Big Sky River

“It’s wonderful to be here,” Erin answered, adjusting her wire-rims.

Tara felt a little stab of love as she shifted, putting an arm around each of their tiny waists. They wore the narrowest of jeans, sandals and long-sleeved T-shirts, Elle’s blue, Erin’s pink. “We’re going to have a great time,” she told them. “You’ll like Parable, and the farm, too.”

Erin’s eyes grew big and very blue. “We were so scared Dad would change his mind and make us go to summer camp instead of coming out here to stay with you.”

Elle nodded her agreement as they all strolled purposefully through the small airport, moving aside now and then so they didn’t block foot traffic. “And summer camp started weeks ago,” she added. “The day after school let out. So everybody’s already chosen their friends. We would have been, like, geeks.”

Tara laughed. “Geeks?” she countered. “Never.”

“Elle likes to be in on all the action,” Erin said, wisely tolerant of her sister.

They reached the baggage claim area and waited with the other arriving travelers, until a buzzer squawked and the first bags lurched into view.

Erin and Elle had two large suitcases each, color coordinated like their T-shirts, with busy geometric patterns.

Tara, after getting one luggage cart, went back for a second after her stepdaughters pointed out their bags. By the time she got back, a man in a cowboy hat had lifted one pair of suitcases onto the cart. He repeated the process, tugged at the brim of his hat and, without a word, picked up his own bag, and walked away.

“That was a cowboy,” Erin breathed, impressed. “A real one, I think.”

Tara grinned and nodded. “The genuine article,” she agreed.

“How do you know?” Elle asked them both, ever practical. “Maybe he was just a guy in boots and a hat.”

“I know he’s a cowboy,” Tara replied, “because he stepped up and helped with the suitcases without being asked.”

Elle pondered that, looking only partially convinced, and Erin gave her sister a light prod in the ribs. “Cowboys do polite stuff,” she informed Elle. “Like lifting suitcases and opening doors.”

“Not just cowboys,” Elle retorted. “Tony—” she glanced at Tara, no doubt figuring her stepmother was out of the loop, having been gone for a couple years “—he’s the doorman in our building. He does the same things.”

“But he doesn’t wear boots and a hat,” Erin said in the tone of one bringing home a salient point. “Not one like the cowboy had on, anyway.”

“He’d look silly if he did,” Elle said. “Right in the middle of Manhattan.”

“I’ve seen cowboy hats in Manhattan, though,” Erin reasoned. She was the diplomat of the pair, Elle the pragmatist.

Tara, enjoying the exchange, reveling in the presence of her beloved stepdaughters, didn’t comment. She simply led the way outside, pushing one cart while Erin managed the other, and silently counted her blessings, two of them in particular.

Sunshine shimmered in the twins’ hair, and there was a cool breeze out.

Life is good, Tara thought, rolling her cart through the crosswalk.

Elle swung around her backpack in front of her as they walked, rummaged through it, extracted an expensive cell phone and switched it on before pressing a sequence of icons. By the time they’d found the SUV, she was finished with whatever she was doing and popping the device into a jeans pocket.

“There,” she said. “The paternal unit has been duly informed of our whereabouts.”

Tara smiled again—not that she actually stopped smiling since the moment she had spotted Elle and Erin in the flow of incoming passengers—and opened the hatch on the SUV with a button on her key fob.

This time, there was no cowboy to step up and load the baggage into the back of the rig, but working together, they jostled the luggage inside. Then the twins flipped a coin to see who would sit in front with Tara and who would sit in back.

Erin won the toss, crowed a little and climbed in across the console from Tara.

“I thought you had a dog,” Elle remarked from the back as she buckled herself in for the ride home.

“Lucy’s waiting impatiently back at the farm,” Tara told the girls, starting the engine, preparing to back out of her parking space. “She likes to ride in cars, but she’s still a puppy, really, and I think this trip would have been a little too long for her.”

“What happened to the red car?” Erin wanted to know. “The one you sent us pictures of?”

Tara might have sighed in memory of her zippy little convertible, if she’d been alone, or in a less ebullient mood. “I traded it in,” she replied.

“We wouldn’t all fit in a sports car, goon-face,” Elle pointed out, affably disdainful.

“I know that, ding-dong,” Erin answered, without a trace of hostility.

