Big Sky Mountain

by Linda Lael Miller

  “It would the neighborly thing to do,” Tara replied, appropriating the binoculars and raising them to her face. Lucy and Daisy, having run off all that energy chasing each other around Tara’s yard and trying to catch grasshoppers, were asleep in the shade of a gnarl-trunked old apple tree nearby.

  “Since when are you and Boone on ‘neighborly’ terms?” Kendra countered. Damned if she didn’t want to get a look at Hutch Carmody, up close and shirtless, but damned if she’d indulge the whim, either.

  “We’re not,” Tara admitted. “But after all the verbal potshots I’ve taken at the man for maintaining an eyesore, the least I can do is encourage him to stick with the cleanup campaign.” She handed the binoculars back to Kendra, who immediately used them. “Besides, Opal is over there, working her fingers to nubs. Maybe she could use some help from us.”

  “Right,” Kendra said, thinking of her business suit and high-heeled shoes. “I’m certainly dressed for it.” She watched, heartbeat quickening, as Hutch used the T-shirt to wipe his forehead and the back of his neck. Muscles flexed in his arms and shoulders, making her mouth water. “You, on the other hand, look like a fugitive from a rerun of Green Acres, so you might as well go right on over there with your bad self.”

  “Not without backup,” Tara said.

  “Opal is backup enough for anybody,” Kendra replied. It was almost as though Hutch knew she was watching him from afar; he seemed to be overdoing the whole manly thing on purpose just to rile her up.

  Take the way he walked, for instance, with the slow, rolling gait of an old-time gunslinger, like his hips were greased, like he owned whatever ground he set his foot down on. And the way he threw back his head and laughed at something Opal called to him from the porch of Boone’s trailer.

  “Scared?” Tara challenged.

  “No,” Kendra lied, lowering the binoculars with some reluctance. She needed a few moments to process the sight of Hutch Carmody walking around half-naked. “I’m supposed to pick Madison up at preschool. And there’s supper to think about, and—”

  “You’re supposed to pick Madison up in two hours,” Tara pointed out.

  “Why do you want to do this?” Kendra asked, almost pitifully. She felt cornered by Tara’s calm logic. “You can’t stand Boone Taylor.”

  “Like I said,” Tara replied with a self-righteous air, “good behavior should be encouraged. Besides, I’m dying to know why he’s suddenly so interested in all this DIY stuff.”

  Kendra sighed, recalling her phone conversation with Joslyn earlier that day. “Well, I can tell you that,” she said importantly. “Boone’s boys are coming to stay with him for the weekend. He’s getting the place ready for them.”

  “Boone has children?” Tara looked honestly surprised.

  “Two,” Kendra replied, wondering how Tara could have lived around Parable for so long without knowing a detail like that. “They’ve been living with his sister and her family in Missoula since his wife died.”

  “I knew he was a widower,” Tara mused sadly. “But kids? The man just packed his own children off to his sister’s place after they lost their mother?”

  “Well, I don’t think it was as cut and dried as that....” Kendra began, but her voice fell away. She liked Boone, and felt a need to take his side, if sides were being taken, though like just about everyone else he knew, she could have shaken him for turning his back on a pair of small, motherless boys the way he had.

  “He’s even more selfish than I thought,” Tara said decisively. She got out of her chair, still holding the binoculars, and went into the house, returning without them a few moments later. Evidently their spy careers were over. “Who does a thing like that?” she ranted on under her breath as she plunked back into her chair.

  Compassion for Boone welled up in Kendra’s chest. “You weren’t here when his wife died,” she said quietly. “It was terrible, Tara. Corrie was in so much pain toward the end and Boone couldn’t do a thing to help her. That would be hard for anybody, but especially for a man who’s been strong all his life.”

  “You can bet it was hard for those little boys, too,” Tara pointed out, but her tone had softened somewhat by then. “How old are they?”

  Kendra made some calculations, “Probably five and six,” she said. “Something like that. Cute as can be—both of them look just like their dad.”

