“You had a good visit in Fort Worth?” she asked, walking in stocking feet toward the small living room. He followed, choosing an ottoman across from where she settled on the couch. “With your college friend, Phil?”
“Yes. I got to see his granddaughter baptized.” Matt watched as an orange cat appeared from nowhere and jumped up onto the couch beside Kate. It had at best half of a tail.
“Cat versus ambulance,” she explained, stroking his whitewashed chin.
Matt hid his wince, hoping Kate wasn’t remembering how he’d run over her cat all those years ago. Angry, drunk. It was a reminder of why he was here. Thank you, Lord. I hear you.
“I wanted you to know,” he began with his heart in his throat, “that I’ve been attending services at the church where the AA meetings are held. Good Shepherd. It’s been a help for me in a lot of ways. I’ve been sober for nearly eight months now—237 days as of this morning, to be exact.” He held his breath, watched his daughter’s eyes.
“I’m glad for you,” she said, clearly uncomfortable. “But you don’t need to tell me any of that.”
“I do.” Matt tightened his fingers around the solid warmth of the daisy mug. Reminded himself that by unexpected grace he now had a father’s encouragement. All things were possible. “I do need to tell you, Katy. That’s why I came to Texas.”
“If this is part of that twelve-step make-things-right pledge, skip me. I don’t need to hear it. We’re good.”
Matt sighed, said the words that pierced his heart. “We’re not good, Katy. We’re strangers. It’s killing me that I caused it to happen.”
She closed her eyes, but he kept talking. Had to.
“When your mother got sick, I couldn’t handle it. She was the strong one, the one with faith. The heart of our family. I didn’t trust myself to fill that void.” Matt set his coffee down and leaned forward, hands clasped. “It’s no excuse. Worse than that, it was deeply wrong—because of you. I checked out and left you to deal with it. Sixteen years old and forced to be the adult because I wouldn’t step up.”
Matt saw Kate hug her knees, eyes downcast. Curled up like a lost child. His vision blurred with tears. “And afterward, when you needed me most, I drank myself numb. I was selfish, heartless, and undeserving.” He swallowed, realized his hands were trembling. “I’m sorry, Katy. It’s no wonder you ran away.”
Her chin lifted—a lost child finding strength in familiar defiance. “I can’t talk about that. I won’t.”
“I’m only trying to say that I understand—”
“You can’t possibly.” Her defiant expression twisted with pain.
“I . . .” Matt scrambled for words. Please, help . . . “I only meant that I’m sorry I caused it to happen. And I regret not telling you that after you came back.” His voice choked. “I searched for you, Katy. I drove every street in Sunnyvale and then streets in every town within a hundred miles. I knocked on doors, made calls. Posted flyers. Hounded the police. And when you finally called to say you were fine and not to look for you, I checked the number and flew to Las Vegas. Searched there. You’re my only child. My baby. I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving you alone somewhere—”
“I can’t do this.” Kate stood, her face drained of color. “I can’t.”
“Kate . . .” Matt rose, walked toward her. “I love you, honey. I want a chance to be part of your life. I want to be there for you if you need—”
“No.” She raised her palms. “Don’t. I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to happen.” Kate’s eyes met his, the raw misery in them ripping at his heart. “It’s good that you’re better, Dad. That you’re sober and you’ve found . . . God. It’s good, I guess. But it’s too late for this. I don’t need anything from you now. Can’t you see that? I don’t need anybody.”
- + -
“Yes, ma’am,” Wes told Amelia Braxton, hoping his finger wasn’t permanently stuck in the handle of the dainty flowered cup. “Best tea I’ve ever had.”
The elderly woman’s barely visible brows rose, and he hurried to amend his compliment. He turned to Nancy Rae, sitting on the porch swing, wearing a cherry-print dress and something that looked like an old Pilgrim hat. Only faint scratches gave evidence to her near miss with the business end of a shotgun. “Thank you, too, Miss Nancy,” Wes said, fairly sure that Hershey, wriggling beside him in hopes of a cookie, would laugh out loud if he could. “It was very nice of you to invite me to tea.”
