Folks gathered along both sides of the street cheered.
Ace, beside Belinda at the head of the Flying Ace riders, turned in his saddle toward the rest of their group. “Are we ready?”
“Lead on, bro,” Trey called.
“You boys ready?” Ace asked his sons.
“We been ready,” Jason complained. “Let’s go, Dad.”
“All right.” With a nod and a wink, he added, “Let’s ride.”
And they rode out in their matching shirts and hats at a respectful distance behind the marching band. Ace and Belinda took the lead and rode side by side. Behind them came their sons, Jason, Clay and Grant, trying their best to look solemn and dignified while breaking into giggles and waving at everyone they saw.
Behind the boys came Trey, Rachel and Jack, riding side by side, with Frank, Stoney and Donna, as the three highest-ranking Flying Ace employees, behind them, with the other hands bringing up the rear.
All in all, Rachel thought, a hell of a sight.
She held her breath while she smiled and waved, maintaining a close eye on the three little boys in front of her while also keeping a tight rein on her horse. There was always some joker in the crowd who thought it was funny to toss out a firecracker whenever anyone came by on horseback.
But this year, praise the Lord, the Wilder clan made it the entire three-quarters of a mile down the parade root to the end without incident.
Rachel waved goodbye to her family and trotted her horse down the side street, then turned down Pine and headed back toward the staging area. Toward the clinic float. Toward…Grady.
“Are you sure about this?” Grady asked Louise for the dozenth time that morning.
Louise rolled her eyes. “Will you relax? Every kid in town is going to be envious of Cody for getting to ride in the parade.”
“Yeah, and nobody can be meaner than a little kid who’s jealous,” Grady said tersely.
“I didn’t say jealous, I said envious. Nobody’s mean to the Wilder kids, or any other kids who get to be in the parade. They’re Wyatt County’s version of rock stars for the day. All those kids at the house after the funeral will know who he is. They’ll want to be friends. It’s perfect, I tell you.”
“Is Daddy nervous?” Rachel asked.
Grady gave a start. He hadn’t known Rachel had arrived at the float until she spoke.
The float, as in years past, was a simple affair, a flatbed trailer pulled behind the clinic’s Mountaineer. Bales of straw were stacked precisely to Louise’s specifications to provide perches for Rachel, Cody and Harry.
If Louise had her way, Grady would be back there on those bales, too, as he’d been when he was a boy and he and David rode with their father. But Grady had flatly refused. He might be a partner in the clinic, but he had nothing to do with its operations.
Louise, now, that was another matter entirely. She belonged on the float. She was the initial contact every person made when they called or visited the clinic. She was the one who finessed—sometimes coerced—clients into paying their bills. She was the one who argued with suppliers and made sure medicine and equipment was available to treat the animals. She should be on the float.
Grady should not. He was firm about that.
But Cody…what a kick the kid was getting out of all of this. Grady was just worried that he could get hurt.
Oh, not physically. He wasn’t likely to fall off the trailer or anything. But he didn’t know any of those people who were out there now lining the street, waving and hollering at their friends. Would they wave and holler at Cody? Or would the clinic float pass by curious but silent onlookers?
The thought of Cody getting his feelings hurt was about to cripple Grady. “Yeah,” he admitted to Rachel. He was nervous. “A little.”
“Well, don’t be.” Rachel patted him on the arm on her way to straighten Harry’s antlers.
Grady sucked in a quick breath. Such a casual touch, one that obviously meant nothing to her. To him, even though he knew better, it meant so much more. A hand on his arm, a gesture of…of what? Support? Encouragement? Friendship? Never had he thought to have even that much from her.
“Hold still, Harry,” Rachel muttered, straightening the papier-mâché antlers on the dog’s head.
Harry gave her a sloppy doggy grin.
“You’re eating this up, aren’t you?” she asked him.
Harry’s recovery was coming along nicely. His leg, which had required surgery to repair, was still in a cast, but he got around pretty well on the other three.
“Are we ready?” Cody danced beside Rachel and looked up at Grady. “Is it time? It’s time, isn’t it?”