  A deep sadness moved in Tara’s lovely eyes.

  Kendra considered the possibility that her own mother might have abandoned her not because she didn’t love her, but because she was overwhelmed by life in general. Maybe she’d suffered from depression, like Boone, and become trapped in it.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  “Don’t be too hard on Boone,” she said, deciding it was time she and Daisy headed back to town. “He and Corrie married young, and they loved each other so desperately.”

  Tara nodded slowly. She was looking in the direction of Boone’s trailer, although at that distance, with no binoculars to bring them closer, the people appeared tiny and it was hard to tell one from the other.

  “Hey,” Kendra said to her distracted friend, preparing to descend the porch steps, call for Daisy and head for her car. “Why don’t you and Lucy come into town later and have supper with us?”

  Tara smiled, rose from her chair, came to stand at the porch railing, resting her hands on top of it. “Thanks,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “Maybe some other time.”

  Kendra nodded, and moments later she and Daisy were in the Volvo, heading down the driveway toward the main road.

  Her thoughts and emotions were jumbled—visions of Hutch, bare-chested in the afternoon sunlight, predominated, but there were images of Boone at Corrie’s funeral, too. It had rained that gloomy late-winter day, and a bitterly cold wind had driven all the mourners from the graveside the moment the last “Amen” had been said—except for Boone. He’d simply stood there, all alone, with his head down, his hands folded and his suit drenched, gazing downward at his wife’s coffin.

  Finally Hutch and Slade and a few others had gone out there to collect him, and he’d swung at them, shouting that he wasn’t going to leave Corrie alone in the rain. They’d finally prevailed, but it was a struggle, Boone saw to that.

  Since then, he’d never been the same.

  He worked hard—it was common knowledge that he sent a lot of his paycheck to his sister for the boys’ support—and then he went back to that sad piece of land he’d once had such great plans for, and that was all.

  It grieved the whole town, because Parable was, after all, a family, and Boone, like Hutch and Slade, was a favorite son.

  When Boone ran for sheriff, everyone’s hopes rose—maybe things were finally turning around for him—but until today, when the cleanup effort had apparently begun, there had been no further indication that anything much had changed.

  At home, Kendra changed into khaki walking shorts, a green tank top and sandals. Then she brushed her shoulder-length hair, caught it up in a ponytail and checked the contents of her refrigerator, considering various supper possibilities.

  She’d stopped thinking about Boone’s situation, which was a relief, but Hutch refused to budge from her mind no matter how she tried to distract herself.

  And she definitely tried.

  She tossed an old tennis ball for Daisy in the backyard for at least fifteen minutes, then collected the day’s mail from the box attached to her front gate. Nothing but sales fliers and missives addressed to “occupant”—everything had to be forwarded from her old address on Rodeo Road.

  Not that she received a lot of mail in this day of instant electronic communication.

  She chucked everything into the recycle bin and booted up her computer, a streamlined desktop set up in her home office. Nothing there, either.

  Finally it was time—or close enough to it—to drive over to the preschool and collect Madison. Daisy rode shotgun in the Volvo’s front seat, panting and taking in everything they passed with t
hose gentle brown eyes, as if there might be a quiz later on what she’d seen and she wanted to be ready for any question.

  The preschool occupied a corner of the community center, a long, rambling building that also housed the Chamber of Commerce, along with several conference rooms and a performance area with a stage. The local amateur theater group used the latter, as did the art and garden clubs, and dances, wedding receptions and other events were held there, too. Outside, there was a pool, a tennis court and a baseball field.

  The town was justifiably proud of the whole setup, and maintaining the place was a labor of love, done mostly by volunteers.

  Kendra parked near the baseball field, her usual place, and walked Daisy around on a leash, poop bag at the ready, while they waited for Madison’s “class” to be dismissed for the day.

  The bell rang and children catapulted through the open doors of the preschool, releasing pent-up energy as they laughed and jostled each other, celebrating their freedom.

