All a Man Is

by Janice Kay Johnson

  She made a face at him. “Boy-sit, actually. Liana will be fine at Sophie’s.”

  “Matt hasn’t tried to jump the tracks yet, has he?”

  “He’s hardly said a word, but he hasn’t left the house today, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I vote we stick to the weeklong restriction, but I was thinking of giving him a, er, temporary parole.” He gave a half shrug. “If you agree.”

  “What kind of parole?”

  “I thought he and I could do something. Go for a hike, maybe. I keep thinking I can get him to talk.”

  Julia didn’t even hesitate. “Yes. Please. He’s been quiet, but...” She didn’t know how to describe her uneasiness. What was Matt thinking as he lay brooding in his room?

  Alec’s dark eyes met hers, but all he said was “You need to make friends. You might like Nell.”

  Saturday morning, Alec and Matt left long before Julia did. They’d decided on a hike and she had packed them a lunch, which they stowed in Matt’s old day pack, which showed serious wear after a year of being banged around full of schoolbooks.

  “Oh, Lord. Back-to-school shopping,” she said, and they both gave her identical looks of startled alarm as they went out the door. She smiled once they were gone. She could suggest to Alec that clothing Matt was a form of arming him, as much as those beautiful suits Alec wore were for him. Shopping with her, Matt would make every decision with a goal of horrifying her or defying her. Maybe Alec could make him see some sense.

  It was the first humor she’d found in anything in days, imagining herself pushing them out the door to go clothes shopping.

  She and Nell met at the Kingfisher Café, owned by Nell’s high school friend Hailey Allen. At the wedding, Julia had met Hailey, plump, buxom and mischievous, and liked her.

  She brought over their soup and ended up sitting at their table for a few minutes. “Alec tells Colin you’re an amazing cook,” she said.

  “He said that?” Flattered, Julia laughed. “That’s because he’s getting home-cooked dinners every night instead of fast food or something from the freezer. I doubt his standards are high. Although,” she added in fairness, “his mother really can cook. Traditional Italian. That’s probably why he’s so thrilled with my meals. I got most of her recipes.”

  Hailey’s eyes narrowed in interest. “I’ve never done much Italian. Can we get together and swap secrets?”

  “I’d love to,” Julia said with a warm smile. “Can you escape from the restaurant long enough to join us for dinner one of these evenings and try out one of Rosaria’s recipes?”

  “I’m closed on Sundays and Mondays,” she said promptly. “Cool. Will Alec be there, too?”

  Julia’s heart bumped. “You’re interested in him?”

  Hailey snorted. “Not that way. A cop who has that stone-cold thing going? No. Anyway, I’m seeing someone.” Her grin at Nell had a sly cast.

  Nell cast her eyes upward. “My brother. Who is three years younger. Not to be a traditionalist or anything.”

  “You wouldn’t think it,” Hailey murmured.

  Julia laughed. “Was he at the wedding? Did I meet him?”

  Nell shook her head. “Felix has barely met Noah or Cait. He just finished his law degree at Willamette and is doing a three-month internship with the Department of Justice in D.C. Then he’s considering job offers in Portland and in Bend, thanks to Hailey.”

  Bend was the biggest city in central Oregon, not that far northeast of Angel Butte.

  “Not just me.” Hailey’s smile was soft. “He missed you, Nell. He really wants time with you.”

  “Ohh,” Nell breathed, seemingly struggling with emotion. “I didn’t realize—”

  Julia recalled the story Alec had told her about the fifteen-year-old Maddie Dubeau vanishing one night, escaping her captor with a head wound and amnesia and remaking herself as Nell Smith, who had come back to Angel Butte only last November. Of course her brother thought her reappearance was some kind of miracle.

  “Oops!” Hailey said, jumping up. “Frantic hand signals from the kitchen. Enjoy your lunch.”

  In her wake, Nell asked politely, “Do you have siblings?”

