Springwater Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  Maggie nodded, even though Wes couldn’t see her. “Maybe they’re finally realizing how lucky they are to have each other. It’s about time.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” Wes replied. “Listen, Sis, I’m going to let you go for now. I just wanted to let you know the baby’s finally here, and everything’s O.K.”

  “My love to the kids, and Franny, too, when you see her.”

  “That wasn’t my dad, was it?” Quinn asked, when she’d said good-bye to her brother and hung up.

  “No, sweetheart,” she answered. She was just reaching for the telephone directory to look up the number for Maple Creek Memorial, when they both heard the front door open, and Sadie began to bark.

  Quinn dashed into the main part of the Station, and Maggie knew by his whoop of delight and a strange, elemental quickening in her own senses that J.T. had arrived. “These guys write for supermarket scandal sheets!” the boy piped, for all to hear, obviously repeating something he’d heard Maggie say earlier.

  J.T. chuckled, and Maggie blushed. The reporters were only momentarily distracted from their poker game. No doubt they’d heard worse insults, in better places.

  J.T. set his son on his feet and approached Maggie. “Hey,” he said. He looked tired enough to fall over.

  “Hey,” she said in response. She wanted to touch him, but she didn’t dare; she was afraid she might cling. So much had happened in such a short time, and she was confused by all of it. She figured J.T. was too, and there was some consolation in that. “How’s Billy?”

  “A little better,” he said. “They’re going to operate in the morning, over in Missoula.”

  Maggie wished the reporters weren’t there, that it was just her and J.T. and Quinn. “How about some supper?”

  He sighed. “Much as I love your cooking, McCaffrey,” he drawled wearily, letting his gaze move over her in a way that engendered a sweet ache in some very private parts of her body, “what I need most right now is about fifteen hours of sleep. I just stopped by to give you an update on Billy and collect the rug rat.”

  She managed a nod, that was all, for she’d been struck mute by all that she was feeling, blindsided by it. Despite her best intentions, she realized with sudden and poignant clarity, she’d somehow fallen in love with J.T. all over again. The prospect of watching him walk out the door, even for a night, was bleak indeed, but her pride wouldn’t let her give voice to what she was feeling. After all, nothing had really changed between them, except that they’d been stupid enough to have sex together, thus taking their nonrelationship to a whole new level of unsuitability.

  He reached out to her, his eyes shining as though he’d been reading her thoughts, and curved his fingers under her chin. With the pad of his thumb, he caressed her mouth, setting her ablaze, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. “ ’Night, McCaffrey,” he said. “And thanks.”

  She nodded again, stupidly, not trusting herself to say a word— especially not “good-bye.”

  J.T. hesitated, and she thought for a moment that he might lean down and kiss her, but in the end, he didn’t. With some prompting from his father, Quinn thanked her, and then the two of them were gone.

  Quinn had an email message from Annie, complete with a digital photo of her and Brad standing side-by-side in front of a crumbling church in Caracas. He printed the page, with a little guidance from J.T., and tacked it to the wall over his bed. When the boy had eaten, bathed, brushed his teeth, and crawled under the covers, J.T. drew up a chair. Blackie and Winston took their places at the foot of the mattress.

  “You’re pretty smart, you know that?” J.T. asked, grinning at his son.

  Quinn shrugged nonchalantly, though there was a gleam of pride in his eyes at his father’s praise. “I’m kinda dumb about some things,” he said.

  J.T. made a disbelieving face. “Like what? You’re six years old and you can read and use a computer. Nothing dumb about that, ‘kinda’ or otherwise.”

  Quinn cupped his hands behind his head and his brow crumpled with concentration, a sure sign that he’d moved on, into deeper mental territory. “If I have a bad dream tonight while I’m sleeping, can I get in bed with you?”

  “Sure.” J.T. arranged the covers under his son’s chin. “You been having a lot of those?” he asked casually. “Nightmares, I mean?”

  “I get them sometimes,” Quinn confided. “Once, I dreamed there was a monster after me. It had a rubber face and two noses. Another time, some space guys took me to Mars and I couldn’t get back home no matter what I did.”