  Kendra, standing beside the car with Daisy, smiled as she watched Madison’s head turn in her direction, watched her smile broaden as she raced over, waving a paper over her head.

  “Look what I drew!” she crowed, shoving the sheet of paper at Kendra and then dropping to her knees in the grass to cover Daisy’s muzzle with kisses and ruffle her silken ears.

  Kendra looked down at her daughter’s artwork and felt a wrench in the center of her heart. Madison had drawn a house with green crayon, recognizable as the one they lived in, with four distinct figures standing in the front yard—a little girl with bright red hair, a yellow dog, a stick-figure rendition of Kendra herself, notable for an enormous necklace of what seemed to be blue beads, and a tall man wearing jeans, a purple shirt, brown boots and an outsize cowboy hat.

  Hutch.

  “It’s a family!” Madison said excitedly. “One with a cowboy daddy in it.”

  Kendra swallowed. “I can see that,” she said quietly, before handing the paper back to Madison. “That’s a very nice picture,” she added, afraid to say more, lest the sudden tears pressing behind her eyes break free.

  “Can we tape it to the ’frigerator?” Madison asked, her huge gray eyes solemn now, as though she expected a refusal and was already bracing to argue the point.

  “Sure,” Kendra said with a smile after clearing her throat.

  She spent the next five minutes getting Madison, the dog and herself squared away in the Volvo.

  “My friend Brooke has a daddy,” Madison announced, once they were in motion. “So do lots of the other kids.”

  Give me strength, Kendra thought prayerfully. “Yes,” she said.

  “They put daddies in their pictures, so I did, too,” Madison explained. “I made mine a cowboy.”

  “Does this cowboy have a name?” Kendra ventured. She couldn’t just shut the child down, after all, and there was no use trying to change the subject before Madison was ready because she’d pursue it.

  “Cowboy man,” Madison said in a cheery, who-else tone of voice. “He has lots of horses, and I get to ride one of them sometime.”

  “That will be exciting,” Kendra agreed, smiling.

  “He said that,” Madison chimed from her place in the backseat, Daisy beside her. “You heard him say that, didn’t you, Mommy? That I could ride one of his horses if you said it was okay?”

  “I heard,” Kendra said. Did Hutch even remember making the offer? Or had he simply been making conversation, telling the child what he thought she wanted to hear at that particular moment?

  To him, it was probably just small talk.

  To Madison it was a promise, sacred and precious.

  Kendra bit her lower lip, thinking. She could play the heavy, of course, say she’d rather Madison didn’t get on a horse until she was a little older—conveniently, that was the truth—but one, she didn’t want to raise a fearful child and, two, why should she be the one to disappoint Madison, while Hutch came off as the good guy, the one who’d tried to make the dream happen and would have succeeded, if not for her?

  No.

  This time, for once in his life, he was going to follow through.

  Madison would have her horseback ride; Kendra would make sure of that, for her little girl’s sake.

  As soon as they got home, Madison fetched a roll of cellophane tape from Kendra’s office, climbed onto a chair and proudly affixed her “family” drawing to the refrigerator door.

  “There,” she said, getting down and standing back to admire the installation.

  Kendra admired it, too. “You’d better make some more pictures,” she said thoughtfully. “That one looks a little lonely all by itself.”

  Madison readily agreed and ran off, Daisy on her heels, to find her crayons.

  Kendra returned the chair to its place at the table, got out her cell phone and bravely keyed through stored numbers until she found Hutch’s. When was the last time she’d dialed that one?

  “Hello?” he said after the second ring.

  “We need to talk,” Kendra answered, employing a clandestine whisper. “When can we get together?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  WE NEED TO TALK. When can we get together?

  To say Kendra’s words had caught Hutch off guard would be the understatement of the century, but he hoped his tone sounded casual when he replied, “Okay, sure. I’m just leaving Boone’s place—I’ve got some chores to do at home, and I could really use a shower.”

  TMI, he thought ruefully. Too much information. The woman hadn’t asked for a personal hygiene report, after all.

