CHAPTER TEN
NOTHING HAD HAPPENED between him and Tara, Boone silently insisted as he and Scamp left her place later that evening, but something had changed, something profound, and it was a burr under his hide trying to figure out exactly what the shift meant.
Hell, he still wasn’t sure why he’d wanted to see Tara so badly in the first place, and never mind her tentative suggestion that, after a hard day, he’d probably just “needed to talk to somebody.” The fact was, there were plenty of people he could have spent time with—close friends, any of his deputies (except McQuillan), the bartender over at the Boot Scoot Tavern. The waitresses at the bowling alley snack bar, for God’s sake.
Instead, he’d chosen Tara Kendall, of all people. The pseudo chicken rancher. The big-city sophisticate who looked down on his battered double-wide, his sorry-looking yard and, most likely, she disapproved of the fact that he’d left the boys with Molly and Bob for so long.
To her, he was probably still just the redneck sheriff of a nowhere county, irresponsible to boot. Secretly, she probably marveled that he had all his teeth and no broken-down appliances rusting on his sagging porch.
Okay, yes, Tara had been genuinely concerned about Dawson McCullough, the McCullough family and the accident that, even in the best-case scenario, would turn Patsy and her children’s lives upside down. Anybody with half a heart, with a shred of compassion for their fellow human beings, would care about a tragedy like that, and care deeply.
What nettled Boone was that he hadn’t just wanted to be with Tara, hadn’t simply chosen to be with her. It was that he’d needed to, the way he needed his next breath, his next heartbeat. Bottom line: he hadn’t had a choice.
And Boone didn’t like not having choices. Before tonight, he would have sworn he didn’t have an impulsive bone in his body. Despite all that, he’d left the office with the dog, hours after his usual quitting time, and driven straight to the chicken farm, like he was on autopilot or something, a moth winging its bumbling way into the bright core of a flame.
Finally home, but still sitting in his cruiser, with the headlights washing over his weedy yard and Scamp watching him expectantly from the passenger seat, pointy ears perked and fuzzy head tilted to one side, Boone tightened his grip on the steering wheel, remembering Corrie and how much he’d come to love her after the first dazzling passion began to let up a little.
They’d been nothing but kids when they got together, he and Corrie, awash in hormones and the kind of reckless optimism only the very young can sustain for long, but all too soon the realities of grocery bills and rent and car payments, along with an unexpected pregnancy, had matured them considerably. For all the challenges, totally against the odds, they’d made their marriage work.
“If we don’t give up,” Corrie had said to him once, after a yelling match and a bout of Olympic-quality makeup sex, “we’ll be okay, Boone. All we have to do is keep trying to get this right, and, one day, we will.”
Boone’s heart clenched as he recalled those wise words and felt again the softness of Corrie’s cheek resting on his bare shoulder, the warmth of her skin, her blind confidence that they had a future together, a good long one.
They were both naive and idealistic. Neither of them had much of an adult support system, with Molly gone off to live the life she’d put on hold for his sake. His folks were dead by then and hers were far away, divorced from each other and disapproving their one common link: their daughter. Back then, Boone was making next-to-no money as a brand-new sheriff’s deputy, a job he’d immediately loved. He’d pulled overtime whenever he could get it, just to make ends meet, and taken extension courses through the community college over in Three Trees as well as online.
His goals had been clear: he’d wanted to be a good provider, a good husband and father. The rest, he’d figured, would take care of itself.
The plan, simple as it was, had made sense to him and to Corrie, too. They’d had the piece of land Boone had gotten after his and Molly’s parents had died, and a ramshackle trailer bought for less than a thousand dollars, the entirety of their combined savings. They’d had a baby coming and they’d had each other, and for the time being, anyway, all of that was enough.
In a few years, with discipline and more hard work, they’d reasoned, they’d be on track financially. They’d have more children and later on, Corrie would go back to school, get a degree of her own.
Trouble was, it turned out that “a few years” were all they were ever going to get.
By the time Boone earned his degree in criminal justice, he and Corrie had two fine, healthy sons, and they’d paid off their secondhand car, too. Nights and weekends they spent hours sketching out preliminary designs for the house they meant to build, doing much of the work themselves. The place would be modest, definitely not a mansion but big enough to accommodate a growing family. There would be a fenced yard, and Boone planned on building a play area for the boys. They’d even had a construction loan in place, one that could be converted to a mortgage later on, when the earth flipped on its axis.
