Parable, Montana [4] Big Sky Summer Page 14

  She looked a sight, though, and a fine one, as she ran a brush through her coppery hair and wrestled it back into a ponytail, as it was before they’d decided to take a roll in the hay.

  Walker didn’t regret what they’d done—no sane man would have, especially after a lengthy dry spell like the one he’d just been through—but he knew Casey had enough regrets for both of them. And if he was honest, the knowledge hurt a little.

  “Do you want to wait for Brylee to bring the kids back here or go home?” he asked, figuring Casey might not say another word to him, ever, if he didn’t make the first move.

  She turned to face him, an act of pure bravado, he reckoned, placing her hands on her hips and straightening her spine until she reached her full and patently unremarkable height.

  “I want to go home,” she said. Not much ambiguity there.

  “Okay,” Walker agreed, standing up again. A part of him—a big part of him—wanted to lure Casey Elder right back into bed and make love to her all over again, but success seemed about as likely as a two-way conversation with his horse, so he tried to let go of the idea. For the time being, anyhow.

  “That’s all?” Casey sniped. “Just, ‘okay’?”

  “What do you want me to say, Casey? That we can pretend this didn’t happen?”

  She marched past him, out of the bedroom, along the length of the hallway, past a couple of other rooms and, finally, into the kitchen. Only then, snatching up her shoulder bag from a countertop and shoving one arm through the strap, did she deign to answer, drawing in a deep breath and then, in the next instant, deflating again.

  “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” she asked, looking away from him and then, with visible determination, looking back. “Trying to pick a fight, so I can put some distance between us, give myself time to think.”

  Walker nodded, though he was a little surprised by the admission. Casey was good at fooling herself, and even better at fooling other people, and she’d been living the lie for so long that he’d begun to wonder if she could no longer recognize the truth.

  “Take all the time you want,” he said, at some length. “But it isn’t going to be business as usual, at least as far as Clare and Shane are concerned. I’m through playing the good ole dependable family friend, Case. Insofar as they’ll let me, at this late date, I want to be a father to them both.”

  “Good luck with Clare,” Casey said, and while she might have sounded flippant, Walker knew by the tears glinting briefly in her green eyes and the wobble of her chin that she’d meant those words, hadn’t simply tossed them off in an effort to get under his skin or make him back off a step or two.

  Walker wanted to put his arms around Casey then, but he didn’t dare. She so rarely allowed him to comfort her that, when she did, they both lost control.

  “Clare will come around, Case,” he said gently, because he knew she was afraid the girl would never forgive her. And it was true enough that long-term family feuds sometimes started over a lot less, so he reckoned she had cause for concern, all right. “You’re her mother, and she loves you. Plus, she’s a smart kid—in time, she’ll realize that everybody makes mistakes, often with the best of intentions.”

  Casey averted her eyes from Walker, shy all of a sudden, changeable as sunlight dancing on the surface of a creek. For just a moment, he caught a glimpse of the little girl inside her, the one who had lost her folks as a baby, grown up with stodgy if well-meaning grandparents, wealthy and past the time when child rearing might have been a realistic possibility, and probably at more of a loss, with every passing day, than pride would have allowed them to admit. He supposed they’d loved Casey, in their way, tried to make the best of a difficult situation, but she was still, for all her accomplishments, a bird with a broken wing.

  “I hope you’re right,” she finally replied.

  After that, he and Doolittle squired the lady home in the truck, and not much was said along the way.

  “Do me a favor?” Walker said, when he’d seen Casey safely to the front door, waiting while she fumbled through her handbag for the keys.

  “What kind of favor?” she asked, looking up at him, her expression just a touch on the wary side.

  “Don’t go beating yourself up over all this,” he answered, his voice going husky again. “You’ve done what you could to make things right, and that took guts, and you don’t have to fight the whole battle alone anymore. I’ll help as much as I can, and I know Brylee will, too, so let’s try to take things as they come.” He smiled. “Play it by ear, so to speak.”

