by Susan Wiggs
He heard a noise behind him. The mare, thumping her foot on the floor, he told himself. Please let it be that.
He stood up and turned, knowing goddamned good and well it wasn’t the mare that he’d heard. Someone had just caught him red-handed at his most ridiculous.
“Hi, Cody,” she said. “I came to see the new foal.”
“Um, Molly, yeah.” He could feel his face filling up with a blush like a thermometer rising. “That’s your name, right? Molly?” As if he’d forgotten. As if she’d be fooled.
She grinned at him, and the sun through the skylights seemed to get brighter for a second. She was amazing, her long straight black hair so shiny it was like water. Her face was the type of face you never wanted to look away from.
“That’s my name.”
His ears were on fire. He could feel the flames rising from them. “I was, um, making friends with her myself.”
She let herself into the stall, expertly stroking Sylvia to put the mare at her ease. But her eyes never left the foal. “Ooh, she’s such a little beauty.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out a treat for Sylvia. “It’s okay that I saw you doing that,” she said as the mare crunched down the carrot.
Cody nearly choked with embarrassment. “I was just—”
“I usually kiss ’em on the lips,” she stated, then squatted and held out a hand to the foal.
He stood back, feeling a tad superior that the filly wouldn’t have a thing to do with the girl. He didn’t care how long she spent trying to coax it. He’d be happy to stand here all day staring at Molly. Barn clothes looked just right on her. At his school in Seattle, the tight leggings and paddock boots, oversize sweater and puffy down vest would draw comments of dork and dweeb. But here in Sam’s barn, she looked natural and comfortable. He found himself wondering what it would feel like to hold her slender form close to him. He wondered what her hair smelled like, and if her cheek was as soft as it looked, and if her lips—
Whoa. His thoughts were way out of control. He owed Claudia his loyalty, not this skinny backwater stranger. Claudia was the one who had pulled him out of obscure mediocrity at school. Because Claudia was his girl, he was suddenly someone, suddenly important. People knew his name when he walked down the halls at school.
The trouble was, when Molly Lightning looked up at him with shining eyes, she made it real easy to forget all that stuff.
“She’s a perfect filly,” Molly said. “Just perfect. I knew she would be.”
“How’d you know that?”
“She’s by Calyx, out of Sylvia. The perfect combination.”
“By Calyx. You mean that’s the father?”
“Uh-huh. Or the stud, you could say. Breeder talk, I guess.”
“Whatever.” Awkwardness stole over Cody. “Um, do you want to get a Coke or something?”
She stood. “Sure. We should leave the baby alone, anyway.”
It turned out she was right. Practically the second they left the stall, the foal curled up and fell asleep. They raided the beat-up old refrigerator, filled with shots and wormer and soft drinks. The Border collie thumped her tail, then went back to sleep. They stood in the barn office, sipping from the cans as unease settled over them again.
“So my mom heard you got kicked in the head.” Molly eyed the knitted gray cap Cody had pulled on that morning.
He felt a little swell of pride as he touched his forehead where the edge of the bandage showed. “Yeah. I got in the way of Sylvia’s hoof at the wrong time.”
She regarded him with such admiration that he felt inches taller. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
He liked the way she sipped her Coke from the can. He liked the way her fingernails were cut, short and plain. Claudia painted hers a different color practically every day, and on special occasions she painted tiny designs on each one. He had never seen the point of it, but it was a girl thing, he supposed.
“So how’d your mom hear about the accident?” he asked.
Molly rolled her eyes comically. “My mom hears everything. She teaches English at the high school. I bet Edward Bliss told her.”
“Did he tell her the other stuff?” Cody felt a strange lightness in his chest, as if he’d inhaled cigarette smoke and was holding his breath.
“What other stuff?”
“About… Sam McPhee.”
“What about Sam?”
“That he’s my dad.” He made sure he sounded totally blasé. “My biological dad.” He didn’t look at her, but he felt her stillness, her dawning amazement.
