CHAPTER NINE
THINGS ARE NEVER SO BAD, Boone thought ruefully, as he drove away from Mayor Hale’s stately home a little over an hour after the disaster at the water tower, that they can’t get worse.
Hale, a portly man in his mid-sixties, with a head of white hair that reminded Boone of Mark Twain, had been waiting on his veranda—with all that fretwork and gingerbread, the thing was too elaborate to be called a mere porch—looking as though he might bite his unlit cigar in half. Obviously, word of the incident had already reached him.
“This is what we get for depending on your department to keep Parable safe for decent people!” he’d raged, before Boone had even managed to open the front gate, let alone step through it. “Setting up a municipal police force would strain the town’s budget, but it sure as hell would have been cheaper than the multimillion-dollar lawsuit we’re probably facing now!”
The town’s lack of its own law enforcement agency, however modest, had been a sore spot with Hannibal Hale since his election, way back in the early eighties. He’d never liked being dependent on the sheriff’s department, and thus the county, but the council members had repeatedly voted to table the matter.
Too bad the mayor hadn’t been as concerned about that damnable water tower, and the threat it presented to generations of kids.
“Has there been any word about the boy’s condition?” Boone had asked evenly, fighting back the impulse to jump straight down the mayor’s throat and set him straight on a few things. He knew the old man would have made calls by then, and not just to the town’s attorneys, a citified bunch with offices over in Three Trees, but to the administrators of the most likely hospitals in Missoula and Helena, as well.
Some of the bluster had gone out of Hale at the reference to Dawson McCullough, and Boone had seen his hand tremble as he removed the cigar from between his piano-key dentures and lowered it to his side. “Spinal injuries,” he’d replied gruffly, the first signs of chagrin gathering in his wide, bulb-nosed face. He’d extracted his pocket watch and snapped open the case to check the time. “He’ll be heading into surgery right about now.”
“Prognosis?” Boone had asked, bracing himself for the answer.
Hale, clad in his customary summer garb, a white suit that made him look like a character in some fifties movie set in the Deep South, had shrugged his beefy shoulders, but they’d slumped noticeably when he lowered them again. He’d shaken his head, sighed. “If that young man comes through,” he’d replied, raspy-voiced, “he’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. No question about that, I’m afraid.”
It struck Boone then that a person could be shocked by something without being surprised. He’d known this was coming, and yet he felt sucker punched.
After a moment or two of private recovery, Boone had asked for the name of the hospital Dawson had been taken to, so he could check on the kid personally. After making a mental note, he’d bitten the proverbial bullet and said, “About the water tower—”
Hale had interrupted brusquely. “Heard about that, too,” he’d growled. “Damn it, Boone, why didn’t you step in? Accident or no accident, that water tower was the oldest structure in the county. It was a historical landmark, for God’s sake. The Parable Preservation Committee is going to peel off a strip of my hide when they find out it’s been torn down—and yours, too, unless I miss my guess.”
“The thing was a menace,” Boone had replied flatly. “I wasn’t sorry to see it fall, and I think most people around here would agree.”
Most. But definitely not all.
“You’ll change your tune when the complaints start rolling in,” Hale had retorted, gesturing with the cigar to drive home his point. “I’ll expect you to charge Hutch Carmody and the others with destruction of public property before this day is over, Sheriff. And you might want to think about turning in your resignation, too.”
Boone’s spine had stiffened. “Don’t hold your breath, sir,” he’d answered, stepping back through the mayor’s front gate onto the uneven sidewalk. “On either score.” With that, he’d turned to leave.
He’d felt the mayor’s furious gaze boring into his back as he returned to the cruiser.
Recalling the exchange as he pulled into the courthouse parking lot a few minutes later, Boone spotted the waiting media vans—how had the reporters gotten to Parable so fast?
With an inward sigh, he parked the cruiser in the usual slot, near the door to his office and the county jail adjoining it, and took his cell phone from its holder, affixed to his belt. He wouldn’t be getting off work in time to pick up the boys at the community center that afternoon, that much was a certainty. There would be reports to write, interviews to give, calls to make, concerned citizens to deal with.
