Big Sky Mountain

by Linda Lael Miller

  No one had to go in search of Joslyn’s husband; he seemed to have sonar where his wife was concerned.

  Kendra watched with relief as he came toward them, his strides long and purposeful, but calm and measured, too. He was grinning from ear to ear when he reached Joslyn and crouched in front of her, taking both her hands in his.

  “Breathe,” he told her.

  Joslyn laughed, nodded and breathed.

  “It’s time, then?” he asked her, gruffly gentle. His strength was quiet and unshakable.

  “Definitely,” Joslyn replied.

  “Then let’s get this thing done,” Slade replied, straightening to his full height and easing Joslyn to her feet, supporting her in the curve of one steel-strong arm as they headed for the parking lot.

  Opal took off her apron, thrust it into the hands of a woman standing nearby and hurried after them, taking her big patent leather purse with her.

  Shea materialized at Kendra’s side with Madison and Daisy and leaned into her a little, her expression worried and faintly lost.

  Kendra wrapped an arm around the teenage girl’s slender shoulders and squeezed. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she said softly. “Just like Opal said.”

  “They forgot all about me,” Shea murmured, staring after her stepparents and Opal as they retreated.

  “No, sweetheart,” Kendra said quickly. “They’re just excited because the baby’s coming and maybe a little scared, that’s all.”

  Shea bit her lower lip, swallowed visibly, and rummaged up a small, tremulous smile. “A baby brother will be hard to compete with,” she reflected. “Especially since he really belongs to them and I don’t.”

  Kendra knew Shea adored Slade—her mother, his ex-wife, was remarried and living in L.A.—and she also knew that Slade loved this girl as much as if he’d fathered her himself. And Joslyn loved her, too.

  “You belong to them, too, Shea,” Kendra assured the girl. “Don’t forget that.”

  Madison, perhaps sobered by Shea’s mood—the two had been hanging out together since Madison and Kendra had arrived with Hutch—slipped her hand into Kendra’s and looked up at her with wide, solemn eyes.

  “Are babies better than big kids?” she asked very seriously.

  Kendra’s heart turned over. “Babies are very special,” she answered carefully, “and so are the big kids they turn into.”

  As she spoke, Hutch stepped into her line of sight, and something happened inside Kendra as she watched him watching Slade and Joslyn’s departing vehicle. Opal sat tall and stalwart in the backseat.

  What was that look in his eyes? Worry, perhaps? Envy?

  Back in high school, Kendra recalled, Joslyn had been Hutch’s first love and he hers. Most people had expected them to marry at some point, perhaps after college, but they’d grown apart instead, from a romantic standpoint at least. They had remained close friends.

  She, Kendra, had been his second love.

  Maybe that was why he hadn’t stepped in when she threw herself into an ill-fated relationship with Jeffrey Chamberlain, way back when. Possibly, letting her go had been easy because he hadn’t really been over Joslyn at that point.

  In fact it could well be that he still wasn’t over her, even though she was happily married to his half brother and about to give birth to their first child.

  Now you’re just being silly, Kendra scolded herself silently, straightening her spine and raising her chin. Besides, what did it matter who Hutch Carmody did or did not love? He’d hurt every woman he’d ever cared about—except Joslyn.

  “Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?”

  The question had come from Hutch and he was looking at Shea as he spoke. Although he and Slade were still working on being brothers, he was already an uncle to Shea and she was a niece to him.

  Shea shook her head, slipped away from Kendra’s side and held out a hand to Madison. “The three-legged race is starting soon,” she said to the little girl. “Want to be my partner?”

  Madison nodded eagerly and crowed, “Yes!” for good measure, in case there might be any ambiguity in the matter.

  “Let’s go check out the prize table then,” Shea said. And just like that, they were off, racing through the grass, Daisy and Jasper, the Barlows’ dog, bounding after them.

  “Slade and Joslyn do realize,” Kendra began, without really meaning to say anything at all, “that Shea is worried that they won’t love her as much once the baby is here?”