Grady took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Yeah. It’s time.” He started to give Cody a boost up onto the bed of the trailer. He wanted to touch him, wrap his arms around him for just a minute during the lifting, to reassure himself that Cody would be fine, that he wouldn’t get his feelings hurt out there on Main Street.
But Cody had already been up on the trailer and down a dozen times by himself and didn’t wait.
Grady’s arms felt empty. “Be careful,” he cautioned as Cody jumped from one bale of straw to another. “You fall off, you’re in trouble.”
“Aw, gee, Dad,” Cody said with disgust. “I don’t fall off straw bales.”
“Well, don’t fall off the trailer.” Grady turned away and saw Rachel starting to lift Harry in her arms.
“Here.” He took the dog from her and put him up on the straw with Cody.
“Thanks.” Rachel brushed her hands together, then gave him a big smile. “Now, one more.”
Grady cocked his head. “You want me to lift you, too?”
“Nope.” She nodded her head toward Louise, who was straightening the banner on the far side of the trailer. That banner read: Adopt a Pet from the Animal Shelter. The one on the near side read: Spay/ Neuter Your Pets. Worm Your Stock. Vaccinate Everybody. They were Louise’s pride and joy, and she wanted them to hang straight so everyone could read them. “Her,” Rachel said.
Grady’s smile was slow and wide. “You talked her into riding up there?”
“Nope. We’re just going to ignore her and put her up there.”
“Wilder,” he said with a laugh, “I like your style.”
“Well, then, Lewis, let’s get to it.”
Together they rounded the end of the trailer and each took one of Louise’s arms.
“Hey, wha—?”
“Just come peacefully,” Rachel told her as she and Grady dragged her toward the tail of the trailer, “and there won’t be any need for rough stuff.”
“No way, you two, I’m not—”
“Up you go.” Grady grabbed her by the waist and lifted her onto the trailer.
“Grady Lewis—” She whirled and started to climb back down. “I’m not riding on this thing.”
“Come on, Louise, you know you want to. You know Dr. Ray always wanted you to,” Rachel added, thinking to play on Louise’s emotions. She slipped into her white lab coat and tossed one each to Louise and Cody.
“And I’ll tell you the same thing I told him every year,” Louise said. “It’s not my place. He was Standing Elk Clinic, and now you are.” She pointed at Rachel. “I don’t belong on display.”
Grady didn’t worry about playing on the woman’s emotions. He pulled out the big guns. “I’m the majority partner of this outfit, and I say you’re riding back there. Rachel.” He gave Rachel a boost and headed for the Mountaineer. “Everybody better hang on, we’re pulling out. And don’t forget your stethoscopes and headlights.”
A moment later, when he put the SUV in gear and drove slowly toward Main Street a few yards ahead, he heard Louise shriek and Rachel and Cody laugh.
To Grady’s relief, the Standing Elk Clinic float was an instant hit. Or maybe people were cheering because after them came the fire department, marking the end of the parade, and everyone could head for the park for lunch.
“Hey, Gra
dy!” someone called.
He glanced over and saw one of his classmates from high school grinning and waving. Tentatively, Grady waved back.
“There’s Dr. Rachel! Hi, Dr. Rachel!”
“Grandma! Look, Granddad, it’s Grandma on the fwoat!”
Grady glanced over to see one of Louise’s grand-kids jumping up and down and tugging on Louise’s husband’s hand. The poor man looked thunderstruck to see his wife up there throwing candy to the kids.
“Look! That’s Harry! The dog in the paper. Oh, look at him! Isn’t he cute?”
“That’s him, Mama, the kid I met when you went to the fooneral. His name’s Cody. Hi, Cody! Hi! Remember me? I’m Jeff!”
A lump rose in Grady’s throat. In the rearview mirror he watched Cody jump up and down excitedly on his bale of straw while throwing handfuls of candy to the sidelines.
Grady blinked to clear his vision. Cody’s place in the community was being firmly established. Because Rachel had insisted that the boy ride on the float. In David’s place. With David’s dog.
