Montana Creeds: Logan

“Half drained the well getting that done,” Logan said. “About exhausted the soap supply, too.”

Josh broke down and grinned.

It finally occurred to Briana that Logan must have come to the cemetery to visit someone’s grave. And a pilgrimage like that, especially after a long absence, might require privacy.

“Maybe we should go,” she said.

But Logan shook his head. “Stay right here and carry on with your picnic,” he told her. Then, addressing Josh, he added, “Sidekick can have that sandwich if the offer’s still good, but it’s only right to warn you that he might hurl. Seems to have a delicate stomach.”

Hurling being serious business to a ten-year-old, Josh nodded. “Dog food would be better,” he said. “We could lend you some of Wanda’s kibble if you need it.”

Logan chuckled, looked as though he’d like to ruffle Josh’s hair, but didn’t. “Thanks,” he said. “But we made a run to town for grub earlier, and we’re all set.”

Briana smiled, herded Wanda and the boys back toward the picnic blanket. Sidekick stayed with Logan, who went to crouch beside one of the graves.

“Can I take Sidekick some bologna?” Alec whispered.

“No,” Briana said, watching Logan. “Not now.”

“It’s a private moment, doofus,” Josh told his brother.

“Dogs don’t have private moments, stink-breath!” Alec countered.

“Be quiet,” Briana said, wondering why her hands shook a little as she poured drinks and unwrapped sandwiches.

LOGAN’S EYES burned as he ran the tips of his fingers over the simple lettering chiseled into his mother’s headstone. Teresa Courtland Creed. Wife and Mother.

He’d been three years old when his mom lost her battle with breast cancer, and there’d been a gaping hole in his life ever since. His dad, Jake Creed, never a solid citizen in the first place, had gone on a ten-year bender starting the day of the funeral. His grief hadn’t kept him from marrying Dylan’s mother six months later, though. Poor, sweet Maggie had died in a car accident four days after her son’s seventh birthday. True to his pattern, Jake had married again before the year was out—this time to Angela, an idealistic young schoolteacher with no more sense than to marry a raging drunk with two wild kids. Doubtless, she’d thought all Jake needed was the love of a good woman. She’d been a fine stepmother to Logan and Dylan, and had soon given birth to Tyler.

She’d lasted a whole five years, Angela had.

But Jake’s carousing had just plain worn her out. One fine summer day, she’d made a batch of fried chicken, told Logan and Dylan and Tyler to be sure to do their chores and say their prayers, and left.

Jake had turned the whole countryside upside down looking for her. Enraged, he was convinced she’d left him for another man, and he meant to drag her home by the hair if it came to that.

Instead, Angela had had herself a first-class nervous breakdown. She’d checked into a motel on the outskirts of Missoula, swallowed a bottle of tranquilizers and died.

Such, Logan thought, was the proud history of the Creeds.

After that, Jake had given up on marriage. When Logan was a junior in college, the old man had gotten himself killed in a freak logging accident.

Remembering the funeral made Logan’s stomach roll. As ludicrous as it seemed in retrospect, considering the havoc Jake’s drinking had wreaked on all their lives, the three of them had swilled whiskey, then gotten into the mother of all fistfights and ended the night in separate jail cells, guests of Sheriff Floyd Book.

They hadn’t spoken since, though Logan kept track of his brothers, mostly via the Internet. Dylan, four-time world champion bull-rider, was apparently a professional celebrity, now that he’d hung up his rodeo gear for good. He’d even been in a couple of movies, though as far as Logan could tell, Dylan was famous for doing not much of anything in particular.

Only in America.

Tyler, whose event was bareback bronc busting, was still following the rodeo. He’d been involved in a few well-publicized romantic scrapes, invested his considerable winnings in real estate and signed on as a national spokesman for a designer boot company. Though he was the youngest, Tyler was also the wildest of Jake Creed’s three sons. He had issues aplenty, between the way Jake had raised them and his mother’s death.

But his brothers’ stories were just that—their stories. Logan knew he’d have his hands full straightening out his own life, and while he regretted it, the fact was, the Creed brothers were estranged. And the estrangement might well be permanent. Given the family pride, not to mention inborn stubbornness, “Sorry” just wasn’t enough.