“No name-calling,” Tara said lightly. The way the girls said “goon-face” and “ding-dong” sounded almost affectionate, but it was the principle of the thing.

Erin bent to lift her backpack off the floorboard and ferret through it for her own phone, an exact duplicate of Elle’s, except for the case. “You texted Dad that we got here okay, right?” she asked Elle without looking back.

“He’d be the paternal unit I mentioned, goon—” Elle paused, and her tone took on a note of mischievous acquiescence. “I mean, Erin,” she said sweetly.

Tara concentrated on maneuvering the SUV through the exit lane and onto the road, still smiling. Talk about a goon-face, she thought, having caught a glimpse of herself in the wide-range rearview mirror. She couldn’t seem to stop grinning.

Erin sat with her head tilted slightly forward so her short hair curtained her face, working the virtual keyboard on her phone with all the deft expertise of any contemporary child. Presently, she gave a little whoop of delight and announced, most likely for her sister’s benefit, “Savannah got her ears pierced!”

“No way,” Elle said. “Her mom told her she had to wait until she was fifteen. I was there when she said it.”

“Savannah’s not with her mom,” Erin answered airily. “She’s with her dad and her stepmom at their place on Cape Cod and her stepmom took her to some place at the mall. It stings a little, she says, but she has gold posts and looks at least five years older than she did fifteen minutes ago.”

Amused, Tara marveled at the perfection of her own happiness as she drove away from the airport, headed in the direction of Parable. The twins’ front-seat/backseat conversation might have seemed pretty mundane to anybody else, but she’d been starved for the small things, like the way the twins bantered.

“Maybe we could get our ears pierced,” Elle ventured.

Duh, Tara thought, finally picking up on the stepmom correlation. She wondered if the text exchange with Savannah had been a ruse. It was possible that the sisters had rehearsed this entire scenario on the flight out, or even before that, hoping Tara would fall in with their plan. “Not without express permission from your father, you can’t,” she said.

Both girls groaned tragically.

“He’ll never let us,” Erin said. “Not even when we’re fifteen. He says it’s too ‘come-hither,’ whatever that means.”

“His call,” Tara said, with bright finality, busy thinking of ways to skirt the probable next question, which would be something along the lines of, What does come-hither mean, anyway? “Are you hungry?”

“Why do grown-ups always ask that?” Erin reflected.

“We were in first class,” Elle added. “Every time the flight attendants came down the aisle, they shoved food at us. I may explode.”

“Okay,” Tara said. “Well, then. We’ll just head straight for home.”

“I want to meet your dog,” Erin said, sounding both solemn and formal. “Dad won’t let us have one in the penthouse. He says the rugs are too expensive for wholesale ruination.”

“For the time being,” Tara replied, watching the highway ahead as it unrolled like a gray ribbon, twisting toward the mountain-spiked blue horizon, “you can share mine.”

“Like Dad ever bought anything wholesale,” Elle scoffed quietly.

Erin rolled her eyes at Tara, but allowed the remark to pass unchallenged. Then, looking more serious, she smiled over at Tara. “Thanks,” she said. “That’s nice of you, offering to let your dog be ours, too, at least for a little while.” She considered. “What about horses? Do you have any of those?”

“Just chickens,” Tara replied. “Sorry.”

“Chickens?” Elle asked, interested.

Tara had told her about the hens and roosters via email, but a conversational opening was a conversational opening.

“How many?”

“Dozens,” Tara answered. Since she’d never been able to bring herself to kill one for the stew pot or the frying pan, the birds were proliferating.

“That’s a lot of eggs,” Elle said.

“And drumsticks,” Erin added. “Yum.”

“Southern fried,” Elle dreamed aloud. “With mashed potatoes and gravy.”

Tara bit her lower lip, and both girls instantly picked up on her hesitation.

“What?” they asked in chorus.

Tara merely shook her head, signaling to change lanes. She liked fried chicken as well as the next person, but when she indulged, which wasn’t often, she generally bought a few choice pieces from the deli section at the supermarket or ordered it at the Butter Biscuit Café. She was basically an impostor, since she lied by omission and let people think she was a country type like them. If Boone Taylor ever found out about this fraud, God forbid, he’d smirk and make snide comments.

Something about city slickers trying to go country, probably.