“Wow,” she said at last.
“So I guess your mom doesn’t hear everything.”
“Guess not. Did Sam know about you?”
Something that felt uncomfortably like shame touched Cody. It pissed him off that he had been conceived so carelessly and then dismissed, no more important than a foal to a stud. “Nope. He and my mom lost track of each other.”
“Do you have a stepdad?”
He thought of Brad, with those clean hands and that fat wallet. And those eyes that didn’t trust him. “Nope.” He poked the toe of his boot at a coil of rope on the floor.
“So are you happy about it or what?”
“He’s just some guy my mom used to know. It doesn’t change anything.”
Molly put her empty can in the recycle bin. “Are you sure?”
“What, you think they’re going to pick up where they left off and fall into each other’s arms?”
“What if they do?”
“They won’t,” he said quickly, fiercely. “We live in a different state. We’re here temporarily.”
“I really like Sam. Everybody does.”
“I don’t even know the guy.”
She paused. “He was seeing my mom last summer.”
Cody’s head jerked up; he narrowed his eyes. “Yeah? Are they still together?”
“Nope. They’re good friends and all, but they don’t really go out. I heard he sees a lot of different women.” Her cheeks glowed pink. “That’s what I heard, anyway.”
“What about your dad?”
She shrugged. “Ditched us when I was little. I barely even remember him.”
“I guess you know Sam a lot better.”
“I guess.”
Cody waited, wishing she’d say more. Since learning about Sam, he’d been on fire with curiosity. There was so much to wonder about. Where was Sam from? How had he grown up? Did he have any brothers or sisters? What did he eat for breakfast?
Why didn’t he come looking for me?
He slammed his can into the recycle bin and stalked out of the barn office. “I better get to work,” he said, growing short-tempered with all the thoughts swirling through his head.
“Want some help?” Molly asked.
“Nope.”
“I could—”
“No.” He turned and faced her. She stood in the doorway, backlit by sunlight. He wished she’d leave in a huff, but she stood her ground. “There’s not much to be done,” he said lamely.
“See you around, then.” She walked out of the barn. A tall Appaloosa with a shaggy winter coat stood tethered to the paddock rail. She untied the horse and swung up into the saddle, turning him and walking him away with unhurried dignity.
Chapter 22
The illness was the enemy. The moment he had been diagnosed, Gavin had envisioned it as a living thing, a monster stalking him through the dark. Initially, he’d wasted a lot of time in denial and rage. Humiliated by the disintegration of his body, he had cursed the universe, embraced a death wish. A binge of drinking and tomcatting had nearly brought him to his knees. He had awakened one morning in an emergency clinic in Kalispell to find that they’d dragged him back from the edge of a coma—temporarily. The rest was up to him.
He went home and got down to the business of survival. He waged a battle against his disease, planning strategy with the precision of a film director blocking out a scene.
Yet he was losing ground. Hiring a sp
ecial nutritionist, participating in special therapies had only postponed the inevitable. His kidneys were useless. Dialysis wasn’t getting the job done. He was slowly poisoning himself. If the transplant didn’t work, he’d be dead in a matter of months.
Driving down the highway away from town, he flexed his hands on the steering wheel. Part of his strategy for dealing with this was to act as if everything was fine, as if he didn’t carry around a bag of dialysis fluid connected by a tube sticking out of his side. He still went to the feed store, still placed his stock orders and gossiped with the cow buyers and rodeo directors who came through town. Still stopped in at the diner for a cup of tea—coffee had been banned long ago.
He was a fixture in Crystal City. Even now, years after his last film, he was regarded as the town celebrity. People liked coming up to him and saying hi. They liked telling their kids he was the guy on all those tapes at the video store.
They kept his movies in the Classics section.
He drove along the empty road, thinking about Michelle and wishing like hell for some alternative to the surgery. Christ, she didn’t owe him a thing, least of all a frigging kidney.
But the minute she’d figured out the score, she’d latched on like a tick, and she wasn’t about to let go.
