Big Sky Secrets

by Linda Lael Miller

  Since she’d had the same thought—without the “we” part, of course, because she’d never considered taking Quinn along, not even for a nanosecond—Ria chose her words carefully.

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” she finally responded, her tone both firm and gentle. “For one thing, we don’t have horses, and for another, we’d be more hindrance than help, particularly if we wound up getting lost ourselves and thus compounding the problem.”

  “We could take the car,” Quinn suggested.

  Ria had to shoot that idea down, too, of course, but she felt bad about doing it. Quinn was so earnest, so ready to jump in and do what she could to help, and those were qualities that ought to be encouraged, at least under ordinary circumstances.

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t work, either,” she explained patiently. “If Landry’s truck wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go—hence, the horse—and Zane is out looking for him, also on horseback, there’s no reason to think a compact car is up to the challenge.”

  Quinn watched Ria closely, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Do you think he’s all right? Landry, I mean?”

  “He’s a grown man, honey,” she reminded the girl gently, aware that she was whistling in the dark, just as Zane might have been doing earlier. “He’s strong and he’s smart and he knows the terrain. He’ll be fine.”

  Quinn seemed at least partially convinced.

  Now, Ria thought, if she could only convince herself.

  Quinn bit her lower lip. “About that internet thing—”

  “That,” Ria said, meaning it, “is not important.” She smiled. “Why don’t you turn in early tonight, sweetheart? You must have been up late last night, and you worked very hard today.”

  At first, the girl looked as though she might resist the idea, but, finally, she nodded in acquiescence. “I’ll take Bones outside to do his thing first,” she said. At the door, the little dog at her heels, she turned to look back at Ria. “What about you? Are you going to go to bed early, too?”

  Ria hesitated, then, too tired to dodge the truth, she shook her head. “Not for a while yet,” she said, smiling very slightly. “I never got around to having that cup of tea I promised myself, remember?”

  Quinn probably wasn’t appeased, but she sighed, nodded again, went outside with Bones.

  They both returned a few minutes later. Quinn’s voice was soft, even fragile, as she asked, “If—if something happens—you’ll wake me up, won’t you?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen, Quinn. I’m sure Landry is fine.” Even if he wasn’t, Ria reflected, trying not to let her lingering concerns show in her face, she probably wouldn’t know about it before morning, at the earliest.

  “But if something does—?” Quinn swallowed. “I’d hate to wake up in the morning, thinking everything was okay, and then find out—well—that it isn’t.”

  “I’ll let you know, I promise,” Ria said, very quietly.

  Quinn mulled that over, then yawned. “Okay,” she agreed, with the resilience of youth. Bones following behind her, a one-dog parade, Quinn stopped by the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth, paused in the doorway to offer a good-night and shut herself and her faithful companion away in the spare room.

  Ria knew she should take her own advice, go to bed, try to get some sleep.

  She also knew she wouldn’t so much as close her eyes.

  So she did night things, like shutting off most of the lights and making sure the doors were locked, brewed the long-delayed cup of tea and sat down in her rocking chair to keep her quiet vigil.

  * * *

  NO DOUBT DRAWN by Landry’s small bonfire, the blaze encircled by sooty stones that had probably been right there on that spot, a sandy cove in an arm of the Big Sky River, for a hundred years, minimum, Zane rode in sometime around midnight.

  He dismounted, leaving his horse next to Landry’s, above a fairly steep bank, where there was grass to graze on and a trickle of creek water meandering through. For a few minutes, Zane prowled around at the edge of the firelight, probably working the kinks out of his leg muscles.

  Typically, he said nothing. He was just there, which, with Zane, was a statement in itself. He’d always lived by the philosophy that what a man did said more about him than words ever could, no matter how eloquent those words might be.

  For Zane, home was Brylee, not any particular house, and he’d left her, in the middle of the night no less, to saddle up a horse and come looking for his brother. That conveyed a message that moved Landry, deep inside, and made the backs of his eyes prickle: Zane cared about him.

