Big Sky Summer

Walker’s expression was not unkind, but it was obvious, from his tone of voice, that he wasn’t going to give an inch of ground, either. He’d reached critical mass, the proverbial hundredth monkey, and this time there would be no going back, no reasoning with him, no changing his mind.

He meant to claim Clare and Shane as his own, once and for all, and publicly, whether she wanted him to or not.

Once the children and the dogs had all been loaded into Walker’s pickup truck, the figurative floodwaters slowly subsided, and Casey could, at last, hear herself think.

She brewed a cup of tea and went downstairs to the soundstage, turning on a single lamp, the only light in the huge room besides the green, blue, yellow and red LEDs blinking back at her from various pieces of high-tech equipment.

Casey opened the battered guitar case she’d first glimpsed under a glittering Christmas tree when she was still a child herself, reverently lifted out the instrument on which she’d played her first, stumbling chords, picked out the initial uncertain notes, made her earliest attempts at composing songs. Eventually, after many incarnations, some of those tunes had become hits, catapulting her to fame.

Remarkable.

The guitar fit comfortably in her arms, and she smiled sadly as she looked down at the open case—both Clare and Shane had taken backstage naps in that unlikely cradle, as tiny babies, bundled in denim jackets on loan from the band or the roadies, nestled among rolled-up souvenir T-shirts or blankets brought in from the bus.

Remembering, Casey’s heart turned over again.

She began to play softly, feeling her way into the sweet flow of music that had always been her solace, her hiding place. Even before she’d learned to play the guitar or any other instrument, she’d sung along with the radio or her grandparents’ stereo system. According to family lore, she’d tackled singing first, and talking later on.

There, in the music, her private refuge, if only for a little while, she lost her fears and her worries and her doubts, and her everyday self with them.

* * *

THE TRUCK WAS a rolling uproar—both kids talking at once, the dogs scrambling to change places every few minutes, like some canine version of the Keystone Cops—the wind whipping past open windows and swirling inside to jumble it all into primordial chaos.

Walker loved it, but his delight in Shane and Clare’s company was bittersweet, too. In a few hours, it would be time to say goodbye and take them back to their mother and her world, the one they knew so well—and he had no place in.

It was something of a relief to see Brylee’s rig parked in the driveway when they pulled in at the ranch house—Walker, grimly independent all his life, suddenly felt the need for his sister’s moral support.

She stood on the steps of the side porch, blue-jeaned and wearing a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, battered boots on her feet, her smile as wide as the Big Sky River that flowed through Parable, through the middle of Three Trees, and rolled on by Timber Creek Ranch, in a hurry to reach the distant coast. Her dog sat obediently at her side, tilting his large head to the right, ears perked in curiosity as he took a silent roll call and found himself up two kids and three dogs from the norm.

Walker had no more than stopped the truck when Shane and Clare both tumbled out, hitting the ground running like just-thrown riders racing for the fence at the rodeo, with a pissed-off bull hot on their heels. The Labs, quieter now, followed, probably trying to gauge Snidely as friend or foe.

Brylee met the kids halfway, and the three of them ended up in a huddle hug, laughing and jumping around like happy fools on a trampoline.

Walker hung back, taking it all in. It was a scene he wanted to remember, etch into his heart and mind, so he could come back to it when he felt the need, and savor the sight and the sounds.

Snidely greeted the Labs with some sniffing and some cautious tail wagging and, as quickly as that, the dogs were all friends. They dashed off to explore the wonders of a genuine barnyard on a genuine ranch, Brylee’s faithful German shepherd leading the pack.

Brylee’s eyes were gleaming with happy tears when the hugging and jumping finally subsided long enough for everybody to catch their breath.

“What a terrific surprise!” She beamed, apparently crediting Walker with the working of this particular miracle.

Brylee loved Clare and Shane; she considered them her honorary niece and nephew—if only she knew—kept their most recent pictures taped to the refrigerator in her apartment kitchen, was forever sending them texts or emails or small gifts.

“Opal said to thank you for all that bread,” Walker told his glowing sister, oddly uncomfortable in the face of all that joy.

“Every single bit of it got sold!” Clare put in. “Mom said the bake sale took in a small fortune.”

“Good,” Brylee said, slipping one arm around Clare’s shoulders and one around Shane’s and giving them each a squeeze. Her eyes were full of questions, though, as she studied Walker’s face.

“We’re going riding,” Shane said to Brylee. “Will you come with us?”

