Big Sky Wedding (15 page)

“What’s the problem?” Zane asked mildly, watching his younger brother and sipping coffee from one of the six mugs they’d bought the night before, on the shopping expedition to Three Trees.

“It’s boring around here,” Nash complained. He glanced down at Slim, who was waiting for him to finish breakfast, and idly stroked the animal’s head. When he went on, his voice was quiet. “I can’t even get a game of fetch going with this dumb old dog. I throw the stick and throw the stick, and he won’t chase it. He just sits there until I go get it myself.”

Zane hid a grin behind the rim of his mug. He guessed the charm of the new TV must have worn off already—not that he would have suggested, let alone allowed, the boy to hole up in his room and watch the tube on a fine day like that one.

“I was thinking we could drive around a little,” Zane said. “Maybe make a run over to check Parable out, or scout up some good places to go fishing.”

Nash looked cautiously hopeful. “You and me and Cleo?” he asked.

Zane chuckled. “Cleo is busy becoming America’s Next Top Decorator, and I’d as soon poke at a rattlesnake with a short stick as interrupt her now, with her in her element and all. Nope, it’ll just be you and me.” The dog looked back at him then, as if to make it known that he wanted to go along. “And Slim,” he finished.

Nash’s grin was sudden and somehow surprising, a dramatic switch, given the sullen mood he’d been in since he got out of bed. Twenty minutes before, he’d wandered into the kitchen wearing nothing but the oversize flannel boxers he’d slept in, started riffling through bags and boxes looking for food and grumbled under his breath when Cleo told him to go back to his room and get himself dressed like a civilized human being with a place in polite company.

He’d followed orders, all right, but he’d been sour as last week’s cottage cheese when he got back, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, socks and sneakers.

Now, though, Nash practically broke his neck to carry his bowl and spoon over to the one remaining counter, next to the sink, with its exposed pipes and rusty faucet handles, setting them down with a thump.

“Can I feed Blackjack?” he asked eagerly, already on his way to the door.

“I already did that,” Zane said, leaving his mug beside Nash’s breakfast bowl. “First rule of ranching, little brother—no sleeping in half the day while the livestock waits for hay and fresh water.”

Nash executed a crisp salute. “Yes,
sir!
” he said, grinning.

Zane resisted an urge to muss up the kid’s hair, just for the heck of it. “Go tell Cleo we’ll be out for a while,” he told the boy. “I’ll start up the truck.”

For once, Nash didn’t offer a comeback—he just followed the sound of Cleo’s voice into the next room.

Zane and Slim went outside, and Zane hoisted the dog into the backseat of the rig.

Maybe they’d stop at the courthouse over in Parable and get old Slim licensed, he decided, make sure the mutt was legal.

He’d barely climbed behind the wheel when Nash burst out of the house, leaped right over the porch steps without touching down on any of them and sprinted across the yard toward the truck.

Cleo’s voice rang out behind him. “Didn’t I
tell
you not to slam that screen door, Nash Sutton?”

Nash ducked slightly, as though he expected her to hurl something at the back of his head, and then scrambled, grinning, into the passenger seat. While he was fastening his seat belt, Slim leaned forward and licked the kid’s face in welcome.

Nash laughed, turning just far enough to give one of Slim’s floppy ears a gentle tug. “Stupid dog,” he said, with obvious affection.

Slim panted, happy that the gang was all there, and sat back to take in the scenery.

“I never had a dog,” Nash remarked as they passed the mailbox at the bottom of the dirt driveway. “We moved around too much, but Dad promised I could have one someday.”

Zane’s throat tightened.
Someday
was Jess Sutton’s favorite word. Not that “someday” ever actually rolled around.

“That so,” he said, watching the boy out of the corner of his eye. No cars had gone by since he’d gotten up soon after sunrise, but he looked in both directions, then looked again, before pulling out onto the county road.

“How come you don’t like him?” Nash asked. There was no challenge in his tone, no petulance—just curiosity. Slim made a scrabbling sound as he rebalanced himself on the backseat after the turn. “Dad, I mean?”

Zane hesitated. “I don’t know him well enough to have an opinion, one way or the other,” he finally replied. He couldn’t avoid the subject of their father forever, he knew, and the kid wasn’t going to stop asking until he got answers and made sense of them.