One ordinary morning, while showering, Corrie found a hard, pea-sized lump in her left breast. She’d called Boone in from the kitchen, where he was overseeing Griffin’s cold-cereal breakfast and spoon-feeding Fletcher in his high chair, a hand-me-down from Molly’s kids, and there was a slight quaver in her voice.
Back then, as a deputy, he’d worn starched uniforms, and he carried Fletcher with him, tucked in the curve of one arm and held at a little distance, in hopes that the toddler wouldn’t drool or spit up on his shirt.
He’d found Corrie shivering in the tiny bathroom, a towel clutched around her otherwise naked body, her eyes huge.
Without a word, she’d guided his hand beneath the towel to the soft underside of her breast. He’d felt a distinct swelling beneath her silky, still-damp flesh.
They’d just looked at each other for a long moment, both of them struck silent by cold, elemental fear.
Just an hour later, the babies were in a neighbor woman’s keeping and Boone and Corrie were on their way to the local clinic. Blood tests, exams, a mammogram and lots of frightening questions followed. A biopsy was scheduled for the next morning.
Of course the news was bad, and the fear grew into something that made Boone’s breath catch in his lungs and the backs of his eyes scald like fire.
Ever the devoted sister, Molly came right away, leaving her own kids in Bob’s care, and Corrie had undergone the dreaded double mastectomy. Since radiation would be required, reconstructive surgery had to be put off until later.
Boone still choked up when he recalled the first words she’d said to him, his beautiful, funny, tenderhearted wife, when she woke up and saw him standing beside her hospital bed.
“You’ll still love me, won’t you, Boone? Now that I’m flat-chested and scarred?”
He’d nearly lost it then, replied hoarsely that he’d always love her, no matter what.
“But you’re a breast man,” she’d said with a small, sad flicker of a smile.
“I’m your man,” he’d managed to get out in a raspy whisper. “Nothing’s going to change that, Corrie. Nothing.”
At first, they’d been hopeful. After all, Corrie was young, and otherwise healthy, and cancer wasn’t an automatic death sentence the way it used to be; what with all the new drugs and streamlined treatments and experimental programs, people recovered from the disease all the time. Went right on to enjoy happy, productive lives.
Things didn’t happen that way for Corrie and Boone, though. An infection swept through her already-weakened system and, despite massive doses of antibiotics, she couldn’t fight back.
Slowly, bravely and sometimes painfully, when she’d refused her meds because they made her “dopey,” Corrie had wasted away, become a ghost weeks before she’d actually breathed her last in Boone’s arms.
Forcing himself back into the present moment, if only because he couldn’t stand the past, Boone squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, tried to shake off the images. Scamp let out a little whimper and scrabbled at the inside of the car door, tired of being confined.
Methodically, as though he’d been programmed like a machine, Boone shut off the headlights and the engine, leaned across to open the passenger-side door so Scamp could jump to the ground. He hoped he wouldn’t have to chase the critter back to Zeb Winchell’s again, because he was just plain tuckered out by then, physically and emotionally.
He pulled that door shut, opened his and got out of the cruiser.
To his relief, Scamp lifted a leg against the side of an old tire, took care of business and then trotted off toward the porch, just as the door swung open. A rectangle of yellow light splashed into the yard, and Opal Dennison’s tall, sturdy frame filled the gap.
“Their movie is almost over,” she said, evidently referring to the kids, stepping out onto the rickety porch to greet Boone. “It’s an ice-age cartoon—” Opal paused, chuckled appreciatively, having the gift of finding joy in little things, shook her head as though there were no end to the marvels of ordinary life. “One of the characters is a wooly mammoth with an Elvis haircut, believe it or not. And here are all those folks claiming the King is dead.”
Boone chuckled wearily, mounted the steps, walking into the double-wide behind Opal. He locked away his service revolver first thing, like always, then put his cell phone on the charger. While he washed up at the kitchen sink, leaving his badge on the windowsill beside a potted plant he didn’t recognize, Opal scooped two huge slices of pizza from a box on the counter onto a plate, long strands of cheese trailing, and zapped the works in the microwave.
