Big Sky Mountain Page 7

  Daisy was remarkably cooperative when they got back to the guest cottage. She lapped up half the water in her bowl, munched on some kibble, went outside with Madison to take care of dog business and returned to settle on her soft bed in the kitchen, yawning big.

  Kendra’s heart swelled into her throat as Madison crouched next to the puppy, patting its head gently and whispering, “Don’t be scared, okay? Because Mommy and I will be back before it gets dark.”

  For the thousandth—if not millionth—time, Kendra wondered what life in that series of foster homes had been like for Madison. Had she felt safe, secure, loved?

  According to the social workers, Madison’s care had been exceptional—most foster parents were decent, dedicated people, generous enough to make room in their homes and their hearts for children in crisis.

  Still, Madison had been passed around a lot, shuffled from one stand-in family to another. How could she not have been affected by so many changes in her short life?

  Kendra was pondering all these things as she fastened the child into her booster seat in the backseat of the Volvo, and then as she slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. “I’m not going anywhere, you know,” she felt compelled to say, making an effort to keep her voice light as they pulled out onto Rodeo Road.

  She didn’t so much as glance at the mansion either as they passed it or in the rearview mirror; it might have been rendered invisible.

  Maybe, as some scientists claimed, things didn’t actually exist until someone looked at them.

  “Yes, you are too going somewhere,” Madison responded, after a few moments of thought. “You’re going to Three Trees so we can buy a bed!”

  Kendra laughed, blinked a couple of times and focused her attention on the road, where it belonged. “That isn’t what I meant, silly.”

  “My first mommy left,” Madison said, perhaps sensing that Kendra’s conversation was leading somewhere.

  “Yes,” Kendra said gently. “I know.”

  “But you won’t leave,” Madison said with reassuring conviction. “Because you like being a mommy.”

  Kendra sniffled. Blinked again, hard. “I love being your mommy,” she replied. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, kiddo. Remember that, okay?”

  “Okay,” Madison said, her tone almost breezy. “Some of the kids at preschool have daddies, not just mommies.”

  The ache of emotion slipped from Kendra’s throat to settle into her heart. Part of the child’s remark echoed to the very center of her soul. Not just mommies.

  “My daddy died,” Madison went on. It was an exchange they’d had before, but repeating the facts seemed to comfort the little girl somehow, to anchor her in a new and better present. “He’s in heaven.”

  “Yes,” Kendra said, thick-voiced. She considered pulling over for a few moments, in order to pull herself together. “But he loved you very much. That’s why he sent me to find you.”

  Thank you for that, Jeffrey. In spite of everything else, thank you for bringing Madison into my life.

  The topic ricocheted with the speed of a bullet. “Is the cowboy man somebody’s daddy?”

  The question pierced Kendra’s heart like an arrow. They were near the park, and she pulled over in the shade of a row of hundred-year-old maples, all dressed up in leafy green for summer, to regain her composure.

  “I don’t think so,” she managed, after swallowing hard.

  “I like the cowboy man,” Madison said. A short pause followed and when she spoke again she sounded puzzled. “Why are we stopping, Mommy?”

  Kendra touched the back of her right hand to one cheek, then the other. “I just needed a moment,” she said.

  “Are you crying?” Madison sounded worried now.

  “Yes,” Kendra answered, because it was her policy never to lie to the child, if it could be avoided.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m happy,” Kendra said. And that was the truth. She was happy and she was grateful. She had a great life.

  Still, there was the daddy thing.

  As a little girl, lonely and adrift, tolerated by her grandmother rather than loved, Kendra had longed for a father even more than she had for a dog or a kitten. She could still feel the ache of that singular yearning to be carried, laughing, on strong shoulders, to feel protected and cherished and totally safe.

  She was all grown up now, perfectly capable of protecting and cherishing her daughter as well as looking after herself and a certain golden retriever puppy in the bargain. But could she be both mother and father to her little girl?

