Parable, Montana [4] Big Sky Summer Read online

  They hadn’t known, of course, until one day when Casey was twelve—not quite Shane’s age now—and they’d returned unexpectedly from a European cruise, after an outbreak of food poisoning struck down half the ship’s passengers, who had to be hospitalized in Barcelona. Her grandparents, whom no mere stomach bug would have dared afflict, had cut the trip short and flown back to the States more than a week early.

  Naturally, they’d expected their granddaughter—she of the incessant singing—to be in the mansion, eagerly awaiting their return.

  Instead, she’d been manning one of the roadside stands with Lupe, and when one of the housemaids called to say they were home, demanding to know where Casey was, Lupe and Juan had rushed her back to Dallas in their old rattletrap of a car.

  Her grandmother, who would not hear any explanation, had fired Lupe and Juan on the spot, and never mind their years of dedicated service. They were traitors, never to be forgiven.

  Soon after that incident, Casey had been sent away to a New England boarding school, where she was completely miserable, sustained only by encouraging letters from Lupe. When Casey’s grandmother died suddenly a few months later, her grandfather had sent for her, intending to send her straight back to those hallowed halls of learning directly after the funeral.

  But she’d cried and cajoled and, finally, her grandfather had agreed to let her stay and return to her old school, which, though stuffy and intolerant of red-haired girls who wanted to be country singers, was better than living among strangers far away.

  That Christmas, she received her first guitar. But Lupe and Juan were still gone, and Casey was still lonely, so she threw her whole heart and soul into her music. Using a Dummies book, she taught herself to read notes, and she practiced chords on that guitar until her fingertips were raw, then, mercifully, calloused.

  She sang along with her radio, alone in her room, copying the old-timers—Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, then Reba McEntire and Faith Hill and LeAnn Rimes and anyone else she admired, which added up to a lot of people. Then she started singing on the street, to her grandfather’s mortification, collecting quarters and crumpled dollar bills—and a whole lot of pennies—in her open guitar case resting at her feet on the sidewalk.

  From there, she’d gotten bookings in grange halls and old folks’ homes and high school gymnasiums, and she’d known even then, with her grandfather nurturing an ever-greater disapproval, that she had something special, that she was going to make it.

  And she had. The breaks had finally started coming, barely noticeable at first. She’d played rodeos and, having lied about her age so many times that she believed herself, bars and nightclubs.

  Her grandfather had finally stopped speaking to her entirely, though she still heard from Lupe and Juan, even now.

  “Mom?” Shane snapped his fingers in front of her face. “Hello? Mom?”

  Casey chuckled. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I was drifting.”

  “How come you’re not eating?” Clare wanted to know. She could be bossy at times, that child.

  “Because I’m not hungry,” Casey answered patiently. By the time this day ended, she thought, these children would know she’d deceived them, and they might never be together, in exactly this way, again.

  Tears burned behind her eyes, but she held them back. Even smiled, which took some grit. “We’re going out to Timber Creek today,” she said. “All three of us.”

  Shane looked thrilled. “Can we take the dogs?”

  “Not this time,” Casey told her son with gentle regret.

  Clare, not only older than Shane but female, and therefore more perceptive, studied her mother with frank concern. “What’s going on?” she asked.

  Casey had to swallow several times before she could answer. “You’ll know soon enough,” she said. “For now, let’s leave it at that.”

  “Mom,” Clare demanded, “are you sick? Are you going to tell us that you’re dying of some horrible disease?”

  “No,” Casey was quick to reply. “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then, what?” Shane wanted to know. “We’re moving? You’re going back on the road?”

  Casey almost told them the whole story then, but words failed her. She didn’t like admitting that she needed anybody, but she needed Walker beside her for this one—that was for sure.

  She shook her head. “We’re not moving and I’m not going back on the road,” she assured Shane, who was visibly relieved. “I’m calling the crew together, after Labor Day, to record some songs and block out a new video, but that’s the extent of it.”