Why was that? Filial love and devotion didn’t explain it. A sense of duty—maybe. The trouble was, they were doing this ass-backward. Forgiveness should come first. Then the transplant. Sad to think it took a crisis to bring them both to the table.
He pondered the long gap in their relationship, a gap that spanned the years of Cody’s life.
I’m pregnant, Daddy.
I’m not surprised. Your mother was careless, too.
Christ. What the hell had he been thinking, speaking to his young, frightened daughter that way? Worse, Gavin had made sure she didn’t have Sam McPhee to turn to. No wonder she had left, erecting a wall of silence that had endured for years. He didn’t blame her.
He had responded to her departure by finding a mistress nearly as young as Michelle and becoming the resident playboy of Crystal City. He threw himself into work, producing a few small-studio independent films and giving the rest of his attention to the rodeo stock breeding program on his farm. There had barely been time to come up for air. And he sure as hell hadn’t been inclined to let her know her old boyfriend had made good and moved back to town.
He’d salved his guilt about Michelle in equally typical fashion—by setting up a massive college fund for her child. He knew better than to suppose he could buy her forgiveness, but at least the boy would never have to worry about paying for his education.
Many times since his diagnosis, Gavin had picked up the phone, even dialed the number. It was a terrible thing, a pathetic thing, to use pity and compassion to bridge the gap. He’d held off telling her as long as he could. Michelle caught on when Gavin had set up a new trust fund in Cody’s name. Within hours of receiving the papers to sign, she had called.
On some insane level, he was grateful for the illness that had brought her to him so swiftly and unquestioningly. If the transplant didn’t work, he’d feel like a failure. But that was asking for a guarantee, and for once in his life, he knew better than that.
The sight of a breakdown at the side of the road startled Gavin from his musings. He recognized the beige Chevy Celebrity parked on the shoulder with its hood propped up. He eased off the road and parked behind the car.
“Car trouble?” he asked the woman bent over the engine.
She straightened up. Instant recognition froze her face. Tammi Lee Gilmer was in her fifties and looked it, with tired skin and overtreated hair teased high. She was slender and pale-eyed, a wary smile playing about her mouth. In the years since she’d moved back to Crystal City, she had lived a quiet life, never showing any signs of the out-of-control partying that had once made her the talk of the town.
She worked in a fabric shop—Gavin had never set foot inside it. On the rare occasions that he saw her, they dismissed each other with a nod and a murmured hello. Now he was trapped.
“It just died on me,” she said. “I can’t think what happened.” Her voice was husky. As far as Gavin could tell, she’d given up drinking, but the habit still haunted her voice.
He opened the passenger door of his truck. “I’ll give you a lift.”
She slammed down the hood and grabbed her purse off the seat. “Thanks, Gavin. I was on my way out to Sam’s. I can call McEvoy’s Garage from there.”
It was a tall step up into his truck, and he held out a hand to steady her as she climbed in. Her arm felt small and bony, but she was spry enough as she settled into the passenger seat. She smelled of cigarettes and drugstore perfume, and he found the fragrance unpretentious and therefore slightly welcome. He came from a world where women donned formal dress to go to the mailbox. He didn’t miss that world at all.
He walked around the truck and got in, easing back onto the highway.
“You know the way to Sam’s?” she asked.
“Yeah, I know where Lonepine is. I’ve been out there once or twice.” Gavin had bought a couple of horses from Sam. Beyond that, they hadn’t spoken.
Tammi Lee crossed one leg over the other, adjusting the wool cuff of her snow boot. Gavin kept his eyes on the road, but he found himself remembering, almost against his will, one of the meetings he’d had with his transplant team. The psychologist had pretty much guaranteed him he’d have no interest in sex for a good long while—maybe never again. The antirejection meds had a motherlode of side effects.
“But it’s life,” Dr. Temple had said, his painfully earnest face animated by optimism. “Preferable to the alternative.”
