by Lisa Jackson
No, in her mind’s eye she saw Faye as she had been the night she’d left: fearful, weak, and trembling.
You should never have gone. Never left her alone with that maniac. You were the stronger one. Always. You left her to get pregnant and bring another girl into that hell of a marriage.
Rationally, she knew she was being too hard on herself; that she’d been the child whom her mother was supposed to protect. Still, of the two of them, Shiloh was the one made of tougher stuff.
She flashed onto the day that her mother had married Larimer Tate, how happy and full of hope Faye had been, her blond hair twisted into a chignon, her dress a gossamer frothy ivory, her face filled with expectation. At sixteen, Shiloh had known the man was bad news, but Faye, forever a romantic dreamer, had thought Tate would turn their luck around, help save the ranch, help her deal with her headstrong, wayward daughter.
What a joke.
Shiloh set her jaw and felt the sting of tears.
She’d always thought there would be time to repair their broken emotional fences, to reconnect with her mother. Now, it seemed, it was too late.
Chapter 4
The hospital was built on a hillside where once a strip mall from the fifties had been perched. Constructed of stone and glass and flanked by a wide parking lot, Prairie Creek Hospital was small by big city standards but a major upgrade from the clinic that had serviced the area for previous generations. EMERGENCY ENTRANCE was clearly marked in red letters, and as Shiloh grabbed her purse and swung out of her vehicle, she noticed a helicopter landing pad close by.
Beau Tate’s truck was parked haphazardly, taking up two spaces, but he and Morgan were nowhere in sight.
Already inside.
Shiloh made her way to the entrance.
A double set of automatic doors whispered open, and she had to dodge an elderly man in a wheelchair. In a bathrobe and slippers, clutching a plastic bag of belongings, the patient barely glanced at Shiloh as he was pushed to a waiting vehicle. Inside, she spied Tate talking to a woman seated behind a large circular desk. Next to him, bouncing nervously from one foot to the other, Morgan was fighting tears.
As Shiloh strode to the desk she heard. “… sorry. Nothing I can do.” The receptionist, whose ID tag read NINA CORTEZ, was petite and sharp-featured, her black hair shot with strands of silver and tucked into a neat bun at the base of her skull. She was also wearing a practiced smile that didn’t quite touch her eyes.
“I want to see my mom!” Morgan insisted, alternately glaring at the woman and glancing beseechingly up at Beau.
“I think it’s important,” he said.
“I understand, but the doctors are with her now.” Nina didn’t waver.
“I’m Faye Tate’s daughter,” Shiloh said, walking up to them. As the next of kin and an adult, maybe she could make an inroad past the roadblock of Ms. Cortez. “Shiloh Silva.”
Nina’s intractable expression cracked a little, and her gaze shifted, her dark eyes narrowing. “Shiloh Silva?” she repeated. “Wait a minute. I think I read about you …” Disbelief clouded her features. “I thought—”
“I’m her daughter too!” Morgan interjected, shooting an angry look at Shiloh.
“I understand,” Nina said to the girl, but her eyes were on Shiloh. “Right now no one can see her. Not yet. If you’ll all just take a seat, someone will be out to update you shortly.”
Morgan was having none of it. “But—”
“It’s no use, Morgan. We’ll have to be patient,” Beau said, and with a big hand placed over her shoulder, he effectively guided his distraught sister from the desk.
Nina said, “You’re one of those girls who went missing, what, about ten years ago?”
“Fifteen,” Shiloh corrected.
“I thought … the whole town thought you were dead.” Nina was sizing her up, mentally trying to connect the image of the woman standing in front of her to pictures that had been all over the newspapers years before.
“Not everyone.” Shiloh didn’t elaborate. Her mother had known she was alive, and possibly a handful of other people.
Nina obviously didn’t approve.
Shiloh didn’t care. “Look, I just want to see my mom and make sure my sister sees her, too.”
The receptionist’s face returned to its original bland expression. “You’ll have to wait with the others. But if you’re the legally responsible party, you need to go to the next desk and fill out some paperwork, insurance information, medical history.”