“How can that be?” Nash wanted to know. A glance in his direction showed he was genuinely confused.

Ask him,
Zane might have said, but he didn’t. “Landry and I didn’t see much of the old man, growing up,” he said, shifting from first gear to second and choosing his words carefully. Keeping his gaze fixed straight ahead on the winding, rutted road that wouldn’t turn to blacktop until less than a mile outside Three Trees. He cherished a brief and futile hope that the kid would let the topic drop, but, naturally, he didn’t.

“Dad told me that your mom left him in the middle of the night and took you and Landry with her,” Nash said matter-of-factly. “He looked everywhere for you, but it was a couple of years before he caught up.”

Zane suppressed a ragged sigh, and it swelled inside him, hurting like a gulp of beer that had gone down the wrong pipe. It probably didn’t help that he’d swallowed what he wanted almost desperately to say in reply—
Did Dad happen to mention that he’d been gone for three days when Mom finally loaded us into her old car, along with most of our clothes, some of our toys and every edible scrap left in the refrigerator? Did he tell you he was shacked up the whole time with some woman he met in a bar, and that wasn’t the first time he’d cheated?

“That’s his story, huh?” he asked instead. Admittedly, the remark was a mite on the snarky side, but it was also the best he could do right then, remembering, as he was, how many times that rusted-out wreck of a station wagon had broken down on some lonely highway, how the food, which didn’t amount to much in the first place, ran out the second day.

In the backseat, Slim gave a whimper that sounded strangely cautionary.

“Are you saying Dad lied?” Nash asked, but he still didn’t fly mad or even raise his voice. His tone was conversational, if a touch on the sad side.

Zane cleared his throat, spared his brother a glance, turned his attention back to the road ahead. “He did catch up with us,” he said, after a few moments of grim self-control.
Eventually,
he clarified, in the privacy of his own head. Then he went on, because he had to give Nash something, didn’t he? “We were staying with Mom’s dad and stepmother back then, on the outskirts of Tucson—Mom was between jobs, and she hadn’t had much luck finding work—and one morning, as if out of nowhere, Dad turned up at the front door.” Zane paused again, chafing at the way his father had grinned and spread his arms in a sweeping here-I-am kind of gesture, evidently expecting a warm welcome, even though better than two years had gone by without so much as a letter, let alone a check for child support. As it turned out, he’d hitchhiked all the way from New Mexico, where they’d all lived before the breakup, to Arizona. He didn’t have a car, even the dimmest prospect of a job or a plug nickel in his pocket.

“What happened?” Nash pressed. “I’ll bet you were glad to see him.”

They were approaching Three Trees now, and Zane was relieved to swap the hard-dirt roadway for solid asphalt.

Glad to see him? Not really.

Zane might have cut loose with a chuckle, raw as his throat felt, but even after all these years, it hurt to look back on that day. They’d loved their father, he and Landry, but young as they were, they’d long since shed any illusion that the man would change. In fact, Zane suspected their mom had held out hope that Jess
would
come looking for his family, gather them up and, well, do all the things he hadn’t done before.

“My grandfather gave him some money, bought him a bus ticket and said he’d be wise not to come back.” Zane’s voice sounded hollow in his own ears when he finally spoke.

“Did Dad try to talk to you and Landry or anything? Where was your mom at the time?”

Zane slowed way down as they cruised along the main street of Three Trees. “She was out looking for work that day,” he allowed. “Got herself hired on at a burger joint. The job didn’t pay much, but she was all excited when she got home.”

He recalled the look of hope that had overtaken Maddie Rose’s face and then her whole countenance when she learned that Jess had been at the house.

That was when Grandpa thundered that he’d sent the bastard packing, and Maddie Rose was instantly weary again, and sadder than she’d been in a long time. Just recently, she’d even stopped crying herself to sleep at night.

“Where were you?” Nash’s question startled Zane. “That day when Dad came, I mean?”

Damn, the kid was like a hungry dog with a soup bone.

“We were hiding in the basement,” Zane said, well aware of how that must sound and not really caring. “Waiting for Dad to go away.”

Nash’s eyes rounded. “You didn’t want to see him?”