Logan was about ready to leave—he had several other places to go. Briana and the kids were folding up their picnic blanket. The younger boy, Alec, approached with a slice of bologna for Sidekick.

“You a cowboy?” the kid asked, taking notice of Logan’s worn boots while the dog feasted on lunch meat, downing rind and all.

Logan thrust a hand through his hair. “I was, once,” he said, aware of Briana—now, where the devil had she gotten a name like that?—looking on.

“My dad’s a cowboy,” Alec said. “We don’t see him much.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Logan replied.

“He rodeos,” Alec explained. “Mom divorced him online after he left us off in front of Wal-Mart and didn’t come back to get us.”

Something bit into the pit of Logan’s stomach. He felt fury, certainly—what kind of man abandoned a woman and two little boys and a dog?—but a disturbing amount of relief, too. Once again, his gaze strayed to Briana, who was just opening her mouth to call Alec off. Damn, but she was delectable, all curves and bright hair and smooth, lightly freckled skin.

“Mom takes real good care of us, though,” Alec went on, when Logan didn’t—couldn’t—speak. Old Jake hadn’t been the father of the year, either, but for all his womanizing, all his drinking, all his brawling, he’d worked steadily and hard up there in the woods, felling trees. On his worst day, he wouldn’t have left his woman or his kids to fend for themselves.

“Bet she does,” Logan managed to respond, as Briana drew closer.

“She’s a supervisor over at the casino,” Alex stated, speeding up his words as his mother got nearer.

Briana arrived, placed a slender hand on Alec’s T-shirted shoulder. Both boys had dark hair and eyes, in contrast to their mother’s fair coloring. A picture of her ex-husband formed in Logan’s mind. He was probably a charmer, one of those gypsy types, with a good line and a sad story.

“That’s enough, Alec,” Briana said calmly. She kept her eyes averted from Logan’s face, as though she’d suddenly turned shy. “We have to go home now. You have chores to do, and lessons.”

Alec wrinkled his nose. “Mom home-schools us,” he told Logan. “We don’t even get a summer vacation.”

Logan arched an eyebrow, perched his hands on his hips. Resisted an urge to rub his beard-stubbled chin self-consciously.

“That,” Briana said, squeezing the boy’s shoulder gently, “is because you goof off so much, you have to put in extra time.”

“I wish we could go to school in Stillwater Springs, like the other kids,” Alec lamented. “They get to play baseball. They ride a bus and go on field trips and everything.”

Briana’s face tightened almost imperceptibly, and that flush rose again, along the undersides of her cheekbones. “Alec,” she said firmly, “Mr. Creed is not interested in our personal business. Let’s run along home before the mosquitoes come out, okay?”

“Mr. Creed” was, in fact, interested, and out of all proportion to good sense, too. “Logan,” he said.

Briana checked her watch, nodded. “Logan,” she repeated distractedly.

“Can Josh and me call you ‘Logan,’ too?” Alec asked, his voice hopeful.

A woman who home-schooled her children might have some pretty strict ideas about etiquette. Logan didn’t want to step on Briana’s toes, so he said, “If it’s all right with your mother.”

“We’ll see,” Briana said, still flustered. Then, like a hen, but without the clucking, she gathered her brood and herded them off toward the creek. Dylan’s place was just on the other side of a rickety little wooden bridge, hidden from sight by a copse of birch trees in full summer leaf. The black dog waddled after them.

Logan felt strangely bereft, watching them go. Sidekick must have, too, because he gave a little whimper of protest.

Logan bent, reassured the dog with a pat on the head. “Let’s go home, boy,” he said. “By now, word will have gotten around that I’m back, and we’re bound to get company.”

But neither of them moved until Briana, the boys and the dog disappeared from sight.

Logan paused, thinking he ought to stop by Jake’s grave before he left, but he was afraid he’d spit on it if he did. So he headed toward the orchard instead, Sidekick hurrying to keep up.

Sure enough, Cassie Greencreek’s eyesore of a car sat beside the house. It sort of classed up the place, which was a sad commentary by anybody’s standards.

Cassie was waiting for him. She’d settled herself on the top porch step, looking resplendent in a purple polyester dress big enough to hide a Volkswagen. Her waistlength black hair was streaked with silver now, and her brown eyes glinted with a combination of welcome and bad temper.