  Casey gave a wan little grin at the awkward pun, stuck the key in the lock and turned it. Pausing on the threshold, she looked up at him again, and broke his heart into two jagged pieces with her bravery.

  “I’m going to need some time, Walker,” she reminded him. “And some space. I won’t stop you from seeing Clare and Shane, but—”

  He touched her mouth with one finger, unable to bear hearing the rest of that sentence. “One day at a time,” he said.

  She nodded again, stepped inside, closed the door.

  Walker waited until he heard the lock engage, then turned to walk away, even though leaving Casey behind was about the last thing he wanted to do just then.

  *

  A WELCOMING COMMITTEE composed of three eager dogs, barely more than puppies, and two more-reserved cats awaited Casey in the cathedral-like entryway to that too-big, too-fancy house.

  The place was more like one huge and soulless showcase than a home, it seemed to her, especially in comparison to Walker’s spacious but functional quarters. His house had a history—she could picture generations of Parrishes living and loving within those solid walls, imagine simple, wholesome meals being made and shared. People had surely laughed and cried there, celebrated and mourned. In good times, they would have rejoiced, in that quiet and modest way country folks did, and when times were hard, they would have made do, and rarely, if ever, complained.

  By contrast, this mansion she lived in, beautiful as it was, had an air of impermanence, of anonymity, like a grand hotel. In those reflective moments, she was more grateful than usual for the rough-and-tumble attentions of the dogs, if only because they were genuinely glad to see her.

  Resolving to snap out of it, Casey stopped playing the comparison game, since the score was always zero-to-zero and nobody ever came out a winner, and wondered if she and the pets were alone in the house.

  It was at moments like this that she missed the guys in the band, missed their boisterous goodwill and their willingness to make music at any hour of the day or night.

  Doris, the housekeeper, was probably around somewhere, but Casey didn’t go looking for her, mainly because she didn’t want to answer any perceptive questions. Doris was a longtime employee and a true friend, but this fix Casey found herself in wasn’t the sort of thing she could be expected to understand, being of another generation. The older woman would know at a glance, though, that something big had happened, age difference notwithstanding, and, always kindhearted, she’d try to open a dialogue—which was the last thing Casey wanted to deal with while she felt so jangled.

  So she climbed the Gone-with-the-Wind staircase, secretly glad when none of the pets followed, and took lonely refuge in her room.

  After a quick shower, Casey put on fresh jeans, a blue silk shirt, low-heeled shoes and makeup. When Clare and Shane came home, she’d be there to greet them, on top of things, equal to any challenge, even if she had to pretend. Angry or not, Clare needed a mother, strong and competent and ready to engage, not some caricature of a mad housewife, disheveled and distracted.

  And never mind that she felt a lot more like the latter than the former at the moment. If she’d dressed to match her present emotions, she’d have worn an old chenille bathrobe, ratty scuff slippers and a head full of foam curlers. There probably would have been a martini in her hand, too.

  Alas, weakness was a luxury she couldn’t afford. As soon as the kids came through the do
or, it would be showtime.

  Having come to terms with the situation, Casey went downstairs to the kitchen, in need of a cup of tea and mindful of the fact that it was time to feed the pets. Taking care of the menagerie was normally Shane and Clare’s job, but since they weren’t around to do it at the moment, she’d have to step up.

  For all that, Casey might have gone right on hiding out in her room if she’d known Doris was already in the kitchen, standing in front of the eight-burner stove, stirring something in a kettle. When the other woman looked back over a shoulder and saw Casey, she started a little.

  “Oh,” she said, putting a hand to her heart.

  “I’m sorry,” Casey said quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Doris tried to smile, but there was a strange, distracted glint in her eyes, and her lips moved constantly, even when she wasn’t talking.

  “Is everything all right?” Casey asked, forgetting her tea for a moment. Doris wasn’t herself, and that alarmed her, because Doris was always herself.

  The housekeeper looked baffled by the question, and didn’t reply right away.