“We were scared,” Zane said. The truth was the truth and, hell, he and Landry had been little boys at the time. Still, they’d known even then that they were better off with their mother.

“Of Dad?” Nash was still keeping his cool, but his forehead was wrinkled up and his eyebrows almost met in the middle. “He wouldn’t have hit you or anything.”

Zane shook his head. “No,” he said. “And that’s a point in his favor, I guess. He never laid a hand on us or on Mom, as far as I can recall, though they had some pretty spectacular fights back in the day.”

“Then why were you scared?” Nash wasn’t letting this one go and, in a way, Zane respected him for it, even if he
was
borderline pissed off by then. His anger wasn’t directed at the boy—that was the thing that helped him keep a lid on his temper. But he would have liked to throttle dear old Dad with his bare hands, and that was bad enough.

“We figured he might steal us from Mom if he got the chance,” Zane said, very quietly. Of course he wouldn’t have—having two small boys in tow would have cramped Jess Sutton’s style. He’d have had to feed them, and that took money, and a man couldn’t get money without effort.

Ergo, he’d never had any.

“Didn’t you even love him a little bit?” The question was plaintive, and the bewilderment in Nash’s tone made the backs of Zane’s eyes scald for a second or two.

“Yes,” he answered, his voice dry and rough. “We loved him.” Storefronts and gas stations and a post office with a flag flying from a tall pole out front rolled past the window before he continued. “He was our dad, after all. But we loved Mom, too. And we knew she’d never go off and leave us, no matter how tough things got.”

Things had gotten tougher after Jess’s visit, all right, and fast.

Grandpa might have stood up to Jess that day, and hustled him out of town, pronto, but he hadn’t approved of his daughter’s choice of a husband in the first place, and he just couldn’t let that go. He took to reminding Maddie Rose how she’d wrecked her life, marrying a no-account loser like Sutton, and now she had two kids to show for it and precious little else, and if she thought he and the wife were going to support her and her boys, she had another think coming.

Maddie Rose’s stepmother, a kindly woman named Sharon, had tried to smooth things over, but Grandpa got mad all over again every time he even thought of Jess Sutton, and he didn’t try to hide it.

Less than two weeks later, Maddie Rose had quit her job at the fast-food joint out on Highway 10, and used her last paycheck to fill the car with gas and buy some cold cuts and fruit for the trip. Then the three of them left Tucson behind, this time, for good.

“Wow,” Nash said, breathing the word. “That’s bleak.”

They’d passed the town limits by then, and hit the open road that wound toward Parable, rich grasslands sprawling on either side, the sky so big and so blue that if Zane looked at it too long, he figured it might just break his heart.

“You wanted to know,” he replied. “So I told you.”

Of course, there was a whole lot Zane
hadn’t
told Nash, too. There was always the possibility that Jess had matured in the years since he’d tracked down his runaway family again. By then, Maddie Rose had found herself a good man, Hal Banks, a farmer she’d met in the café where she worked, down in Colorado, and she was starting to make noises about settling down. Zane and Landry had liked Hal, and they’d liked his small but prosperous farm, too. Then, around Christmas, Jess came back like a bad penny, driving a secondhand car and bearing gifts.

Maddie Rose didn’t welcome him, but she let him sleep on the couch in the front room of their rented trailer for a few nights, and Hal, convinced she was still in love with her ex-husband, had quietly pulled out of the relationship.

Jess stuck around just long enough to mess everything up for all of them, as it happened, and then, to no one’s surprise, he was gone again.

Same song, second verse.

They’d packed up and moved again, a few days later, and Zane and Landry said silent goodbyes to regular meals, a roof over their heads and riding the bus to and from the same school instead of finding themselves in a new one every fall.

The muscles in Zane’s forearm corded as he shifted the truck into a higher gear, picking up speed, and Nash settled back in his seat, sighed and stared out the window, asking no more questions.

CHAPTER NINE

P
ARABLE
, Z
ANE
AND
Nash soon discovered, was a bit smaller than Three Trees and a whole lot quainter. Where Three Trees boasted a couple of mega discount stores, a few strip malls and at least half a dozen franchised burger joints, Parable had small shops on Main Street, along with a café or two, and there was a well-kept park in the middle of town, too. Kids and dogs played rough-and-tumble in the neatly trimmed grass, climbed monkey bars and zipped down a curving metal slide while young mothers looked on benevolently, chatting among themselves but with an undercurrent of vigilance.