“They have names,” she explained lamely, after a few moments of fast thinking. “The chickens, I mean. They’re like—pets.” To her mind, the Tuesday night special at the Butter Biscuit was one thing, and plunging a fork into Doris or Harriet or Clementine was quite another. She had considered serving Boris up with dumplings a time or two when she’d wanted to sleep in past sunrise and he’d crowed anyway, but nothing had ever come of the idea.

The girls were quiet for a while. Then they burst out giggling.

Tara thought she caught a note of relief in their amusement, though, and she relaxed.

After that, everybody lapsed into benign silence—Erin continued to text, chuckling to herself every once in a while, and Elle plugged a pair of earbuds into her phone and settled back to listen to music.

Eventually, both girls fell asleep—they’d gotten up early to catch their flight and changed planes not once but twice along the way, after all, and who knew how much rest they’d gotten the night before. They would have been excited about the trip ahead then, but now they didn’t have to rush.

It wasn’t until Tara had driven through Parable proper and turned onto the bumpy dirt road that led to her farm that Elle and Erin awakened, blinking and sleepy and curious.

Chickens scattered everywhere as Tara parked the SUV, and even over the squawking and flapping of wings she could hear Lucy barking a welcome from just inside the front door.

She smiled.

“Let’s get the bags later,” she said as the girls leaped out of the vehicle and turned in circles, looking around them, taking in everything in great, visual gulps. “Lucy might turn inside out if she has to stay shut up alone for another minute.”

Erin hurried through the gate in the white picket fence surrounding Tara’s front yard, partly to get away from the chickens, Tara figured, and Elle followed.

Reaching the porch, Tara opened the screen door, turned her key in the lock and cautiously stepped back, grinning a warning at the twins, who were still on the walk.

“Heads up,” she warned. “Here comes Lucy!”

Lucy shot through the opening like a fur-covered missile, paused only briefly to nuzzle Tara in one knee, and bounded toward the girls before Tara could catch hold of her collar and gently restrain her.

“She won’t hurt you,” she said, but the assurance proved unnecessary, because Elle and Erin were as pleased to make Lucy’s acquaintance as she was theirs. The three of them went into a rollicking huddle, like long-lost friends finally reunited.

Lucy yipped and yelped exuberantly and broke away to run in circles around the now-crouching twins, her ears tucked back in that funny way, simply unable to contain herself in the face of such joy.

Elle and Erin laughed at her antics, rising back to their feet, dusting bits of lawn grass off their jeans. Glancing warily back, in tandem, to make sure the chickens were still on the far side of the picket fence.

“I think it’s safe to say Lucy likes you,” Tara observed.

“Silly dog,” Erin said, with such fondness that Tara’s throat constricted. “Silly, wonderful dog.”

Inside, Tara gave the twins a quick tour of the downstairs, Lucy following everywhere they went, panting with the lingering excitement of having guests—these humans were just full of delightful surprises, she seemed to be thinking—and then they all trooped up the back stairs, along the hallway and into their room.

Tara had worked hard renovating that old house, and she was proud of it, but she knew a moment’s trepidation while she waited for the girls’ reactions to their very modest quarters.

They lived in a very pricey penthouse, after all, with ten rooms and a spectacular view of the most exciting city in the world.

“This is cool,” Elle finally said, one hand resting on Lucy’s golden head as she looked around.

“Like being at camp,” Erin added cheerfully, tossing her backpack onto one of the twin beds. “Except fewer bunks.”

“Goon-face,” Elle said benevolently, “it’s not like camp at all. The look is called ‘shabby chic,’ for your information.”

Tara pretended she hadn’t heard the term “goon-face,” pointed out the door to the guest bathroom, and suggested the girls get themselves settled in while she went downstairs and made a pitcher of lemonade.

They were flipping a coin for the first shower, evidently their go-to way of making minor decisions, Lucy watching them in fascinated adoration, when Tara left the room and returned to the kitchen, humming under her breath. Fifteen minutes later, she was sitting on the front porch, contentedly rocking in her favorite wicker chair and waiting to serve the lemonade, when Opal drove up in her tanklike station wagon, causing the previously calm chickens to squawk wildly and kick up clouds of fresh dust.

Lucy, probably still enthralled with the goings-on upstairs, wasn’t there to bark a greeting.

“Hello, there!” Opal sang, waving as she got out of the car.