  “An older brother.” Julia felt a pang, remembering the expression on Colin’s face when he’d walked his sister down the aisle to meet Noah Chandler. “We were never close. Ten years apart in age, which was maybe too much. My parents were...quite stern. Home wasn’t as happy as it could have been.”

  “Mine, either,” Nell said, her eyes shadowed. “I realized later that was one reason I didn’t try harder to recover my memory. I didn’t want to come home.”

  Julia nodded, able to understand even if her childhood hadn’t been that bad. “I take the kids to their grandparents’ every few years for Christmas, but...” She shrugged. “The minute we walk in the door, I remember why I went so far for college.”

  “Makes sense to me.” Nell smiled. “So, tell me about your kids.”

  Julia’s laugh was weary. “Are you sure you want to hear about them? You don’t have any yet yourself, do you? I don’t want to scare you off.”

  “No, although we’re thinking pretty soon...” She touched her belly in an unconscious gesture any woman would have recognized. “I’m only twenty-nine, but Colin is thirty-five. He doesn’t want to be too old when our kids get to be teenagers.”

  “Oh, he definitely doesn’t,” Julia agreed, more heartfelt than she’d intended.

  Nell’s eyebrows rose. “Your boy is...?”

  “Thirteen.” She hesitated. “Let’s say Matt hasn’t handled losing his father well.”

  “As in...depressed?”

  “As in Jekyll and Hyde. Is it Jekyll who’s the evil one? I can never remember.”

  “No, I think it’s Hyde.”

  “That’s my boy,” Julia said with a sigh. “I don’t know how Alec and Colin feel about each other, but I’m here to tell you that, no matter what Colin has told you about him, Alec is a saint to take us on.”

  “Is that what he did?”

  Julia found herself talking, and talking, as sandwiches replaced the soup then pastries arrived with a wave from Hailey. Julia hadn’t realized how much she had needed a friend. She didn’t think she was making too much of an assumption, either; they segued into Nell talking about her troubled relationship with her parents, and a little about the years of living without the memories most people took for granted as a foundation for their personality.

  “You’ll like Cait, too,” she said. “She’s as mixed-up as all the rest of us.”

  Julia laughed. “Bless you. I really needed this.”

  Nell insisted on paying for lunch. On the way out, she asked where Matt was today. “I suppose you can’t exactly call it child care, given his age....”

  “I called it boy-sitting when I stuck Alec with him.” Her mood got flatter as she thought about going home. Had the day gone well for Alec and Matt—or been a disaster?

  Please, she begged silently, not a disaster. Matt needed someone.

  She thanked Nell and they parted ways, Julia to shop for groceries on her way home. She was a little uneasy at how important feeding Alec had become for her. She had a bad feeling she was pretending he was hers and setting herself up for heartbreak.

  Why did life have to be so complicated?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ALEC DIDN’T START the day with big plans. Urban Southern Californians that they were, neither he nor Matt had ever done much in the way of hiking. Alec had taken up Nordic skiing after arriving in Angel Butte in late March. Living here alone, what else was there to do? He’d considered alpine skiing, but the idea of breaking bones didn’t much appeal to him. The kids were younger; he guessed they’d want to try it. Him, he was happy gliding through silent, snowy woods.

 
“This is a short hike,” he said as they pulled away from the duplex. “About three miles. Circles one of the lakes, crosses a couple of streams. I’m told it’s pretty.”

  Beside him in the Tahoe, Matt shrugged. Par for the course—he hadn’t been unpleasant yet, but he wasn’t brimming with enthusiasm, either. Alec hadn’t expected that he would be. Polite, now, that he did expect.

  “Maybe next week we can go look at kayaks,” he suggested.

  “You mean you’ll let me out of the house again?” There was a sneer in the voice.

  “When the seven days are up. If you’ve done what I asked of you.” He paused. “If you want to skip the kayak idea, that’s fine.” He thought about threatening to take Liana or Julia or both with him instead, but canned it. No, he and Matt needed things to do together that were theirs. Julia would understand that.