  She hadn’t heard from Mitch by phone or email since he’d stormed off after she’d turned down his proposal, nor had she received his letter of resignation.

  Hopefully, that mess, at least, would blow over. She liked Mitch, and he was a good manager. Besides, the thought of starting from scratch with somebody new, after all these years, was overwhelming.

  Mercifully, the kids stopped asking questions after that.

  Casey retreated to her room and stepped into her ridiculously large—and full—closet. She would have known what to wear if she was going to sing for a president or any level of royalty, but how did one dress to tell her children that she’d been deceiving them since birth? No harmless fib, this. Instead, it was a lie so big that it had become a lifestyle, and Casey had lived it so long and so thoroughly that she didn’t know who she—or any of them—would be without it.

  Black seemed too funereal and white too innocent, so she finally chose a green voile sundress that brought out the color of her eyes and complemented her red hair. Forswearing pantyhose—there was a limit to the suffering she was willing to endure, even in this situation—she slipped sandals onto her bare feet, squirted a little perfume at the hollow of her throat and called it good.

  Studying her reflection in the mirrors above her vanity, Casey made a simple, motivational speech.

  “Buck up, cowgirl,” she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE KITCHEN OF THE HOUSE at Timber Creek Ranch was probably a quarter the size of her own, if that, Casey observed, sitting numbly at the large round table, with Clare seated to her left, Shane to her right and Walker straight across. Under any other circumstances, she would have enjoyed the cozy normality of the room, the pretty cotton curtains at the old-fashioned windows, the natural-rock fireplace where cheerful blazes surely snapped and crackled on winter mornings, the rustic plank floor dotted here and there with colorful handmade rugs. At the moment, though, she was so focused on what she had to say—what she was afraid to say—that her surroundings barely registered.

  Walker’s gaze connected with hers, held. The impact reminded her of railroad cars coupling with a jolt.

  The inside of Casey’s head buzzed, as though her brain were a wasps’ nest, and her stomach bounced continually between her pelvis and her esophagus.

  “Would somebody please tell us what’s going on?” Clare burst out, glancing from Casey to Walker and back again, speaking for her brother as well as herself, it would seem. As the older of the two, and a natural take-charge type, she often did that.

  Shane remained silent, his gawky, youthful body stiff with tension. One day, Casey thought, those now-thin shoulders of his would be broad and strong, like Walker’s, but, for now, they were narrow and a little stooped, making the boy look all too vulnerable.

  Casey opened her mouth to reply to her daughter’s question, but no sound came out. Not even a croak, though she felt a scraping sensation, as though she were trying to swallow a rusty hasp of the sort used to file horses’ hooves.

  Walker’s grin was slight, but encouraging. “It’ll be okay,” he said, his voice gruff and gentle, both at once.

  Casey swallowed, her hands knotted together in her lap, and nodded, but she still couldn’t get her vocal cords to work.

  “Mom,” Clare insisted, arms folded across her beginning-to-blossom chest, eyes troubled. “What?”

  Casey looked at her da
ughter, her son and then Walker.

  “This is hard,” she finally managed. Tears blurred her vision for a moment, and she blinked them away.

  “Go on,” Walker urged quietly.

  Casey knew he would speak up if she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, but it was her responsibility to tell her children the truth, because she’d been the one to start that first lie rolling. And then sustain it, with many, many other lies.

  Clare and Shane seemed on the verge of panic, though, and there was no more time left, Casey realized with a painful start. The sand had all run through the hourglass.

  So she blurted it out, starkly and far too abruptly. “Walker is your father,” she said.

  A thunderous silence fell, filling the room, pushing the walls outward. Casey waited for the roof to cave in, though, of course, it didn’t.

  She could feel her own heartbeat, pounding in the hollow of her still-sore throat, and she forced herself to look squarely at her children, each in turn. Shane was not only unfazed, he was grinning, his eyes alight with wonder.

  “For real?” he asked.

  “For real,” Casey replied softly, shifting her gaze to Clare.