  Hutch, standing nearer than she’d thought, replied quietly, “Slade and I may have our differences,” he said, “but the man is rock-solid when it comes to loving his family.” A pause followed, then a wistful, “Not a trait he learned from our dad.”

  Picking up on the pain in his words, she looked at him directly.

  They were essentially alone together, under those leafy, breeze-rustled trees, because everyone else had gone back to what they were doing before Joslyn had gone into labor—setting out food, pulling weeds, mowing grass, generally getting ready for the festivities that would follow on the heels of the cleanup effort.

  Hutch, meanwhile, looked as though he regretted the remark about John Carmody, not because he hadn’t meant it, but because it revealed more than he wanted her or anyone else to know.

  “Tell me about your dad,” Kendra said, pushing the envelope a little. She remembered the elder Carmody clearly, of course, but she hadn’t really known him. He’d been a grown-up, after all, and a reserved one at that, handsome like Slade and almost religious about minding his own business.

  Hutch took her hand, and she let him, and they drifted away from the others to sit on rocks overlooking the town of Parable, nestled into the shallow valley below. “Not much to tell,” he said in belated reply to her earlier request. “The old man and I didn’t see eye to eye on most things, and he made it pretty plain that I didn’t measure up to his expectations.”

  “But you loved him?”

  “I loved him,” Hutch confirmed, staring out over the town, past the church steeples and the courthouse roof. “And I guess, in his own way, he probably loved me. Do you remember your dad, Kendra?”

  She shook her head. “He was long gone by the time I was born,” she said.

  Remarkably, as close as they’d been, she and Hutch hadn’t talked much about their childhoods. They’d been totally, passionately engrossed in the present.

  Now Kendra thought about her mother, Sherry, beautiful and flaky and too footloose to raise a little girl on her own. In a moment, Kendra was right back there, like a time traveler, standing in the overgrown yard in front of her grandmother’s trailer, clutching Sherry’s fingers with one hand and gripping the handle of a toy suitcase in the other.

  She’d been five years old at the time, only a few months older than Madison was now.

  “I’ll be back soon, I promise,” she heard Sherry say as clearly as if a quarter of a century hadn’t passed since that summer day. “You just sit there on the porch like a good girl and wait for your grandma to get home from work. She’ll take care of you until I can come and get you.”

  Maybe the suitcase, hastily purchased in a thrift store, should have been a clue about what was to come, but Kendra was, after all, a child and a trusting one at that. She hadn’t known she was being lied to, not consciously at least.

  Most likely Sherry hadn’t known she was lying, either. Never mean, Sherry had always meant well. She just had trouble following through on her better intentions.

  In the end, she’d leaned down, kissed Kendra on the top of her head, promised they’d be together again soon, this time for good. They’d get a house of their own and a dog and a nice car.

  With that, Sherry waggled her fingers in farewell, climbed into her ancient, smoke-belching station wagon and drove away.

  Kendra simply sat and waited—it wouldn’t have occurred to her to wander off or run after Sherry’s car.

  When her grandmother arrived home a couple hours later, she go
t out of her car, lit up a cigarette and drew deeply on the smoke. Then she crossed the overgrown yard to stand there frowning down at Kendra.

  With her bent and buckled plastic suitcase beside her, Kendra looked up into her grandmother’s lined and sorrow-hardened face, and saw no welcome there.

  “Just what I need,” the old woman had said bitterly. “A kid to take care of.”

  But Alva Shepherd had given Kendra a home, however reluctantly.

  She’d put food on the table and kept a roof over their heads and if love and laughter had been lacking from the relationship, well, nobody had everything. If Sherry hadn’t dropped her off that day, she probably would have been killed in the car accident that took her mom’s life six months later.

  After that, her grandma had been a little nicer to her, not out of compassion—she didn’t seem to grieve over losing a daughter or Kendra’s loss of her mother, apparently regarding it as a fitting end to a misspent life—but because Kendra became eligible for a small monthly check from the government. That made things easier all around.

  “Kendra?” Hutch tugged her back into the here and now, still holding her hand.