  The dogs and cats, knowing supper was in the offing, converged on the kitchen en masse, and for the next few minutes, Casey busied herself pouring kibble rations and rinsing and refilling water bowls while she waited—for what seemed like an eternity—for Doris to say something.

  “No, dear,” she finally answered, shoulders drooping, unaware that whatever she’d been stirring was now dripping from the end of her wooden spoon onto the gleaming floor. “Actually—no. Everything isn’t all right.”

  Casey left the pets to their meals and approached, touching Doris’s arm lightly before removing the spoon from the woman’s grasp and setting it aside on the stove top. “What is it? Are you ill?”

  She had to resist the motherly urge to touch the housekeeper’s forehead, testing for fever.

  “No, I’m— I’m not sick.” But Doris’s nose reddened at the tip, and her eyes grew moist. “It’s my sister, Evelyn,” she went on. “She’s fallen and broken her hip, and she’s all alone over there in Seattle, with nobody to keep her company or take charge of things.”

  Casey took both her housekeeper’s hands in her own and looked directly into her worried eyes. “Then you’ve got to go to her,” she said softly. “Right away.”

  “But what will you do without me?” Doris all but wailed. “Who will cook and clean and look after the children when you’re working?”

  “Don’t worry about us,” Casey answered, biting back an automatic We’ll be fine because it might have hurt Doris’s feelings, made her think she and the kids didn’t need her. She’d spoiled them all completely, over the years, but now they’d just have to buck up and do things for themselves. “Right now, Evelyn matters most. She needs you. And you need to be with her, for your own peace of mind.”

  “She’s so scared, lying there in a hospital bed like that,” Doris confirmed fitfully, nodding her head again and again, as if in answer to some other voice that Casey couldn’t hear. “She’s hurting something terrible, too—Evelyn never had a very high threshold for pain, you know—and she told me earlier, when she called, that the doctors and nurses aren’t listening to a word she says.”

  “Pack your bags,” Casey said firmly. “I’ll charter a plane, and you’ll be in Seattle, holding Evelyn’s hand before you know it.” Not so long ago, Casey had owned a private jet and kept a flight crew on call 24/7, but now that she wasn’t doing concert tours, she wouldn’t have used it enough to justify the staggering expense, so she’d sold the aircraft and canceled the service providing pilots and other staff.

  Doris blinked. She was a woman with her feet firmly planted on the ground, literally and figuratively, and, unlike Shane and Clare, who’d loved flying, she’d rarely traveled with Casey and the entourage. “Are you sure I ought to go? There’s so much to do around here, and Clare and Shane don’t eat enough vegetables if I don’t keep an eye on them, and—”

  Casey chuckled, silenced her friend with a big hug. “I’ll force-feed those kids spinach and broccoli, if I have to,” she teased. “Go pack your bags while I make a few phone calls.”

  Just over an hour later, a sleek jet came in for a landing at what passed for an airport, a strip of asphalt that served both Parable and Three Trees. Casey, who had driven Doris and her suitcases there, virtually shooed the woman aboard. Doris had barely disappeared into the cabin when the copilot descended the folding stairs to stow the bags in the cargo hold and make a final flight check.

  Casey was about to get back behind the wheel of her SUV, planning to head home immediately after takeoff, but at the copilot’s approach, she paused. Grinning, he tipped his hat and said genially, “Hello, there, Ms. Elder. Remember me?”

  As many people as she’d met, Casey had a good memory for names and faces. “Joe Parker,” she said, extending a hand and smiling. Back when she still owned a jet, one with her name and face splashed across the side, no less, Joe had occasionally joined the crew, which tended to rotate. “How are Shelley and the kids?”

  Joe shook her hand, beaming with pride. He wasn’t a player like some people who traveled more than they stayed home, and Casey had always respected him for that. “Just fine,” he replied. “You and yours?”

  “We’re doing great,” Casey lied. No point in burdening an acquaintance with a lot of unsettling and very private truths. “Clare and Shane are growing up too fast, but that’s normal, I guess.”