  “Ah,” J.T. said, rubbing his chin in a Freudly fashion and nodding. He leaned down, kissed the boy’s freckled forehead, then cast a dramatic glance in one direction, then the other. “No monsters around here. No space guys from Mars, either.”

  Quinn sighed and settled deeper into the pillow. “I’m tired,” he said.

  “Me, too.” It was the understatement of a lifetime, but J.T. was already wondering if he would so much as close his eyes that night, exhausted as he was. Maggie was on his mind, indeed, her image was imprinted on his very cells, as much a part of him as his DNA. He might wind up staring at the ceiling for hours.

  “Would you leave a light on in the hall?” Quinn asked.

  J.T. stood, set the chair back in its place at the small desk under the window. “You bet,” he said, and left the room.

  The house was empty, except for himself and Quinn, as Cindy had gone to Missoula with Billy when he was flown there for surgery. J.T. locked the doors, front and back, and loaded the supper dishes into the dishwasher, finding a certain comfort in the routine. Then he got the coffeemaker ready for morning and wandered into his study to make sure he’d shut down the computer after Quinn went off-line. It was then that his gaze fell on the antique mining documents Maggie had given him at the ball field, and a spark ignited in his mind. He remembered the photograph of his parents and their friends at that long ago picnic, and the curious equipment in the background.

  Upstairs, he looked in on Quinn, who was already enjoying the profound slumber of the innocent, then took a shower and crawled into bed. His mind was still on Maggie, so he reached for the mining papers and began to read, hoping to bore himself to sleep. Surely there was no connection between these papers and that old picture, he reflected. After all, a full century lay between one event and the other.

  Instead of dozing off, however, he soon found himself sitting straight up, his back against the headboard, his mind clicking along like wheels on a subway track. Sleep was out of the question, and not just because of Maggie. There was copper on the Wainwright land, and Scully had agreed to allow Trey Hargreaves’s company to do some exploratory mining, with the stipulation that no lasting damage would be done to the land. As far as J.T. knew, no one had ever dug a mine shaft anywhere on the ranch, and he was familiar with virtually every inch of the place. Apparently Scully and Evangeline had changed their mind about the agreement at some point; Hargreaves, being their friend, would undoubtedly have respected their wishes.

  He stretched out on his back, trying to relax, and cupped his hands behind his head much the way Quinn had done earlier, when he’d tucked the boy in for the night. He smiled, wishing McCaffrey were there to tuck him in, but even with memories of a warm and willing Maggie coming alive in his body, his mind wouldn’t let go of the copper. Of the structure in the picture.

  It wasn’t the possibility of a fortune that intrigued him, however; Billy, Travis, and Randy had been shot on his property, up in the hills, along the old cattle trail. Something stirred in his subconscious, a subliminal splash. There was a connection.

  Wasn’t there?

  He switched out the light, closed his eyes, and stared at the back of his eyelids.

  Copper. And copper meant money. Lots of money.

  Enough to motivate someone to kill? J.T. asked himself. Suppose whoever had murdered Jack Wainwright all those years ago had known about the untapped ore just lying there unde
r the ground waiting to be mined? Who would have profited?

  Janeen? No. She’d adored her elder brother; except for J.T. himself, Jack was the only family she had. She would never have done anything to hurt either one of them. Clive, on the other hand, might have thought the place, and the attendant mineral rights, would come down to her, and indirectly to him, if Jack were removed from the equation …

  Wild speculation on your part, Wainwright, he thought. Then he threw back the covers, got out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans, and headed downstairs. He flipped the switch on the coffeepot and headed for the file cabinets in his study.

  When dawn came, a few hours later, he’d found nothing pertaining to any mining done on his family’s land, but that didn’t mean he was ready to put the matter to rest. When Quinn was up and around, and the two of them had wolfed down some breakfast, J.T. loaded the pickup and went out to feed the stock. Quinn and the dogs went along, hindering as much as they helped. When the initial work was done, they got back into the truck and J.T. shifted into four-wheel drive and headed up the old cattle trail.