He speed-dialed a familiar number.
After two rings, Joslyn Barlow answered the phone at Windfall Ranch, where she and Slade lived, and Boone reluctantly asked to speak to Opal. When she came on the line, he asked her to get Fletcher and Griffin from school when three o’clock came around and keep them with her until he could pick them up.
Bless her, Opal agreed right away, as he’d known she would. “And Boone?” she ventured, when he was about to say thank you and goodbye.
“What?” he asked wearily.
“It isn’t your fault, what happened today,” Opal said. “You couldn’t have kept that child from falling. Fact is, it’s a miracle nobody’s gotten hurt long before this.”
Boone let her words sink in. “Thanks for that,” he told her. “But I don’t think Mayor Hale and the Parable Preservation Committee see things quite the same way as you do.”
“Hannibal Hale,” Opal sputtered dismissively. “That old buzzard should have retired years ago!” For her, one of the kindest people Boone had ever known, this was a virtual outburst of anger. “Don’t you pay any mind to what he says. The sensible people in this town will understand, you can count on that. In fact, they’ll be grateful.”
Boone sighed again. He wondered if Patsy McCullough would be grateful—or hopping mad because that tower had been left to stand for decades after it should have been dismantled. “I hope you’re right,” he said, gazing through his dusty windshield at the crowd of newspeople and assorted locals bearing down on him.
They ended the call.
Boone got out of the car, shoved the door shut behind him and shouldered his way through the growing throng. The back entrance to the courthouse, and beyond that, his office, seemed to recede farther into the distance with every step he took; he might have been wading through knee-deep mud, so sluggish did his progress feel.
Several microphones were shoved into his face.
“Sheriff, is it true that you stood by and allowed the destruction of an historical monument?” asked a woman he recognized from the five o’clock news out of Missoula.
“Yes,” he said, still walking. “It’s true. But right now, I’m a lot more concerned about the seventeen-year-old boy who took a fifty-foot dive off the thing. Dawson’s undergoing emergency surgery right now, after all, and his condition is critical.”
The newscaster didn’t flinch, or even blink. “Shouldn’t the county have taken safety precautions?” she pressed. “Prevented this tragedy somehow?”
Hindsight, Boone reflected glumly, is always twenty-twenty.
“The water tower is—was—within the town limits of Parable,” Boone said, lengthening his stride, doing his best to move forward without shoving anybody out of his way. “Strictly speaking, it isn’t in the county’s jurisdiction.”
“Will charges be filed against the men who tore the tower down?” another reporter asked, shouting to be heard over the others, all of them clamoring for a scapegoat, somebody to take the blame.
What was it with these people? Boone wondered fractiously. Were they really more worried about some negligible “historical site” than the well-being of the community’s kids?
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” he bit out. Hutch and the other two men had broken the law, but Boone wasn’t about to arrest any of them. As far as he was concerned, they’d simply done what nobody else had had the guts to do.
Finally, he pushed open the side door and stepped into the corridor leading to his office, trailed by the crowd, only to be greeted by all six members of the historical preservation group, every one of them irate—and not all that well preserved themselves, in point of fact.
At least the dog, Scamp, was glad to see him, wriggling happily and licking at the toes of his boots. Boone bent, scooped up the animal, and figuratively dug in his heels.
* * *
“IT’S A GIRL,” Joslyn announced, bypassing “hello” completely, when she called Tara that evening. She and the girls were having supper on the front porch, watching Lucy chase end-of-the-day butterflies in the yard and enjoying the peace and quiet of a country evening. The resident noisemakers, the chickens, had retired into their coop for the night.
Tara felt such a rush of joy at the news—weary joy, since she and the twins had been working hard all afternoon—that her throat tightened and her eyes stung for a moment. “She’s healthy? The baby, I mean? And Kendra’s all right?” she managed to ask.
Overhearing, and immediately connecting the dots, Elle and Erin smiled.
“Baby and Mama are doing great,” Joslyn replied, with a soft laugh. “Hutch, on the other hand, seems to be in some kind of daze. So says my handsome husband, anyway. Slade just got home from the hospital a few minutes ago, and he filled me in on the details before he went out to the barn to feed the horses.”