“I don’t know if I have any information that will—”
“Right there,” Nina said, pointing emphatically to the next desk. “Rebecca will help you. Now, next in line, please.” Nina rained her smile on the woman behind Shiloh, a twentyish mother holding a whimpering baby.
Fine, Shiloh thought and, with a last glance at Beau and Morgan, now seated on the bland chairs flanking the windows, made her way to the next desk where blond, cheery Rebecca Aldridge was ready with forms and questions that Shiloh had no way to fill out or answer.
*
The wait was excruciating. Sitting in the uncomfortable chairs, staring at the clock, holding Morgan and trying not to show his irritation at Shiloh, Beau tried to hang onto his patience. Both he and Shiloh had been to the desk several times, asking for information, and had been put off each time.
“I want Mom,” Morgan whispered as she sat next to him. “Why won’t they let me see her?”
“Rules,” he said.
Her face crumpled. “But—”
“I know.” His heart tore a little bit. Why the hell wasn’t someone giving them an update? He was about to storm to the information desk again when a doctor approached. Tall and reed-thin, in green scrubs, he paused only to confirm with the desk before heading in their direction. His face was somber, his eyes, behind rimless glasses, dark and serene.
“Ms. Tate?” he asked Shiloh as they all stood.
She didn’t correct him. “I’m Faye Tate’s daughter. Shiloh.”
“Me too,” Morgan said, fear showing in her eyes. “I’m her daughter too.”
The doctor’s sober gaze shifted to Morgan for just a second, and he paused a moment before addressing Shiloh directly. “I’m Dr. Sellers. I was your mother’s ER physician.”
Was. Past tense. The word rang through Beau’s brain. He braced himself and felt, rather than saw, Shiloh do the same.
“I’m sorry. We did everything we could, but your mother was too compromised when she came into the hospital. We tried to revive her, but it couldn’t be done.”
Beside him, Shiloh took in a sharp breath.
“But she’s okay?” Morgan demanded, hearing the unspoken message but refusing to believe. “She’ll be okay, right?” Tears began drizzling down her cheeks as she turned to him. “Mom’s sick, but she’s going to be okay.”
He put his arm around her. “I’m afraid not, honey.”
Morgan protested, “But she has to come home, she has to—”
“She was just too sick.”
“No!” Morgan fell into broken sobs.
Beau turned away from Shiloh and guided Morgan toward the door. She clung to him and wept against his neck. Hot, pained tears. His heart ached for his sister, but he couldn’t stay in the hospital a second more. There was just no reason. Let Shiloh work things out with the hospital accounting department, let her decide what would happen to her mother’s remains, let her deal with the mortuary. For now, he needed to get his broken twelve-year-old sister home.
Not a whole lot else mattered.
*
By the time Shiloh drove back to her mother’s home, it was dusk, the sun no more than a brilliant glow beyond the western ridge, the first stars winking high in a lavender sky. She’d rolled down the driver’s-side window, allowing the warm Wyoming air to tangle her hair and kiss her cheek. It had been a long, emotionally wrought day, with hours in the ER, then more time spent making funeral arrangements before meeting with Faye’s lawyer, all
the while dealing with the brutal fact that her mother was dead. As in forever.
Heavy bands seemed to tighten over her chest, and she found it hard to believe that she hadn’t made it in time to say “good-bye” or “I love you.”
Fingers clutching the wheel, eyes squinted into the gathering night, Shiloh felt a growing numbness deep inside. She’d not been close to her mother, not for years, but the finality of Faye’s passing, her death, hit her harder than she’d imagined it would. A small part of her had irrationally believed that Faye Renee Wilson Silva Tate would always be there for her. Oh, maybe not just around the corner, but always just a phone call away. The fact that this wasn’t the case, that Faye had died, was a shock. Already there was a hole in her life, an empty space she’d never thought she’d feel. Apparently just knowing that Faye was living here had been emotionally settling for Shiloh.