Being the county seat, Parable had a modest courthouse, a library and one beauty shop out on the highway—they’d passed it coming into town—with an honest-to-God mom-and-pop grocery store directly across the way. For some reason, the sight of that old-fashioned business, clearly thriving, cheered Zane up considerably.

“Not much to this place,” Nash commented, breaking the silence that had stretched between them after the conversation about Jess. It hadn’t been awkward or uneasy, that silence—they’d just run out of things to say. That was easy to do, Zane supposed, since he and his youngest brother were not all that well-acquainted.

“I kind of like it,” Zane answered, with a slight smile. Three Trees wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, with a population of just under ten thousand, but Parable, with half as many people, seemed sleepy by comparison. Most of the houses were freshly painted in tasteful pastel colors, with shutters at the windows and inviting porches, and the yards neatly mowed and surrounded, almost without exception, by tidy white picket fences.

They cruised on, taking their time, riding up one street and down the next.

“There sure are a lot of churches,” Nash observed, after some time had passed.

“Sure are,” Zane agreed. He wasn’t a churchgoer; he and God had a you-mind-your-business-and-I’ll-mind-mine pact going.

They continued to explore for a while, then headed for the courthouse, tree-shaded and quite august, for such a small community. There, Zane found a cubicle marked Animal Control, paid a license fee and showed the clerk a card the people at the shelter had given him, official proof that Slim was current on his shots and therefore no threat to society. He was putting the card back in his wallet as they reached the sidewalk again, Nash eager to attach the shiny new tag they’d been given to the dog’s collar.

They’d spotted the Butter Biscuit Café earlier, over on the other side of the street, and even from that distance, the smells of good country-style cooking reached their noses, wafting out every time the door opened to someone going in or out.

“You hungry?” Zane asked Nash, waiting beside the truck while the boy conferred the tag on Slim with all the ceremony of royalty bestowing knighthood.

“I guess,” Nash said doubtfully. He’d hoisted Slim down from the backseat and clipped on his leash, by then. “But I don’t have any money.”

Zane held in yet another sigh. “I didn’t ask if you had money,” he pointed out, with affable reason. “I asked if you were hungry. Very different questions.”

Slim was tugging at the other end of the leash, wanting a walk and, most likely, a place to lift his hind leg against something.

“I could eat,” Nash admitted, in that offhand way he had, which was probably supposed to indicate a lack of concern one way or the other. “I was about to let Slim stretch his legs a little, though. He’s been cooped up in the truck for a while and—”

“I’ll wait,” Zane said, when the boy fell silent. He leaned back against the side of his dusty truck and folded his arms to show he was in no hurry.

Nash brightened, just briefly, then looked troubled again, but all he said was, “Okay.”

Zane watched, full of emotions he wasn’t eager to name, as the boy and the dog headed down the sidewalk, away from the truck. Away from him.

He was no mind reader, but he’d have sworn Nash was worried that Zane might ditch him and Slim, simply drive off and leave the two of them to stay afloat or go under.

The thought ached in his mind like a bruise, then settled into his heart like silt stirred up in a shallow pond. He watched as the boy and the dog passed under dappled shadows cast by venerable oak and maple trees, rounded a corner and disappeared behind the courthouse.

Love,
Zane thought. This tangle of feeling in his chest and his gut was love, for his little brother, and for that cast-off dog, too. Slim was settling into his new life nicely, but the kid had a longer memory. He expected to wear out his welcome at any time and find himself alone in the world.

Zane’s throat screwed shut again, and he rubbed his eyes hard with a thumb and forefinger, once again remembering Maddie Rose. She’d never had a pot to piss in, as Grandpa had reminded her at every opportunity, but there was never any doubt that she cherished her children. She’d been proud of them, scraped the money together for school pictures every fall and tucked the new likenesses into dime-store frames, prominently displayed no matter where they happened to be living. The shots from the previous term wound up in a photo album that was always the first thing Maddie Rose packed when it was time to move on again.