  Because he disapproved of other people talking on their cell phones while they drove, Hutch pulled over to one side of Boone’s weed-shorn yard and let the men he’d brought over from Whisper Creek pass on by him in their trucks, and Opal, too.

  Probably thinking there might be trouble, Opal stopped her big station wagon and started to roll down her window to ask if everything was all right, but Hutch grinned and waved her on.

  Kendra sounded a little flustered when she answered, as though she might be wishing not only that she hadn’t phrased the invite the way she had, but that she’d never called him at all. “Tonight, tomorrow—whenever,” she stumbled.

  Hutch felt better, aching muscles and ravenous hunger notwithstanding. Obviously, he wasn’t the only one feeling a little out of their depth at the moment and he had to admit, the “we need to talk” part intrigued him in a big way.

  “So this is nothing urgent,” he concluded with a smile in his voice. He didn’t need to see Kendra to know she was blushing to the roots of her pale gold hair; practically every emotion showed plainly on the landscape of her face and usually her inner climate did, too.

  Kendra Shepherd might look like a Nordic ice queen, but Hutch knew she was capable of tropical heat.

  Meanwhile, Kendra struggled bravely on, determined to make her point, whatever the heck that was. “No—I mean—well, I suppose we could discuss it now—”

  “That’s fine, too,” Hutch said amiably, relishing the exchange.

  “Yes, Madison,” she said to her daughter, who could be heard asking questions in the background, “you do have to wash your hands before supper. You’ve been petting the dog, for Pete’s sake.”

  Hutch chuckled at that. “I’ll stop by later tonight,” he offered. “What time does Madison go to bed?”

  “Eight,” Kendra said weakly.

  “Then I’ll be there around eight-thirty.”

  There was a pause, during which Hutch half expected Kendra to change her mind, tell him there was no need to come over in person because she could just say what she had to say right there on the phone.

  Except that, for whatever reason, Kendra didn’t seem to want Madison to be privy to what was said.

  “Eight-thirty,” Kendra confirmed, sighing the words.

  Hutch agreed on the time, set his phone aside and hurried home, where he fed the horses, took a shower, wolfed down cold chicken and potato salad, leftovers
from the meal Opal had served over at Boone’s earlier in the day, and checked the clock about every five minutes.

  It wasn’t even six yet.

  He’d done everything that needed doing at warp-speed, it seemed. What the hell was he supposed to do with the two and a half hours still to go before he could show up on Kendra’s doorstep?

  “You’ve sure got a burr under your hide about something,” Opal commented, putting away the remains of the feast. She’d left some of the overflow with Boone and given shares to the ranch hands who’d helped out with the work, too. Nobody turned down Opal’s potato salad, ever. “Jumpy as a cat on a griddle, that’s what you are.”

  Good-naturedly, Hutch elbowed her aside and took over the job she’d been doing, shoving chicken and potato salad every which way into the fridge. “Why don’t you take the night off?” he asked companionably, when he thought enough time had elapsed so the question wouldn’t sound contrived.

  “Given that I don’t work for you in the first place,” Opal informed him, “that’s an interesting suggestion. What are you up to, Hutch Carmody? You planning on heading back to the Boot Scoot Tavern again tonight, looking to drum up some more trouble?”

  He laughed. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to the Boot Scoot, and never mind that, it’s none of your business if I do.”

  Opal’s eyes were sly, even suspicious. “There’s Bingo tonight,” she said. “I never miss a game, especially when I’m on a lucky streak. Since I’m headed into town anyway, I could drop you someplace, pick you up later on.”

  “I do my own driving these days,” he reminded her dryly. “Have been since the day I got my license.”

  “Fine,” Opal said with a sniff, untying her apron and heading for her part of the house, presumably to get dolled up for a big night wielding Bingo daubers in the basement of the Elks’ Club. “Don’t tell me what’s going on. It isn’t as if I won’t find out sooner or later. All I’ve got to do is keep my ear to the ground and sure enough, somebody will mention seeing you tonight, and they’ll have the details, too.”