The Price of Honor

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Then she set a place for Grady. “You made better time than you thought you would.”

  Grady shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep last night. Figured I might as well be driving. I called here and left a message on the machine, telling you I’d be early.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been ignoring the messages. Everyone wants to talk about the plane crash, and I just…”

  “Yeah. I don’t blame you,” Grady said. He could barely admit to himself that his father and David were dead. He damn sure wouldn’t want to talk about it to a bunch of people on the phone, no matter how well-meaning they might be.

  A few minutes later, Grady had joined Cody at the table with a sandwich and a beer for himself when Joe came in with a bag of groceries. He set the bag on the counter with a thud. Grady had scarcely risen from his chair before Joe nearly hefted him off his feet in a bear hug.

  “By God, boy, it’s good to see you.”

  This man had played almost as big a role in Grady’s life as Alma had. While Grady’s dad had taught him how to ride and how to take care of a horse, it was Joe who taught him the finer points of horse training, how to rope a steer at an all-out gallop. How to fight, and how to hide the bruises from Dad. How to survive a hangover. How to hide a hangover from Dad. How to later confess to Dad about the fights, the hangovers, and anything else that needed confessing.

  Joe Helms was a hell of a man. The only man alive good enough for Alma.

  But it was Raymond Lewis who had taught Grady about life, about honor and integrity. That a man’s word was more important than anything. How to be strong, and how to be gentle. How to love, how to laugh. How to stitch up a wound.

  Suddenly the twenty-six-year-old man named Grady Lewis felt as small and vulnerable as a defenseless baby.

  It was finally starting to sink in. His father and brother were dead.

  Dad! David! What do I do without you?

  Grady wasn’t the only one feeling the pain of Ray and David Lewis’s passing. As Rachel walked the two hundred yards from the Lewis home to the clinic, she struggled against tears.

  Work. That was what she needed to keep the memories at bay.

  But work would bring them, anyway. Just walking up to the clinic brought so many memories rushing back. Standing Elk Veterinary Clinic, the sign at the edge of the small gravel parking lot said. Raymond Lewis, D.V.M., Owner.

  Rachel wondered how long it would be before Grady had the heart to take his father’s name off that sign.

  Grady’s father, Dr. Raymond Lewis, was the first man outside her family that Rachel ever loved.

  She smiled slightly at the memory. She had been five, and her father had been about to put her pony down because it was old and sick. But Rachel’s brother, Jack, had defied King Wilder and sneaked into the house and called the vet. Dr. Lewis had arrived, and for the first time in her life, Rachel saw a man stand up to her father. It had been frightening, yet thrilling, because in doing so this stranger was saving her pony.

  And save her pony he did. He gave it a shot of something—Rachel couldn’t remember now what it had been—and the pony had recovered and carried her around the ranch for another two years, until she graduated to a full-sized horse of her own. Even after that, little Hopscotch was allowed to retire in ease; he’d lived another five years and hadn’t been sick a day of that time.

  Dr. Raymond Lewis had become Rachel’s hero. From the first day she saw him, working over her pony, Rachel had worshiped the man. And she had known, right then, what she wanted to be when she grew up. She wanted to be a veterinarian. Even if she hadn’t quite been able to wrap her tongue around the word yet.

  Her friend, her hero. Her mentor. And now he was gone.

  That fall, when Rachel went to school for the first time, she’d met the rest of the Lewis clan: Grady, an older man of six, whom she had fallen in love with and planned to marry until years later when he betrayed her; and David, age ten, who had grown into a beautiful man inside and out, with the eternal optimism and, sadly, due to a tragic accident, the mental capacity of an eight-year-old.

  David, too, was lost to them now. He had died in the same plane crash that took Dr. Lewis three days ago. He would be mourned and buried alongside his father tomorrow.

  Rachel shook her head and started around the building to the back door. The clinic was closed today, the front door locked. They’d given Jimmy, their part-time helper, the day off, but Louise was probably working at the front desk. Rachel would use the back door to hopefully avoid interrupting her.