“Does Baby Girl Carmody have a name yet?” Tara asked. A car went by on the road, slowed to turn in at Boone’s place, jostled over the cattle guard. She recognized the station wagon Opal drove.
“If she does, Hutch and Kendra aren’t telling,” Joslyn replied, a smile warming her voice. “We might not find out until the christening.”
Watching the goings on over at Boone’s as she listened, Tara saw Opal and the little Taylor boys as they got out of the station wagon, walking through the gathering twilight toward the double-wide. For reasons she couldn’t have put a name to, the sight caused a tiny pinch in her heart.
“What a day this has been,” Tara said, thinking how strange life could be, brimming with happiness and sorrow, all of a piece. “Is there any word about—about the boy who was hurt over at the water tower?”
“Dawson came through surgery alive,” Joslyn replied, solemn now. “But things are still touch and go. Poor Patsy must be beside herself with worry.”
“Yes,” Tara agreed as the lights blinked on in the trailer across the narrow branch of the river. She sucked in a deep breath, squared her shoulders. “Thanks for letting me know about Kendra and Hutch’s baby, Joss. I’d love to see her, as soon as visitors are allowed.”
“Me, too,” Joslyn answered. “I’ll call when I find out—we can go together.”
After that, the two women said their goodbyes, and Tara turned to the girls to relay what they’d already gathered from her end of the conversation.
Elle and Erin listened closely, finished with their supper and casting glances in the direction of the double-wide.
“That’s awesome,” said Elle.
“Are we old enough to babysit?” Erin wanted to know.
“It is awesome,” Tara agreed. “As for the babysitting part—well, actually, no, I don’t think you’re quite old enough.”
There was a brief silence.
“Could we walk over and say hi to Opal and the rug rats?” Elle asked, first to change gears. “And take Lucy with us?”
Tara considered the request—all the while resisting a crazy urge to keep the twins close, like a hen sheltering chicks beneath its wings—and finally nodded her consent. Elle and Erin might not be grown-up enough to look after newborn babies, but they were twelve years old, capable of navigating one of the largest cities in the world, not only on foot, but via the buses and subway system, too. Besides, there was less than a quarter mile between her house and Boone’s, and most of it was clearly visible from her yard. “I guess,” she agreed aloud, gathering up plates and glasses and silverware to take back to the kitchen. “Just be careful, okay? And don’t stay longer than half an hour.”
After fetching a leash for Lucy and grabbing a flashlight “just in case,” Tara’s stepdaughters set out, taking the path that wound along the water’s edge instead of the road. There was a narrow place where someone had laid out boards as a makeshift bridge, and Tara watched as the girls went straight for it. Their voices floated back to her on a warm breeze scented with country smells—mud and grass, mostly, along with pine trees and sun-dried laundry and the faintest whiff of chicken manure.
Tara lingered on the porch, her hands full of supper dishes, watching with a love-swelled heart as the girls, on the fast track to womanhood, and the dog paused on the other side of the sliver of water to examine an old rowboat, half-sunken and mired in gluey mud.
She wondered fretfully if she should have gone along with them. Until today, she’d considered Parable an almost mystically safe place, but she’d been proven wrong, hadn’t she? Even here, terrible things happened, people got hurt—
She shook off the mental image of the water tower, and the long drop to the ground from its height.
Think about Hutch and Kendra’s baby, Tara told herself. Think about Elle and Erin, and what a blessing it is to have them here with you.
Soon, she went inside, carried the dishes to the kitchen sink and looked up Boone’s home number. Then she picked up the receiver on the wall phone and punched in the digits.
Opal answered with a cheery, “Sheriff Taylor’s residence. This is Opal Dennison speaking.”
Tara smiled, amused. “Hello, Opal Dennison,” she replied. “This is Tara Kendall. I’m just calling to alert you that Elle and Erin are on their way over even as we speak. They wanted to say hello to you and the boys.”
“That’s fine,” Opal said heartily. “Have they had supper?”