Boone didn’t have the heart to tell this good woman he wasn’t hungry and probably wouldn’t get that way, at least in the immediate future. His brain was wrung out, his emotions were as snarled and spiky as a coil of rusted barbed wire and his stomach was as cold and heavy as if he’d swallowed a bowling ball.
All he really wanted to do was shower, fall into bed and sleep, grab a few hours of blessed oblivion before the sun rose and the whole show started up all over again, but the days when he could be that self-indulgent were over.
He moved to the living room doorway, looked in. Griffin and Fletcher were on the floor, too close to the TV, while Tara’s preteen stepdaughters lounged, respectively, on the couch and in Boone’s battered recliner. The golden retriever pup at their feet looked up, too.
Griffin, meanwhile, turned back over one T-shirted shoulder and grinned a welcome at Boone. “Hey, Dad,” he said offhandedly. “Be with you in a sec. This is the best part of the movie.”
Boone smiled. Be with you in a sec. At least one of his kids wanted to spend time with him. “No rush,” he said quietly, as Scamp darted across the floor and landed square in the middle of Fletcher’s narrow back, frantically licking the boy’s nape and one of his ears.
Fletcher burst out giggling, and rolled over to wrestle with the dog, careful to be gentle, since Scamp was small. The sight made Boone’s throat pull in tight and ache a little.
The girl in the recliner—Erin? Elle? he couldn’t begin to tell the sisters apart—looked at him with startled, worried eyes. Was he that scary, even without his service revolver and his badge?
“Shall I get out of your chair?” the girl asked, poised to bolt.
Boone shook his head, figured her dad must be one of those guys who tended to be territorial about their favorite lounger. “Stay put,” he said mildly. “I’m good.”
Then, bemused, he turned and went back to the kitchen. Thinking of the girls’ father led to thinking about Tara with a husband, and he didn’t want to go there.
Not now, anyway.
In the interim, Opal had set the plate of reheated pizza on the table, along with a paper napkin and some utensils, and though she hadn’t picked up her purse, reached for her well-worn summer cardigan or rattled her keys, she was clearly gearing up to leave.
“I promised Tara I’d drive Elle and Erin and Lucy home after the movie,” she said, studying Boone solemnly, seeing too much, as she generally did. Then she gestured toward the food. “That’s not the most nutritious supper in the world,” she added with some regret. “But you still need to eat.”
Boone sighed. Maybe he could fake it until she was out the door, pretend an interest in the pizza, but that seemed like a stretch, given that all four kids were still glued to the TV and Opal was nobody’s fool. “I know,” he said. “In a minute.”
Opal walked over, drew back a chair at the table, sat down across from him. “Hutch and Kendra’s baby came today,” she said. “A fine and dandy girl, healthy as any one of her daddy’s horses. Weighed nine full pounds.”
Boone’s flagging spirits climbed, then dipped a little; of course he was happy for his friends, but there was that usual small twinge of something uncomfortably similar to envy, too. He and Corrie had hoped to give the boys a baby sister or two, when the time was right, and now, like so many other things, that was never going to happen. “I knew Kendra had gone into labor,” he said finally, his throat dry as dust. “I was there when Hutch got the call. What with all that was going on, though, I never got around to following up.”
Opal nodded understandingly, apparently seeing no need to comment. “How is the McCullough boy?” she asked presently, taking off her glasses and polishing the lenses with a corner of her cotton apron. Opal Dennison always seemed to be wearing one, usually with big pockets and a few ruffles, always ready for a cooking or cleaning crisis.
“Dawson’s holding on,” Boone said. If he’d been asked that question once that day, he’d been asked it a dozen times, and he was tired to the center of his soul, but this was Opal, after all. Not some busybody, or big-city reporter.
“What’s poor Patsy going to do?” Opal fretted, shaking her head. “She cleans motel rooms, for pity’s sake, and I know she doesn’t have health insurance.”
Subtly, he hoped, Boone slid aside the pizza, rested his forearms on the tabletop. He recalled his conversation with Mayor Hale, and, later, the go-round with the good people who made up the Parable Preservation Committee. They’d been spitting mad over that stupid water tower, especially after Boone pointed out that they could have maintained the damn thing a little better if it meant so much to them, made it safer, if only to live up to their pompous-assed name.
