by Maggie Marr
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Emma asked. Her voice contained an upbeat, forced cheeriness as if trying to sweep the hard emotions out the door.
“I’m still working on the Carson appeal,” Tulsa said. She scrubbed her hand over her eyes. She’d only been awake for a couple of hours and already she needed a nap. “Then another supervised visit.”
Emma nodded and her lips pulled down. Both Joe and Emma knew that a supervised visit would entail Tulsa spending the afternoon with Cade. She hadn’t seen him or discussed what had happened in the hospital with Hudd. Nor had they discussed the events in his truck. Guilt over her desire for Cade fought with the anxiety that gripped her belly surrounding Hudd and Connie’s case.
“And you two?” Tulsa asked. She was finished discussing her personal life, her pain, her confusion—at least for now. She needed to pull her thoughts together, try to give the documents that Jo was sending her discerning legal eyes, not the eyes of a daughter who had lost a mother.
“I’ve got a depo in a half hour,” Jo said. She lifted the pages from the conference table and tapped them against the wood. “We’re here for you.”
“And I have a contested custody hearing,” Emma said.
And I get to deal with my family.
*
Four thousand feet above Tulsa, Thunderridge Peak scraped the bright blue Colorado sky. The ski trails that cut through the thick forest of aspen trees and dark green pines would be white and packed with snow in less than two months, but were now lush and green. Once the snow dropped on Powder Springs, the ski trails would be crawling with skiers, like tiny ants over spilled soda. A cool and not so gentle breeze flew down over the mountain and whipped her curls. A Powder Springs resident wouldn’t shiver. It was only fall. But Tulsa pulled Savannah’s fleece-lined ski jacket tight around her.
Bobby and Ash stood a few feet ahead of Tulsa, near the front of the ski-lift line. Cade walked up, wearing a short-sleeved top and jeans. The muscles of his arms bulged where the shirtsleeve ended and Tulsa glanced quickly from his arms and chest to Cade’s face.
“The alpine slide?” Tulsa asked.
“I suggested it.” Cade fell in beside Tulsa. “It closes next week.”
Even irritated with Cade, Tulsa couldn’t escape the heat that clutched her with his nearness. They waited their turn behind the tourists and Powder Springs residents who wanted a quick thrill by traveling thirty miles per hour down a cement trough on a barely-there plastic sled with wheels.
Two pairs of people ahead of them, Ash and Bobby sat on the tiny cushioned ski lift attached to a wire. The ski lift jerked forward and swung Ash and Bobby away from the ground.
Tulsa’s stomach lurched. Soon she would feel the whooshing sensation of her stomach dropping to her knees and the earth pulling away from beneath her feet. Her heart accelerated its beat in her chest and her hands grew clammy.
“You loved this,” Cade said.
“When I was fourteen,” Tulsa said. She didn’t want Cade to know that along with creating a new life in Los Angeles, she’d also developed a fear of heights. Some might even say phobia.
The ski-lift operator, in his sunglasses and short-sleeved shirt, nodded toward Tulsa and Cade.
“Ready?” Cade asked.
The ski lift wouldn’t stop for them. They followed the chair in front of them as it lifted from the ground. Tulsa watched the feet of the twosome dangling and her heart hammered faster. She stood behind the blue line, waiting to feel the press of the chair on the backs of her legs. She inhaled. She’d done this a million times as a kid, even as an adult. Granted, the last time was five years ago and she’s suffered a nearly paralyzing panic attack on the chairlift before her very last ski run, but she wasn’t about to tell Cade that little tidbit.
The chairlift seat cushion pushed into the backs of Tulsa’s legs and like a shot of adrenaline to her chest, her heart hammered. Her palms wet, she grabbed the metal rail to her right. Cade pulled the metal guardrail down in front of them. The chair jerked forward and up.
Tulsa’s stomach flew forward and landed somewhere near her throat. Every muscle in her body tightened—gripping at nothingness. She shut her eyes and bit down on her bottom lip. She forced a deep inhale, a deep exhale, a deep inhale, a deep exhale—
“Look how small,” Cade crowed. “What a view.”
