Courting Trouble (21 page)

“Why not?” Wayne said, “Go that direction. If he’s confused enough to think he still drives, then he’s confused enough to think east is west.”

*

Rose told Tulsa that Wilkes Stevenson wasn’t lost so much as he didn’t want to be found. Living off a one-lane dirt road that was fifteen miles past the two-lane highway that led through a stretch of wilderness backing up to a National Forest was a surefire way not to get many visitors.

Tulsa climbed from Savannah’s Jeep. The weather to the west looked mean. Big clouds, loaded with weather, rolled toward her. They’d be nearly over Powder Springs. She shivered with thoughts of snow or even hail on her return trip.

She turned back toward the two-story log cabin built from thick pine with a river-rock chimney. The front porch contained nearly a cord of neatly stacked firewood. She smelled the earthy scent of wood burning. This high in the mountains at least three months of the year Wilkes’s home was inaccessible except by horse, snowmobile, or snowshoe. A stand of pine trees on both the north and west buffered the cabin from sub-zero winds whooshing down the mountain face onto this ridge.

Savannah climbed the well-kept porch. Her heart fluttered like a hummingbird caught in a cage. Here in this place was the man with answers to her questions. Her belly rolled and a heavy thickness thudded to the bottom of her stomach. Questions that she’d been too scared to face, too scared to ask, even now too scared to admit she needed answers to.

A wreath of painted pinecones hung on the door. Fear twisted and pulled at the heavy feeling in her gut. She forced a deep breath into her lungs; she squared her shoulders and willed herself to face her fear.

Then she knocked.

The woman that opened the door wasn’t much older than Tulsa. Her frame was thicker. She wore her grayish-brown hair pulled back from her face in a low ponytail. She wore a smile and her expression seemed familiar to her face. She wore jeans, a thick undershirt, and a heavy flannel shirt.

“May I help you?” Her voice was warm, casual, inquisitive.

“I’m looking for Wilkes Stevenson.” Tulsa’s voice was rough and thick, as though the words were nearly too heavy for her to bear.

“He’s gone to Leadville for the day.” The woman tilted her head with the tiniest squint at the edge of her eyes, as if trying to recognize Tulsa. Behind the woman, the house had the eerie quiet of emptiness. “I’m his daughter,” she said. “Would you like to leave him a message?”

Tulsa hadn’t known that Wilkes had a daughter and she definitely hadn’t known that his daughter was near her age.

“I just…” Her voice faltered and filled with doubt.

What should she tell Wilkes’s daughter? She wanted Wilkes to contact her, and Tulsa feared if she pressed too hard she wouldn’t get the opportunity to speak with him.

“Would you give him my card?” Tulsa finally said, her words jumping out of her mouth. She fumbled with her purse. Once unzipped, Tulsa pulled out her business card. “It says LA, but I’m in Powder Springs right now. The cell phone number is the best way to reach me.”

The woman took the crisp white card between her thumb and forefinger.

Tulsa took a step back. “Thank you,” she said and turned toward the porch steps.

“McGrath?”

The knot in Tulsa’s chest tightened with the word of identification.

“Are you Connie McGrath’s daughter?” the woman called.

The heavy, thick feeling in her belly spread to her chest and limbs. She turned back toward the door. Tulsa nodded before she spoke, fearful that with this admission the woman might never deliver the card to Wilkes.

“I am,” Tulsa said softly. “I’m Connie’s daughter.”

A veil of sadness fell over the other woman’s face—nothing obvious, but her lips turned down and her eyes softened around the edges. Her posture loosened as though they’d gone from complete strangers to two people who shared something very intimate.

“I’ll tell my dad you stopped by,” the woman said. And in the statement with her soft eyes and her hands clutching Tulsa’s card ever so delicately, like a precious piece of glass, Tulsa felt certain that this woman who’d been nearly the same age as Tulsa when she lost Connie, would indeed keep her word and tell Wilkes that Tulsa had been there.

*

Cade slowed his truck. Hudd stood near a ditch on the side of Yampa Valley Road. He wore a brown corduroy jacket, not nearly warm enough to protect him from the foul weather rushing in from the west. The wind tossed his father’s hair about his face. Like a lost child, Hudd wandered in the grass beside the highway.

Cade stopped his truck and quickly got out. The wind blasted him in the chest and knocked the air from his lungs. He braced himself from the gust and the cold. How had his dad walked nearly three miles with these blasts of wind?