He straightened, waited out the strange rush of sentimentality and thought about other things, carefully avoiding the past, until Slim and Nash reappeared, several minutes later.

Nash loaded the dog into the backseat of the truck and made sure the windows were rolled down a little way, so the air could circulate.

Slim, content to stay behind, settled on the seat, sighed and immediately fell asleep. Zane locked the truck and he and Nash crossed the street—there were lots of cars in the lot next to the Butter Biscuit, and parked out front, too—but a plump lady with a name tag that read “Essie” seated them right away.

Nash held down the fort while Zane went to wash his hands, passing three men gathered around a table near the jukebox, one of them wearing a sheriff’s badge. They seemed comfortable together, as if they’d known each other a long time—maybe their whole lives. Once, Zane had been at ease with Landry in the same way, but that time was over, and the brief realization stung. He nodded as he passed, and they nodded back, cordial enough.

When he got back to the booth he and Nash were sharing, the menus had been delivered and there were glasses of ice water waiting.

“I’ll have—” Nash began, having already perused the menu, evidently.

“You’ll wash your hands before you have anything,” Zane interceded, quietly but firmly.

“I’m not dirty,” Nash argued. “And besides, I’m
starved.
”

“Go,” Zane said, cocking a thumb in the direction of the men’s room. He didn’t smile until the boy had turned his back. Nash dragged his feet as he went, looking put-upon.

Meanwhile, Zane reached for a menu and studied it, deciding immediately on the meat loaf special, only to look up and find the sheriff standing next to the table. A dark-haired man with a solemn face, albeit a face women probably found attractive enough, put out a hand and smiled in greeting.

“Howdy,” he said. “I’m Boone Taylor.”

Zane nodded, shook the offered hand. “Hello, Sheriff,” he replied.

“Boone,” the sheriff said. “Call me Boone.” Then, after a beat. “And you are...?”

Zane felt a surge of relief. The man didn’t recognize him; he was just meeting and sizing up a newcomer to his county. Most likely, it was routine for him.

“Zane Sutton,” he answered mildly. “Glad to meet you, Boone.”

Boone nodded, indicated his two companions with a slight motion of his head. “That’s Slade Barlow over there, in the blue shirt, and the other yahoo is Hutch Carmody.”

Overhearing, both men nodded a silent hello.

Hutch Carmody.
The name struck Zane like a shock from a cattle prod. Sure enough, this was the same guy he’d seen on the internet, a few years older now than in the pictures and videos, the very one who’d run out on Brylee on her wedding day.

Zane’s back molars locked together, a reflexive response, and he forcibly eased up on his jaw muscles, returned the other men’s unspoken hello with a nod of his own.

Nash came back from the restroom, clean-handed and no longer visibly perturbed, looking the sheriff over with good-humored interest. “I guess the law finally caught up with you, big brother,” he said, grinning at his own cleverness. “It was only a matter of time, I suppose.”

At the periphery of his vision, Zane noticed several waitresses huddled together behind the lunch counter, staring at him and giggling as they whispered to one another. He swore silently and told Boone, “This is Nash. He’s twelve and he thinks he’s a wit.”

Boone chuckled. “Howdy, Nash,” he said, and repeated his name for the boy’s benefit. The sheriff seemed to be in no hurry to go on about his business, and that made Zane strangely uneasy, like the gaggle of blushing waitresses on the other side of the room. Not to mention the sudden and pulsing silence that had fallen over the previously noisy café as everybody in the place looked their way.

“We live over by Three Trees,” Nash announced, though nobody had asked. “At Hangman’s Bend Ranch.”

Boone nodded, taking in that information and a whole lot more, it seemed to Zane, who was, by the way, a law-abiding citizen, though he
had
gotten into a scrape or two back in high school. Nothing serious enough to count against him now, though.

The sheriff’s friendly attitude never wavered, but it was obvious that he took his job seriously. He probably made a point of introducing himself to every stranger he met up with, just on general principle.

“Well,” Boone finally drawled, “welcome to Parable County, both of you.” He paused, and his service belt creaked as he shifted slightly. “I see you haven’t had a chance to order yet—the BLT is real good, and the hot beef sandwich is even better.”

“Thanks,” Zane said, deciding he liked Sheriff Boone Taylor.