“Yes,” Tara answered. “We just finished eating.”
“That’s too bad,” Opal responded. “Griffin and Fletcher and I picked up a pizza in town, and I think our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. Rented a couple of movies, too. Would it be all right if the girls stayed for a while? The boys will enjoy the company and I’d be glad to drop them off at home later on when I leave.” She paused. “Of course, that won’t be until Boone turns up, and there’s no telling what time that’ll be.”
Tara was torn between a certain possessiveness—her time with Elle and Erin was limited, and she treasured every moment of it—and the need for a little solitude, so she could sort through some things.
“Tell you what,” she said, after some thought, “if Boone isn’t back by the time the second movie ends, call me, and I’ll come over and get Elle and Erin myself. Lucy’s with them, by the way—that’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Sure it’s all right,” Opal said, her voice as warm and motherly as a hug. To Tara and many other people, the woman represented everything that was good about Parable, Montana, and all the towns like it, and just talking to her made Tara feel more hopeful. “Here they are now, peeking in at me through the screen door.” Her voice changed as she turned from the receiver to call out a welcome. “You girls come on in, and bring that dog with you.”
Smiling, Tara thanked Opal, and they both said goodbye and hung up.
Alone for the first time since the twins had gotten off the airplane in Missoula, without even Lucy to keep her company, Tara stood very still, there in her empty kitchen, listening to the relative silence.
Her first response was a rush of loneliness, the achy kind that a homesick child feels at sunset. Clearly, solitude wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Shaking off the feeling, she loaded the dishwasher, tidied up the kitchen, brewed herself a cup of herbal tea and returned to the porch, planning to sit on the steps for a while, watching the first stars pop out and enjoying the twilight songs of bugs, a few birds settling into their nests and the soft breeze.
Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were out in full force by then, and Tara was forced to retreat to her home office. There, she switched on her computer, waited for it to boot up and finally went online. So much for counting stars and generally communing with nature on the porch steps on a summer night. She was as much an internet junkie as anybody else.
There were emails awaiting her, including a cell-phone photo of Baby Girl Carmody bundled in her proud mother’s arms, a hospital-room shot, no doubt taken by an equally proud father. The message itself had been sent by Kendra, however, which must have meant she was recovering nicely. We’ll be home tomorrow. Come and see us, she’d written.
Tomorrow. Tara smiled and dashed off a quick Reply. She’s absolutely beautiful. What’s her name?
Not expecting an answer right away, she went on to her other emails, all of which had come in since that morning, and noticed there was one from James. Given that the subject line—I NEED A BIG FAVOR!—was written all in caps, the cyber equivalent of shouting, she knew she couldn’t have missed it when she scanned the list the first time. No, James’s email must have come in while she was admiring the photo of Kendra and the baby, which might mean he was still online.
Any contact with James Lennox unnerved Tara, especially when she wasn’t expecting it. He was effectively a stranger. But, then, that was nothing new. She’d never really known him at all, she reflected, even when they were married.
Bracing herself, she drew a deep breath—don’t say you want me to send the girls back to New York right away, she pleaded silently—and opened the message.
Getting married, James’s missive began, typically blunt. No caps, no punctuation. Evidently, he’d used up his supply of those writing the subject line. We’re thinking of a honeymoon cruise—around the world. It’ll take six weeks—any chance the twins could stay with you until school starts again, right after Labor Day?
Tara just sat there for a moment, staring at the screen. Sure, she was relieved that James wasn’t cutting Elle and Erin’s visit short—more than relieved—but as far as she knew, the man hadn’t said anything to his daughters about getting married again. Was he expecting her to break such important news to them, so he wouldn’t have to?
The thought of her ex avoiding a huge responsibility like that one made Tara seethe—how could James be so callous, so selfish, so inconsiderate of his own children?
Be reasonable, Tara. You’re jumping to conclusions. Okay, so maybe James had told Elle and Erin what his plans were. But surely, if that was the case, the girls would have mentioned it to her, wouldn’t they? It wasn’t as if they were eager to acquire another stepmother, after all.