“Logan Creed,” she declared, receiving the dog graciously when he went to greet her. “I never thought you’d have the nerve to come back here, after all the goings-on at Jake’s funeral.”

Logan grinned sheepishly, pausing on the weedchoked walk. Spreading his hands in the time-honored here-I-am gesture.

“When was the last time you shaved?” Cassie demanded, making room for Sidekick on the step. “You look like some saddle-bum.”

Logan laughed at that, drew near and bent to kiss the old woman’s upturned face.

“I love you, too, Grandma,” he said.

CHAPTER TWO

THE HOUSE THAT had sheltered Briana Grant, her sons and her dog for just over two years looked the same as ever, in the gathering dusk, and yet it was different, too.

A strange little thrill, not in the least unpleasant, danced in the depths of her abdomen as she looked around.

Same noisy, dented refrigerator, its front all but hidden by Alec and Josh’s artwork.

Same worn-out linoleum floors.

Same old-fashioned harvest-gold wall phone with the twisty plastic cord. Beneath it, on the warped wooden counter, the red light on the answering machine winked steadily.

What had changed?

It wasn’t the house, of course. She was different, altered somehow, and on a quantum level, too, as if the very structure of her cells had been zapped with some dangerous new energy.

What the hell? she wondered, biting down hard on her lower lip as the boys engaged in their usual cominghome chaos—Josh logging on to the computer at the desk under the kitchen window, Wanda barking and turning in circles around her water dish, Alec diving for the answering machine when he saw that the tiny red light was blinking.

“Maybe Dad called!” Alec shouted, punching buttons.

“Maybe the president called,” Josh mocked bitterly.

“Shut up, poop face!”

“Shut up, both of you,” Briana said, drawing back a chair at the table and dropping onto its cracked red vinyl seat, feeling oddly displaced, as though she’d accidentally stumbled into some neighboring dimension.

Vance’s voice, rising out of the answering machine like a smoky genie promising three wishes—none of which would come true, of course—sounded throaty and cajoling.

Wanda stopped barking.

“Hello, family,” Vance said, and Briana glanced in Josh’s direction, saw his sturdy little back stiffen under his striped T-shirt. “Sorry about that child-support check, Bree. I figured I’d have the money in the bank before it cleared, but I didn’t make it.”

Briana closed her eyes. Vance loved to toss the word family around, as if just by using it, he could rewrite history and undo the truth—that he’d virtually thrown his wife and children away, like the candy-bar wrappers and burger cartons that collected on the floorboards of his van.

“I might be passing through Stillwater Springs in a week or so,” the disembodied voice drawled on. “I’ll bunk in on the couch, if it’s all right with you, and see what I can do about making that check good.” A slight pause. “The couch folds out, right?”

The graveyard supper of bologna and juice roiled in Briana’s stomach.

Alec erupted with joy, jumping all over the kitchen like one of those Mexican worms trapped inside a dry husk.

“If he’s coming here,” Josh huffed, fingers flying over the computer keyboard, “I’m running away from home!”

“See you soon,” Vance crooned. “Love you all.”

Click.

See you soon. Love you all.

Right.

Briana swore under her breath. The earlier, almost mystical sense of profound change receded into the background of her mind, instantly replaced by a tension headache, bouncing hard between her temples.

“Go ahead and run away,” Alec taunted his brother. “I’d like to have the bottom bunk, anyway!”

Briana sighed. “Enough,” she said, rising weakly from her chair, going through the motions. She filled Wanda’s water and kibble bowls, but her gaze kept straying to the answering machine. Vance hadn’t left a number, and she didn’t have caller ID, since the phone was vintage. “Do either of you have your dad’s cell number?”

Vance used cheap convenience-store phones, mostly. To him, everything was disposable—including people and a dog he’d raised from a pup.

“Like I’d call the jerk,” Josh muttered. He put up a good front, but there were tears under all that scorn. Briana could relate—she’d cried a literal river over Vance herself, though the waterworks had long since dried up, along with everything else she’d ever felt for him. She was so over him—in fact, she’d been looking for a way out long before the drop-off outside of Wal-Mart.

“Why do you want Dad’s number?” Alec asked, red behind his freckles, practically glaring at Briana. “You’re not going to call him and tell him not to come, are you?”