“Don’t be such a basket case,” she muttered under her breath as she eased into the corner of the lane leading to the ranch house.
What now? She couldn’t help but wonder. The future stretched out before her, in many ways no different than it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but in other ways it was vastly changed.
She was now responsible for her sister, a girl she barely knew. Morgan. She’d heard Morgan was headstrong and smart, and, right now, she was shattered, her life imploded. It was up to Shiloh to provide some stability.
Not exactly her strong suit.
Then again, neither had it been Faye’s.
But that was just the beginning of the life changes. Shiloh would also have to deal with her stepbrother, the son of a man she detested, a cowboy who was outwardly sexy, she’d give him that, but inwardly, she suspected he was as distant and cold as a Canadian blizzard. Then again, he seemed to care for Morgan and the little girl for him. So there might be a chance that Beau Tate’s chest wasn’t empty, that somewhere deep inside he actually had a beating heart. Not that it mattered. She’d deal with him, heart or no. She had to. She had already stopped by Faye’s attorney’s office, paid a past-due bill to the taciturn receptionist, and gotten a copy of the will from C. Lewis Cranston. Faye’s meager belongings were in trust for her underage daughter, and the kicker was that Faye had appointed both Shiloh and Beau to be Morgan’s guardians. Together, as each was related equally to their sister.
“Swell,” she said under her breath, the beginning of a headache starting to throb at the base of her skull. “Just damned peachy.” Her SUV bounced along the rutted drive, weeds scratching the undercarriage. Shiloh had only planned to be in Prairie Creek a week, maybe less, though she’d made arrangements to have her job in Montana covered for longer. She was a horse trainer and worked out of a ranch near Grizzly Falls in the Bitterroots and had found someone to help her out. However, she doubted Carlos would appreciate her being gone indefinitely as her absence doubled his workload at the Rocking M.
And then she’d have to deal with the police and the people who thought she’d vanished along with Rachel Byrd and Erin Higgins. Another girl, Courtney Pearson, had disappeared soon after the others, just before the monster had attacked Ruthie. Shiloh winced at the thought. They should have known better than to sneak out at that time. By going to the pond, had they inadvertently set up Ruthie’s rape? Had Ruth’s rapist been involved in those other girls’ disappearances, or were they runaways, as she’d always believed? These same torturous thoughts had dogged her for fifteen years.
She sighed and brought herself back to the present and the gathering gloaming. The lights in the house had been turned on, warm patches of yellow glowing over the darkening landscape. The dog, Rambo, was lying on the porch and lifted his head, perking his ears and giving a soft “woof,” announcing her arrival as she parked near Beau’s beat-up truck.
Cutting the engine, the headlights of her Explorer dimming, she sat in the dark for a few minutes, content to stare through the bug-spattered windshield at the coming night. She thought of Kat and Ruthie, girls she’d steadfastly pushed from her mind, but who had haunted her dreams, the nightmares that punctuated her sleep.
She yanked her keys from the ignition.
She was out of the cab and walking up the path to the house before she noticed Beau seated on the darkened porch, his hips resting on the railing. “’Bout time you showed up,” he drawled.
“I’ve been busy.” She couldn’t keep the snap from her voice. “You left me to deal with all the paperwork.”
“Had my hands full.”
She couldn’t argue the point and instead asked, more calmly, “How is she?”
“Not great, as you can imagine.” He turned his head, stared across the shadowy fields. “She’s resting.” He frowned, dark eyebrows drawing together. “Exhausted. Can’t say as I blame her.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s gonna be rough for a while.”
Maybe longer. “Do you know anything about Faye’s will?” she asked and saw him scowl.
“Nope.”
“Then you probably don’t realize that you’ve been named as Morgan’s guardian.”
“Is that so?” He didn’t seem surprised.
“You and me.”
His head whipped around so fast it startled her, and even in the darkness she felt the intensity of his gaze drilling into her. “You and me,” he repeated. “Both of us together?” He sounded about as thrilled as she was.
“That’s the way it’s laid out in the will. Morgan will inherit everything when she turns eighteen. Until then, you and I are supposed to take care of her.”