Slowly, Tara let out her breath. She hit Reply, waited a few beats and typed, Elle and Erin are welcome to stay here as long as they need to, of course. But do they know you’re getting married again?
She paused, afraid James would think she was jealous or hurt that he planned on remarrying—and nothing could have been further from the truth.
He responded almost immediately, confirming her suspicion that he’d been lurking, waiting for her answer. That’s great, he wrote. You’re great. By the way, I sent you a check today—you know, in case the kids need anything.
Do they know? Tara fired back.
It won’t come as a surprise, James hedged, after waiting so long that Tara was beginning to think he’d left his computer. She could picture him hunkered over the keyboard of the laptop he kept in his den.
You need to tell them, James.
Another long pause followed, then, I think they might take the whole thing better if they heard about it from you.
Tara rested her elbows on the edge of her desk, splayed her fingers wide, and shoved them into her hair as she lowered her head and indulged in a silent scream. Then, feeling slightly more composed, she answered, That isn’t fair to Elle and Erin, James. You’re their father. You’re getting married. You need to level with them—now.
I’ve got to go, James replied briskly, this time with no hesitation.
And Tara knew it would be useless to argue.
Still, she grabbed up her cell phone and dialed James’s home number.
She got his voice mail, of course. “You’ve reached Dr. Lennox. Leave your information and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
Yeah, right.
Tara steamed. “You can’t do this,” she protested, after the beep. “It’s wrong!”
Nothing. If James was at the penthouse, rather than his clinic or the hospital, and she knew he must have been because he never sent personal emails from anyplace but home, he was ducking her call.
The bastard.
She pushed back her desk chair and got to her feet, wildly annoyed.
What did James plan to do? Send his daughters a postcard from wherever the cruise ship stopped? Guess what, kids! You have a new stepmother—isn’t that wonderful?
Tara paced, trying to vent some of her frustration, but pacing didn’t help. She still wanted to pick up something and throw it.
So she marched outside, mosquitoes be damned, and headed for the vegetable garden, a shadowy, moonlit space, and ruthlessly weeded three rows of carrots. At least she hoped she’d been pulling up weeds.
After a little while, the adrenaline began to subside, and she stood up. Left the garden. Of course the knees of her jeans were wet and stained, where she’d knelt in the dirt, as she came around the side of the barn, just in time to see headlights bumping over the cattle guard and swaying up the driveway.
Recognizing Boone’s squad car, she waited in puzzled consternation, fitfully slapping at mosquitoes as they landed on her shoulders and bare arms.
He parked the cruiser, shut off the lights and got out. His dog bounded out after him, a four-legged deputy trotting at his side.
Without a word, Boone approached, took Tara gently by one elbow and squired her up the porch steps and through the front door.
“What—?” she asked, still confused, balking once they were over the threshold.
A single lamp burned in the entryway, and Boone looked wan in the thin light, even a little gaunt. The dog sat down at his feet, small and watchful, looking up at both of them, ready for anything.
Boone gave a ragged sigh, took off his hat, shoved a hand through his already-rumpled hair. “Don’t ask me what I’m doing here,” he said, “because I don’t have the first damn idea what the answer is supposed to be.”
Tara touched his arm, feeling strangely stricken. There it was again, joy and sorrow, all rolled into one. “Come in,” she said quietly. “I’ll make coffee.”
He nodded once, but said nothing.
As she led the way to the kitchen, Tara was aware of Boone Taylor in every fiber of her being, aware of his heat and his strength and his uncompromising masculinity.
“You’ve done a lot with this place,” he commented when they’d reached the kitchen.
Tara recalled that Boone had grown up in the house, looked back at him as she approached the single-cup coffeemaker on the counter. “Have a seat,” she said, indicating the table and chairs in the center of the big room.
Boone dragged back a chair, sighed again and sat.
Suddenly, it was ridiculously easy for Tara to imagine that he belonged in this kitchen, that they lived here together as man and wife.
Maybe in a parallel universe, she thought sadly. In this one, they weren’t even friends—just neighbors who each wished the other one would move away.
Tara crossed to take his hat from his hand, hung it from one of the pegs near the back door, returned again to the caffeine-machine.