  “Where are we going?” Quinn asked.

  “I want to check something out,” J.T. answered. After a lot of puzzling, he’d pinpointed the area in the photograph of his parents as kids somewhere near the head of the overgrown track that crossed the northern section of his property. He was nervous about bringing Quinn along, and he’d almost taken him to town to hang out with Maggie for a while, but in the end he’d decided against the idea because he didn’t want to communicate his own paranoia to his son. If he started babying Quinn all the time, the kid would respond accordingly—by being helpless and afraid. Not a good idea.

  The truck jostled and strained, but it pulled the incline without a problem, and soon they’d reached the place J.T. had in mind, a high meadow framed on three sides by snow-white birches and cottonwoods with leaves that seemed to shimmer in the breeze.

  Quinn gazed out over the valley below. The house was visible, as were the remains of the barn and the wreckage that had once been Cindy and Billy’s trailer. “Look,” he said, pointing. “I can see all the way to town.”

  Sure enough, Springwater was in plain sight, a collection of tiny houses tucked in among folds of greenery. The view made J.T. exquisitely aware of his own roots, reaching deep into the Montana soil, holding on. No matter where he’d traveled, no matter what he’d gone through, as a boy and as a man, he’d always belonged right here, in this place, and he always would. The land, the town, and the people were all as much a part of him as the veins channeling blood through his body, and he wanted his son to feel the same powerful connection, to understand and appreciate his heritage.

  “Can I have a pony?” Quinn asked. “Landry has one.”

  J.T. smiled. “That’s one I’ll have to discuss with your mother,” he said. “In the meantime, you can ride with me. Just till you get used to being on horseback.”

  “You mean sit up on the saddle with you, like a little kid?”

  “Yeah,” J.T. said. “That’s what I mean.”

  Quinn heaved a sigh. “I guess that’s okay.”

  “Good,” J.T. answered, beginning to look around for signs of the structure he’d seen in that old photograph, “because the topic isn’t open for debate.”

  “What’s that?” Quinn asked, pointing at something J.T. hadn’t noticed before. It resembled a pyramid, standing about waist-high, constructed of field stones.

  “Let’s have a look,” J.T. said, starting off in that direction.

  Quinn scampered to keep up.

  The rock pile had been undisturbed for a long time, but it was plainly a marker of some kind. Searching the deep grass that surrounded it, they found bits of rotten wood and a few rusty nails. A prickle at the back of J.T.’s neck, familiar from his days as a cop, told him they’d found something. The question was, what?

  He pulled the photo from his shirt pocket and studied it, scanned the horizons, and knew the place to be the one where his mother and father and their friends had held that long ago picnic.

  “I don’t like it here,” Quinn said, startling J.T. “I feel like somebody’s watching us.”

  J.T. secretly agreed with that assessment, but he was damned if he’d let himself be spooked on his own land. Still, on instinct, he drew his son against his side. “Let’s go,” he said, fully intending to come back alone and have a better look around. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. Something important.

  Saturday morning brought virtually the entire community to J.T.’s ranch, along with truckloads of lumber and almost that much food. While the younger men immediately set to work on the new barn, the older ones laid boards in the grass to make a dance floor, and then set up folding chairs around the perimeter. Portable picnic tables sprouted like mushrooms beneath the trees, their bright cotton cloths flapping in the summer wind.

  Maggie, arriving with Sadie and a basket full of fried chicken, surveyed the scene with pleasure. One side of the barn had gone up already, and she knew that by nightfall J.T.’s horses would once again be sheltered in stalls of their own. Ed Allen, the neighbor who’d been keeping the animals since the fire, drove up just after she did, pulling a horse trailer behind his truck.

  J.T., working shirtless in the summer sun, was a sight to see. Maggie stood by the Pathfinder for a long moment, Sadie fussing at her side, just admiring him. Although his side was scarred where he’d been shot, he moved without self-consciousness, confident and strong.