  “Kayaking was cool,” Matt finally mumbled.

  “You been up to the top of Angel Butte yet?” Alec asked on impulse, seeing the turnoff.

  “I didn’t want to ride my bike up.”

  Or push it, more likely. The road that circled to the crater rim was steep. Alec was a runner and challenged himself to go to the top one or two mornings a week. He’d been disconcerted to learn that the mayor did the same. He and Chandler met each other coming or going every now and then.

  “Let’s drive up there,” he said.

  Matt didn’t object and even looked mildly interested.

  They emerged at the top and Alec pulled into the small parking lot. When he opened his door, Matt hopped out, too. There were a couple of other cars up here and a pickup with a camper. A family stood reading the historical-designation placard that told the story of the angel that gave the butte and town its name.

  “She’s been here since 1884,” Alec told Matt as they walked along the paved path that led to the marble angel atop the base he’d been told had been added not that many years ago to boost her so she could see over the top of the scrubby trees growing out of the cinder sides of the butte. “This was the Wild West then. Supposedly the guy who ran the stagecoach stop and trading post was involved in cattle rustling. A bunch of the ranchers decided to hang him, no trial required. He claimed an angel appeared to protect him. Scared the vigilantes away. He’d evidently made a silent vow, because next thing people knew, a huge crate arrived on a wagon, and what was in it but a marble statue of an angel, carved in Italy. There wasn’t any road up to the top in those days.” He contemplated the eight-foot-tall angel with her tucked but delicately incised wings. “Can’t imagine how they got her up here unbroken.”

  Matt stepped off the path to look up at her face, weathered into a serenity that might or might not have been there originally.

  “Think what that must have cost,” Alec said thoughtfully. “Makes you wonder where he got the money, doesn’t it?”

  Matt cackled. “Stealing cattle.”

  Alec’s mouth tipped up. “Probably.”

  He stood to one side and watched as his nephew climbed the three broad steps of the base and then jumped down, circling until he stood behind her. “She looks kind of like the sister I had for third grade,” Matt said.

  Alec had forgotten the kids had gone to a Catholic school in San Diego. He and Josh had, too, for a few years, although both had switched to the public schools by sixth or seventh grade.

  “None of the nuns I had for teachers looked like her,” he said. “They were an aging bunch.”

  “Sister Regina wasn’t. She was, well, kind of pretty. Although it was hard to tell with the, you know.” His hands shaped the wimple and Alec nodded. “But she used to fold her hands in front of her like that, and she always stood totally straight and with her head high, and she never missed anything, even when she had her back turned, like when she was writing on the board or something.”

  “Eyes in the back of her head.”

  “She could see even through all that cloth.”

  Alec laughed. “Could be. Hey. Let’s get going before the day gets too hot.”

  The angel seemed to have eased the tension. The drive wasn’t ten miles northwest to a small campground and parking lot at one end of Osprey Lake. The campground appeared to be pretty well full. When he looked both ways, bright colors caught Alec’s eye where fishermen on rocky promontories cast lines into the deep lake waters.

  Alec offered to carry the pack, but Matt, displaying outraged pride, insisted he could. Alec didn’t force conversation as they set out on the dusty trail. They nodded at a few fishermen in passing, but otherwise, despite this being a weekend, he and Matt found themselves mostly alone. In the quiet they could hear birdcalls and see chipmunks and squirrels darting up trees and then pausing to peer around the boles or from high branches at these two intruders.

  “Doubt we’ll see any larger wildlife,” Alec commented, “but if you’d like we can get higher in the mountains on another trip or head east into the desert. We should probably both get outfitted with hiking boots, though, if we’re going to do much.” He risked an add-on. “Maybe your mom and sister, too.”

  “We used to walk a lot on the beach,” Matt said after a minute. “This is different.” Another pause. “It smells different from home.”

  “I’ve noticed.” They stopped on a short timber bridge that led over a small, rocky rill. The forest surrounding them was still the dry ponderosa and lodgepole pines, from what Alec had been told. He’d noticed from the first how distinctive the air smelled around here, clean and tangy. He didn’t know whether it was volcanic soil or trees or just the lack of smog, or all three, but he liked it.

