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Collin caught a hint of mirth in James’s eyes. But this was so not the time to go easy on Amanda. Even though Old Man Tolbert had been running Slippery Rock High with an iron fist since before Collin’s high school days.
“I deconstructed the maze and you can’t prove I was the one to tape Troll-bert into his house,” she said and then mumbled, “On the third snow day he screwed us out of last year.”
“Col, I know you’ve got your hands full with the orchard and all, but I can’t keep covering for your kid sister. It could mean my badge.”
“No, I’ll take care of it. This won’t happen again,” Collin promised his friend, wondering how long he would be able to keep it. He hadn’t even realized Amanda was gone tonight.
Or any of the other times she’d snuck out of the house since he’d grounded her.
He wasn’t good at this stand-in-father thing.
“If you think it’ll help, I’ll take her to the station house. She can spend the night in a holding cell.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “You can’t send me to jail.”
“Au contraire,” James said. “I can. And if your brother wasn’t one of my best friends, you’d already be there.”
“I’ve got this one,” Collin said. He walked James to the front door. “I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again, man.”
“I’m not always going to be the one getting the call about her antics, Col. I know you guys are going through some stuff right now, but if one of the other deputies catches her, she’ll do more than spend a night in our county lockup, you know?”
Collin nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“This isn’t us painting the mascot on the water tower or Mara resetting the stoplight so it taps out an SOS in Morse code.”
“I know.” God, did he know.
Collin had once thought the rebellious Tyler gene had skipped his baby sister, but Amanda seemed to be making up for lost time. And he didn’t know how to help her.
How the hell was he supposed to come down hard on her when he’d done worse than she had on so many other occasions? The difference was he didn’t get caught. She not only had the Tyler Rebel gene, but their mother’s Bad Timing gene.
“Thanks for bringing her home, J. I’ll take care of it. This won’t happen again.”
James stepped out onto the front porch. “See you for the fish fry Sunday?”
Collin nodded. “Sure. I’m bringing the apples, remember?”
James got into the squad car and backed down the drive. Collin closed the front door and rested his forehead against it for a second.
“What the hell were you thinking, Amanda? What are you trying to do?”
She didn’t answer.
“Are you trying to get sent to some halfway house for rejects? Because if Sheriff Calhoun or one of the other deputies catches you out one night, that’s where you’ll go. It won’t matter that I’m your older brother, but it will matter that I don’t have custodial rights. That you don’t have parental supervision.”
Still no answer.
“You could wind up in juvenile hall.”
Nothing.
Collin turned around.
Amanda lay on the sofa, a round pillow clutched to her chest, asleep. Her legs were curled up to her chest, the way she’d slept when she was a baby, and the ponytail was fanned out over the sofa cushions.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, but her only answer was a soft snore.
Collin gathered his sister in his arms as if she weighed nothing and carried her upstairs and down the long hall to her bedroom. When he pulled back the electric-pink covers, he saw Mara’s old doll on the pillow. It was one of those life-size dolls that seemed to walk alongside when a little girl held its hands. Mara had used it to fake out their grandparents every time she’d snuck out as a teen.
“I’m trying, Amanda, but I don’t know what you need,” he said as he laid her sleeping form on the bed. Collin pulled the covers over her and smoothed her hair off her face. “I wish I could say they’re coming back, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could change it. I wish I could make our family like every other family in Slippery Rock, but I can’t. I’m what you’ve got, kid. Me and Gran, and she’s not as strong as she used to be. The upside of that is that the two of you are all I’ve got, and I’m not going to let you down the way our parents let me and Mara down, okay? I’m going to get you through this.”
Amanda snuggled into her pillow as another snore escaped her lips. The sullen expression was gone, the rebellious bent to her shoulders nonexistent. She was just a kid. A lonely, screwed-up kid whose parents showed up two weeks after her grandfather’s funeral, saying it was a wake-up call, and that they wanted to build a relationship with their youngest daughter. They had actually stayed at the orchard for just over a year, but when Gran needed the hip replacement, things got too real for Samson and Maddie and they’d left in the middle of the night, just before Christmas.