Tulsa forced her eyelids up and watched Cade lean forward and crane his neck to see the earth plummet away from them.
“I don’t ever get tired of this.” They locked eyes. “Heights scare you, Tulsa?”
Her throat was tight—closed, but for the tiny trickle of air that barely inflated her lungs. Unable to speak, Tulsa shook her head no and looked to her right. She set her gaze on the horizon but that focal point didn’t help—everything was far away and the mountain was huge. Giant pine trees, hundreds of feet tall, swayed beneath them. She clutched the rail to the right with one hand and the tiny safety bar in front of her with the other. Her hands were clammy and she couldn’t get a good grip, her hands slid over the metal. Her fingertips would surely slip if she had to make a clutch for her life.
A cold wind blasted from the top of the mountain and the chairlift wobbled in the wind. A chill rushed down her spine and her thighs shivered. She wanted to pull her coat closer around her, but she’d have to release her hand from the chair rails to do it and her brain couldn’t command her fingertips to unclasp.
“Cold?” Cade asked.
“H… h… hardly,” Tulsa shivered out the word. Her lips had to be turning blue.
Screams of delight wafted upward from the two cement tracks where kids and adults raced down the alpine slide. She was trapped on a chairlift, shivering in fear with Cade. If she could simply get to the top of the mountain without plummeting to her death or Cade bringing up the events of last Friday night, then she could breathe.
The ski lift ground to a halt. Oh shit.
Cade leaned forward against the safety bar and peered to the earth, so damn far away. This happened. On chairlifts. They stopped. For whatever reason. Someone fell getting off. Someone fell getting on. The wind blew too hard or too fast. They stopped and Tulsa didn’t like it. Not one bit. Because the only thing worse than hanging from a wire, feet dangling, a million miles above the earth, was being trapped hanging from a wire a million miles above the earth. Deep, slow, even breaths—the chairlift would start again—they would soon move upward and in minutes would safely reach the peak of Thunderridge Mountain.
And then Cade did the unthinkable.
He swung his legs.
The evil son of a bitch…
The tiniest swing, really just a gentle sway—as if rocking somewhere on a porch with a glass of lemonade—but to Tulsa this felt like a loop-to-loop on a roller-coaster ride from hell.
Cade swung his legs again.
“Stop it!” Tulsa said. She couldn’t grab Cade or his legs. She didn’t have enough hands. Right now both clutched the metal of the lift. Her heart hammered in her chest.
Cade turned his gaze to her and a wicked smile curved his lips upward—a mischievous smile, the kind that acknowledged he knew exactly what he was doing to her insides.
“You’re going to kill us!” Tulsa yelped as the ski lift swung. This wasn’t an elementary-school playground. These things weren’t built to be swings. Hell, they were barely built to safely garner passengers up the 2500-foot incline at twelve miles per hour, 163 feet above the earth. “Damnit! Stop swinging your legs!”
Cade stopped. He turned to her, his face serious. “Then tell me,” Cade said.
“What exactly is it that you think you need to know?” Tulsa said, her words fast and her tone terse. On pain of death, at this moment she’d tell Cade nearly anything to keep him from trying to flip their chairlift off the wire that barely kept them from hurtling to the earth. With Cade’s luck, if the cable snapped he’d somehow land on an aspen tree below and climb down to safety while she plummeted to the earth and cracked her head
on a rock.
“I want to know why you left without a word, how you—”
The chair lift jerked to life.
Tulsa sighed. Thank you, God!
“You were saying?” Tulsa managed to squeak out.
Cade’s face clouded, quieted by his thoughts. “Nothing.”
The ski lift approached the wooden platform and Tulsa’s lungs expanded, her muscles relaxed.
Cade lifted the metal guardrail. Tulsa’s feet finally touched the earth. They both stepped away from the chair. Tulsa fought her urge to kiss the ground.
“I’ve been thinking,” Tulsa said, her voice now back at full strength. She turned and pulled herself to her full height, no longer made vulnerable by her irrational fear. “I’d like to talk to Hudd.”
Cade’s head swiveled and his eyes popped wide for a millisecond before he squinted.