  Matt jumped down to cross and recross the stream, balancing on rocks, then clambered back up to the trail. Moments like this, he looked so young, not like an angry boy whose father had died violently half a world away not so long ago.

  Partway around, they settled on a big rock extending out into the lake to eat their lunches. Alec had hoped Matt might want to talk, but instead he lay on his stomach, dipping his hands in the lake and watching minnows dart like pale shadows beneath the sparkling surface.

  Alec enjoyed the silence. He had to be guarded most of the time—on the job it was automatic, with Matt he had to watch what he said and with Julia...oh, hell, that was the hardest, fearing how easily he could give himself away. This, lounging here with his head tipped to the sun, made his muscles grow lax and his eyelids heavy. He could, quite contentedly, have sprawled on the rock and napped.

  But after a while Matt said in astonishment, “You aren’t going to sleep, are you?” and Alec groaned.

  “Given half a chance.”

  “You can’t! That’s boring. Only old people and babies take naps.”

  He pushed himself up, wadded his lunch leavings and poked them into the day pack, pleased Matt did the same with no argument. They both trod a few feet off the trail to take a leak, then ambled on around the trail.

  On this side of the lake, they passed only a lone fisherman, who either wasn’t aware of them passing or didn’t want to bother exchanging greetings.

  Matt whispered, “Do you think he’s catching anything?”

  “Wouldn’t be so many of them trying if there weren’t some decent trout in the lake,” Alec suggested. “That’s probably what they’re all planning for dinner tonight.”

  “I’ve never had trout.” Matt sounded doubtful. “I don’t know if I’d like it.”

  Alec hadn’t either, come to think of it. “If you like fish, fresh trout is supposed to be the best.”

  The stream at the head of the lake was livelier, draining from the mountains. They could hear the burble as they approached. Alec wasn’t sure it was safe to drink from; he knew you could get giardia or the like from some mountain water. Matt was disappointed but shrugged.

  Most of the way they’d been deep in forest that grew to the rocky lak
eshore, but circling toward the campground, the trail suddenly opened in a meadow that in May or June would have been scattered with wildflowers, judging from the seed heads.

  “Oh, look.” Matt suddenly crouched.

  Crack.

  Jesus. That was a gunshot. Alec threw himself atop the boy, flattening them in the tall grass. Was some idiot hunting? He risked raising his head slightly.

  Crack.

  He heard the thud of the bullet striking a tree trunk too close to them.

  Swearing, he flattened himself again. If this was hunting, he and Matt were the prey.

  “Let’s scrabble to the trees,” he said and lifted himself enough to let Matt squirm out from beneath him. As Matt kept going, shivering the grass, Alec contorted to pull the small .38 caliber he kept in an ankle holster. He’d feel better to have his big SIG Sauer in his hand, but this was better than nothing.

  Smaller and lithe, Matt was better at the squirming, snakelike system of propulsion. Alec had to half crawl, exposing more of himself. Prickles traveled up his spine and raised the hair at his nape at the consciousness of having his back to the enemy.

  Matt reached the first puny pine tree and stopped. Looking up, Alec saw the fresh white wound scored by the bullet. That gave him a direction.

  “Keep going,” he ordered, voice harsh. “Quick.”

  He half rose and threw himself behind the first larger tree trunk he saw. “Keep down,” he told Matt, who turned a scared face up to him.

  Weapon in hand, Alec eased around the tree far enough to look along the shore toward the campground, then to scan the woods beyond. A flash of color made him jerk, but it was one of the fishermen, who was crouched behind the thin growth of huckleberries as if they could protect him.

  Nothing.

  Alec let a couple of minutes tick by.

  More nothing.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “I want you to stay right here, Matt. I suspect the shooter is long gone, but I’m going to work my way around and find out. I’ll come back for you. Got it?”