Amelia giggled. “She thinks you have beautiful eyes. So do I. And good manners.” She peered at Wes through lenses finely dusted with powdered sugar. “Your mother did a fine job of raising you up. Manners, Sunday school, music lessons. Yes indeed. . . . But we hardly see Lee Ann these days. You must tell her to come by for tea. We miss her.”
“I’ll do that,” Wes promised, wondering if anyone really did miss his mother. Twenty-seven years was a long time.
Framed photographs of his mother had been gradually stored away at the Tanner home. They were replaced by images of Miranda and Paul, Wes with his adopted brother and sister, the grandbaby, countless snapshots of foster children—and horses, of course. But there were still some remnants of Lee Ann. A redbud tree she planted when they were laying the house’s foundation, and the Bless this Home stencil she’d sponged over the kitchen sink. Miranda had carefully taped it off and brushed around it the times they repainted the walls. After all these years, there wasn’t much of anything left. Except the questions in Wes’s heart.
“Excuse me, Mr. Tanner.” The newly hired caregiver smiled at him from the screen door. The scent of cookies wafted onto the porch. “Mrs. Braxton and Miss Lily have doctors’ appointments at two thirty—” she glanced at Amelia—“and Nancy Rae wants to stop by the grocery.”
“Of course.” Wes twisted his finger in the cup handle, freed it. “I promised I’d have a look around the grove to see that things are cleaned up. I’ll make sure the horse trailer isn’t blocking your car, and—”
“‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’” Amelia raised a finger. “That’s what you played for your mother at the recital. She sang along to help you when you forgot that last verse. ‘Why does the lamb love Mary so?’” Amelia sang, her voice thin, quavery. “‘Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.’” She sighed, shaking her head. “It made her cry.”
Wes stared down at his fingers, heart in his throat. He’d forgotten.
- + -
Kate ran her fingers through her damp hair, stubbornly wayward after a shampoo, and then frowned at her image in the foggy mirror. Even scrubbed clean, she looked like someone who’d just sent her father packing. After he’d poured out his heart, saying what she’d yearned to hear for so many years. “I searched for you, Katy.”
She turned away, sick of what she saw reflected in her own eyes. Sick at heart . . . of who I am.
She zipped her jeans and reached for her thermal tee with guilt hissing in her head. How could she let her father talk about newfound faith and family—“You’re my only child. My baby.”—after what she’d done? He’d searched Las Vegas for her. Kate’s stomach twisted. What if he’d seen her that desperate day she was seven months pregnant and snatched a half-eaten cheeseburger off a casino’s smoky bar? No father could love a daughter like that.
He said he wanted to be part of her life. What if he knew . . . I walked away from my baby?
She pulled on her boots, grabbed a quilted vest, then yanked her purse from the vanity, avoiding her reflection.
She couldn’t stay in this house whether Roady was here or not. Right now his company wasn’t enough. There were two daisy coffee mugs on the counter and a cross hidden in the closet. Oil and water. Honesty and lies. They didn’t mix. And Kate couldn’t stand the way they made her feel.
She opened the door, car keys in hand. She’d gone AWOL from work and it was well past lunchtime. Chuy’s, Shady Grove, veggie empanadas at Flipnotics? Her Austin neighborhood promised an endless supply of food . . . to fill a hole in her heart?
Not everything was possible. But she was going. She’d slid into the Hyundai when her phone buzzed in her purse. She wouldn’t talk to her father. But she’d told the hospital to call if there was an emergency. She pulled the phone out and her eyes widened.
“Barrett?”
“Hi,” he said, somehow making a two-letter word stretch to a syrupy drawl. “I hear you escaped from the workaday world.”
“Appointment,” she fibbed.
“I thought maybe we should have dinner tonight.”
Her heart froze. “Did they find Ava Smith?”
“No.” His careless laugh made her skin crawl. “Nothing like that, Kate. You’re far too serious.”
Too serious? An abandoned baby was too serious? A threat to her job was something to be taken lightly? Her fingers clenched the phone. “Then why should we meet?”
“Because I like you.”
She pulled the phone away, grimaced.
“Kate?”
“I’m here,” she managed despite a troubling memory of that ill-fated date in San Antonio. With a man currently wearing a jailhouse jumpsuit.