  The girl’s reaction was the polar opposite of Shane’s—the red in her hair seemed to leach into her face, making vivid pink circles on her cheeks, and her eyes were narrowed almost to slits. Her chin wobbled, and she immediately shoved back her chair, ready to bolt.

  Walker stopped her by taking hold of her hand. “Easy now, sweetheart,” he told his daughter, the words thick with affection and regret. “Give your mom a chance to explain.”

  Clare remained seated, but her whole countenance exuded defiance. “You lied,” she accused, glaring at Casey. “You knew how much we wanted a dad, Shane and me, and you let us believe we were freaks, conceived in some laboratory—”

  “Clare,” Casey said miserably. “Listen to me, please—”

  “I hate you!” Clare erupted, and this time, when she started to rise, Walker made no move to keep her at the table. She swept both parents up in a scathing sweep of a glance. “I hate you both—”

  “No.” Casey fairly whimpered the word. This was what she’d feared would happen. On some level, she’d known Shane would take the news well, but Clare would feel wounded and betrayed—by the person she’d trusted most.

  Clare whirled, headed for the outside door, nearly tripping over a startled Doolittle in her hurry to escape her mother’s company and, by extension, Walker’s. She slammed the screen door hard and stomped across the porch, footsteps reverberating.

  Casey started to rise, every instinct compelling her to go after her daughter, find a way to comfort the girl, make everything all right, but Walker put up one hand, like a traffic cop.

  “Let her go,” he said. “She needs a few minutes for this to sink in.”

  Casey, knowing Walker was right, slumped bleakly back into her chair.

  Shane, still staring at Walker as though he’d just emerged from Aladdin’s lamp, genie-style, remained awestruck, oblivious, evidently, to his sister’s angry departure. “You’re really our dad?” he half whispered.

  “I’m really your dad,” Walker confirmed.

  They heard a rig come up the driveway then, a motor shutting off, ticking and clicking as it went still. A car door closed, a dog barked.

  Brylee, Casey thought. The poor woman couldn’t possibly know what she was walking in on.

  Walker caught her eye. “I can ask her to leave for a while,” he offered. “Come back later—”

  But Casey shook her head. “No,” she answered. “Brylee’s family, and she has a right to know what’s going on.”

  Walker gave a slight nod.

  Brylee and her dog could be heard coming up the porch steps. Her voice came gently through the screen in the door; she’d spotted Clare, probably huddled in the big wooden swing.

  “Hey,” Brylee said softly. “What’s the trouble, honey?”

  Clare’s response was an angry sob, and the chains supporting the swing creaked as she started it in motion, probably with a hard kick at the floorboards.

  “You can tell me,” Brylee said.

  “Ask them!” Clare cried in response. “Ask the liars!”

  Casey closed her eyes for a moment, against the pain she’d caused her daughter, boomeranging back to bruise her, as well. Her stomach felt as though someone had just slammed a fist into it, hard.

  Some murmuring followed, and Clare continued to cry, fury giving way to heartbreak. Neither Casey nor Walker moved or spoke, though Shane, by then out of his chair and stroking Doolittle’s head and gleaming back, seemed to be lost in a happy world of his own.

  He snapped out of it long enough to make a comment, though.

  “I don’t get it,” Shane said, amazed. “We find out we’re not lab experiments—that we have Walker for a dad—and Clare’s bawling her eyes out like it’s the end of the world or something.”

  Walker, leaning from his chair, laid a hand on his son’s shoulder and, though he’d done that many times before, it was different this time. Casey saw pride in the way Walker touched Shane, knew he was claiming the boy, that no matter what happened after this, they would always be father and son—the bond, finally established, was unbreakable.

  “Clare will be all right,” Walker told Shane. Then his gaze caught Casey’s again, and he leaned back in his chair. “We all will.”

  The screen door opened with a slight squeal of hinges in need of oiling, and Brylee came in, the dog right behind her.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked bluntly, her eyes big and her cheeks pale with concern. “Did something happen—?”

