first boyfriend, Squirrely Miller Greavy. Her entire life, captured on glossy paper and framed with her mother’s impeccable taste.

  Her breath hitched as she finally allowed herself to look at the large, formal photo in a priceless antique frame that sat all alone on one end of the crowded mantelpiece. Her wedding picture.

  Her very own fairy-tale fantasy done in the colors of the sun and swirls of pixie dust.

  It had been Indian summer, and the sun had bathed the small chapel in gold. Cassidy had worn the rented tux with an authority that had taken her breath away. Not even her mother’s friend and long-time beau, Frank Bidwell, in custom-tailored Armani had been as impressive.

  Smiling, she traced the majestic line of those wide, wide shoulders with her blunt, unpainted nail. Clark Gable shoulders, she used to tease, just to watch him scowl. He’d been scowling when they’d met, too, between colorful curses that had questioned the paternity of the two ranch hands who had hauled him into the ER on a hot day in July.

  “He’s all yours, ma’am,” one of the crusty hands had declared prophetically before hurrying to the safety of the waiting room.

  “Best not try to take his pants,” the younger cowpuncher had counseled, before he, too, had abandoned her.

  A wild stallion Cassidy had been set on breaking had tried to return the favor, and Cassidy had ended up at the receiving end of the horse’s flashing, steel-shod hooves. Still wearing his chaps over frayed jeans and dusty boots, he’d been all but out of his mind with pain from a gash in his forehead, a severe concussion and four broken ribs, one of which had been dangerously close to puncturing a lung.

  While Karen helped the nurse with his vitals, he’d told them in no uncertain terms what they could do with their pain medication, threatened Karen with unspeakable horror if she so much as reached for the buttons on his fly and worked hard on turning the air blue in the small treatment cubicle, earning him a severe rebuke from a tough ex-army nurse by the name of Helga Tutt. He’d also gone down in history at Vanderbilt Memorial as holding the unofficial record for consecutive curses without a single repetition.

  It had been love at first sight—on her part, at least. But when they’d started dating, Cassidy’s motivation had been far more direct—he’d wanted to take her to bed. While she’d been weaving romantic dreams, he’d been skillfully knocking down her virginal defenses one by one. And yet, when she’d told him about the baby, he’d kissed her with great tenderness before informing her in his usual brusque manner that they would be getting married as soon as the law allowed.

  “You were beautiful that day, Kari,” her mother remarked quietly, drawing Karen’s gaze. “Truly radiant.”

  “I was scared to death!”

  “So was Cassidy. I’ve never quite seen that shade of white in a man’s face before.”

  Karen felt a lump forming in her throat as she recalled the possessive note in his voice as he’d repeated the vows. Her own voice had been barely audible and more than a little shaky. At one point, she’d stumbled over the words, and Cassidy had given her icy hand a reassuring squeeze that had calmed her.

  She’d been giddy with happiness for a long time after that. Cassidy had made no secret of his determination to grant her every wish, and he had, she reminded herself as she settled in the chair opposite her mother’s—until she’d made the decision when Vicki was nearly three to return to medical school for her final two years.

  He’d changed after that. Each day he’d seemed to draw more tightly into himself until she’d come to feel as though she were living with a taciturn, polite—and terribly remote—roommate instead of the man she adored.

  After taking a sip of the now tepid coffee, she asked brightly, “So what did you decide to wear to the reception tomorrow night?”

  Her mother tossed her a saucy grin that took years from her face. “What else? My little black dress and pearls.”

  “Of course.” Karen recalled with fondness the hours of her youth that she and her mother had spent discussing fashion and style.

  “I wish Olivia was going to be at the party,” Sylvia murmured after a long moment of silence. “She and I used to tease each other about who wore pearls most often.” Sylvia drew a sad breath. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

  Karen toyed with her coffee cup, centering it on her knee, tracing the handle, then repositioning it on the chair arm. Olivia Stuart and her mother had been friends for years—since the days when their girls had been in grade school together and almost as close as sisters.

  Now pictures of Eve’s mom flitted gently though her mind. For all her grace and innate charm, Grand Springs’ mayor had been a strong advocate for the underdog. She’d also been a wonderful role model, especially for young women and girls, like Vicki and Olivia’s own beloved granddaughter, Molly.

  “It doesn’t seem possible that a wonderful person like her should have been murdered.”

  Her eyes dulled by sadness, Sylvia shook her head. “I talked to Rio the other afternoon when he came in to make a payment on his truck loan. He said that the police have pretty much exhausted the leads in the case.”

  Karen heaved a weary sigh. As a doctor, she dealt with death nearly every day, in one way or another, but that didn’t make it any easier when the Grim Reaper struck so close to home.

  “I’m sure Eve and Rio will be at the party. Maybe Rio’s work at the Gr
and Springs Herald has turned up new information.”

  Sylvia let out a long breath. “If there is any new information. It seems to me things like this go on forever, and sometimes they’re never really satisfactorily solved. That disturbs me almost as much as losing Olivia did.” She shrugged a slender shoulder. “What a pathetic tribute to someone’s life.” She crooked her elegant fingers to indicate quotations marks. “‘Case pending.’ No sense of closure. No sense of justice being done. It makes a person wonder what it’s all about. You know?”

  Karen understood, perhaps better than her mother realized. What was it all about? She’d been asking herself that question a lot lately. She had no answers.

  As if Sylvia sensed how gloomy her daughter was feeling, she declared firmly, “Enough depressing stuff. Tell me about your new dress. You never did tell me what you bought.”

  “Probably because there’s nothing to tell. I don’t have anything new.”

  Sylvia arched an eyebrow. “But I thought that’s the reason you and Vicki made a special trip to the mall last month.”

  Karen grinned and rolled her eyes. “That was the plan, yes, but remember me, the mother of a precocious soon-to-be nine-year-old? I’d swear she was thirteen going on twenty-five, listening to her talk. Barbie dolls are definitely behind us, I’m afraid. Now she’s lusting after makeup and heels with a gleam in her eye that will probably throw Cassidy into cardiac arrest when he realizes what’s on her mind.”

  Sylvia chuckled. “She is shooting up fast, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, scary, isn’t it? Anyway, by the time we settled on the absolutely perfect party dress, we’d run out of time to look for something for me.”

  This time Sylvia’s cup clattered impatiently when she returned it to its saucer. “For heaven’s sake, Karen, why didn’t you tell me you were short on time? You know I leap at any opportunity to shop. I’m sure I could have found you something appropriate.”