Boone nodded again and walked away, but he didn’t go back to his friends. Instead, he ambled over to the cash register to pay his share of the check before leaving, a man who knew he had plenty of time to do what needed doing.

One of the waitresses, shooed forward by the others, approached Zane and Nash’s table, order pad in hand.

“My name’s Lucy,” she said. Her narrow face was mottled with red patches of sheer embarrassment, but her gaze was avid, as if she was taking an inventory and mentally recording the results.

“Hello, Lucy,” Zane replied, checking the menu again. Maybe he didn’t want the meat loaf special, after all—a good BLT was hard to beat, and it usually stuck to a man’s ribs without making him feel as if he’d just gorged himself at Thanksgiving dinner.

“And you’re Zane Sutton,” Lucy trilled.

Nash tried not to laugh, but the sound came sputtering past his lips, and his eyes were dancing.
And you’re Zane Sutton,
he mouthed, gleefully mimicking the waitress.

“Yes,” Zane said smoothly, though he felt the heat of temper rise up his neck and tingle behind his ears. “At least, that’s who I was when I got up this morning.”

“I’ve seen all your movies!” Lucy blurted out.

The other waitresses, still behind the counter, were giggling again by then, but the other customers had, mercifully, lost interest. Or maybe they were just being polite.

Essie, the woman who had greeted Zane and Nash when they came into the café, must have been the boss, because she looked mighty impatient as she marched over and snatched the order pad from Lucy’s hand.

“Lucy,” she said summarily, serious as a heart attack, “get your silly self in back and don’t come out until you’ve pulled yourself together.” Essie turned her head to shoot a look at the apron-clad crew behind the counter, and though she didn’t speak, they all got busy real fast. Lucy scuttled away, blushing magnificently, and Essie turned back to the matter at hand. “I sincerely apologize, Mr. Sutton. We get famous people in here now and again, we surely do, but my people never seem to get used to it. Fall all over themselves every time, like a bunch of gum-popping junior highers.”

Zane didn’t let his amusement show. It wasn’t as if things like this didn’t happen to him right along, so he’d long since gotten used to effusive fans. Plus, he didn’t want Lucy to get into trouble on his account.

“That’s all right,” he said kindly, waving off the woman’s earnest apology, and ordered the BLT on wheat, with a side of fries and a strawberry milk shake.

Nash asked for a cheeseburger deluxe, onion rings and what sounded like a five-gallon drum of cola.

Essie wrote everything down, turned on the crepe-soled heel of one sensible shoe and trundled away, waitresses scattering before her like a flock of startled chickens.

“I bet you get that a lot,” Nash said. He was trying not to grin, but not very hard.

By then, Zane was thinking about Hutch Carmody again, and what he’d done to Brylee on their wedding day. Carmody seemed like an okay guy, on the surface, anyhow, not somebody who made a habit of breaking women’s hearts as publicly as possible—but then, what did that kind of man look like?

Like you,
Tiffany might have said, if she’d been there and heard the question. Zane rarely thought about his ex-wife, especially since he’d made Brylee Parrish’s acquaintance, and he dismissed her from his mind immediately.

“Yo, Hollywood,” Nash said, waving a hand in front of Zane’s face. “You in there?”

Zane gave the boy a look fit to strip paint from a wall and said nothing.

“Okay, okay,” Nash said, leaning back in the vinyl seat, palms out in a bid for peace. “So I guess you don’t like to be called ‘Hollywood.’ No problem, that’s cool.”

Before Zane could answer, Carmody and the other cowboy-type—Barlow?—scraped back their chairs and stood up, ready to leave.

Barlow, clearly a man of few words, settled up with Essie and went out, putting his hat on as he passed through the doorway onto the sidewalk.

Carmody, on the other hand, walked over and stood in the same spot Boone had occupied earlier. “Hutch Carmody,” he said, putting out a hand, a slight grin quirking up the corner of his mouth. “My wife, Kendra, and I are throwing a barbecue this Sunday afternoon, out at our place. We’d be pleased if you could join us.” He paused, blue eyes twinkling, and lowered his voice a notch. “Never mind those gals back of the counter. Most folks around here are country, through and through, and they won’t crowd you or anything.”