  Walker was still looking at Casey, and there was a question in his eyes, as clear as if he’d asked it aloud. Should I tell her?

  Casey merely nodded.

  Walker broke the news to his sister and he was a lot more diplomatic than Casey had been just minutes before. Briefly but thoroughly he outlined the circumstances that had brought them all to this moment and this place.

  A slow smile spread across Brylee’s wide mouth as she listened, moved up into her eyes, shining there.

  “Wow,” she said when Walker finished. “That’s great.”

  Great, Casey thought dismally. Except that Clare was still out there on the porch, crying her heart out, feeling cheated and furious and sold out—by her own mother, no less.

  “Can I live here now, with you?” Shane asked Walker. “Can I have a horse? Does this mean my last name is really Parrish, instead of Elder?”

  Walker smiled at the boy. “Whoa,” he said. “You belong with your mom. As for the horse and the last name, we’ll discuss all that later, after the dust settles and everybody’s on the same page.”

  Casey tossed an appreciative glance in Walker’s direction; he was letting her know he didn’t plan on trying to take her children away from her, and she hadn’t realized, until that moment, how afraid she’d been that he would do exactly that.

  At least, she hoped that was his meaning.

  She stood, unable to wait any longer, her knees wobbly and her head spinning a little, and moved past a sympathetic Brylee to open the screen door and step out onto the porch.

  Just as she’d pictured her, Clare was crumpled up in a corner of the big swing, looking more like the little girl she had been, just a few short seasons ago, than the young woman she was so rapidly turning into.

  Casey walked over and sat down beside her daughter on the plump, faded cushion padding the seat of the swing. She didn’t touch Clare and she didn’t speak, either. She just wanted to be there.

  Clare, resting both forearms on the arm of the swing, shoulders shaking, eventually lifted her head. She didn’t look at Casey, though. Instead, she stared off into something well beyond the rails of the porch, the nearby barn, even the distant horizon.

  “Why?” she asked, after a long, long time. She sounded broken, as well as outraged.

  Casey weighed the obvious answers. It seemed li
ke a good idea at the time, though true, would sound flippant. I thought it would be the best thing for all of us, then? No, that wouldn’t do, either, because while she’d wanted to believe that from the beginning, she knew now that it was just another lie. She’d wanted her career, too, and, dammit, she wasn’t ashamed of that, for all her other regrets.

  “No excuses,” she said. “I should have told you the truth, right from the start, and I’m really sorry I didn’t, honey.”

  Clare turned puffy, accusing eyes on her then. “Why?” she repeated fiercely. “Tell me why.”

  Casey sighed. “I’m not sure I know,” she admitted, at some length. “Not the whole reason, anyhow. I was young, my career was just getting started and I wasn’t expecting to get pregnant.”

  “So you chose your music over Shane and me and Walker?” The words pierced Casey’s heart like a spray of porcupine quills.

  “I wanted to keep singing,” she said after deliberating for a while. “But it wasn’t about choosing anything—or anybody—over you and your brother.” Mitch, members of the band and other close friends had advised her to put her baby girl up for adoption, and she’d flatly refused, but she didn’t think it would do any good to mention that just now. In fact, it might even make things worse.

  “And you let it happen twice,” Clare marveled angrily, as though Casey hadn’t spoken at all. “I’m sorry, but that’s just weird.”

  Casey smiled sadly, remembering the scared, pregnant girl with fame and fortune at her fingertips. By then, her grandparents were both dead, and when it came to kinfolks, she was alone in the world. “Maybe,” she confessed presently, her voice small and soft. “But I can’t imagine my life without both you and Shane.”

  Clare didn’t answer right away, and she’d averted her eyes again, too. “What about Walker? Did he want us?”

  “He didn’t know,” Casey replied, after biting the figurative bullet. It would have been so easy to blame Walker, make him out to be one of those men who make babies and then skip out, fancy-free.