“Well, now, how’s that supposed to work, seein’ as you don’t live anywhere around here and Morgan and I do?”
“I guess I’ll have to move,” she said, though she didn’t mean it. She just said it.
“Well, I guess you will.” He didn’t bother hiding the disdain in his voice. “Or more likely, I could petition the court to be her single guardian, and you can go off and hide again, pretend you don’t exist or whatever it is you’ve been doing for the past decade or so.”
Shiloh gritted her teeth. “I’m not abandoning her.”
“You don’t even know her, Shiloh.”
“But I will.”
“Don’t you have a life somewhere, maybe a husband or a kid or a job?”
“A job, yes.” Why was she even having this conversation? “Look, for now, I’m staying, that’s all.”
“For now,” he repeated knowingly. He pushed himself off the railing and stood over her, a good head taller than she was. One long arm stretched toward the entrance to the house, where the screen was shut but the heavy wooden door was ajar. “That girl in there has been through a lot. She’s lost a father and now a mother, and she’s only twelve, so what’s not gonna happen on my watch is that she gets attached to someone who has no intention of sticking around. No more abandonment. Not from you. Not from anyone.”
Her back teeth ground together, and though he was intimidating, Shiloh wasn’t about to back down from Larimer Tate’s son, not the way she’d run from the old man. “That goes double for you. Morgan seems to have some attachment to you, so I expect you to stick by her and help out.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
They paused a moment, staring at each other like boxers in their corners. Then he extended his hand and gripped hers for a quick shake, surprising her. In the awkward aftermath, she headed inside to check on Morgan and tried to shake off the nagging feeling that she’d just made a deal with the devil.
Chapter 5
Morgan had claimed the bedroom that had belonged to Shiloh when she’d lived here, so after Shiloh quietly checked on her sleeping sister, assured that Morgan was curled up atop the covers of the very same twin bed that had been Shiloh’s, she found a quilt in the closet and tucked it around the girl. Morgan, exhausted, barely moved. The girl’s face looked pale against the pillow case, her hair a riot of untamed curls falling across her cheeks.
Sleep tight, Shiloh thought but didn’t utter the words. Her throat was suddenly thick as she realized the girl was an orphan, as was Shiloh. Morgan was alone aside from Shiloh and Beau Tate.
All in all, it was going to be a difficult situation.
For all of them.
She turned to find Beau standing in the doorway. He was silently observing her, as if he couldn’t quite trust her. She couldn’t help but bristle and didn’t say a word as she passed by him and walked the few short steps from the hallway to the main living area, a space that hadn’t grown cozier, or cleaner, or more tended over the years. If anything, the living room, dining area, and kitchen seemed drearier than ever, the walls dingy, the furniture sagging, the lingering scents of bacon grease and Faye’s last cigarette still faintly noticeable.
Shiloh was reminded of her own childhood in this dreary, unhappy home, and her guts tightened. But Larimer, the brutal tyrant, was long gone, along with Faye, his dutiful if long-suffering wife, and now the house was empty—devoid of life, rough as it had been for Shiloh.
She heard Beau close Morgan’s bedroom door, the latch clicking before he walked into the living room.
“You’re staying here?” He pointed a finger at the floor to indicate the house.
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
“You thought maybe I was going to book a room at Prairie Creek’s answer to the Ritz?”
He snorted, as close to a laugh as he was going to come. “Maybe stay with a friend.”
“I don’t have any friends here,” she said, and in her mind’s eye she saw Katrina Starr as she had been: short, athletic, tough. A cop’s kid. And then there was Ruthie, with her pale, terrified China-doll face. They’d undoubtedly changed since then, were probably married and had kids, maybe moved away. Ruthie most likely went by Ruth now that she was all grown up. Who knew? Certainly not Shiloh. She hadn’t kept up with them. Or anyone. By design. That had been the plan, the oath she’d sworn, and she’d stuck to it, never once asking her mother about the other two girls, cutting them out of her life completely, never expecting to see either of them again.
