by Janet Dailey
“I don’t understand,” she protested. “There’s got to be something you can do about it.”
“We’ve tried, Kit. We’ve both tried.”
She hated the defeat in his voice, and pulled back to glare at him. “Don’t you love her anymore?”
His eyes filled up with tears. “Yes,” he murmured thickly. “Yes, I love her. I love her so much it hurts.” His hand trembled as it touched the tears on her cheeks. Then gently he brushed the hair back from her face.
“Then there’s got to be something you can do,” she insisted. “Some way to make her stay. Maybe if you’d promise to quit drinking, if you’d stop seeing Bonnie Blaisdell-”
He blanched. “You know about her?”
She looked down at the front of his shirt, feeling sick, ashamed, embarrassed. “When Bannon brought me home from the game last week, I saw your truck parked behind her house. I knew it wasn’t the first time,” she admitted, her voice tight. “Kids talk, Dad.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry, Kit.” He turned his head away, his arms loosening.
“Why, Dad? Why do you see her if you love Mom so much?”
For a moment, he just shook his head as if there was no answer. Then he lifted it to look at her. “How old are you now-sixteen?” She nodded, although he didn’t seem to notice. “I guess maybe you’re old enough to understand.” He turned his gaze to the mountains and stared off into the distance. “Your mother is a beautiful woman, Kit. The most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. When I was your age, our class went on a school trip. We went to a museum in Denver. There was a vase there. An incredibly beautiful vase, centuries old. The blues and greens and gold in it were so vivid, so rich,” he murmured, as if seeing it again in his mind’s eye. “They had it displayed in a case, enclosed in glass. You couldn’t touch it. All you could do was look at it.” He paused and glanced sideways at Kit. “That’s never been enough for me. When I see something beautiful, I want to touch it, hold it in my hands-in my arms. Your mother…she never could stand that. She tried but…”
Awkwardly Kit wrapped her fingers around his hand, letting him know he didn’t have to say any more; she understood now why he saw Bonnie Blaisdell. “Either way, Mom’s hurt.”
He didn’t reply. He just squeezed her hand tightly and held on.
“Kit.” Paula had repeated her name a second time before Kit heard her.
“Sorry.” She blinked once to rid herself of those vivid recollections of the past, then met Paula’s faintly amused gaze. “I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”
“Nothing important really. I merely remarked that I thought it was unusual that you stayed with your father. Most daughters go with their mothers when their parents divorce.”
“They left the choice to me. At the time, I thought my father needed me more. Maybe he did. I’m not sure anymore.” She lifted her shoulders, indicating her uncertainty. “Anyway, Dad and I were so much alike I’d always been closer to him. And I think I blamed my mother for not being the kind of woman he needed-and for hurting him so much. I never considered that maybe she couldn’t help it.”
It was something she’d wondered about lately, since her father died. At sixteen, there’d been so much she didn’t know. Maturity and experience now told her that counseling might have helped her mother overcome her aversion to sex, although Kit suspected Elaine Masters was too proud and too private a person to have sought help. Now it would never be known whether the cause was psychological or an early symptom of multiple sclerosis.
However, Kit did know that, like her father, she’d never be satisfied to love at a distance either. She needed to touch, to kiss, to hold, to give her love the same as he had.
And like him, she’d learned that love could bring both joy and pain. Also like him, she had known more pain than joy. immense joy-and it could bring immense pain. It could make you hurt so much that you started to believe it was possible for a heart to literally break.
The past. She was thinking too much about the past.
Paula’s cup clinked in its saucer, providing a much-needed distraction. “What I wouldn’t give for a maid to unpack those suitcases,” she said on a sigh.
“Dream on.” In one long swallow, Kit drained the tea from her cup, then set it and the saucer aside. “Unfortunately neither dreaming nor sitting here will accomplish that-or all the other things I have to do.”