Needless to say, they hadn’t appreciated the reminder. They were clamoring for arrests, and for his resignation, neither of which, he’d pointed out, were forthcoming. Unless, of course, hell froze over.
“I don’t know,” Boone said honestly, in reply to Opal’s question, thinking that money, though it would definitely be a problem, was probably the least of Patsy McCullough’s worries right about then. “I ran into Walker Parrish a few hours ago when I went over to the Butter Biscuit to pick up a sandwich, and he told me that Casey’s setting up some kind of trust for Dawson—plans to fund it with at least one benefit concert.” He paused, cleared his throat. “People will step up as best they can, Opal—this is Parable, remember?”
She relaxed a little. Even smiled. “Yes,” she agreed. “This is Parable. And it’s generous of Casey to help out, given that she’s pretty new in town.”
Boone nodded. Casey had loaned the McCulloughs her private jet, too. For somebody so famous, she struck him as surprisingly down-to-earth.
“Speaking of Walker,” Opal went on thoughtfully, “whatever happened with that case Treat McQuillan was threatening to bring against him for that tussle they had over at the Boot Scoot Tavern that night?”
Boone permitted himself a smile, though it probably looked more like a grimace to Opal. Over a year ago, Treat and Walker had gotten into it after Treat made a move on Walker’s kid sister, Brylee. Walker had decked the offender, pronto, and Deputy McQuillan had sworn he’d press charges.
“I guess they must have settled that privately,” he said. “Walker and Treat, I mean.”
Opal made a little harrumphlike sound. “I wouldn’t have given Treat McQuillan credit for that much good sense,” she said.
“Me, either,” Boone agreed. He supposed some money must have changed hands, but then, payoffs weren’t Walker Parrish’s style. He probably hadn’t regretted throwing the punch that landed Treat in the sawdust and peanut shells covering the barroom floor for so much as a moment.
Closing-scene music swelled from the TV; the movie was over.
The tube went blessedly silent, and four kids and two dogs wandered into the kitchen.
“Did Scamp try to run away again after you went and found him?” Griffin asked, standing close to Boone’s chair.
“Nope,” Boone replied. “But tomorrow’s another day. We’ll have to keep an eye on him for a while, I think.”
“Aunt Molly called tonight,” his elder son continued, the sudden remembering plain in his earnest little face. “She said you were on the TV news. And that you’re up to your backside in alligators.”
Fletcher’s eyes widened. “Alligators?” he repeated, after a hard swallow. “Like the one in Peter Pan?”
“That was a crocodile,” one of the twins put in, matter-of-factly. The young retriever stood patiently while she hooked a leash to the animal’s collar. The bigger dog showed a studied lack of interest in Scamp, who was trying to get some kind of canine game going.
Fletcher didn’t look away from Boone’s face. He wanted answers.
Boone’s mouth twitched, and he risked rubbing the top of the boy’s buzz-cut head with one hand, was gratified when the kid didn’t pull away. “It was just a figure of speech, buddy,” he assured the child. “Among its other charms, Montana is both an alligator- and crocodile-free zone.”
Fletcher let out a long breath. “Good,” he said, obviously relieved.
“We didn’t see you on TV,” Griffin added, looking disappointed. “Opal wouldn’t let us turn the set on until after we had supper.”
“Good for Opal,” Boone said with a glance at her.
She was on her feet by then, distracted and efficient, saying good-night to the boys, herding Elle and Erin and the golden retriever outside to her car before Boone could so much as say thanks, let alone reach for his wallet and pay her.
“You didn’t miss anything,” he told his sons, after the door closed behind the others, recalling what a hard-ass he’d been in front of the news cameras that day. He was glad the boys hadn’t been watching. “By not catching my TV debut, I mean.”
They both just stood there watching him, the dog sitting between them. The boys seemed to expect something more from him—hell, maybe Scamp did, too—but what?
“Did your aunt say anything about how your uncle Bob is doing?” Boone asked, partly to break the silence and partly because he really wanted to know.
Griffin nodded, serious as the national debt. “She said he’s super-duper grumpy, but he’ll be as good as new in a couple of months.”