  “There are too many broken people in this world,” she said, thinking aloud.

  Hutch simply gazed at her for a long, unreadable moment. “True enough,” he agreed finally, almost hoarsely. “But there are plenty of good ones, too, built to stay the course.”

  Happy noises in the distance indicated that the games were about to start and picnic food was being served. Hutch was right, of course—these sturdy people all around them were the proof, teaming up to tend the grounds of a decrepit old cemetery, to serve potato salad and hot dogs and the like to old friends and new, to hold races for children who would remember sunny, communal days like this one well into their own old age.

  In that moment, Kendra felt a wistful sort of hope that places like Parable would always exist, so babies could be born and grow up and get married and live on into their golden years, always in touch with their own histories and those of the people around them, always a part of something, always belonging somewhere.

  It was what Kendra had wanted for Madison, that kind of stability, and what she wanted for herself, too—because her story hadn’t ended with her overwhelmed grandmother on the rickety porch of a double-wide that had, even then, seen better days. Because Opal had taken her into her heart and Joslyn had been the sister she’d never had, and the generous souls who called Parable home had taken her into their midst without hesitation, made her one of them.

  Tears brimmed in her eyes.

  Hutch, seeing them, stopped and cupped a hand under her chin. “What?” he asked with a tenderness that made Kendra’s breath catch.

  “I was just thinking how perfect life is,” Kendra admitted, “even when it’s imperfect.”

  He grinned. “It’s worth the trouble, all right,” he agreed. “Want to enter the three-legged race? I can’t think of anybody I’d rather be tied to at the ankle.”

  She laughed and said yes, and threw herself headfirst into the celebration.

  * * *

  PARABLE COUNTY HOSPITAL was small, with brightly painted white walls, and most of the staff had been born and raised within fifty miles of the place, so folks felt safe when they were sick or hurt, knowing they’d be cared for by friends, or friends of friends, or even kinfolk.

  Hutch hadn’t been there since his dad died, but now there was the baby boy, born a few hours before, ratcheting up the population by one. The numbers on the sign at the edge of town were magnetic, so they could be altered when somebody drew their first breath, sighed out their last one or simply moved to or from the community.

  Slade, standing beside him, rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. After the races and the picnic and the prizes, he’d dropped Kendra and Madison and that goofy dog of theirs off at their new digs before heading home to shower, shave, put on clean clothes and make the drive back to town.

  “You done good, brother,” Hutch said without looking at Slade.

  Slade chuckled. He hadn’t taken his eyes off that little blue-bundled yahoo in the plastic baby bed since they’d stepped up to the window. “Thanks,” he replied, “but Joslyn deserves at least some of the credit. She handled the tough part.”

  Hutch smiled, nodded. The kid hadn’t even been in the world for a full day and he was already looking more like John Carmody, as did Slade, by the second. He guessed it was the old man’s way of keeping one foot in the world, even though he was six feet under. “What are you going to call him?” he asked.

  “Trace,” Slade answered, with a touch of quiet awe in his voice, as though he didn’t quite believe his own good fortune. “Trace Carmody Barlow.”

  Hutch wasn’t prepared for the “Carmody” part. While Slade was technically as much a Carmody as Hutch himself was, their dad hadn’t raised him, hadn’t even claimed him until his will was read.

  Slade interpreted his half brother’s silence accurately. “It’s a way of telling the truth,” he said. “About who Trace is and who I am.”

  Hutch swallowed. Nodded. “How’s Joslyn?” he managed to ask.

  “She’s ready to take the boy and head home to Windfall,” Slade said with another chuckle. “Opal and I overruled her, insisting that she spend the night here in the hospital, just to make sure she and the baby don’t run into any hitches.”

  Windfall was the aptly chosen name of Slade and Joslyn’s ranch, which bordered Hutch’s land on one side. Slade had bought the spread with the proceeds from selling his share of Whisper Creek to Hutch and, as convoluted as the situation had been, Hutch would always be grateful. He was a part of that ranch and it was a part of him, and losing half of it would have been like being chopped into two pieces himself.