From the second they arrived, Collin wanted to make them leave, but the hope he’d seen in Amanda’s eyes, the desperation he’d seen in Gran’s, had kept him from kicking them right back to wherever they’d been living. Prior to that visit, the last time they’d been at the orchard had been when Collin and Mara graduated from high school, and that had been a quick trip between what Samson Tyler called “business meetings.” Collin had heard him begging for money from Granddad, though, so he’d known it was a lie.
Collin had caused Amanda’s rebellion. If he’d only kicked them out, like Mara had suggested, none of this would be happening. There would have been no time for Amanda to get so attached to them that she forgot they couldn’t be relied upon.
He’d been pissed after their mother had called to say they were taking more time in Florida. Even more pissed when the two weeks she’d said they needed turned into two months. He hadn’t heard from them since mid-January. Not a phone call or an email. At first, all he’d thought about was what an inconvenience it was to have to look after Amanda while they sunned themselves in Florida. How much time he was taking away from the orchard and his plans.
He’d never thought about the toll this must be taking on her.
Collin closed her bedroom door quietly.
For as long as he could remember, Samson had talked about how things would be different in Florida. How they would find a good life in Florida. Apparently, they had found that better life.
Now he had to figure out how to make a better life for his sister here in Slippery Rock. Before he lost her.
* * *
SAVANNAH WOKE THE next morning feeling restless. She showered and dressed and then shoved the sequined number she’d worn the night before to the back of her closet. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of Collin Tyler’s walkout.
Or her own idiocy.
Mama Hazel was in the kitchen when she walked in, squeezing orange juice into a tall carafe. Hazel Walters was sixty-two years and one hundred pounds of feisty. Her hair was steel-gray and she had lines around her eyes, but the backs of her hands were still smooth and rich.
“It’s about time you got out of bed. You’re back on the ranch now, not in your fancy Nashville apartment.”
“So I’m supposed to wake up with the rooster and ride the range?” Savannah teased as she snagged a glass from the cabinet and poured juice from the filled carafe. Hazel began filling a paper plate with biscuits and bacon.
“Wouldn’t hurt. Levi and your father have been up since dawn, you know.”
“Levi is a paragon of virtue,” Savannah said drily. Levi had left the bar early, and alone. Levi hadn’t made a play for a woman and been walked out on.
Levi was a football star. Levi made the pros. Levi would have been inducted into the Hall of Fame if not for a squidgy hit. But even though he’d blown out his knee, he’d kept his opponent from scoring.
Levi. Levi.
Freaking. Levi.
“Pssh. Levi has his bad qualities.”
“And I have my good ones. After all, if it weren’t for me, the Walters clan wouldn’t have a black sheep. And every family needs a black sheep.”
“Sweetheart, you’re no black sheep. You are my beautiful angel.” Hazel reached up and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind Savannah’s ear. “When I saw these braids for the first time on television, I wasn’t sure I liked them. Your natural hair was always the prettiest of corkscrew curls. I was wrong, though, it’s just as beautiful like this.” She put the plate of food in Savannah’s hands, tucked a thermos between her elbow and rib cage and motioned her to the door. “Take this out to your brother. He didn’t bother to come in for breakfast. He’ll be in the barn by now.”
Savannah walked across the front yard toward the massive barn. It was painted red, as it had been for as long as she could remember, but the black tin roof was new. The last time she’d been home the roof was still shake-shingled. Not that it mattered what the roof of the barn was made from. It just looked funny to her.
The same swing, fashioned from the metal seat of an old tractor, hung from a limb of the ancient oak in the side yard. The same ranch trucks sat before the barn, and the same horses ran in the paddock behind it. At least, they looked like the same horses. Somehow, despite growing up on the ranch, she hadn’t learned much about farm animals.
She found Levi in the barn office, clicking through a file on his computer. “Mama said you skipped breakfast,” she said, setting the plate on the desk.
“And you’re her errand girl sent to make me eat?”
Savannah sat in the hard wooden chair across the desk from her brother. “Something like that. I didn’t want to get roped into whatever confection she was starting to make, anyway.”
“Fish fry on Sunday. She’s probably prepping her apple-caramel pie.” Levi eyed the plate as if trying to convince himself not to eat.
“You on a diet or something?”
“No.” He stuck a couple of bacon slices into the center of a biscuit. He took a bite. “Have fun at the Slope last night?”