As she pushed out of the chair, her glance fell on the old rolltop desk in the corner next to her father’s gun case. With the entire afternoon ahead of her, Kit decided that after she called Maggie to check on her mother, she’d make it her first project to go through all the papers and records in the desk. Hopefully she’d run across something that would give her a realistic idea of the ranch’s worth. For the life of her, she didn’t understand how John’s figure and Bannon’s could be so far apart.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The sun sank lower behind the mountains, tinting the high thin clouds into gossamer veils of amethyst, fuschia, and vermilion. The chill of a high mountain night was already in the air when Kit carried her coffee onto the front porch. Paula strolled over to the swing and draped herself over the length of its seat in a graceful sprawl, making a sleek and elegant picture in her quilted lounging pajamas of dark cocoa velvet, the deep color contrasting perfectly with the vibrant red of her hair.
Delicately she smothered a yawn and took a sip of her coffee, then snuggled deeper in the swing. “I have a feeling I’ll have absolutely no trouble at all sleeping tonight.”
“You’re becoming acclimatized to the high altitude,” Kit observed, then gave in to a surging restlessness and moved to the porch rail. Perching on it, she hooked a denim-clad leg over the rail for balance and gazed across the valley’s empty pastures.
“Maybe I am. My headache’s almost gone.” Sighing, Paula curled both hands around her cup and tilted her head back to rest it against the swing’s chains. “It feels like it’s been an incredibly long day.”
“It was definitely a long afternoon.” With a kick of her leg, Kit swung off the rail and crossed to stand at the top of the steps. “After sitting at the desk, sorting through Dad’s papers all afternoon, I know I could never stand to work in an office every day.”
She felt some satisfaction in knowing she’d accomplished the task, even though she hadn’t found anything that could give her a clearer idea of the ranch’s value. But that didn’t compensate for the feeling she’d been caged all day, left with a lot of excess energy and no outlet for it.
A breeze curled down from the mountains and rustled through the aspen grove, the leaves shimmering with this new movement of air. Paula shivered a little. “It’s getting cold out.”
Kit lifted her face to the invigorating bite of the breeze. “It feels good,” she said, recalling that she’d never minded the cold.
“Your blood is obviously thicker than mine.”
“Probably.” She wandered over to one of the chairs and gave the back of it a push, sending it swaying to and fro on its rockers. It didn’t help, and she turned, facing the barn. The chestnut gelding stood in the corral, contentedly munching on the hay that had been thrown out to him. In that instant, the thought formed in her head.
“As beautiful as the sunset is,” Paula said, rising from the swing, “I’m going to drink the rest of my coffee inside where it’s warm. Are you coming?”
“No,” she said, the decision made. “I’m going for a ride. Want to come? Sundance will carry double.”
Paula stopped halfway to the front door and stared at her with widened eyes. “You’re going to ride a horse? It’s almost dark.”
“I love riding at night. It’s my favorite time.”
“Not mine. In fact, I’m not that fond of horseback riding at any time. I’ll just stay here and read or watch television,” she said, then hesitated, concern rising in her expression. “You will be all right?”
“Of course.” Kit grinned. “Leave the porch light on for me. I might be la
te.”
“You’re crazy.”
Aware that when the sun went down so did the temperature, Kit grabbed a jacket and gloves from the house and headed for the barn.
The light had faded to a ruby char in the west when she rode the gelding out of the corral, leaving the gate open. The mountains cut a black, cardboard outline against the purpling sky. The gelding was fresh and eager to travel. At a canter, they crossed the ranch yard and Kit pointed the chestnut at the aspen grove and the narrow trail leading into the mountains.
The ermine-barked trunks of the aspen trees stood out like slender white poles amid the deepening shadows. Kit found the old game trail and swung the chestnut onto it, dry leaves crackling beneath its hooves. Recognizing the path, the gelding pulled eagerly at the bit. Kit knew the trail as well as her mount and let the horse travel along it at an unchecked pace.
Beyond the stand of aspens, the trail began to climb, winding up the ridge. Darkness swallowed them as they passed into the shadowed aisle walled by towering pines. Here, a carpet of pine needles, made by a hundred years of falling, muffled almost completely the sound of the chestnut’s strides.