Grady’s vision blurred again. David, can you see him? God, I wish you could see him. Everyone says he looks like me, but he doesn’t. It’s you he resembles.
“Hey, Lewis!”
Grady blinked and looked toward the voice calling from the curb. It was Danny Warden, another high-school buddy. They’d called him City Boy all through school, because he’d moved here from Cheyenne when he was six. That meant he wasn’t a native.
“I hear you and Joe signed up for the team-roping,” Warden called.
“You heard right, Warden,” Grady called back.
Warden laughed. “Get ready to eat my dust, pal.”
“In your dreams, City Boy.”
And so it went, all down the street. Friends and neighbors called out greetings, laughed and waved. On the float, Rachel, Louise, and Cody wore their white lab coats—Cody’s swallowed him, but it was cute. They each wore a stethoscope and around their heads a doctor’s headlight and reflective mirror. Cody appeared to be hamming it up big time.
Sitting up on a bale of straw between Cody and Rachel sat Harry. Harry knew his place on the Fourth of July. He wasn’t going to let a little thing like a broken leg stop him from playing his part. He sat there with his leg in a cast and his tongue hanging out in a goofy, doggy grin, with those crazy papier-mâché elk antlers perched on top of his head.
The dog was having almost as much fun as Louise, Rachel and Cody. And Grady had to admit that he wasn’t suffering any himself.
At the end of the parade route Grady pulled up and parked behind the giant stuffed moose on the Moose Lodge float and got out.
“Dad, Dad!” Cody leaped from one straw bale to another on his way to the back of the trailer, his oversized lab coat flapping in his wake and threatening to trip him. “Did you see, Dad, did you see? Wow! It was great!”
“I saw, I saw.” Grinning, Grady held out his arms and Cody jumped. “Umph. You’re almost too big for me to catch.”
“Golly, Dad, I saw kids I knew and everything. It was way cool.”
“Was it, now?”
Rachel sat on the end of the trailer and dangled her legs. “I hate to be the one to say I told you so,” she said to Grady. She was grinning almost as widely as Cody was, and her eyes were filled with fun and laughter. “But—I told you so.”
“Yeah.” Grady glanced up at her, into those laughing blue eyes, and couldn’t look away. “Yeah, you told me.”
“Grandma, Grandma!” Louise’s granddaughter rushed up, with Granddad in tow, and broke the spell. “You rided in the pawade!”
Before Grady could put Cody down and offer Rachel a hand, she scrambled down from the trailer on her own.
“Come on, pard,” he told Cody as Louise’s husband helped her down. “Let’s go take this trailer and Harry home, then come back for some barbecue.”
“Aw, Dad, does Harry have to go home?”
“As Harry’s doctor,” Rachel told him, “I think he’s had about enough excitement for one day.”
Grady knew Rachel was just trying to help him out. Harry was fully ready to spend the day in the park, hobbling around on three legs and letting every kid in sight pet him and feed him. But Grady wasn’t prepared to keep an eye on him and Cody.
“But Cody can stay with me if he wants,” Rachel added. “If it’s okay with you. We’ve got a picnic spot staked out in the shade by the north parking lot, and the boys would love to spend the day with him. They ask about him all the time.”
“Can I? Can I, Dad?”
“Let me think about it a minute.” Grady turned to Louise. “I don’t think Cody’s met any of your grandkids, has he?”
“Mercy. I don’t think he has,” Louise claimed. “Come over here, Cody, and meet these kids.” By now four more of her grandchildren had arrived.
As soon as Cody turned toward Louise, Grady faced Rachel. “What’s your family going to say about Cody tagging along with you?”
Rachel blinked at him. “What are you talking about?”
“This is me, Rachel. I’m sure your brothers would just as soon not have anything to do with me or mine.”
One corner of her mouth curved up. “Since when did you care what my brothers thought?”
“I don’t want Cody getting caught in the middle.”
If she’d been about to smile, now she was glaring. “You know better than that. My brothers are the most fair-minded men I know. They would never hurt a child, not for any reason.”
Well, hell. She had him there.