“I have some questions I think he can answer.” And with those final words she walked toward Bobby, Ash, and the alpine slide. Let Cade Montgomery think on that.
*
“She wants to talk to Hudd?” A low whistle emanated from between Wayne’s lips. “That’s not good.”
The sun lay low on the horizon and the scent of fresh pine floated on the wind. Cade sat beside his brother in the bleachers of the football field. Wayne turned his head back to watch Holt run passing drills. Holt dropped back from the line and rifled a long pass to Dylan Conroy, fifteen yards downfield.
“You gonna let her?” Wayne asked. He wore his sheriff’s uniform and his SUV cruiser was parked near the side of the field. They’d climbed the bleachers together to watch the Powder Springs Pilots’ midweek practice. They met here every week to watch Holt. And usually to discuss Hudd. His prognosis. His behavior. His ill temper.
“You think that’s wise?” Cade asked.
“Who knows what Hudd’ll say?” Wayne shook his head. “Especially if he thinks he’s talking to Connie’s ghost.”
“I guess I can’t really stop her,” Cade said. “Tulsa could see him anywhere. It’s not like I’ve got him locked in a closet at the ranch.”
“I think I suggested that,” Wayne said. “Save us all a whole lot of problems.”
“Not funny,” Cade said. “And what problems with Hudd do you exactly have?”
Wayne gave him a long look. Okay, sure there were problems with Hudd that both he and Wayne faced each day. But Wayne wasn’t tasked with taking care of the cantankerous old man. Wayne didn’t have to see Hudd over breakfast, at the office, and then at dinner.
“It’s not like you have to take care of him,” Cade grumbled.
“And you don’t either,” Wayne said. “There are caretakers, nurses, people to help with the elderly. I’m not suggesting you shuffle him off to a home, but you don’t have to spend every damn minute of every damn day for the rest of his life watching him. Who knows, the old coot might outlive both of us for spite.”
Holt hammered the ball right into the receiver’s numbers.
“Nice pass,” Cade said. Wayne was right… in theory. But Cade couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow taking care of his father was his responsibility. He didn’t expect Wayne to share his feelings or even understand them. Wayne’s biological father had skipped town right after Judith and he got divorced and Wayne’d had little contact with his own father for his entire life. Hudd hadn’t been much of anything but a curse for Wayne. Constantly reminding Wayne of his tenuous status within the Montgomery household. How Wayne wasn’t a true Montgomery and never would be. Cade was actually surprised how much Wayne actually cared for the old man.
“You know you’ve got a blind spot as big as the sun when it comes to Hudd.”
“There’s nothing for Dad to tell her,” Cade said.
“You really believe that?” Wayne asked. “That Hudd had nothing to do with Connie’s death?” He turned back toward the football field. “Or with anything else?”
Cade’s heart pulsed an extra beat and a chill rushed up the back of his neck. A thought that there was something—something—he didn’t know caught in the back of Cade’s brain.
“What else could there be?” Cade squinted his eyes and shook off his irritation at Wayne’s words.
Wayne didn’t answer—didn’t look at him—didn’t flinch. A long time ago, without any words, the brothers sorted out that where Hudd was concerned the two of them would always be at odds. Regardless of Wayne’s strained relationship with Hudd, the facts were the facts and there was nothing to prove Hudd’s involvement with Connie’s death or any other damn mystery.
Cade stared at his nephew, who jogged toward the sideline for instructions from his coach. Cade had to believe in Hudd. What would it mean to his past and his future and even his present if he didn’t believe his father’s version of that April night years ago? To doubt Hudd wouldn’t mean anything good, that was for damn sure.
Chapter Seventeen
“Aunt Tulsa, you can drop me here.”
“That’s okay.” Tulsa pulled to the stop sign. The temperature was nearly zero—okay thirty, but it felt like zero—and they were three blocks from the high school.
“No, really,” Ash said. At the stop sign she opened her passenger door and jumped out with backpack in hand before Tulsa could move the Jeep to the side of the road. Ash slammed shut the door. Tulsa turned and looked at Savannah in the back seat. “What was that?”
“Hormonal adolescent,” Savannah said. “And probably embarrassed.”