For a time Kit could hear only the gelding’s snorting breaths, the jangle of bit and creak of saddle leather. Gradually her senses became attuned to the night and she caught the sigh of the wind in the trees, the fragmented murmuring of a distant stream, the whir of a bird’s wings, and the rustling of night creatures in the brush.
Leaving the pines, the trail became rougher, steeper. She gave the surefooted gelding its head, letting it pick its own way and its own pace. Never once did she feel any apprehension, not of the trail or the cloaking darkness.
At the crest of the ridge, she pulled the chestnut in and let it have a good blow while she took in the view. A crescent moon cast a pale light at the earth, letting the deep indigo sky sparkle with its dusting of stars-stars that looked close enough to reach out and touch. She could make out the jagged peaks of the surrounding mountains, the valley below and the quicksilver gleam of a stream running through it.
She smiled. This view from the heights was her kind of country, and she loved it. The isolation, the long distances, and the mystery of the star-swept sky overhead, she’d been born into it and she could conceive no other land as satisfying. She felt the wildness of the mountains flow around her, seeping into her bones and her mind, easing her tension. In the night, there was a timeless swing, a vast rhythm that caught her and carried her away from the little things. In the night there was an undertone of life that was without pause, without end.
She breathed in the chill air, her sharpened senses savoring the wind’s keen edge, the great silence of the mountains, and the deep, deep glitter of the stars. The chestnut gelding nickered softly and swung its head toward the trail, pricking its ears in the direction of the winks of light two miles distant, the ranch lights of Stone Creek. Smiling, Kit touched a heel to the horse and the gelding moved out eagerly toward them.
The cattle checked, the evening chores done, and supper eaten, Bannon sat on the front porch of the log ranch house. A mental and physical weariness loosened his long frame and the ease of the darkening night moved over him. With an indolent rhythm, he swayed the rocker across the planked floor and breathed the fragrance of his cigar.
The ranch hands had long since gone to their homes. Old Tom stirred in the house, grumbling at the television’s snowy reception. On the porch, night crowded around Bannon until he felt thoroughly alone. The call of a whippoorwill ran through the silence and a small steady breeze, cool with the coming winter, brushed over his face.
There were two great hours in life, Bannon decided-the hour of morning’s first gray light, when everything was fresh and sharp and keen, and this hour with its softness and mystery and time for reflection.
He located the Big Dipper and the North Star, a bright, unblinking point of light that reminded him of the constancy of all things, the changelessness and fidelity of the outer world. Man was the only impermanent thing.
Those were his thoughts, all pathways leading back to his early manhood and to Diana, the woman who had been his wife. He remembered how bright and clear that time had been, how much fun they’d had. Then the fun had gone, leaving him alone-almost beyond the power of laughter.
He kept remembering her eyes, how black they’d been with anger and reproach when she’d looked at him at the last-black with the thought that their unhappiness had been his fault. She had died hating him for taking her from the life she’d known, hating him for a marriage she had so soon found wrong.
That was always the clearest thing-the memory of her eyes. That memory had left him with one permanent, impossible wish-to live those days over again and give back to her that insatiable love of life she’d had when they first met. Not her love for him. That, they had both learned, had never existed.
He rolled the cigar between his fingers and took another puff, reliving those old moments. As he blew out a stream of blue smoke, he heard the distant drum of hoofbeats coming out of the foothills to the west. He lifted his head, the sound like an echo of an even older memory.
He waited as the drum of cantering hooves came closer. A horse and rider emerged from the black shadows of the ranch buildings. Bannon recognized the chestnut’s blaze face and four white stockings and knew it was Kit in the saddle. She rode the horse in a way that was good to see, her shoulders swinging, her body full of grace.
At the porch, she reined in and dropped to the ground in one careless jump. Bannon rose from the rocker as she came up the stone steps.