  “I see you brought Kendra and her little girl to the cleanup today,” Slade remarked lightly.

  Hutch looked straight at him. “Some first date, huh?” he joked, not that it actually was a first date, considering that he and Kendra had once been a couple. “A picnic at a cemetery.”

  Slade grinned. “I took Joslyn to a horse auction the first time we went out,” he reminded Hutch. “Maybe chivalry runs in the family.”

  “Or maybe not,” Hutch said, and they both laughed. Shook hands.

  “Thanks for showing up to have a look at the boy,” Slade said.

  Hutch nodded, said a quiet goodbye and turned to go while Slade stayed behind to admire his son for a little while longer.

  Shea and Opal were standing in the corridor when Hutch got there, talking quietly with a beaming Callie Barlow.

  “That’s one fine little brother you’ve got there,” he told Shea.

  Apparently over her earlier angst at no longer being the only bird in the nest, Shea smiled brightly and nodded in happy agreement. Callie hugged her step-granddaughter, her own eyes full of tears.

  “He’s the best,” Shea murmured.

  “Congratulations,” Hutch said to Callie. It was, if he recalled correctly, the first word he’d ever said to the woman, even though he’d always known her. It wasn’t that he’d judged her—he supposed she’d loved the old man once upon a time, since she’d had a child with him—but Hutch’s mother’s heartache and rage over the affair was still fresh in his mind. Until Trace, acknowledging Callie would have seemed like an act of disloyalty to his mom, as crazy as that sounded. After all, she’d died when he was twelve.

  “Thank you, Hutch,” Callie said, dashing at her wet eyes with the back of one hand.

  “You look skinnier every time I see you,” Opal put in, giving Hutch the once-over and frowning with devoted disapproval. To Opal, everybody in Parable was her concern, one way or the other. “You need me to come out to Whisper Creek and cook for you for a couple of weeks. Put some meat on those bones. And who ironed that shirt—a chimpanzee?”

  Hutch grinned, though he felt a thousand years old all of a sudden and bone-weary in the bargain. “Nobody ironed it,” he said, even as he wondere
d why he’d risen to the bait. “It’s permanent press.” He’d taken the garment out of the dryer and pulled it on just before leaving the house to drive back to town.

  “There’s no such thing as ‘permanent press.’” Opal sniffed. “A shirt ought to be ironed.”

  That seemed like a good time to steer the conversation in another direction. “I appreciate your offer, Opal,” he said honestly, “but Joslyn’s going to need you to help take care of Trace.”

  “Joslyn’s mama is on her way to Parable as we speak,” Opal replied succinctly. “She’ll provide all the lookin’ after that family needs, at least for a week or two. I’ll be at your place first thing tomorrow morning with my suitcase, so be ready for me.”

  Hutch opened his mouth, closed it again.

  There was no point in arguing with Opal Dennison once she’d made up her mind, which she obviously had. If she meant to take over his house—or his whole life, for that matter—she’d do it. She was about as stoppable as a tornado gobbling up flat ground.

  Best to just get out of the way and wait for the dust to settle.

  “See you tomorrow,” he finally said.

  “Pick up some spray starch on your way home,” Opal ordered. “And a decent iron, too, if you don’t have one.”

  He pretended not to hear and walked off toward the elevator.

  * * *

  THE ELEVATOR DOORS opened, and Kendra came face-to-face with Hutch when she stepped out.

  Even after spending much of the day in his company over at the Pioneer Cemetery, she felt startled by the encounter. Unprepared and very nervous.

  “Where’s Madison?” he asked, his gaze drifting lightly over Kendra’s cotton print sundress, which she changed into after the picnic, and then back to her face.

  Kendra found her voice. Stepping past him, she remembered that she’d come to the hospital on a mission—to see her best friend’s brand-new baby for the first time. “Downstairs,” she answered automatically. “The receptionist is looking after her.”

  “I’ll say howdy to her on my way out,” Hutch replied.