  It was incomprehensible to Rachel that a flock of geese could be responsible for the loss of two people so dear to her. Geese, of all things, flying a head-on collision course with the light plane Dr. Ray had been flying.

  David had loved to fly. Dr. Ray had put off taking him up for months, waiting until Rachel finished school, received her veterinary license, and came to work with him at the clinic. Only then would he allow himself to take a day off and spend it with his eldest son.

  Only when Rachel’s lifelong dream of working side by side with her mentor was finally accomplished could Dr. Ray go out and get himself killed.

  Damn! It wasn’t fair.

  Rachel jerked open the back door and barely refrained from slamming it shut behind her. Death wasn’t fair. For that matter, neither was life.

  And if she wasn’t careful, she was going to start feeling sorry for herself, when nothing that had happened had happened to her.

  Ah, yes. Poor me. I’ve lost my mentor and friend, and now I have to face the man who broke my heart.

  Me, me, me. My, my, my. I.

  What an ego she had. The world didn’t revolve around her.

  Rachel scolded herself for the self-pity. She needed to keep busy.

  Inventory. That would occupy her mind. They would need an accurate inventory of everything in the clinic for the court once Ray’s will was read.

  Oh, God, Ray, I miss you and David so much.

  Was it self-pity to wonder if she would still have a job after ownership of the clinic passed to Grady? As Ray’s heir, he would have the final say over everything to do with Standing Elk—the ranch and the clinic.

  One by one, every dream she’d had was crumbling beneath her feet.

  Behind her the door to the surgery opened.

  “Oh, you’re back,” Louise said. “I wasn’t expecting you this soon.”

  Louise Hopkins was the clinic’s office manager, bookkeeper, receptionist, and all around Jane-of-all-trades. Without her, Dr. Ray always said, there wouldn’t be a Standing Elk Veterinary Clinic. The blue-haired grandmother of twelve had been working for him since his second month in business some twenty-odd years ago.

  “How is Alma holding up?” Louise asked quietly.

  “As well as can be expected,” Rachel answered. “Grady’s there now, and Joe just drove up, so she’s not alone.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Whenever Louise said “Ah” like that, it was a given that she had just formed an opinion or was about to make an observation that a person probably didn’t want to hear.

  “Nothing.” Louise waived a hand in the air.

  Uh-oh. Denial. Another sure sign that Louise was about to trip somebody up.

  “So tell me,” Louise said with exaggerated casualness, “is he still as good-looking as ever?”

  Rachel blinked once, slowly. “Joe? I’ve always thought he was handsome. He hasn’t changed much since you saw him this morning.”

  “You’re so funny. Of course I meant Grady. Not that Joe isn’t handsome, I agree. But I’m used to his face. Seems to me Grady used to be one good-looking hunk.”

  “Why, Louise,” Rachel said with her tongue planted firmly in her cheek. “Does Bill know you have these fantasies about younger men?” She wiggled her eyebrows up and down at the older woman. “Do your grandchildren know?”

  Louise chuckled. “I’m not so old that I can’t appreciate a prime specimen. And you didn’t an
swer my question. Is he still a prime specimen?”

  Rachel turned away, hopefully before the blush hit her cheeks. Prime specimen, and then some, she thought. But she wasn’t about to admit she had even noticed. “You’ll have to judge that for yourself. I’m going to inventory the surgical supplies.”

  “Well, you can if you want,” Louise said on her way to the outer office. “But I did it yesterday.”

  Great, Rachel thought, her shoulders slumping. “Did you—”

  “Yep,” Louise called back from her desk. “Complete inventory. All done.”

  Hmph. “Okay. Great.”

  Rachel looked around at the immaculate room. Well, she could clean out the cages. But when she stepped into the kennel, the cages were spotless.

  There were a thousand other things she could do. There was always work to be done around the clinic. But just then Rachel couldn’t think of a single chore. Her mind kept straying back to the little boy standing at Grady’s side. The boy with the big brown eyes.