Brylee, still looking at Walker, raised one eyebrow in silent question.

“Absolutely,” Walker said. When, he wondered, was the last time he’d seen Brylee looking so happy?

Anyhow, they all ended up in the barn, choosing which horses they wanted to ride—Walker steered the kids toward the gentler ones—saddling up, leading the animals out into the penny-bright sunshine of a Sunday afternoon in summer.

Brylee, like Walker, had been riding since before she could walk or talk, but as far as he knew, she hadn’t done more than groom her trusty black-and-white pinto gelding, Toby, in months. She’d told Walker once, in a weak moment, that some things, like certain kinds of music and the company of her horse, touched places so raw inside her that she had to back away.

Recalling this, Walker was heartened to watch his sister instructing Clare and Shane, who were fair riders but lacking in experience, as easy in the saddle as if she’d been born there. This was the old, spirited, devil-take-the-hindmost Brylee, the one Walker knew best and loved without reservation.

With Brylee leading the way, Clare alongside on Tessie, the four of them headed for the foothills rippling at the base of Big Sky Mountain like ruffles on a fancy skirt. Walker followed on Mack, while Shane bounced cheerfully beside him, riding chubby, mild-mannered Smokey.

The four dogs brought up the rear, behaving themselves and sticking close to the band of horses and riders, though not so close they were in danger of being kicked or trampled.

“This is great!” Shane said enthusiastically, his backside slapping hard against the saddle as Brylee eased Toby into a slow trot and the other horses followed suit.

Walker laughed. “You’re going to be mighty sore tomorrow if you don’t get in rhythm with that horse,” he told his son.

His son. He wanted to shout it from the mountaintop: my daughter, my son, my children.

“I’m trying,” Shane answered, smiling fit to light up the whole county.

Walker showed him how to stand up in the stirrups—sometimes that helped a rider get in step, so to speak, with his mount—but the boy’s legs weren’t quite long enough to reach.

When they got to the creek, some fifteen minutes later, Walker got off Mack, walked over to Smokey and adjusted the stirrups to suit Shane.

“I guess I’m sort of out of practice,” Shane said, keeping his voice low so Brylee and Clare, who were having a fine old time girling it up, wouldn’t overhear.

“That’ll be easy to fix,” Walker assured him. “It’s been a while since you and your sister came for a visit, after all, and my guess is, you haven’t had many opportunities to ride horses in the meantime.”

Shane studied him solemnly, swallowed once. “I wouldn’t mind being here more often,” he said, choosing his words with such obvious care that Walker’s heart hurt a little. “If you wanted me—us—Clare and me, I mean, hanging around and stuff.”

Careful, Walker counseled himself, because his most powerful instinct was to gather the boy in his arms, tell him how much he wanted Shane and Clare to play bigger parts in his life. How very much he wanted to tell them they were his, try his damnedest to make up for lost time, hear the world call them by their rightful surname, which was Parrish, not Elder.

“You can hang around as much as your mom will allow,” Walker finally replied. “How’s that?”

“She’ll say you’re busy and we’ll be underfoot,” Shane answered with bleak certainty.

Walker’s throat hurt. He cleared it, in order to speak. “I reckon that part of it is my call,” he said cautiously. Then, after a long pause, he added, “Suppose I have a talk with her?”

Shane brightened, but his delight faded as quickly as it had appeared. “You can try,” he said. “Mom’s pretty hardheaded, though. Everybody says so.”

Walker chuckled, a rusty sound, saw-toothed enough to draw blood, the way it felt coming out. “That’s true,” he allowed gently, “but I reckon she’s had to be a bit on the hardheaded side to raise you and your sister into the people you are, and build a world-class career at the same time.”

Shane appeared to consider this, but in the end, Walker suspected, the finer points went over his head. He was only thirteen, after all, in that in-between place, neither boy nor man, an ever-changing sketch of the person he would become as he grew to manhood. “I guess,” he said, sounding unsure.

“Are we going to ride or stand around and yammer?” Brylee interceded, the smile on her face seeping into her voice. She hadn’t dismounted, and neither had Clare.

Walker laughed, shook his head and swung back up into the saddle, the reins resting loosely across his right palm. “You ready?” he asked Shane in a quiet aside.

Shane nodded, proud and determined. “Ready,” he confirmed.

They rode for another hour, until the dogs started lagging behind, tongues lolling, signaling that, as Walker’s dad used to say, they’d had about all the fun they could stand for one afternoon.