“I talked to Patsy McCullough a little while ago,” Boone said presently. It came again, that strange sense that it was normal for him to sit at this table, and tell her about his day. “Dawson’s mother.”
Tara set a mug under the spigot of the coffeemaker and pushed the brew button. She nodded. He’d had news, obviously, about the boy who’d fallen from the water tower in town that day. Instead of speaking, Tara simply waited, letting Boone take his time.
Finally, and with an effort that probably meant he’d dredged up the words from somewhere deep in the unfathomable silence within him, his dark eyes haunted, he continued, “The good news is, Dawson came through the surgery all right, and he’s doing as well as can be expected. The bad news is—” Here, he paused again, cleared his throat, shoved a hand through his hair once more. Tara suppressed a need to walk right over and smooth her fingers through it, offering him comfort. “The bad news is, there was some serious damage to the boy’s lower spine, and he isn’t going to walk again.”
Tara’s throat scalded, so she swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she said very softly. She was sorry for Dawson McCullough, sorry for his mother—and sorry for Boone, strong as he was.
The emotion felt dangerously intimate.
She moved stiffly as she brought him the coffee, then went back to the machine to brew a cup for herself. Now it was a certainty—she wouldn’t sleep well that night, if she slept at all. Something about the set of Boone’s shoulders, the look in his eyes, a combination of vulnerability and stubborn courage, made her nerves pulse with a kind of sweet urgency that reminded her of desire. She was stunned to realize that, more than anything, she wanted this man to hold her, even make love to her.
And damn the consequences, forget the morning after.
She took an automatic step back, nearly spilling the cup of coffee in her hand.
Boone’s gaze held steady—no way he could know what she was thinking, what she was feeling—the man wasn’t psychic. At least, she hoped he wasn’t.
Fingers stinging from the mild burn, Tara took herself resolutely to the table and sat down opposite Boone, wishing he would leave, wishing he would stay.
The inner conflict was so intense, so tangled, that heat surged into her face, and she set her cup on the tabletop, hoping Boone would think the blush was a reaction to hot coffee.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” he said gruffly, scraping back his chair, abandoning the coffee she’d made for him only minutes before. He started to rise.
“Stay,” Tara heard herself say. “Please.”
Boone slowly lowered himself back into his chair. The dog, having shot to its feet, lay itself down again with a resigned little sigh.
Boone smiled at the critter.
Tara smiled at Boone.
Watch it, warned her better judgment.
“I’m sorry,” Boone told her, “for busting in on you like this. I ought to be at home, putting the boys to bed.”
“They’re watching movies with Opal and the twins,” Tara said. She propped her elbow on the tabletop, cupped her chin in her palm and regarded Boone as objectively as she could, given the crazy gyrations of her nerves. “And there’s no reason to apologize for dropping in. We’re neighbors, aren’t we?”
His grin was a mere tilt of one corner of his mouth, but his eyes danced behind that sheen of weariness. “If you say so,” he allowed lightly, taking a sip of his coffee and savoring it for a long moment before going on. “But we got off on the wrong foot, you and I. There’s no denying that.”
“No, I guess not,” Tara said, wondering what had changed between the two of them, and when. She’d never hated Boone Taylor, but she hadn’t liked him, either. He was too sure of himself, too good-looking, too hardheaded, too everything.
He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly and met her eyes. “Today was a hell of a day,” he said, as though coming to a quiet realization.
“You probably get a lot of those in your line of work,” Tara offered. “Maybe you just needed to tell somebody about it, in a familiar kitchen, over a cup of coffee.”
Boone regarded her solemnly, but a touch of amusement lingered in his eyes. “Maybe,” he admitted. Then he looked around. “Not that this kitchen is all that familiar. When we lived here—Mom and Dad and Molly and me, I mean—it had ugly gold appliances, scuffed linoleum and bad wallpaper. Really bad wallpaper.”
Tara laughed then, surprising herself.
Had she ever laughed in Boone’s presence before? No. She’d hardly even smiled.
The title of an old Bob Dylan song ran through her mind.
The times were definitely changing.