Savannah folded her arms across her chest. “What if I did?”
“Just tell me you didn’t go home with Merle, okay?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I didn’t go home with anybody. I came back here.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Are you my keeper now?”
“No. Dad mentioned—”
“Would you both back off? I’m twenty-seven years old, and I’ve been living on my own in a major metropolitan area for the past couple of years. I think I can handle Slippery Rock without accidentally falling on some guy’s penis and impregnating myself.”
Levi blinked. “It isn’t that we don’t think you can take care of yourself—”
“Sure it is.” Savannah stood and began to pace. “You want me to be helpless, but I’m not. I’m like Mama.” At least I want to be.
Mama Hazel was always calm, always knew what to say and how to fix a hurt. She baked pies and loved her family.
“Mama has a purpose.”
“And I don’t?” She didn’t know why she was picking a fight with her brother. It was stupid and childish, especially when she wasn’t sure she wanted the things she kept telling her family she wanted. She liked singing, and she was good at it, but there was a difference between the fun of karaoke night with a few friends and singing in front of an audience in an arena. In having all those people scrutinize her every move. There were good points, too, like meeting little girls who wanted to be singers. A few of them had looked up to her. At least, it seemed as if they had.
Levi just watched her for a long moment. “Mama worked in the Peace Corps, Van. She didn’t vagabond all over the world with a hobo sack over her shoulder.”
“I’m not a vagabond, and my luggage is Louis Vuitton. I lived in Nashville and I’ve been on tour with the top artist at the label.”
Levi nodded as he finished his biscuit.
“Fine, I have no illusions about world peace and I’m not curing cancer. That doesn’t mean my dreams are inconsequential.”
She just needed to figure out what her dreams were. Did she want to go back to Nashville and face the music? The one part of the city she liked was the weekend music program the label put together for underprivileged kids. Helping those kids find their music had been the highlight of her months there. Now she wasn’t welcome in Nashville and definitely not in the music program.
“They could be so much more, Van. You had a scholarship to the university. You were talking about med school.”
“And then I realized I didn’t want ten more years of school. I wanted...something else.”
Levi waited, watching her expectantly. “What is the something else?”
“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Is that why you’re here ‘on a break’ now? Because you don’t know what you want?”
“Is that so wrong?” She didn’t wait for his answer.
Savannah stalked out of the barn and started down one of the trails leading to Slippery Rock Lake, which separated Walters Ranch from the Tyler’s orchard. Through the trees she could see sunlight dancing over it.
What was wrong with her? Getting turned down by a guy was no reason to take her frustrations out on her family. And keeping this lie that things in Nashville were perfect was ridiculous. Things were so not right in Nashville it wasn’t even funny.
She’d gone to Nashville to try to get people to notice her the way that nobody had in Slippery Rock. To validate her in some way. When she was onstage she was more than Levi’s sister. Offstage, though, she was still the kid someone had left on the steps of a police station with her name pinned to her jacket.
The truth was that she didn’t know what she wanted. She liked singing, but had found out that she detested being on a big stage in front of thousands of people. She enjoyed working with the kids in the music program, but she didn’t play an instrument so mostly she’d just encouraged their interest. Now she was back in Slippery Rock, pretending she had her life together, when in truth it was falling apart and she had no idea how to make things right or if she even wanted to.
She’d been wrong to come back here.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Savannah should have kept driving and completely reinvented herself in some town where no one knew who she was.
She could use some distraction.
As she neared the lake, she saw Collin sitting on the hood of his old pickup truck, staring out over the calm water. She hadn’t realized she’d walked so far.
“Hi,” she said as she neared him. Brilliant May sunlight gave his blond hair streaks of white, which was just unfair. Women in Nashville paid hundreds of dollars to beauticians for streaks like that.
“Savannah.”
“You say that like you’re unhappy to see me,” she said, leaning against the fender of his truck and shooting a flirtatious look his way.
Collin glanced at her. “I’m not.”
“Not unhappy to see me? I figured,” she said, pretending she couldn’t read the disdain in his expression. He might have turned her down last night, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from flirting with him again. “What brings you to my side of the lake?”
“Technically, you’re on my side.”
Savannah grinned wickedly. “Do you want to know what brought me to you, then?”