Back at the barn, Brylee and Clare continued to chatter while they unsaddled their horses and put them away in their stalls. They talked while they brushed the animals, too, and the whole time they were feeding them.

“How come women talk so much?” Shane asked innocently. He and Walker had been performing the same tasks as Brylee and Clare right along, but only a few words had passed between them. It wasn’t that there wasn’t anything to say—working together, side by side, was its own kind of communication, rendering speech unnecessary.

“I have no idea,” Walker answered in all honesty. “I guess females are just wired that way.”

“Maybe,” Shane agreed. “Mike—that’s my mom’s lead guitarist—says girls think if things get too quiet, somebody’s mad at them.”

Walker weighed the pros and cons of that theory. “That’s a little on the simplistic side, I think,” he said. “My guess is, strong women—like your mom and Brylee and Clare—don’t worry too much about whether or not anybody’s mad at them. They’re too busy doing the things they figure they ought to get done.”

Shane nodded thoughtfully, and Walker would have given a lot to know what was going on in the boy’s mind just then. What had it been like for him, on the road with Casey and the band for most of his young life? Had he ever felt scared, facing new places and new people at every turn? Did he ever wish he could just light somewhere, attend regular school, make friends and play on the softball or soccer team?

He didn’t really know Shane, or Clare, for that matter, and that realization, oft-visited though it was, shook him, made him feel wistful and pissed off and a whole passel of other things, too. He clamped his jaw down tight so he wouldn’t say it, wouldn’t blurt out the facts. While it was probably right, the claim that the truth set people free, it was equally true that it could scorch the earth, destroying everything in its path, leaving nothing but rubble in its wake. It could break hearts.

Maybe, he reflected glumly, it was already too late to rectify the situation without doing more harm than good.

He was fairly sure Casey believed exactly that—and she might be right.

“Spaghetti for supper?” Brylee asked when the horses were taken care of. Two ranch hands were already busy feeding the rest of the livestock and attending to other end-of-the-day chores.

The kids approved of the suggestion loudly and with vigor, but Walker remained pensive, thinking of all the time they’d wasted, he and Casey and the kids. And while he figured he could love the woman if he was ever fool enough to trust her that much, right about then, if she’d been handy, he’d have read her the riot act from start to finish, and then started all over again just in case she’d missed anything.

Whatever happened between him and Casey, Walker thought, he was through playing games, through watching from the sidelines while his children grew up, through with the lies and the pretending and all the other bullshit.

If the four of them—he and Casey, Clare and Shane—couldn’t be a family, well, so be it. It wasn’t an uncommon problem, in the modern world—folks dealt with it, did the best they could.

All Walker could have said for sure as he fed and watered all four dogs on the side porch, the sounds of laughter and cooking and table-setting rolling out through the screen door between there and the kitchen, was that he was done doing this Casey’s way.

Yes, there would be consequences. He’d just have to find a way to work through them, the way a man worked through a hard winter or a long-term heartache.

* * *

MITCH FOUND HER, eventually, probably drawn by the faint strains of her guitar and a song that wouldn’t quite come together.

Companionably, Casey’s manager sat down on the bottom step, rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in one palm.

“You and the cowboy,” he began. “Is it serious?”

Casey stopped playing, placed her guitar gently back in its case, lowered the lid and snapped it closed. “By ‘the cowboy,’” she replied, “I assume you mean Walker?”

“Don’t try to throw me off, Case,” Mitch said with a note of sadness in his voice. “We’ve known each other too long for that.”

Casey looked away. “Walker is a—friend,” she said, because the first person she told about her relationship with Walker was not going to be Mitch Wilcox, no matter how much she respected him and appreciated all he’d done for her over the years. No, Clare and Shane had to hear what she had to say before anyone else and, after them, Brylee. This was, after all, a family matter.

“If you say so,” Mitch agreed, still seated on the stairs. Out of the corner of her eye, Casey saw him spread his hands in a gesture of helpless acceptance. “I’m not here to talk about Walker Parrish.”

“You could have fooled me,” Casey replied sweetly, though the joke fell a little flat, flopping between them like a fish out of water.

“I care about you, Casey,” Mitch went on in a concessionary tone. “And about the kids, of course.” With Mitch, Clare and Shane were always an afterthought. A logistical problem. “That’s why I’m here—in Parable, I mean.”