  Was she, and the love she offered, enough?

  “I don’t cry when I’m happy,” Madison said as Kendra pulled the car back out onto the road. “I laugh when I’m happy.”

  “Makes sense,” Kendra conceded, laughing herself.

  They drove on to Three Trees, parked in front of the furniture store and hastened inside, hand in hand.

  And they found the perfect bed almost immediately—

  it was twin-size, made of gleaming brass, with four high posts and a canopy frame on top. A dresser, a bureau and two night tables, all French provincial in style, completed the ensemble.

  Kendra paid for their purchases—the pieces were to be delivered the next day, bright and early—and before they knew it, they were almost home again.

  Madison, seemingly deep in thought for most of the drive, piped up as they pulled into the driveway. “Mommy, we forgot to buy a bed for you.”

  “I already have one, honey,” Kendra responded, stopping the car alongside the guesthouse. She’d selected a few modest pieces from the mansion to take along to the new place. Most of the furniture in the main house was too big and too fancy for the simple colonial. There was a queen-size bed in one of the guest rooms that would work, a floral couch in the study, and they could use the table and chairs from Opal’s old apartment.

  Kendra wanted to leave room for some new things, too.

  She parked the car and turned Madison loose, and they raced each other to the guest cottage, where Daisy met them at the door, barking a happy greeting.

  Kendra set aside her purse, washed her hands, and searched the cottage fridge for the makings of an evening meal. She was chopping the vegetables for a salad, to which she would add leftover chicken breasts, also chopped, when she heard a vehicle coming up the driveway.

  Peering out the kitchen window, she saw Hutch Carmody getting out of his truck.

  Her stomach lurched and her heartbeat quickened as she hurriedly wiped her hands on a dish towel and went outside. Daisy and Madison, who had been playing in the kitchen moments before, rushed out to greet him.

  Soon they were all over him.

  He laughed at their antics and swung Madison off the ground and up onto his shoulders, where she clung, laughing, too.

  The last of the afternoon sunlight caught in their hair—Hutch’s a butternut color, Madison’s like copper flames—and the dog circled them, barking her excitement.

  Kendra couldn’t help being struck by the sight of the man and the little girl and the dog, looking so happy, so right.

  She went outside.

  “I was here earlier,” Hutch told her, easing Madison off his back and setting her on her feet, where she jumped, reaching up, wanting to be lifted up again. “You weren’t home.”

  Kendra couldn’t speak for a moment, knowing, as she somehow did, that she might never get the image of the three of them together out of her head. It had been unspeakably beautiful, like some otherworldly vision of what family life could be.

  “Hello?” Hutch teased, when she didn’t say anything, standing close to her now, his head tipped a little to one side, like his grin. All the while, Madison was trying to climb him like a bean pole and he finally swung her back onto his shoulders.

  “Come in,” Kendra heard herself say, her voice all croaky and strange.

  He nodded and followed her into the guest cottage, ducking so Madison wouldn’t bump
her head on the door frame. This time when he put the child down, she seemed content just to hover nearby.

  He accepted the chair Kendra offered him at the small dining table and the coffee she brought him—black, the way he liked it.

  Funny, the things you didn’t forget about a person—mostly small and ordinary stuff, like coffee preferences and the way they always smelled of sun-dried cloth, even after a day spent hauling cattle out of mud holes or digging postholes.

  Kendra gave herself a mental shake, sent a protesting Madison off to wash her hands and face before supper. Daisy, of course, tagged along with her small mistress, though she cast a few glances back at Hutch as she went.

  “Join us for supper?” Kendra asked, hoping she sounded—well—neighborly.

  Hutch shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said, offering no further explanation, which was like him.

  Kendra could hear Madison in the bathroom, running water in the sink, splashing around, talking non-stop to Daisy about the new house and the new bed and whether or not they’d be allowed to watch a DVD that night before they had to go to bed.