“Officially I make it a rule not to become personally involved with anyone even remotely connected to a case. But—” the unnerving chortle repeated—“you are far too tempting, Kate Callison. I’m betting that you feel the connection too. We should pursue this.”
Pursue? “No. I don’t think . . .” She flailed, wanting to stomp him like a scorpion but terrified by what he could do to her career—and her flimsy hope for a new beginning. “I’m not feeling well,” she said finally. Truer than anything today. Other than in Las Vegas, she’d never felt more ill. “I can’t go to dinner.”
“Ah, I’m wounded. Rain check, then.”
Kate sighed. The continuing Texas drought gave further proof that God had no mercy for her.
When she finally put the car in gear and pulled out onto the road, her appetite was gone but not her need to run away. Kate had no clue where she was going. Or what she needed. She only knew that going back—even to a house that had begun to feel like home—wasn’t something she could do right now. She needed comfort beyond what food could offer; she needed to feel that she wasn’t the woman Barrett Lyon thought she was. She wanted to feel . . . “Smart, tough when you have to be . . . funny, caring . . . beautiful.” The words came back, washing over her like a balm.
She pulled to the curb. Then lifted her cell phone from her purse and scrolled to the number.
“Kate?” Wes’s voice sounded more than a little surprised.
“I took the day off,” she told him as if that were reason enough for calling.
There was a pause. “Did your father find you?”
She’d guessed it, of course. “Yes.”
“I meddled.”
“Yes.” Kate heard him sigh. “Look . . . I get that your sense of family would have to be skewed. You’re all so close-woven, this fuzzy-warm blanket that’s, like, generations thick. I’m not angry that you gave my father the address. Since he didn’t have it, you can guess that it’s not a Hallmark movie on our side. But you were probably still hoping for that.”
“I—”
“Admit it,” she pressed. “You were. You were hoping for a scene where he shows up and I fling my arms around him and cry. And then he calls me ‘baby girl’ and I call him ‘Daddy’ . . .” She swallowed past a sudden lump. “And all is forgiven and we start making Thanksgiving plans.”
“What did happen?”
“I gave him instant coffee and told him to drive safely. And I told you I don’t cry.” Kate watched the cars pass by for a moment. “I’m not like you, Wes. Or Sunni Sprague.”
“I don’t expect that. Hey, don’t you remember, that night at the lake . . .” His voice lowered and he sounded so close she expected to feel the warmth of his breath. “When I said that I think you’re amazing and—”
“Where are you?”
“At the Braxton ranch. Why?”
“I was going for a drive.” Kate’s heartbeat began to thud in her ears. “I thought maybe I’d come out your way. If it’s okay, I mean.”
“Sure. The caregiver took the ladies to an appointment and I promised to check the fences while they’re gone. It’ll take another hour or so.”
“I’ll come there.”
“This is out in the middle of no—”
“I have GPS.”
She swore that his laugh tickled her ear.
“So you’ll need to give me the address . . . ,” she prompted.
Once he had, Kate disconnected from the call. She sat there for a moment, stunned by what she’d done. Then she began tapping the Braxton address into the GPS, a gift from her father when she left California. He’d preloaded it with the Sunnyvale address designated as “Home.” Though neither of them really expected she’d be back.
She watched the colored map come up, the display of the route to the rural destination and her expected time of arrival. Kate shook her head. There was no map that could tell her where she was going with this unexpected meeting. She didn’t know that herself. She only knew that hearing Wes’s voice had erased some of the pain of her day. And that she’d needed the response he gave when she said she wasn’t like Wes or Sunni: “I don’t expect that.” It made Kate feel almost like she was okay. Acceptable. Despite everything. And that she wasn’t like Barrett Lyon, no matter how many times he told her she was.
Dinner with the hospital attorney or checking fences in the middle of nowhere—with the man he’d dismissed as an “Eagle Scout well digger.” She smiled at her choice. Then started the engine and let the GPS lead her to Wes Tanner.
“HEY THERE.” Wes watched as Kate negotiated the rock path to where he sat at the wheel of the Braxtons’ old Jeep. She was wearing boots, jeans, a green quilted vest over a thermal T-shirt—and yet another inscrutable expression. Still, Wes wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anyone who looked more in need of a hug. Was that why she’d come? He wasn’t about to risk a guess.