That was exactly what Briana had intended to do, but looking down into Alec’s earnest little face, she knew she couldn’t. Not while he and Josh were within earshot, anyhow.

“He probably won’t show up, anyhow,” Josh observed, still busily surfing the Web. What exactly was he doing on that computer? “With his word and one square of toilet paper, you could wipe your butt.”

“Joshua,” Briana said.

“I hate you!” Alec shrieked. “I hate both of you!”

Wanda whimpered and flopped down by her water dish in dog despondence. When Alec pounded into the bedroom just off the kitchen that he and Josh shared, Wanda didn’t pad after him, which was unusual.

Briana sighed again, pulled the carafe from the coffeemaker and went to the sink to fill it, glowering at the nearby answering machine. Damn you, Vance, she thought grimly. Why don’t you just leave us alone? That’s your specialty, isn’t it?

“He’s a cowboy, all right,” Josh said, sounding almost triumphant. The keyboard clicking had ceased, definitely a temporary phenomenon. Josh was online way too much, and he was way too skillful at covering his tracks for Briana’s comfort.

She frowned, still feeling disconnected, out of step. Went on making coffee, even though she didn’t need the caffeine. After the bomb Vance had just dropped, she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night anyway. “Your dad?” she asked.

Josh echoed the sigh she’d given earlier. “Logan Creed,” he said, with the exaggerated patience of a Rhodes scholar addressing a blathering idiot. “I ran a search on him. He’s been All-Around Cowboy twice. He’s been married twice, too, no kids, no visible means of support.”

“He’s a… cowboy?” Briana echoed stupidly. In a way, she found that news even more disconcerting than the threat of Vance’s imminent arrival.

“He does have a law degree,” Josh said, hunching his shoulders to peer at the monitor screen. “Maybe he’s rich or something.”

The Creeds were legendary in and around Stillwater Springs. Even as a comparative newcomer, Briana had heard plenty about their exploits, but if the state of the ranch was anything to go by, they not only weren’t rich, but they’d also been lucky to escape foreclosure.

“Now why would you run a search on Mr. Creed?” Briana asked, with an idleness she didn’t feel, as she took a mug down from the cupboard and dumped in artificial sweetener and fat-free cream.

Creed is a cowboy, said a voice in her head. Consider yourself warned.

“He said we could call him Logan,” Josh reminded her.

“Logan, then,” Briana said, filling her mug even though the pot wasn’t finished brewing. The stuff had that strong, bottom-of-the-pot taste, fit to curl her hair, but it steadied her a little. “Why check him out online?”

“It was the boots,” Josh reminisced, either hedging or ignoring Briana’s question entirely. “They weren’t fancy, like the ones that guy at the Ford dealership wears, with stars and cactuses and bears stitched on them—”

“Cacti,” Briana corrected automatically, ever the teacher.

“Whatever,” Josh said, turning to face her now. “Logan’s boots are beat-up. Anybody with boots like that probably rides horses and works hard for a living.”

Briana thought of Vance’s boots. He’d had them resoled several times, and they were always scuffed. “Maybe he’s just poor,” she suggested. “Logan, I mean.”

Josh shook his head. “He’s got a law degree,” he repeated.

“And ‘no visible means of support,’ as you put it. Stop evading my question, Josh. Why did you research our neighbor?”

“To make sure he isn’t a serial killer or something,” Josh answered.

Briana hid a smile. In a few minutes, she’d check on Alec. Right now, she suspected, he needed some alone time. “And what’s your assessment, detective? Is the neighborhood safe for decent people?”

Josh grinned. His smiles were so rare these days that even the most fleeting ones were cause for celebration. Some inner light had dimmed in Josh, after Vance’s desertion, and sometimes Briana feared that it would go out entirely.

“At least until Dad gets here, it is,” Josh said.

Ignoring that remark, Briana flipped on the overhead lights, sent the twilight shadows skittering. “You wouldn’t really run away, would you?” she asked carefully, making the artwork flutter like ruffled feathers on some big bird when she opened the refrigerator door again. Bologna sandwiches aside, the boys would need a real supper. “If your dad comes to visit, I mean?”

The silence stretched thin between her question and Josh’s answer.

Still in the chair in front of the computer, he looked down at the floor. “I’m ten, Mom,” he said. “Where would I go?”