Two small boys scrambled from booster seats in the back, and Tara, who had seen the children a few times, usually at a distance, thought she would have recognized them even without previous encounters. Both of them looked like Boone in miniature, which meant they’d be heartbreakers for sure when they got older, though hopefully not arrogant ones, like their father.

“Ms. Kendall,” Opal said, as the boys came to stand on either side of her, looking warily at the mob of clucking, pecking chickens surrounding them, “this is Griffin.” She laid a hand on the older boy’s shoulder, then did the same with the younger one. “And this is Fletcher.”

Fletcher frowned at the chickens and moved closer to Opal. “Do those things bite?” he asked.

“No,” Opal assured him. “They just make a lot of noise.”

“Chickens don’t even have teeth,” Griffin informed his brother scornfully. “So how could they bite?”

Tara met the visitors at the front gate, swinging it open, hugging Opal and then solemnly shaking hands with each of the boys in turn. “I’m very glad to meet you both,” she said. “And I know Elle and Erin will be, too.”

“Who’s that?” Fletcher said, wrinkling his nose.

“Thought we’d just stop by and say hello,” Opal explained, overriding the question. “We won’t stay long.”

“Nonsense,” Tara answered. “I’m glad you’re here. I just made lemonade, and I think I could rustle up a few cookies if I tried.” She smiled at the boys, wanting them to feel welcome. Lord knew, they must have had problems enough, being Boone Taylor’s sons. “Elle and Erin are my stepdaughters. They’re visiting from New York.”

“Oh,” said Fletcher, mildly disgusted. Girls, his expression said.

“Cookies?” Griffin asked hopefully.

Fletcher made a face. “I don’t like lemonade,” he said. “It’s too sour.”

“Hush, now,” Opal told him. “Don’t you be rude, Fletcher Taylor.”

“Yeah,” Griffin agreed. “Don’t be so rude, poop-head.”

“That will be enough of that ornery talk,” Opal decreed good-naturedly. Nothing seemed to fluster the woman—she was the eye of the hurricane, the port in the storm, generous competence personified.

Without comment, Tara led them all inside, through the house to the kitchen, Opal checking everything out as they went and making approving noises.

“You have sure done wonders with this old house,” she said as they reached their destination. “Back when Boone’s folks lived here, it was a sight, let me tell you.” Both the boys looked up at her curiously, and she was quick to add, “Not that it wasn’t clean, mind you. Polly Taylor kept it up real nice, but Leroy used to park his motorcycle in the living room when the weather was bad, to protect the paint job, he said. Leroy didn’t trust that old barn not to fall right in on top of his pride and joy once the snow came and made the roof sag.”

Tara smiled to herself, thinking that the proverbial apple didn’t fall far from the tree, given the shape Boone’s own place was in, but of course she wouldn’t have said it out loud with Griffin and Fletcher right there to hear.

Opal had just taken a seat at the table, with a somewhat weary sigh, when Lucy came racing down the back stairway, barking her brains out, having finally clued in that, wonder of wonders, there was more company. Elle, freshly showered and barefoot, wearing white shorts and a yellow top, was right behind her.

Griffin and Fletcher glanced at her, then immediately gave themselves up, laughing, to Lucy’s face-licking hello.

Tara made introductions, over the tumult, and Elle nodded to the boys and extended a hand to Opal. “How do you do?” she said, sounding very grown-up.

Opal beamed a smile at the child. “I do just fine,” she replied. “How about you?”

“I’m good,” Elle said, sounding unusually shy.

“Boys,” Opal said, “quiet down a little now. I declare, I can’t hear myself think over the racket.”

“The dog’s the one making all the noise,” Fletcher protested.

Opal sighed again. “Well, take her outside, then,” she said, the soul of patience.

“Let’s check out the yard,” Elle suggested, leading the mass exodus through the back door, Lucy bringing up the tail-wagging rear.

“Phew,” Opal said when she and Tara were alone in the newly quiet kitchen. “I’m not used to kids that age anymore. Joslyn and Slade’s little one, Trace, being just a baby and all.” She leaned forward a tad and added confidentially, “Poor little fellas. They’re missing their aunt and uncle something fierce.”

Absorbing that, Tara washed her hands at the sink, took glasses from the cupboard and lined them up on the counter, added ice to two of them, then got the lemonade pitcher from the fridge and poured for Opal and herself. “Will they be visiting long?” she asked, remembering yesterday’s interlude with Boone by the ATM at Cattleman’s Bank.