Cade picked his way down the gravel embankment toward his dad. Hudd stood in browned weeds and stared at the ditch. Cade’s heart thwapped against his chest with the thought of what Hudd was searching for. Hudd lifted his cane and hit at the dried grass. His eyebrows were pulled tight and he squinted his eyes; confusion haunted the man’s face.

“Dad?” Cade called, his voice a gentle tone with hints of fear.

Hudd jerked his head upward. His gaze landed on Cade but Hudd’s eyes were flat and dull. Cade’s heart split—the deep crack of something solid breaking away into two halves. There was no recognition in his father’s eyes—they remained unfocused and confused. Hudd’s eyes searched Cade’s face as if seeking a crevasse to latch a memory to and finally—finally, after what felt like a lifetime—the tiniest glimmer lit behind Hudd’s eyes.

“Son? What are you doing out here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Cade said and walked through the dried weeds, closer to his father. “Awful long walk you took, isn’t it?”

Hudd pondered the question. It took extreme concentration on his part to pull up the memory of where he’d begun his walk. Cade’s heart wrenched. He would be the one to install locks at the farmhouse and the necessary alarm to let Cade and Lottie know when Hudd left the house. His father was becoming like a child—his mind careening back and forth between the reality they shared and the faraway land where Cade could no longer reach him.

“Dad, let’s get you home.” Cade slipped his arm through his father’s and gently encouraged his dad to walk back to his truck.

Hudd stood firm like a forty-year-old pine planted on the side of a mountain. He continued to hit the grass with his cane, not yet finished with his examination of the area. He pointed his cane toward the dead grass that lined the ditch.

“I know she was here,” Hudd said, emphatic.

With his father’s words an ugly feeling—fear mixed with anxiety—burrowed into Cade’s belly. His mouth hung open and he watched Hudd strike at the grass within the ditch. “Dad—”

“We came up on her,” Hudd interrupted, his voice at first confused and quiet but with each word his conviction and passion grew. “And she was nearly dead by the time we got out of the car. Right here. It happened right here, son! I know it. Connie McGrath can’t be alive. I saw her die.”

A roar rushed through Cade’s brain. His blood pulsed hard and burst faster through his body and yet he froze. His grip on his father’s arm tightened as Cade felt his own solidness start to fly away. The words—the words that Hudd just said—they were impossible and the ugly slick feeling that began in his belly slid its grimy, oily feeling way into his throat. Cade choked down the urge to scream—the urge to yell
no
into the howling wind.

With a childlike look that implored Cade to believe the words he said, Hudd stared into Cade’s face. His father’s eyes begged Cade to confirm a reality that Hudd knew to be true. A reality that Cade had never believed and barely let his mind entertain.

“Dad.” Cade shook his head back and forth. He needed to shake these thoughts, his father’s words, this pain-soaked place from his brain. “We need to go.”

“But, son—” Hudd’s eyes implored Cade to confirm or acknowledge Hudd’s memory.

Cade could do neither. “We have to go, Dad. Now.”

Hudd’s face relinquished its consternation. His brow relaxed—a look of surrender as though a beaten man, an old man. Hudd’s shoulders drooped and he more resembled a child than a man as he shuffled alongside Cade toward the truck.

Cade settled his father into the passenger seat and latched the seatbelt across his father’s chest and lap. He kept his face calm—he said no words. Cade shut the door and walked to the back of his truck.

Here—behind his truck, beside mile marker 78, the spot where Tulsa’s mother had died one night—Cade grabbed the cold, hard metal of the truck bed and settled his heart, his mind, his fear, his dread. He took one long look at the ditch and his heartbeat steadied. Cade realized—for the first time—that Tulsa may have been right all along.

Chapter Twenty-One

Cade paced from corner to corner in Dr. Bob’s office. Energy coiled tight along his spine and yet his arms hung limp. Cade looked up at the dozen diplomas on Dr. Bob’s wall. How did doctors get so many more diplomas on their march through medicine than attorneys got as they traipsed through the law? A chair creaked. Wayne waited, wedged into an office chair. His bulk was so generous the chair looked as though it belonged in a kindergarten classroom and not in Dr. Bob’s office.

“Sit,” Wayne said, his tone cool-edged. “You’re making me nervous.”