She looked straight at him then, dread leaking into her soul through the holes in her heart. “What?” she asked, somewhat stupidly.

“I care about you,” Mitch repeated.

A silence fell, very awkward and pulsing with all sorts of nebulous meaning.

“I care about you, too,” Casey finally replied.

Mitch seemed to relax slightly, and a grin spread across his face. “Then maybe there’s a chance,” he said.

“A chance for what?” Casey had no clue, though later she would reflect that she ought to have known where this conversation was headed. In some ways, she’d always been aware of the undercurrent in her association with Mitch.

He looked affably hurt. “I know you’re not in love with me,” he said carefully, “but I’m proposing all the same. You’re tired and burned out, Casey. You need someone to take care of you for a change.”

She blinked, unable to believe what she was hearing. Yes, she’d suspected once or twice that Mitch had a “thing” for her, but it came and went. Every few years, he got married, then divorced, then married again. Each time that happened, she’d shaken her head in confused concern, but she’d never entertained the idea of joining the lineup.

“You’re a good friend, Mitch,” Casey said, trying to be gentle and, at the same time, firm. “I’m grateful for all you’ve done for me, careerwise, but you’re right, I don’t love you.”

“Love is overrated,” Mitch offered with a casualness she knew he was putting on for the sake of his pride. “Where has the fantasy of happily-ever-after gotten you so far, Casey? Two children, no husband—all the money and fame in the world can’t make up for the loneliness you’re bound to feel when Clare and Shane grow up and go off to live their own lives.”

Casey blinked. Where has the fantasy of happily-ever-after gotten you so far, Casey? Was Mitch implying that she’d been in love before and wound up with a broken heart? True or not, that was private turf—no trespassing allowed.

“Where has what gotten me so far?” she demanded, feeling testy and dizzy and very disoriented, as though she’d wandered onto the set of a play with a worldwide audience and didn’t know her lines. This was the stuff of her nightmares—going onstage, finding herself unable to sing or play her guitar or even think.

“Let’s take the gloves off,” Mitch said with a lightness that made her want to cross the room and slap him across the face—hard. “I know Walker Parrish is the father of your children, Casey—” He paused, raised both hands, palms out. “Don’t deny it, please. Shane looks just like him, and Clare bears a resemblance, too, though you have to look more closely to see it.”

“I don’t believe this,” Casey said, although she did believe it. Like Job, the thing she had most feared had come upon her. “That’s just—speculation, Mitch. Dangerous speculation. What do you think gossip like that could do to Shane and Clare?”

Mitch simply looked at her for a long moment, his expression maddeningly tolerant and even gentle. “Stop,” he said. “I’m not going to blow your cover, Casey—I love you, and I love the kids. But after all the years we’ve worked together, I think I deserve the truth.”

“I think you need to leave now,” Casey said evenly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mitch replied flatly and without rancor. “Not before you agree to marry me, anyway.”

She gaped at him. “Marry you?”

“It’s not as if I’m the Elephant Man or the Incredible Hulk,” Mitch pointed out. “I’ve been your partner, Casey. Your mentor and your advisor and, most important, your friend. Maybe I can’t offer passion and all that other fairy-tale malarkey, but I understand you. And I can give you companionship, security, a good name—”

“A good name?” Casey broke in, incensed. She’d come in for her share of trash talk, having two children without benefit of marriage, but she was damned if she’d apologize for doing her honest best. Besides, this was her business, not Mitch’s. Friend or not, he didn’t have the right to pry or make judgments—especially not with his marital track record.

“Maybe I could have been more tactful,” Mitch allowed.

“I doubt it,” Casey observed sharply. She was glad she’d put her cherished guitar away, because if she hadn’t, she might have been tempted to smash it over Mitch’s head. “No, Mitch. That’s my answer. No. And, furthermore, I’d appreciate it if we could pretend this conversation never took place.”

“In that case,” Mitch said, looking broken, “perhaps this is the time to offer my resignation as your manager.”

“That might be for the best,” Casey said, shaking on the inside, solid on the outside. If it hadn’t been for Mitch, she might never have gotten past playing in cheap bars and opening for loser bands in third-rate venues, yet while she certainly owed him a debt of gratitude, she did not owe him her soul.

Mitch said nothing after that. He simply set his jaw, got to his feet and headed back up the stairs. Fifteen minutes later, after she’d crept into the vast kitchen to brew another cup of tea with shaky hands, Casey heard the rental car start up and saw her old friend driving away—probably for good.

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