Gavin hadn’t smiled. “Shoot me now,” he’d grumbled, and the psychologist had scribbled something on his clipboard.
Gavin missed Carolyn, who had lived with him until he’d been diagnosed. A former first-runner-up Miss California, her favorite things were riding horses, watching movies, shopping, and having imaginative, recreational sex.
When he told her about his illness, she had looked at him in horror, left that same day, sued him for eight thousand a month in palimony, and sold her story to a magazine.
His attorney had negotiated a much cheaper settlement, and Gavin had set up the second trust fund for Cody.
“I guess you know why I was headed out to Sam’s,” Tammi Lee said, bringing his thoughts around full circle.
“To see the boy, I imagine.”
“I’ve been told the boy’s name is Cody.” Her voice held a gentle censure. “Cody Jackson Turner. So it’s lucky I ran into you. Now you can tell me all about him, sort of prepare me.”
“I haven’t seen much of my grandson, Tammi Lee.”
“Yeah, well, he’s my grandson, too, and I’ve never seen him.”
“A word to the wise. Don’t expect a bunch of hugs and kisses.”
“From a sixteen-year-old boy who doesn’t know me from Reba McIntyre? Don’t worry, Gavin, I’m not that stupid.” She was pensive for a few moments. “When Sam was that age, he acted more grown up than me. Quit school and went to work for you. I took that boy’s childhood away from him. No. I never let him have a childhood in the first place.”
The frank regret in her voice made him wince. “Hey, take it easy on yourself. Sam’s fine. Not every mother raises a boy to become a doctor.”
“He did it all on his own. I never forget that. Never.”
“You have a right to be pretty proud of Sam,” Gavin remarked.
She laughed briefly, shaking her head. “I keep thinking he was left with me by mistake, that he was actually meant for some couple with a nice house full of books and a piano and supper hot on the table every night.”
“I bet that would have made him too soft to do everything he’s done.” Gavin wished she’d drop the subject. He knew what she’d been like when Sam was coming up. Though she’d been his full-time mother, in a way she had been as absent from Sam as Gavin was from Michelle.
Because when you were a drunk, you weren’t there. Simple as that.
“Okay, here we are.” He turned down the drive to Sam’s place. It wasn’t a showy spread, not like Blue Rock was. A battered mailbox was the only indication that it had a name; LONEPINE was stenciled on the side and the flag was up. In the middle of the front pasture, the huge old lodgepole pine tree that had given the place its name stood draped in snow.
A slim girl on a tall Appaloosa rode in the opposite direction, leaving the ranch. Gavin recognized her as Ruby Lightning’s girl.
“Wonder if she was keeping Cody company,” Tammi Lee murmured. “If the youngster’s anywhere near as good-looking as his dad, he’ll have no trouble in the girl department. How about that daughter of yours?” she asked suddenly. “I hear she’s some big-shot ad executive in Seattle.”
“Uh-huh. But I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Nice she came back after all these years.”
He pulled up to the barn and parked. A Border collie scampered out, barking and leaping in the snow.
Turning to Tammi Lee, Gavin forced himself to level with her. “Michelle didn’t come back to be nice.”
“Oh… ?”
“I’ve been sick.” He hated saying it, nearly gagged on the words. “You probably heard that.”
“There was talk of it in the shop.”
“I’ve been on dialysis, but it isn’t doing it for me. I could go toxic anytime. I need a kidney transplant. Michelle’s going to be the donor.”
“My God—”
“I’ll never be able to thank her.”
“Just get yourself healthy, Gavin. That’ll be thanks enough. I know that for sure.”
Sam’s partner, Edward Bliss, came out hefting an extra large Havahart wildlife trap. Gavin opened Tammi Lee’s door for her.
“Hey, folks,” Bliss said, his greeting light, his stare heavy with curiosity.
“Hey yourself, Eddie.” Tammi Lee tucked her knitted hat down over her ears. “My car broke down. I’ll use the phone in the barn office.”