  But he wasn’t a man to make small talk.

  And that was fine with Landry, seated on a flat rock near the fire, silent as a totem pole or a cigar-store Indian, because he wasn’t much in the mood for palavering, either.

  Better to keep his mouth shut and be thought a fool, as the old saying went, than to speak up and remove all doubt.

  After a while, Zane ambled over to Landry’s fire and sat himself down on a log. He considered the low-burning blaze for a long time before he spoke, and when he did, his tone was tinged with frustration as well as concern.

  “Aren’t you too old to be running away from home, little brother?”

  A muscle bunched in Landry’s jaw, and he prodded the shrinking flames with a stick, stirring the embers, watching as sparks flew up in a small flurry, like so many fireflies, some winking out on the bank, some floating as far as the river, reflecting the stars, whispering ancient mysteries to itself as it passed.

  While Landry’s considerable pride would have had him deny that he was running from anybody or anything, he knew the lie would stick in his throat like a thistle ball if he tried to utter it, and Zane would have seen right through him anyhow.

  The brothers’ shared DNA and common history made it hard for either of them to hoodwink the other, no doubt about it, and that was exasperating, for Landry and Zane. They were so alike physically, in fact, that folks had taken them for twins when they were younger—a misconception they’d actively encouraged, and they were still mistaken for each other once in a while.

  Back when Zane was still making movies, Landry had often been approached by complete strangers, on the street, in restaurants, even at the gym, wanting his autograph or to take a “quick” picture with him. When explaining proved to be useless—or worse, a major disappointment to some hapless fan of Zane’s—Landry had stopped resisting, signed his brother’s name to table napkins, the backs of receipts and envelopes and flyers, anything that happened to be at hand, and smiled big for the camera.

  The process always took longer than it should have, maybe because it often meant posing for group shots, then with each individual member of the family or crew of friends, then with passersby who’d seen what was going on, recognized “Zane” and decided they needed pictures, too.

  Looking back, Landry chuckled gruffly at the recollection, shook his head.

  “I came out here to think,” he said, when he’d left Zane’s smart-ass question about running away dangle long enough.

  “Imagine that,” Zane remarked easily. “You, thinking, I mean.”

  Landry didn’t rise to the bait. He’d been the one to set up this camp, such as it was, and that made it his turf, at least for the time being, though it was hard to say whether the spot was on his part of the ranch or on Zane’s. The bottom line was, he hadn’t issued any invitations.

  Zane remained unruffled by Landry’s silence, as always. He just sat there, watching the fire, which was dwindling again, for lack of fuel, and kept his own counsel for a long time.

  Then, just when Landry was ready to extinguish the blaze by kicking plenty of sandy dirt over it, get back on his horse and go home, leaving Zane to sit there like a sphinx all night if he wanted to, Landry heard himself break the silence, a thing he had not intended to do.

  “Dad’s back,” he told Zane.

  “I know,” Zane answered easily, leaning forward to rest his
forearms on his thighs, fingers interlaced, hands suspended between his knees.

  Still another silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the fire, the chirp and click of insects and the comfortable sounds of two good horses, close by, content to nibble grass and wait patiently for whatever came next.

  “He was with Mom,” Landry finally ground out. “When she died, I mean.”

  “Unlike you and me,” Zane said quietly.

  “Unlike you and me,” Landry confirmed. He’d been in the middle of final exams when the end came for Maddie Rose, and Zane had probably been competing in some tin-buckle rodeo at the back end of nowhere.

  They both ruminated for a while.

  “Is that what’s been bothering you all this time?” Zane asked presently. “That neither of us knew how sick Mom was, or could have scraped together enough cash to go to her and say goodbye if we had?”

  “Hell, yes, it bothers me,” Landry said, testy now.

  “You think I felt any different?” Zane replied evenly.