  Rachel understood the fundamentals of genetics. Dominant genes and all of that. Strictly speaking, both of the Lewis sons should have had the thick black hair, deep brown eyes, and dark-toned skin of their mother, Mary Standing Elk Lewis. The black, the brown, and the dark. Those were the dominant genes.

  Grady and David had gotten Mary’s black hair and coppery skin, but while David had those dark Shoshone eyes, Grady got Dr. Ray’s blue-green eyes.

  Now along came Cody, with all the Native American features from Mary, including the dark eyes.

  He was a polite little thing, and so sweet it broke Rachel’s heart. It appeared Grady had done a wonderful job raising the boy on his own.

  “Busy,” she said out loud. “I need to be busy.”

  In one of the recovery cages in the surgery room she found something that needed her attention. She had put a dog back together yesterday that had come out on the losing end of a bout with a barbed-wire fence. Now she could see that the poor canine had chewed the stitches open on his abdomen.

  “Come on, fella, you can’t get well that way.”

  Within a few minutes Rachel was busy applying new sutures and explaining to the sedated animal all the reasons why he should not eat this new set. She was certain he would be appreciative of her work, but doubted he would pay much attention to the lecture. She doubted, too, that he was going to like the collar she was going to put on him to keep him from reaching the sutures.

  Cody had given up taking naps a long time ago, but traveling all day always left him groggy. Right now he was curled up asleep in Grady’s old bed down the hall. The house was quiet. Tomorrow would be different, Grady knew. After the services people would come, bringing food for the survivors, and memories of the dearly departed.

  He wished tomorrow was already over.

  He wished he hadn’t spent the last five years—Cody’s entire life—living nine hundred miles from home.

  For the millionth time, Grady wondered if he’d done the right thing in taking Cody and leaving town five years ago.

  But dammit, what else could he have done, with the sheriff threatening to hand Cody over to the state to be put up for adoption? LaVerne’s father, Sheriff Gene Martin, had a long arm and friends and family in every state and county office in Wyoming. Not to mention that the district judge was his cousin.

  No, there had been no real choice. No matter how many times Grady went over it in his mind, taking Cody had been the only thing he could have done. He could not have stood back and let Cody be raised by strangers.

  Of course, it might not have come to that if Rachel had let him explain. If she had only listened to him. Maybe someday…

  No, there was no point. It was too late now. Five years too late for explanations.

  But it was never too late for regrets.

  Chapter Two

  The funeral the next day was standing-room only, with more folks gathered outside the open doors of the church in hopes of hearing the service. Dr. Raymond Lewis had been one of Wyoming’s most respected veterinarians, a long-time member of the Elks Lodge, and a good friend to nearly everyone he met. Farmers, ranchers, colleagues, and politicians from all over the state came to pay their final respects. Not to mention nearly every single soul in Wyatt County.

  After the double funeral and graveside services, most of the out-of-towners headed for home, but the house at the Lewises’ Standing Elk Ranch was nonetheless packed with people. They overflowed into the front yard and back, from the living room and den, and through the dining room and kitchen. Everyone had loved Dr. Ray, and those who weren’t uneasy around the mentally handicapped had liked David. People shared stories and tales, laughter and tears.

  But almost as prevalent as the topics of David and Dr. Ray in the dozens of conversations taking place at the Standing Elk Ranch that day was the subject of Grady Lewis’s return.

  Would he stay? Would he take off again?

  And what, everyone wondered in hushed tones, was Rachel Wilder thinking about Grady’s return? What was Sheriff Martin thinking about that little grandson of his—Grady’s son?

  Rachel heard the whispers, saw the looks cast at her, at Grady, at the sheriff. She couldn’t do anything about Grady and the sheriff, but she didn’t feel obliged to put up with the stares directed at her.