  Joe nodded. “I know what you mean,” he answered. “Our oldest starts college in the fall, and he’s determined to go to an out-of-state school.”

  Casey felt a pang at that statement, reminded that it wouldn’t be very long before Clare was leaving home, or Shane, either, for that matter. Clare was a gifted singer and played several instruments, but she’d made it clear from an early age that she wanted no part of the music business. All I’d ever be, talent or no talent, the child had decreed, with uncanny wisdom, for a ten-year-old, is Casey Elder’s daughter. I want to be a veterinarian.

  And Clare’s ambition had never wavered since.

  “You take good care of Doris for me,” Casey said, and Joe nodded, executed a little salute and returned to the plane.

  Once he was inside, the metal steps whirred their way back into the underbelly of the craft, and the door closed, sealing itself with a familiar hermetic sound, like a lid fusing itself to one of Lupe’s jars of canned peaches.

  Standing there on the tarmac, hands in the pockets of her lightweight jacket, even though it wasn’t cold, Casey waited, smiling and waving when she saw Doris’s face at one of the portholes.

  After the plane lifted off, she drove home, and seeing that every light in the whole place was on, she knew Brylee must have dropped Clare and Shane off after the horseback ride and the restaurant meal.

  Casey parked in the driveway—she only used the garage in bad weather—and steeled herself to go inside and face her children.

  Shane was in the backyard, with the dogs, when she came around the side of the house on her way to the sunporch entrance.

  Casey paused, gazing at him, trying to memorize the way he was right then, at that moment, poignantly aware that her son would be different tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that.

  Look away from the boy, look back at the man. Her throat thickened.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said, as though it had been an ordinary day, with no mind-boggling revelations. Would there be a backlash at some point? Probably, Casey thought. She’d look into family counseling in the morning, though she knew both children would resist the idea.

  “Hey,” Casey answered when she could trust her voice.

  “Where’ve you been?” Shane inquired. She detected a vaguely wheedling note in the question, knew he was about to make some kind of pitch—resuming the campaign to change his last name to match Walker’s, most likely, or announcing that he wanted to live with his father.

  “Doris
’s sister is in the hospital up in Seattle,” she answered, sounding normal, even if she didn’t feel that way. “I drove her to the plane.”

  “Oh,” Shane said, absorbing that. At his age, Casey figured he was still largely preoccupied with the items on his own agenda, but Doris was practically a member of the family, and he was concerned. “Will her sister be okay?”

  Casey was facing him by then, and her smile, though wobbly, was genuine. “I think so,” she said. “Doris says Evelyn broke her hip, though, and that can be serious for an older person.”

  Shane nodded thoughtfully, ignoring the trio of dogs competing like silly jesters for his attention. “Yeah,” he said.

  “How about you?” Casey asked carefully after waiting out a few heartbeats. “Will you be okay, Shane?”

  He sighed, and his expression remained pensive, even solemn. “I guess,” he said. Then, “Do you think Walker wants me to have his last name, Mom?”

  Casey’s heart ached, but she’d had a lot of practice when it came to putting on an act, whether professionally or personally, and her facade didn’t waver. “I’m sure he does,” she said, very quietly. “Is that what you want, Shane?”

  Rhetorical question. Of course it was—he’d already made that clear.

  Shane searched her face, and, as so often happened these days, she caught a glimpse of the man he was turning into. “Will you feel bad if I do, Mom?” he asked earnestly. “I mean, Elder is a good name, too, and it’s not like I’m ashamed of it or anything.”

  Casey wanted to hug her son just then, fiercely, the way she’d done when he was little and still receptive to mom moves, but she restrained herself, knowing that the moment was fragile, and the boy might be, too. “I won’t feel bad,” she told him. “I promise.”

  Shane looked relieved, but not completely satisfied. Night sounds were all around them, and somewhere nearby, an owl hooted, waking up after a long day’s sleep in some hidden place. “When I asked if I could go and stay with Walker—Dad—for a while, it probably sounded like I didn’t want to be with you anymore—”