  Landry swore under his breath. “How is it that we never talked about what happened?” he rasped. “It was as if we’d had some kind of falling-out—but damned if I can recall one.”

  Zane sighed, took off his hat, held it while he scratched the back of his head with the same hand. “If I had to hazard a guess at what went wrong between you and me,” he answered, at some length, “I’d say it was because we each decided we knew what the other thought without bothering to ask if we had it right.”

  “Here’s what I thought,” Landry said, pacing because he couldn’t stand still for another second, let alone sit. “I thought you were too damn busy chasing buckles and women to care if Mom was sick or well. If you had, you’d have bothered to check on her once in a while.”

  “I called Mom every other week,” Zane said mildly. He didn’t sound defensive, just tired. “She always told me she was doing just fine, and she sounded good, so I had no reason to think otherwise.”

  Landry scowled. Back then, finishing school and working as many shifts at the coffee place as he could, scrambling for every dollar he earned, never quite making ends meet, he’d been preoccupied 24/7. Since he couldn’t afford a cell phone and he downright refused to call Maddie Rose collect, he’d written his mother letters instead. Always short ones—he was busy, after all—always a series of disjointed phrases, rather than full sentences, jotted down over a period of several days, like next week’s grocery list.

  Being the person she was, Maddie Rose had never complained. Instead, she’d penned long, chatty letters, whether it was her turn to write or not, reminding him to eat right and get some rest, not to work so hard, telling him funny stories about the other waitresses, the customers, how the ladies’ bowling league was faring at the time and, without fail, stressing how proud she was of both him and Zane, how much she loved them. In all that time, the woman had never once admitted to any health issues more serious than bunions, or, once in a while, after a long shift, she might say her back was “a little sore.”

  “She didn’t want us to know she was sick,” he finally said.

  “So it would seem,” Zane said, standing up, stretching and giving a yawn.

  “But it was just fine with Mom if Jess Sutton knew,” Landry muttered, furious and confused and with a jagged tear running right through the middle of his heart.

  It was nothing new, that rip; he’d just learned to ignore it most of the time.

  Zane rested a hand on Landry’s shoulder, lightly and briefly. “I don’t reckon our mama had much choice in the matter,” he allowed, his voice quiet. “Jess tracked her down somehow—he was always good at that, remember—probably planning on hitting her up for whatever was left of that week’s tip money or her Christmas fund before taking off again. Instead, he found her in a hospital, getting ready to die. And for once in his worthless life, the son of a bitch actually stepped up, like a man, and played the loving husband. I think that was probably what Mom wanted more than anything else in the world—to see him one last time, I mean, and make some kind of peace.”

  “It doesn’t piss you off, that Mom didn’t tell us she was dying?”

  “No,” Zane said, there beside that river, with the moon a mere sketch of itself and the stars providing the only light. “It breaks my heart. But she did what she thought was right, Landry, however misguided that choice might look in retrospect. The point is, it was her choice to make. Mom gave us all she could—raised us to be tough, to roll with the punches, work hard and make our own way in the world. She loved us, little brother, and she made sure we knew it, every day of our lives. We’ll probably never have a clue how hard it all was for her, either one of us. So if the lady wanted to die on her own terms, well, for my money, she had sure as hell earned the right.”

  This was a long speech for Zane, the classic man of few words.

  Landry took it all in, chewed on it as he and Zane headed up the bank toward the waiting horses.

  When they’d both mounted up, and reined the geldings in the direction of home, a breeze swept through, rustling the leaves of the cottonwood trees and the pines alongside the trail.

  They’d covered a fair amount of ground when Zane cleared his throat, adjusted his hat and said, “It’s probably going to stick under your hide, what I’m about to tell you, but here it is. I stopped by Ria’s place earlier, looking for you. I told her you’d been gone from home long enough to worry Highbridge, said you were probably fine and she shouldn’t worry. She pretended to believe me, but I got the impression she was pretty worried anyhow.”