“That’s good,” Boone said, making a mental note to call Molly the next day, or at least shoot a text or an email her way. “That he’s getting better, I mean. Not that he’s grumpy, even though that’s understandable, given that he’s just had knee surgery.” He pushed back his chair to stand. He went whole days without saying as much as he had this evening, he thought, mildly amused. He was getting downright chatty in his old age. “Anybody want this pizza?” he asked, picking up the plate Opal had prepared for him earlier.
Both boys shook their heads no. “We had some before,” Griffin explained. “And then Opal made popcorn.”
Boone nodded, crossed the room and dumped the pizza into the trash.
After that, it was bath time—Griffin and Fletcher climbed into the tub together, since that was what they were used to—and there was some splashing and some laughing and, finally, the beginnings of a row.
Boone interceded quietly, bringing towels, checking ears and necks, knuckles and knees, to make sure they’d gotten clean.
Once they’d dried off, gotten into their pajamas and brushed their teeth at the sink, shouldering each other the whole time, they hopped into bed. Boone followed, figuring they’d want to say their prayers.
Instead, they settled against their pillows and regarded him with two pairs of dark eyes.
“Tell us about Mommy,” Griffin finally said.
The request struck Boone’s heart like a pebble from a slingshot. He’d known this was coming, of course, but he hadn’t expected it tonight.
He sat down on the edge of their small berthlike bed, sighed. “What do you want to know?” he asked, wishing he had clue-one how much Molly had told her nephews over the years.
“Was she pretty?” Fletcher asked, very softly.
Boone’s breath caught, but he recovered quickly. “Not just pretty,” he said. “She was beautiful.”
“She got real sick and died,” Griffin added.
“Yes,” Boone rasped.
“But she loved us very much,” Griffin recited, obviously repeating what his Aunt Molly had said, “and she wouldn’t have left us for anything, if she could have helped it.”
“That’s right,” Boone ground out. “You guys meant everything to her.”
Griffin frowned. “How come there aren’t any pictures of her? We had one on our bedroom wall back in Missoula.”
The mention of Missoula tightened Fletcher’s small face.
Scamp scooched past Boone to join the boys on the bed, settling between them.
“Yeah,” Fletcher said. “How come there aren’t any pictures?”
“We’ll rustle some up tomorrow,” Boone promised.
“For real?” Griffin pressed, looking doubtful. “I don’t want to forget what Mommy looked like.”
“Okay,” Boone managed to say, going through the motions of tucking in little boys for the night.
Griffin frowned. “Sometimes, when I remember Mommy, I just see a lady, but she doesn’t have a face.”
Boone waited a beat, struggling with an onslaught of emotion. He had the same problem now and then, envisioning Corrie with her features blurred. When that happened, he panicked and got out the fat scrapbook she’d kept, studied her image until he could hold on to it in his mind.
“That’s normal, buddy,” he told the boy. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Will you take us to put flowers on her grave?”
This time, Boone couldn’t speak at all. He simply nodded and got to his feet.
His small sons closed their eyes then, and interlocked their fingers to say their bedtime prayers.
Molly had taught them well.
“Please help that boy who fell off the water tower to get better,” Griffin said.
“And don’t let Scamp run away anymore,” Fletcher added.
“Amen,” they said together.
Choked up, Boone left the room, shutting off the light as he went, whispering a gravelly “Good night,” in the process.
Alone in his kitchen—programming the coffeepot for morning, making sure the back door was locked and finally flipping the light switch to off—he stood at the window over the sink, looking out at the scrap of river and the shadow of the house beyond it.
For all his missing Corrie, still a keen ache that pierced his middle like a spear, for all his mourning the life they’d shared and all the dreams and hopes and possibilities that had died with his sweet wife, it was Tara Kendall who filled his thoughts now.
He felt it again, that need to be near her, even if they didn’t talk, or touch each other. He wanted to breathe in the scent of her, let her tentative smile and the soft light in her eyes soak into all his broken places like healing sunshine.
Moonlight stirred the little spit of river like a trailing index finger, and the stars blazed overhead like small, silver bonfires, full of desolate beauty.
It was happening, he thought grimly, the thing he’d sworn, to Corrie and to himself, that he’d never allow to happen.
He wanted a woman, a particular woman, and not just for sex, like the practically anonymous females he’d bedded now and then, when the loneliness got to be too much.
And that woman wasn’t Corrie.