“I do believe they’re here to stay this time,” Opal said quietly. There was a still a glint of sympathy in her eyes, but something else, too, something Tara couldn’t quite read. “Griffin—that’s the bigger boy, you know—he’s just thrilled to be back with his daddy, though he tries not to let on too much. Fletcher, on the other hand, well, he’s likely to try hitchhiking back to Missoula first chance he gets if we don’t keep an eye on him right along.”

Tara felt a twinge of sadness, for the children and maybe even for Boone. A little.

“Did something happen?” she asked carefully. Either Joslyn or Kendra had mentioned Boone’s children the night before, during their visit, but Tara had been thinking about Elle and Erin at the time, and how much she’d missed them, and hadn’t gotten the gist of it.

Opal sighed and gave a little nod. “Sure did,” she replied. “Molly—that’s Boone’s sister—she and her husband, Bob, have been looking after Griffin and Fletcher pretty much since their mama, Corrie, died. Now, Bob’s gone and had an accident on the golf course, which is the bad news. The good news is that those boys are back here where they belong. Bob and Molly were real good to them, but Boone’s their daddy.”

Tara had known some of Boone’s story, that he was a widower anyway, and that he had two children, but she’d been hazy on the details, telling herself that the less she knew about her redneck neighbor, the better off she’d be. Before she’d come up with a response to Opal’s words, though, Erin came down the back stairs, her hair damp from her shower and curling madly in all directions. She wore a pink sundress and, like her twin, she was barefoot.

Tara made more introductions, and Erin responded politely before looking around the quiet kitchen. “Where are Lucy and Elle?” she asked.

“Outside,” Tara answered, with another smile. Her face was starting to hurt, but she couldn’t help it. She was just too happy to maintain a normal expression for very long.

Erin excused herself and hurried through the back door.

“Maybe I ought to find out what they’re doing out there,” Tara fretted. She was a little rusty at mothering, she realized; back in New York, she’d never have let Elle and Erin out of her sight unless they were in the company of one or more trusted adults.

“They’re just fine,” Opal said with pleasant certainty, and Tara believed her. Settled back into the chair she’d half risen from on the spur of the moment.

“Are you working for Sheriff Taylor now?” Tara asked when the conversation lagged, albeit in a comfortable, kick-off-your-shoes-and-sit-awhile kind of way.

“No,” Opal said, shaking her head slowly. “I’m just helping out for a little while. Boone wasn’t expecting to get the kids back when he did, and I figured he might be in over his head at first.”

“Oh,” Tara said, nodding and taking a sip from her frosty glass of lemonade. When it came to Boone Taylor, irritation had sustained her for a long time. It was odd to find herself feeling a little sorry for the man, but kind of satisfying, too, because she knew it would annoy him plenty, rooster-proud as he was.

The kids came back inside then, all four of them, with Lucy in the lead.

They were only passing through, it turned out, on their way to the front porch, where they could keep an eye on the chickens and Griffin could point out his dad’s place, across that slice of river that separated it from Tara’s property.

Leaving Opal to sip her lemonade in peace, Tara piled a plate high with cookies, filled four more glasses from the pitcher and carried the refreshments out front on a tray.

Griffin was standing at the end of the porch, one arm extended toward the double-wide on the other side of the water, pointing an index finger.

“You live there?” Elle asked, sounding amazed though not quite disdainful. “That’s an actual house?”

Tara closed her eyes for an instant, cleared her throat loudly and made a rattling fuss of setting down the tray on the low porch table.

“Yes, it’s a house,” Griffin replied tersely, offended.

“It’s really a trailer,” Fletcher interjected, in a helpful tone. “It had wheels, once.”

“Lemonade and cookies!” Tara sang out.

“What’s wrong with it?” Griffin asked, frowning at Elle. So much for diverting the conversation away from the trailer next door.

“Nothing, squirt,” Elle replied cheerfully. “Give me a break, here, will you? I didn’t mean any harm—I’m from New York City and we don’t have trailers there, that’s all.”

Tara passed out lemonade, and the children each accepted a glass, though they barely seemed to see her.

“We lived in a house in Missoula,” Fletcher said, gripping his lemonade tightly in small hands. “It was bigger than this one and way nicer.”