Cade ignored his brother and turned back toward the wall. His feet moved again, eating up carpet, retracing his steps. He paused when he reached Dr. Bob’s desk and eyed the pictures of Holt and Karen—Wayne’s son and ex-wife. From where Wayne sat, he was saved the view of these photos. Karen, Dr. Bob, and Holt made a beautiful family—remarkable in their beaming smiles. There had to be pain in this for Wayne—pain and remorse and perhaps even happiness that his son had the solid love of a mother, a father and a stepfather, but definitely pain that it couldn’t be Wayne smiling out from the photo with his ex-wife and son.

The office door opened and Dr. Bob burst toward his desk. “Sorry for the delay.”

Cade sat in a chair beside Wayne and gripped his hands together in his lap.

Dr. Bob shuffled through a file and flashed a smile—fast, but sincere. “I had to remove some stitches and then one of our patients had heart palpitations. The day just gets away from me.” He closed the file and popped open his laptop. “Okay, so I took a look at your dad.” Dr. Bob reached into his breast pocket for his glasses.

“Sounds like he gave you two quite a scare.” The light of the computer screen reflected in Dr. Bob’s glasses as his eyes ate up the words. He finally nodded. “I feel confident about my diagnosis.”

Cade’s stomach twisted and a sour feeling settled into a heavy pool in his gut.

Dr. Bob closed the laptop and his mouth tightened. The corners of his mouth turned down. “Hudd has dementia.”

Cade exhaled. The color drained from Wayne’s face and his jaw locked, but relief rushed through Cade.

“With Hudd’s wandering and the MRI and the lapse in judgment, I feel confident making this diagnosis.”

Wayne didn’t know it yet, but this diagnosis was Hudd’s salvation. Cade closed his eyes and breathed. Hudd’s statements about Connie were those made by an elderly man who was losing his mind. Hudd hadn’t killed Connie McGrath—he’d confused the rumors surrounding that night with the reality.

Wayne shifted his weight and the chair moaned in protest. “Does it get better?”

Dr. Bob shook his head. ‘‘I’m afraid it only gets worse.” He removed his glasses and carefully folded one arm and then the other. “There are ways to keep Hudd better for longer. The more active his mind, the lengthier his lucidity. Activities, in-home health care, medication. If his mind is kept busy, he’ll have longer moments of clarity and that clarity will last later in life.”

“So sometimes what he says makes sense?” Cade asked.

“Often,” Dr. Bob said. “There will be times that his memory and attention to detail may shock and exceed even yours, a man less than half his age. But those moments will only last for so long.” Dr. Bob leaned back in his chair, his expression grim. Dr. Bob’s voice remained soothing yet firm. “Over time, Hudd’s moments of lucidity will decrease.” His gaze locked on Wayne and then shifted to Cade. He shook his head and inhaled a deep breath. “I wish…” He exhaled and steepled his fingertips. “I wish the prognosis was better.”

Silence. Deep but not lengthy—as the words about Hudd settled in around Cade and Wayne. There would be changes to make, precautions, medications—changes. Cade would make them—he would care for his dad just as his father had cared for their family. With hard work and attention to the details of life.

“I’m sorry, Wayne.” Dr. Bob leaned forward in his chair and settled his arm onto his desk. “Karen and I thought we’d let you tell Holt. Unless you want us to?”

Wayne stood and placed both hands on his hips. “Nope, I’ll do it. After the game this weekend.”

“This weekend is the fall carnival.” Dr. Bob stood and walked from behind his desk.

“That’s
this
weekend?” Wayne squinted, shook his head. “Guess with everything I damn near forgot.”

“Karen signed you up for apple-cider duty at the football booster-club booth right after us.”

“I’m sure she did,” Wayne said.

“I have some names and numbers for some folks that do great work with the elderly. I’ll have my nurse send them to you.” Dr. Bob clapped one hand to Wayne’s shoulder and reached out the other to shake. “I wish it was better news.”

Wayne sighed and shook his ex-wife’s new husband’s hand.

“You two let me know if there is anything I can do to make this transition easier. Once you decide on a place—”

“A place?” Cade jerked his eyes up from staring fixedly at the carpet.

“For Hudd to live,” Dr. Bob said. His eyes flicked from Wayne to Cade and then back to Wayne.

“He’s not moving,” Cade said. “He lives at the ranch. With me.”

“For now,” Dr. Bob said. “Of course. But Cade, eventually even with a home health-care worker Hudd may become too much to handle. He’s already belligerent and—”