“Besides,” she said, her grin returning. “It will be a while before they make it to the park. Belinda volunteered them to clean up the street after the parade.”
Now it was Grady’s turn to blink. All his life the Wilder brothers, particularly Ace, as the oldest, had been bigger than life. The strong, macho type. A little intimidating, although, as Rachel had said, fair-minded. But the thought of those three rough, tough Wilder men—he couldn’t help it. He broke out laughing.
“The great and mighty Ace Wilder is shoveling manure off Main Street?”
“So are Jack and Trey. I hope Belinda remembered the camera. Maybe Jimmy will get a picture for the paper.”
“You’ve gotten mean over the years,” Grady observed.
“Who, me?” She batted her eyes at him and fought a laugh. “It’s just a little sisterly payback.”
Grady gave in and let Cody go with Rachel and her nephews. It wasn’t easy for him to stand back and watch Cody go off on his own, make friends on his own. But it was time, Grady knew, to let the boy take his own steps.
He and Joe took the dog and the trailer home. Then they hooked up the horse trailer and hauled their horses to the rodeo grounds. When he finally located Cody again, the kid was having the time of his life with the three youngest Wilders.
“Let him stay,” Belinda said. “They’re having a blast, and one more in this brood won’t hurt a thing. Or two, for that matter. You’re welcome to hang out here if you want.”
Grady saw the way the Wilder men were eyeing him—with speculation, caution—and decided Cody was on his own. The boy had been accepted. Grady knew that acceptance on the part of Ace, Jack and Trey didn’t extend to him.
Then there was Rachel, who was studiously ignoring him, now that they were off the float. Yep. Cody was on his own.
He thanked Belinda for the invitation but declined, then wandered away. It wouldn’t be long before he would have to get back to the rodeo grounds, anyway.
The park was filled with people and booths. Food booths, craft booths and games of all kind. Grady grabbed a hamburger at one, a soft drink at another, and visited with some old friends who did seem glad to see him. Now and then Cody and his new Wilder friends dashed by with at least one adult Wilder in tow. Cody would yell at him and wave each time, and Grady was glad his son was accepted. Very glad indeed.
Rachel was having a ball running around the park with Belinda and the boys. They h
ad to try all the games, visit with all their friends, sample all the food. This was not a day to worry about nutrition. Other than candy, they were allowed to eat and drink pretty much whatever they wanted.
But the soft-drink intake had its predictable results, so they herded the boys toward the cinder-block rest rooms at the edge of the park, where Belinda and Rachel took care of their own needs in the half marked Girls, then waited outside for the boys to emerge from the other side. They were still in there; they could hear them giggling.
Then it got quiet, but it was several more minutes before anyone came out. And then it wasn’t the boys, it was Sheriff Martin.
“Ladies,” he said with a nod. Then he walked briskly away across the grass and disappeared into the throng of people.
When the boys came out a moment later, they were wide-eyed and pale.
“Mom,” Jason called, rushing to Belinda’s side. “The sheriff called Cody a bad name and said he wasn’t wanted around here and for him to find his daddy and go home.”
Shocked, Belinda looked at Rachel.
Rachel stared at Jason, then Cody, then Jason. “He what?”
“He called Cody a bad—”
“Hush, son,” Belinda said gently. “Aunt Rachel heard you.”
Rachel knelt before Cody and studied his face. “Are you okay, honey?”
He was obviously upset, but he swallowed and nodded. “I’m okay. But do you know where my dad is?”
Rachel stood and pulled the boy to her side and wrapped her arm around him. “Not right this minute, but we’ll find him, I promise.”
They took the boys, much subdued now and confused, back to the family picnic spot.
“Keep them here,” Rachel said.
“Are you going to find Grady?”
“In a minute. Right after I rip the hide off that no-good—”
Belinda held all four boys close to her and watched as Rachel spotted the sheriff in the crowd around one of the food booths and took off after him.
Grady finished off a second hamburger and wandered toward the Wilder picnic spot to see how Cody was doing. The minute he spotted him and the other boys, all four of them pale and huddled against Belinda, he knew something was wrong.
The Price of Honor Page 12