* * *
TARA WAVED GOODBYE to Opal, who remained behind the wheel of her station wagon, as Elle and Erin and Lucy erupted from the rear doors and raced toward her. They looked so happy, in the light of that sky-filling moon, the dog bounding alongside.
Opal tooted her car horn, backed up to turn around and drove away.
“We watched two baby-movies,” Elle called out, as she came up the walk, “but they were pretty good, anyway.”
Tara, still dealing with the combined effects of the email exchange with James and the unexpected visit from Sheriff Boone Taylor, smiled. “You had fun, then,” she said. “I’m glad.”
Erin, forever the responsible one, paused to close the front gate before following her twin and Lucy up the walk. “There are no crocodiles in Montana,” Erin said. “Zero.”
Elle laughed as the three of them came up the steps to join Tara on the porch.
“Oh, let that go,” she told her sister, with a note of good-natured impatience in her voice. “You’ve made your point. We all get it, Professor Know-it-all.”
Erin rolled her eyes but offered no argument.
Tara didn’t ask what that conversation was all about. She had too much on her mind. James and—Bethany, wasn’t it?—were about to change the dynamics of Elle and Erin’s lives, throw everything into a tailspin.
True, James and his ladylove had every right to get married, and they certainly didn’t need permission from the twins, but the way they were going about the whole thing bothered Tara. Not only did James expect her to tell them—his children—about the upcoming wedding, he apparently felt no compunction to include them in the big event at all. Shouldn’t they be there, take part in the ceremony in some way?
“What’s wrong?” Erin asked suddenly, frowning at Tara.
Tara moved to lock the front door for the night, wishing she had another kind of face, the sort that didn’t show everything she was thinking and feeling.
“Tara?” Elle insisted, sounding worried.
Tara turned around to face them. She wasn’t going to get out of this one, she realized. She’d been fooling herself, thinking she could hold off until tomorrow and suggest they give their dad a call.
“Let’s go into the kitchen,” she said.
Elle led the way, but she kept looking back at Tara with a worried expression.
The twins took chairs at the table without being asked, and Tara sat down, too, facing them, folding her hands in front of her on the table.
“No one’s hurt or sick, it’s nothing like that,” she told them, holding their gazes even though she wanted to look away. “But I do have something to tell you.”
Damn James, she thought with a sigh. He’d gotten his way—again.
“What?” both girls asked at the same time, nearly whispering.
“Your dad and Bethany are getting married,” Tara said. “Soon.”
Elle’s mouth dropped open.
Erin reddened. “I knew it,” she said, but, though angry, she was obviously as stunned by the news as her sister had been.
Elle found her voice then. “He couldn’t tell us himself?” she asked as Lucy, eyes luminous with sympathy, came to stand between the girls’ chairs.
“He asked me to do it,” Tara replied gently.
“He’s such a coward,” Erin sputtered. Both she and Elle were stroking Lucy’s coat, but their eyes were still fixed on Tara.
Tara ignored the comment, though, of course, she privately agreed. Still, it wouldn’t be fair to criticize James in front of these hurt and bewildered children. They were, after all, his daughters.
Elle’s little shoulders sagged. “He knew how we’d react,” she said miserably.
“He’s still a coward,” Erin said.
“But it’s sort of our fault,” Elle told her twin, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Dad knows we don’t like Bethany.”
“None of this is your fault,” Tara was quick to put in.
Erin turned to Tara, spoke in a soft, heartbreakingly fragile voice. “Couldn’t we just stay with you?” she asked. “Please?”
Tara’s heart broke into pieces. She tried to smile. “You’ll be here until school starts,” she assured them. “That’s longer than expected and—”
“Bethany doesn’t want us,” Erin broke in, stiffening her spine. “She calls us brats. She and Dad will make us go to some boarding school—so why can’t we stay here?”
Tara moved forward, wanting to take both girls into her arms and not quite daring to, because the act might unleash a lot of rash promises, ones she wouldn’t be able to keep.
“I’d like nothing better,” she admitted. “But it isn’t my decision to make.”
After that, the girls scraped back their chairs, stood up and left the kitchen without so much as a glance in Tara’s direction or a muttered good-night.
Besides the arrival of Hutch and Kendra’s baby girl, this day only had one thing going for it: it was over.