  “Why are you here?” she finally asked very quietly. And this time, it wasn’t a challenge. She was too tired for challenges, too wrung-out emotionally from the things Madison had said in the car.

  Hutch sighed.

  The distant splashing continued, as did the child-to-dog chatter.

  “I’m not entirely sure,” he said at some length, taking Kendra aback a little.

  She couldn’t remember one single instance in all the time she’d known Hutch Carmody when he hadn’t been completely sure of everything and everybody, especially himself.

  “That’s helpful,” she said mildly.

  Any moment now Madison would be back in the room, thereby curtailing anything but the most mundane conversation.

  “Joslyn tells me there’s a cleanup day over at Pioneer Cemetery on Saturday,” he finally said, after casting about visibly for something to say. “There’ll be a town picnic afterward, like always, and, well, I was just wondering if you and Madison and Daisy might be interested in going along.” He paused, cleared his throat. “With me.”

  Kendra was astounded, not so much by the invitation as by Hutch’s apparent nervousness. Was he afraid she’d say no?

  Or was he afraid she’d say yes?

  “Okay,” she agreed, as a compromise between the two extremes. She wanted, she realized, to see how he’d react.

  Would he backpedal?

  Instead he favored her with a dazzling grin, rose from his chair and passed her to set his coffee cup, still mostly full, in the sink. Their arms brushed and his nearness, the hard heat of his very masculine body, sent a jolt of sweet fire through her.

  “Okay,” he said with affable finality.

  Madison was back by then, holding up her clean hands for Kendra to see but obviously more interested in Hutch than in her mother.

  “Very good,” Kendra said approvingly, and began moving briskly around the infinitesimal kitchen, setting out plates and silverware and glasses—which Madison promptly counted.

  “Aren’t you hungry, cowboy man?” she asked Hutch when the tally was two places at the table, rather than three.

  He looked down at Madison with such fondness that Kendra felt another pang of—something. “Can’t stay,” he said. “I have horses to look after and they like their supper served on time, just like people do.”

  Madison’s eyes widened. “You have horses?” From her tone she might have asked, “You can walk on water?”

  “Couldn’t very well call myself a cowboy if I didn’t have horses,” Hutch said reasonably.

  Madison pondered that, then nodded in agreement. Her eyes widened. “Can I ride one of your horses sometime? Please?”

  “That would definitely be your mother’s call,” Hutch told her. It was grown-up vernacular, but Madison understood and immediately turned an imploring face to Kendra.

  “Maybe sometime,” Kendra said, because she couldn’t quite get to a flat-out no. Not with all that ingenuous hope beaming up at her.

  Remarkably, that noncommittal answer seemed to satisfy Madison. She scrambled into her chair at the table and waited for supper to start.

  “See you on Saturday,” Hutch said lightly.

  And then he tousled Madison’s hair, nodded to Kendra and the dog, and left the house.

  “Are we going to see the cowboy man on Saturday?” Madison asked eagerly. Once again, it struck Kendra that, for a four-year-old, the child didn’t miss much.

  “Yes,” Kendra said, setting the salad bowl in the center of the table and then pouring milk for herself and Madison. Daisy curled up on her dog bed in the corner, rested her muzzle on her forepaws, and rolled her lively brown eyes from Madison to Kendra and back again. “The whole town gets together every year to spruce the place up for the rodeo and the carnival. Lots of people like to visit the Pioneer Cemetery while they’re here, and we like it to look presentable, so you and I and Hutch will be helping out there. After the work is done, there’s always a picnic, and games for the kids to play.”

  “Games?” Madison was intrigued. “What kind of games?”

  “Sack races.” Kendra smiled, remembering happy times. “Things like that. There are even prizes.”

  “What’s a sack race?” Madison pursued, a little frown creasing the alabaster skin between her eyebrows.

  Kendra explained about stepping into a feed sack, holding it at waist level and hopping toward the finish line. She didn’t mention the three-legged race, not wanting to describe that, too, but she smiled at the memory of herself and Joslyn tied together at the ankles and laughing hysterically when they lost their balance and tumbled into the venerable cemetery grass.