“Hello, Bannon.” She stood in front of him, stripping off her riding gloves, smiling and watching his answering smile break the healthy darkness of his face.
“Kit.”
The ride had deepened her breathing and whipped her cheeks pink. He caught the fragrance of her hair, a familiar fragrance that took him back, reviving old things better not revived. But she’d brought it all with her and faced him now, her vitality and strong spirit touching him and lifting his impulses.
“Have you come to sit on my porch again?” he asked lightly.
She tensed for an instant, then smiled and said firmly, “I think we should stay away from that, Bannon.”
He knew she was right. “I see Sundance still remembered the trail.” He brought over another rocker.
“We both did.” She sank gratefully into it and lay her head back. “It was a wonderful surprise to find him in the corral. I thought you’d sold him.”
Her arm trailed over the rocker’s arm, the leather fringe on her suede jacket sleeve falling loose, her face and hair a soft-shining blur in the dark. But he didn’t need to see her. He remembered how gently her lips lay together, how half serious and half amused her eyes would be.
“Nobody wanted to pay more than a killer’s price for him. They thought he was too old. So I kept him. His cigar was out. He struck another match to it. “Laura rides him sometimes.”
“Where is Laura?” She lifted her head and glanced back at the lighted windows behind them, an odd dread surfacing.
“She’s spending the night in town with Sondra. The two of them were going shopping to buy Laura some winter school clothes. She’s grown out of last year’s.”
Kit looked down at the motionless shape of her hands, keeping her expression composed. “It’s good you’re letting her spend time with a woman. A girl needs that.”
“So I am beginning to notice.”
She let an interval of silence run, then stole a glance at his face. It was in shadows, the lights from the windows showing only the uneven traverse angles of his face, the smoldering tip of his cigar a dull red glow in the night.
“You were doing some sober thinking when I rode up, weren’t you?” she observed.
He stirred. “How would you know?”
“I know.” She looked at the cigar between his fingers. Bannon only smoked one when he was caught up in heavy thought. “So well,” she added in a small, fugitive
murmur. “Too Well.”
If he heard her, he didn’t comment, nor did he press for an explanation of her certainty. Instead he asked, “Did you get settled in at the house?”
“More or less.” She had intended to lead the conversation around to the ranch. Now Bannon had provided the opening. “John Travis was impressed with Silverwood when he saw it. In fact, he said I could probably get ten million for it if I sold it.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
His ready agreement startled her. “But you told me it was worth a half million this morning.”
“In the eyes of the Internal Revenue,” he said in qualification.
“But if it’s worth ten million, why would they let me value it for less?” She frowned in confusion.
“Under the special-use provision of the estate tax code, as long as you continue to manage and operate Silverwood as a ranch, you’re allowed to use comparable operations as a basis for valuation rather than the land’s appreciated value due to commercial developments in the surrounding area. It’s a way of allowing family farms and ranches to pass on to the next generation. Otherwise, if you had to pay estate tax on ten million dollars, you would be forced to sell the ranch to come up with the money.” He paused. “We discussed this on the phone several months ago.”
“We did?”
“We did, about a week or two after the funeral.”
Which probably explained why she didn’t remember it, Kit thought. She’d been going on little more than sheer nerves at the time, spending ten and twelve hours a day on the Winds of Destiny set, then racing to the hospital to be with her mother while emotionally tying to cope with her father’s death and the sudden and swift advancement of the multiple sclerosis in her mother, brought on-the doctors had suspected the emotional shock over the news of her ex-husband’s death.
In that month following her father’s death, she remembered speaking with Bannon two or three times about various matters concerning the will, the ranch, and the disposition of the estate. But during that same period, she’d also had endless consultations with her mother’s doctors, meetings with Hatcher Brooks, an L.A. attorney who had helped her obtain a legal appointment to handle her mother’s affairs, and visits to hospitals in the area with facilities for long-term, chronic care of patients with incapacitating diseases or injuries, seeking one she’d feel secure placing her mother in.