Briana set aside the package of chicken drumsticks she’d just taken from the fridge and went to her son. Moved to lay a hand on his shoulder, then withdrew it. “Josh—”

“Why can’t he just leave us alone?” Josh broke in plaintively. “You’re divorced from him. I want to be divorced from him, too.”

Briana bent her knees, sat on her haunches, looking up into Josh’s face. He was one very worried little boy, trying so hard to be a man. “I know you’re angry,” she said, “but your dad will always be your dad. He’s not perfect, Josh, but neither are the rest of us.”

A tear slipped down Josh’s cheek, a little silvery trail coursing through an afternoon’s worth of happy dirt. “I still wish we could trade him in for somebody different,” he said.

Briana’s chuckle was part sob. Her vision blurred, and her smile must have looked brittle to Josh, even forced. “Cardinal cosmic rule number one,” she said. “You can’t change the past—or other people. And the truth is, while things were pretty hard a lot of the time, I don’t regret marrying your dad.”

Josh sniffled, perplexed. “You don’t?”

Briana shook her head.

“Why not? He’s chronically unemployed. When he does send a child-support check, it always bounces. Don’t you ever wish you’d married another kind of man? Or just stayed single?”

Briana reached up, ran a hand over Josh’s ultrashort summer haircut. “I never wish that,” she said. “Because if I hadn’t married your dad, I wouldn’t have you and Alec, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”

Josh ruminated. They’d had the conversation before, but he needed to be reminded, even more often than Alec did, that she was there for the duration, that she’d fight monsters for him, or walk through fire. For a year after Vance had left them, Josh had had nightmares, woke screaming for her. Alec had suffered, too, wetting the bed several times a week.

“We’re a lot of trouble,” Josh said finally. “Alec and me, I mean. Fighting all the time, and not doing our chores.”

“You’re the best things that ever happened to me,” Briana said truthfully, standing up straight. “It would be kind of nice if you and your brother got along better and did your chores, though.”

The door to the boys’ bedroom creaked partway open, and Alec stuck his head out.

“I’m done being mad now,” he said. His glance slid to Josh. “Mostly.”

Briana laughed. “Good,” she replied, getting out the electric skillet to fry up chicken legs. “Both of you need to clean up. Josh, you go first. Shut down that computer and hightail it for the bathroom. Alec, you can wash here at the kitchen sink, and then we’ll go over your multiplication tables.”

For once, Josh didn’t argue.

Alec dragged the step stool over to the sink, climbed up and scrubbed his face and hands. “It’s summer, Mom,” he protested. “I bet the kids who go to real school aren’t worrying about any dumb old multiplication tables.”

“Alec,” Briana said.

“One times one is—”

“Alec.”

Alec rattled through his sixes, sevens and eights, the sequences that usually gave him trouble, before he got down off the step stool. Then he stood facing Briana, hands and face dripping.

“I know Dad’s cell-phone number,” he said.

Briana’s heart pinched. Alec lived for any kind of contact with Vance, no matter how brief or limited. He probably expected her to shoot down the visit like a clay bird on a skeet-shooting range, but he was willing to give her the information anyway.

“That’s okay,” she said, a little choked up. Alec was only eight. Even after all the disappointments, and all Briana’s cautious attempts to explain, he simply didn’t understand why the four of them plus Wanda didn’t add up to a family anymore. “You know, of course, that your dad… changes his mind a lot? About visits and things like—”

Alec cut her off with a glum look and a nod. “I just want to see him, Mom. I know he might not come.”

Briana’s throat cinched tight. Vance was always chasing some big prize, some elusive victory, emotionally blindfolded, stumbling over rough ground, trying to catch fireflies in his bare hands. Their marriage was over for good, but he still had their sons. They were smart, wonderful boys. Why were they always at the bottom of his priority list?

“I know,” she said, at last. “I know.”

CASSIE STROKED the dog as she regarded Logan in her thoughtful way, seeing way inside. She looked completely at home in her skin, sitting there on the porch step. Unlike most of the women Logan knew, Cassie never seemed to fret about her weight—it was simply part of who she was. To him, she’d always been beautiful, a great and deep-rooted tree, sheltering him and his brothers under her leafy branches when they were young, along with half the other kids in the county. Giving them space to grow up in, within her constant, unruffled affection.