  “And there are prizes?” Madison prompted.

  Kendra nodded. “I won a doll once. She had a real camera hanging around her neck by a plastic strap. I still have her, somewhere.”

  Madison’s eyes were huge. “Wow,” she said. “There were cameras when you were a little girl?”

  Kendra laughed. “Yes,” she replied, “there were cameras. There were cars, too, and airplanes and even TVs.”

  Madison pondered all this, the turning gears in her little brain practically visible behind her forehead. “Wow,” she repeated in awe.

  After supper, Madison had her bath and put on her pajamas, and Kendra popped a favorite DVD of an animated movie into the player attached to the living room TV.

  Madison snuggled on the floor with Daisy, one arm flung companionably across the small dog’s gleaming back, and the two of them were quickly absorbed in the on-screen story.

  Kendra, relieved that she wouldn’t have to sit through the movie for what must have been the seventy-second time, set up her laptop on the freshly cleared kitchen table and booted it up.

  She’d surf the web for a while, she decided, and see if there were any for-sale-by-owner listings posted for the Parable/Three Trees area. She was, after all, a working real estate broker, and sometimes a well-placed phone call to said owners would produce a new client. Most folks didn’t realize all that was entailed in selling a property themselves—title searches and tax liens were only some of the snags they might run into.

  Alas, despite her good intentions, Kendra ended up running a search on Hutch Carmody instead, using the key word wedding.

  The page that came up might as well have been called “We Hate Hutch.”

  Kendra found herself in the odd position of wanting to defend him—and furiously—as she looked at the pictures.

  Brylee, the discarded bride, heartbroken and furious in her grandmother’s wedding gown.

  Hutch, standing straight and tall and obviously miserable midway down the aisle, guests gawking on either side as he held up both hands in a gesture that plainly said, “Hold everything.”

  The condolence party over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, Brylee wearing a sad expression and a T-shirt that said Men Suck.

  Beware, murmure
d a voice in the back of Kendra’s mind.

  But even then she knew she wouldn’t heed her own warning.

  After all, what could happen in broad daylight, in a cemetery, with Madison and half the county right there?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “DOES THIS SEEM a little weird to you?” Kendra asked Joslyn on Saturday morning as they helped Opal and a dozen other women set out tons of home-prepared food on the picnic tables at Pioneer Cemetery. “Holding what amounts to a party in a graveyard, I mean?”

  Joslyn, who looked as though she might be having trouble keeping her center of gravity balanced, smiled and plunked herself down on one of the benches while the cheerful work went on around her. “I think it’s one of the best things about small towns,” she replied. “The way life and death are integrated—after all, they’re part of the same cycle, aren’t they? You can’t have one without the other.”

  Thoughtful, Kendra scanned the surrounding area for Madison, something that came automatically to her now, and found her and Daisy industriously “helping” Hutch, Shea and several of the older girl’s friends from school pull weeds around a nearby scattering of very old graves. The water tower loomed in the distance, with its six-foot stenciled letters reading “Parable,” its rickety ladders and its silent challenge to every new generation of teenagers: Climb me.

  “I guess you’re right,” Kendra said very quietly, though by then the actual substance of her friend’s remark had essentially slipped her mind. An instant later, though, at some small sound—a gasp, maybe—she turned to look straight at Joslyn.

  Joslyn sat with one hand splayed against either side of her copiously distended stomach, her eyes huge with delighted alarm. “I think it’s time,” she said in a joyous whisper.

  “Oh, my God,” Kendra replied, instantly panicked, stopping herself just short of putting a hand to her mouth.

  Opal stepped up, exuding a take-charge attitude. “Now everybody, just stay calm,” she commanded. “Babies are born every second of every day in every part of the world, and this is going to turn out just fine.”

  “G-get Slade,” Joslyn managed, smiling and wincing at the same time. “Please.”