  “He’s definitely hot,” Daphne observed, from right beside Maggie, causing her to jump. She hadn’t known anyone was close by, but there was her dearest friend, grinning broadly and holding Tiffany in one arm.

  “Who?” Maggie asked, blushing.

  “You know who,” Daphne replied. “Your eyes were practically bouncing on springs, you were staring so hard at J.T.”

  Maggie gave a sheepish smile, glanced around. “Where’s Ben?”

  It seemed that Daphne’s spirits dipped a little when Maggie asked that question, but the impression was so fleeting that she decided she’d only been imagining things. “He had to work,” Daphne said.

  “He’ll be here for supper and the dance, though, right?” Maggie asked, and then wished she’d just left the subject alone.

  Daphne looked away, looked back, and shrugged.

  Maggie took a step closer. “Daph, is something—?”

  Before she could complete the sentence, a horn blared, and she looked up to see her father and mother drive up in the RV. Reece got out on the driver’s side, went around and opened the door for Kathleen, who spilled into his arms, laughing like a young girl. She wore an apple green scarf in her hair, and she was soon followed by her dog, Ethel, who was barking with wild happiness.

  Daphne watched, shading her eyes and smiling. “Well, now,” she said. “It looks like there’s a reconciliation afoot.”

  Maggie laughed, more from joy than humor. “Yes,” she agreed. Her father placed some steps on the ground and reached up to help another passenger alight.

  “Who in the world is that?” Daphne asked, when an old woman alighted.

  “No idea,” Maggie said, starting toward the RV.

  “This is Abigail,” Kathleen told her. “Your father’s girlfriend.”

  Abigail cackled with delight and waved one hand. She was tiny, fragile as a bird, with white hair and age-spotted skin. “I’ve tried to steal him from you time and again, Kathleen,” she said, “but he won’t let himself be stolen.”

  “This is—?” Maggie began.

  “Abigail,” Kathleen said. “The woman your father has been emailing.”

  Maggie glanced at her father, then took a step toward Abigail, one hand extended. “I’m glad to meet you,” she said, and she certainly meant it.

  After that, the day seemed to rush by. Children and dogs chased all over the property, making equal amounts of noise, while the men worked on the barn and the women cooked and served foo
d.

  At sunset the band arrived and set up in the back of an old hay wagon, running cords into the house to power their keyboard and electric guitars. Ben appeared at last, driving a company car, and he and Daphne had words, although Maggie didn’t hear what they were. Nor did she ask.

  When the last board had been nailed into place, everyone took a tour of the new barn. Although the building was only roughed in and would require considerable finishing, it was usable, and J.T.’s horses were led in with fanfare and installed in their proper places.

  Maggie was standing with her back to a cottonwood tree, admiring the new structure as the moon rose over its sturdy roof, when J.T. walked over to her. He’d had a shower and put on clean jeans and a crisply pressed white shirt. He smelled of rainwater and sweet grass.

  “Every dance is mine,” he said.

  She was thrilled, though she made an effort to be coy. “Oh, re-ally? Every dance with whom?”

  He laughed, caught her chin in his hand, and bent to place a cool, teasing kiss on her mouth. “With you, McCaffrey.”

  She trembled in spite of herself. “You’re awfully confident,” she said.

  He smiled, but offered no comment. He’d spotted Purvis and Nelly at a nearby table, filling their plates and chatting with other picnickers. Maggie followed his gaze.

  “They make a nice couple, don’t they?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Like us.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  He ran a fingertip from her chin, along the length of her neck, to the base of her throat. Her breasts, though untouched, responded as if they’d been caressed, and another shiver went through her, a visible one that betrayed her to him. “Going to the Founder’s Day parade day after tomorrow?” he asked.

  She was relieved at the change of subject, even though her body was still reacting to his nearness, his touch, even the timbre of his voice. “I wouldn’t miss it,” she said. “My dad is grand marshal. He’s dressing up as Jacob McCaffrey and driving Al Fenwick’s covered wagon down Main Street.”