  Landry nodded and adjusted his own hat—it was catchy, that gesture, like when somebody yawned and got everybody else yawning, too. “I’ll stop by and see if she’s still up,” he said.

  “She’s still up,” Zane assured him, with a sidelong glance and quirk of a grin.

  “In the future,” Landry went on, in measured tones, “I’d appreciate it if you minded your own business, big brother. I figure you meant well, but the fact is, Ria and I still have a lot to work through, and getting her all stirred up because I was late for supper won’t make things any easier.”

  Zane nudged his horse from a walk to a trot, and even in the dark, with his hat shadowing his features, Landry saw the flash of his brother’s grin.

  “Duly noted,” Zane said.

  “You know about the internet thing?” Landry ventured, keeping up. “The pictures of Ria and me at the Boot Scoot last night, I mean?”

  “Everybody does,” Zane answered. Though not surprising, this reply was hardly a salve to Landry’s spirits. “It’s just another shit storm, though, and it’ll blow over in time, like they all do.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Landry grumbled. When Zane got home, Brylee would be waiting, warm and willing, in their bed. He, on the other hand, could look forward to another confrontation with his fussbudget butler, if not more lectures from dear old Dad.

  They’d reached the logical place to part ways by then, Zane heading one way, Landry another, and they both stopped their horses, sat facing each other.

  Zane laughed a little over Landry’s comment. “I speak from experience,” he said. “Brylee and I traveled many a rocky road before we finally faced the fact that we were in love and ought to do something about it.”

  “Ria’s still wearing her dead husband’s wedding band,” Landry admitted.

  “Then I guess you’d better get down to business,” Zane replied affably, “and love that ring right off her finger so there’ll be room for yours.”

  Love the ring off Ria’s finger?

  Landry was stumped by the concept at first, and by the time he had a retort ready—he’d been about to spout the old bromide about how you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink—Zane had already ridden off into the night, making his exit with a Zorro-like flair.

  Grandstander, Landry thought uncharitably, but something had eased inside him, since Zane had caught up to him an hour or so before, and t
hey’d swapped opinions. A few knots had been untied, a few barriers undermined, if not completely torn down.

  He might be up to his ass in alligators, Landry reasoned, what with his dad underfoot for who knew how long, and the other development, that Ria had evidently been declared the official online poster child for at least one twelve-step group, if not more. And she wouldn’t take off that damn ring.

  But he just might have his brother back. His sidekick and partner in crime.

  Landry swallowed a celebratory whoop, even as his eyes stung something fierce, and rode on, taking an overland shortcut that brought him to Ria’s place within minutes.

  There was a light shining in her kitchen window, he saw, with nervous relief. Maybe Zane had been right, and Ria was waiting up for him.

  Landry dismounted, left his horse untethered outside the picket fence, found the side gate, opened it and crossed Ria’s lawn to climb the steps of the back porch. There, he lifted his hand to knock, then paused to draw a deep breath and give himself one more chance to change his mind and get the hell out of there.

  He came down on the side of staying.

  Eventually, he would love Ria out of that wedding band, and every stitch she might happen to be wearing at the time, too.

  It might not happen tonight, or next week, or next month.

  But it would happen, if only because he’d finally made up his mind about a number of things and, like Zane, he was not only too cussed stubborn to give up, but he didn’t know how to quit, either. Much of the credit for that trait, which could be a blessing or a curse, depending, went to Maddie Rose Sutton.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Landry said softly.

  And then he raised his hand again, smiled to himself and knocked, quietly but with purpose.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SOUND OF a knock at her back door startled Ria a little, even though, on some level, she’d been hoping to hear it.

  She got out of her rocking chair, flipped on the porch light just in case her caller wasn’t the one she was expecting and felt a rush of—well, something—when she saw that she hadn’t kept her sleepy vigil in vain.