“Of me?” Tulsa asked. “But I’m the cool aunt from Cali.”
“You’re the cool aunt from Cali when you have the convertible Mercedes, but today you’re just another old woman driving a Jeep.”
“Old?”
“To a fourteen-year-old everyone over twenty is old. Stop and I’ll get in front.”
Tulsa pulled to the curb. Savannah opened the passenger door and popped into the front seat. A block ahead of the Jeep, Ash fell in step with some girls and laughed.
“I’ve half a mind to pull up there and call out her name.”
“It’s not worth it,” Savannah said. “I’ve tried. She’ll find a way to make you pay later.”
“She liked me last night,” Tulsa said. Her voice sounded quiet and lonely. Ash continued down the street with her friends. “And a week and a half ago at the football game.” “That was then and this is now. It’s moment to moment with all those hormones.” Savannah brushed at her pants with her fingertips and then folded her hands in her lap. She turned her head toward Tulsa. The angle was jaunty—almost daring—as if to offset the flat, barbed tone of her next five words. “Your newness has worn off.”
Since the football game, the weather wasn’t the only thing chilly in Powder Springs. There’d been nothing overt—nothing obvious, no harsh words—instead, Savannah had gone “Grandma Margaret style” with her displeasure and met Tulsa with frosty silence.
Tulsa clutched one hand over her heart. “Are you insinuating that you, too, are irritated with me?”
“I’m not the one sleeping with the bad guy.” Savannah drew out the words at a slow, deliberate pace.
“No.” Tulsa put the Jeep in gear and pulled past a stop sign. “You already slept with the bad guy and now we’re here.” She tossed the words out with a light tone. “And I’m not sleeping with Cade.”
“Yet,” Savannah said, her voice low and thick with the kind of judgment only a sister could dish out.
Tulsa pursed her lips together and focused on the road that led to downtown Powder Springs. Irritation lodged in her chest. She wanted to spin on her sister and tell Savannah that she was crazy for making the suggestion that Tulsa still harbored emotions for Cade. But if Tulsa were completely honest with herself, any denial was a lie. She still wanted Cade. She still thought of him, and if there were no roadblocks like Ash’s future and Connie’s past, then yes, she would explore her feelings for Cade. But there were roadblocks and giant red flags and flashing lights, so going any further with Cade was impossible
.
Tulsa put the Jeep into third. “These feelings… Cade…” Tulsa held her palm up as if imploring Savannah to understand. “None of this was my intention.” She glanced at Savannah. “I never thought… I never expected…” Tulsa shook her head back and forth. What had she thought—what had she expected? That she could live in a state of denial for her entire life? Denial about her relationship with her niece, her relationship with her sister, her hometown, and her dead mother.
Savannah rested her head against the seatback. Her shoulders relaxed in surrender and the tightness around her lips smoothed. “I remember the day you fell in love with Cade,” Savannah said. Her voice was forlorn and yet soothing, as though she were revisiting a fond memory in her mind.
Tulsa squinted her eyes and glanced toward her sister.
“It was the middle of your junior year. You came home from something. Maybe cheerleading practice or yearbook or who knows what? You belonged to more clubs than anyone else at PSHS.”
True. So true. What Tulsa lacked in money she made up for with hard work.
“You walked into the kitchen with this weird look on your face.”
“Weird look? That’s how you knew? Have you seen the looks that Ash is throwing at you, because weird looks—”
“I’m not finished.” Savannah glared at her sister. “You interrupt me too m—”
“I don’t interrupt you,” Tulsa said.
“Please tell me that was meant to be a—”
“Joke?” Tulsa interrupted again. Her faint smile grew into a giant grin.
Savannah’s head jerked back and a laugh burst over her lips. Her hands flew to her eyes and she looked at Tulsa through her fingertips as her belly rolled with laughter. Tulsa laughed too. The laughter felt good and released the tension. Their laughter made them smile and reminded them that their relationship as sisters was sometimes hard, but forever permanent.
“Are you going to let me finish the story?” Savannah finally gasped out around the traces of her laughs.
“Does it involve me?”