  If pushing her way into the kitchen to slice sandwiches felt more like hiding than helping serve food, well, maybe it was. She needed something to do with her hands, a legitimate something upon which to focus her eyes while she tried to come up with a polite way to tell her lifelong friends and neighbors that her thoughts about Grady’s return were none of their business.

  Of course now that everyone was at the house, they could get a good look at Cody, if they didn’t mind getting caught by everyone else staring out into the backyard at a bunch of little boys at play.

  Cody hadn’t been at the funeral or graveside. Donna, Rachel’s brother Ace’s housekeeper, had worked things out with Alma so that Donna stayed at the Lewis house rather than attending the services, and she brought Ace’s three young sons with her. That way she would be on hand if people starting showing up at the house before Alma got home after the services.

  Alma had apparently called Donna last night and asked if she would mind adding one more to the brood. Cody had stayed at the house with Jason, Clay, and Grant. Then others had heard that Donna was willing to watch their children, too, so they could attend the funeral. By now the eight or ten kids were probably fast friends. On her way through the house, Rachel had spotted them out in the backyard together while she tried to avoid Grady.

  She hadn’t been able to avoid him at the graveside services. Duty, and respect and love for David and Dr. Ray, dictated that she give the surviving family member her formal condolences at the end of the service. She’d done that, if a wobbly smile and a brief nod could be considered condolences. But that was all she’d been able to do without risking breaking down and crying at the thought of Ray and David’s deaths.

  She had cried plenty since the plane crash. Now she would think about something else.

  But nothing else could work its way into her mind. Nothing but Grady. How long would he stay?

  And why, she thought, angry with herself, was she concerned at all with what Grady would or would not do? She wasn’t, she assured herself. Except for how his actions might affect her job and those she cared about, like Alma and Joe.

  She wouldn’t let herself worry about her job or Grady. This was a day to remember David and Dr. Ray, not old heartaches from the past or concerns for the future.

  Ida Sumner worked her way through the gathering of people blocking the door between the kitchen and the formal dining room, where most of the food was laid out.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” Ida cried, hugging a covered dish to her ample chest. “There must be a hundred people out there.”

  “At least,” Alma said. “What have you got there, Ida? Wasn’t there any more room on the dining table?”

&
nbsp; “Truth to tell, I didn’t even look,” Ida confessed. She set her dish down on the counter. “This isn’t for that crowd out there. I made it special, in case Grady came home. Told him over at the cemetery that I made it for him. Wanted to put it in here to be sure it didn’t disappear before he had a chance to sample it.”

  Alma clucked her tongue and smiled at the same time. “I can guess without looking. Peach cobbler, right?”

  Rachel smiled and ignored the pang of nostalgia that struck her. Grady had always had a weakness for peach cobbler, especially Mrs. Sumner’s.

  Ida laughed. “Right the first time. I didn’t know what the little one would like, so I made chocolate-chip cookies for him. How are you doing, Rachel, honey?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “We’re all so proud of you for getting your vet license and all. A crying shame you didn’t get to spend more time working with Ray. That man was a pure genius with animals, he was.” Without giving Rachel a chance to respond, Mrs. Sumner turned back to Alma. “So what are you and Joe going to do? Do you think you’ll stay on here at the ranch?”

  Another pang struck Rachel. She’d been so wrapped up in grief over the accident that she hadn’t thought about the fact that, depending on what happened to the ranch now, Alma and Joe might end up without their home, as well as their jobs. Surely not, though. Surely Dr. Ray had made some provision for them in his will.

  Alma’s smile was tight and tired. “I guess that depends on what Grady decides to do. He just got in yesterday. We haven’t had the heart to ask him yet if he’s made any decision about the ranch.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, don’t you suppose? Why, it wouldn’t seem right, Standing Elk Ranch without a Lewis here. Without you and Joe.”

  Alma chuckled. “It wouldn’t seem right to me, either.”

  “Ralph and I were talking just last night,” Ida said, “about when Mary Standing Elk first came here and she and Ray got married. Oh, what a beautiful young woman she was.”

  “I wish I’d known her,” Rachel murmured.