“Is that an old Willys?” she asked, eyes widening.
“A 1950. Original dust.” He glanced to where Hershey, tongue lolling, had wedged himself behind the Jeep’s seats. “Dog hair’s more recent.”
“Amazing.” Kate shook her head. “It looks like something out of an old M*A*S*H rerun.”
“Climb in.” Wes patted the sun-worn passenger seat. “I still have one more thing to check. Ride along with me.” The image of Kate climbing into Lyon’s Mercedes rose. And now she’s here. Despite the irony, he wasn’t going to question it.
“I’m game,” she said, hauling herself into the seat beside him. She reached back to give Hershey a pet; then her eyes met Wes’s. There was discomfort in her expression. “I needed to get away. The walls were closing in.”
“No walls here,” he said, flattening the clutch pedal as the Jeep’s engine rumbled to life. “Or doors either. That’s a warning. Hang on.” Wes jiggled the gearshift, shoved it into first as Kate took hold of the grab bar. No luxury ride. He could imagine Lyon’s smirk. The Jeep lurched forward, tires grinding the chalk-soft caliche rock.
“I saw the horse trailer.” Kate raised her voice over the engine noise.
“Only Clementine. I tied her down in the grove and left her with a bucket of sweet feed. After what happened down there, I figured she needed to replace those memories with some good ones.” Maybe we all need that.
“You come here a lot?” Kate touched a fingertip to the faded black-and-white snapshot that had been tucked into the Jeep’s windshield frame for as long as Wes could remember. A wedding photo of Amelia and her late husband. “To help the Braxtons?”
Wes nodded. “I do what I can. They’re neighbors. But we train here too—search and rescue. I did my survival night here.”
“Survival?”
“Part of the FUNSAR training—fundamentals of search and rescue. The trainee is left alone in a wilderness area for a full day and night. With his twenty-four-hour pack—” W
es pointed toward his pack, now serving as Hershey’s pillow—“and nothing else.” He saw the concern on Kate’s face. “Monitored from a distance by the team, but no contact. It’s a confidence builder; you learn to trust that you have everything you need to survive.” Wes smiled. “All the right stuff.”
Kate’s stomach rumbled. She laughed. “I’m guessing there’s no cupcakes in there.”
“Sorry. GPS, Leatherman tool, headlamp, whistle, space blanket, rain cover . . . tape, hand and foot warmers, water bottle, sunblock, first aid kit.”
“So did you?” Kate asked. “Have the ‘right stuff’?”
“Guess so. I’m here now,” Wes told her, suddenly hoping he had the right stuff for what today held as well. What did Kate expect from him? He returned his gaze to the road in time to avoid a clump of prickly pear cactus. “We’re almost there now.”
“Where?”
“Right . . .” Wes slowed the Jeep, pointed toward a stand of scrubby trees and the tumble of stones that was once a cattle shed. “There.”
“What is it?”
“An old abandoned well.” Wes paused, then added, “And the site of a rescue.”
- + -
“But it’s just some old boards on the ground.” Kate watched as Wes tested the sun-bleached wood with his boot; it responded with a hollow thunk. “I thought wells were sort of . . .”
There was amusement in his expression. “Stone wishing wells with a wooden bucket and shingled roof?”
“Maybe.” Kate decided he didn’t need to know that the Callisons’ elderly neighbor had one exactly like that in Sunnyvale. Guarded by a tacky garden gnome—not too effectively, since the well was always filled with pennies, Popsicle sticks, and probably some LEGOs, tossed in by every kid on the block. “But I will bow to your obvious expertise. Given the Got Water? shirt and engineering degree.” She watched as Wes knelt down, inspected the well cover. The afternoon sun splashed over his silky dark hair. “What did you mean when you said it’s the site of a rescue?”
Wes stood. “This well was drilled way back, one of the few that wasn’t my grandfather’s. There was a cattle shed here once, a watering tank.” He tapped the toe of his boot against the wood again. “The Braxtons built the ranch house where it is now, with a new well. This one was covered up—or so they thought.”
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