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“Not to mention illegal.” A belated giggle escaped Melissa. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted, eyeing her food warily. The microwaved dish looked more like a plastic replica of lasagna than the real thing, the kind that might be sold in a joke shop—assuming there was even a market for stuff like that. “But trust me, it was also a shock. You haven’t lived, my dear, until you’ve seen a pack of bare-ass naked senior citizens engaged in a lively game of croquet.”
“And you without a fire hose,” Ashley quipped.
“Ha-ha,” Melissa said, carefully peeling the cellophane cover from her lasagna. Ashley was the one with the cooking talent; Julia Child was her patron saint. Melissa had never really caught the culinary bug; in fact, she’d all but had herself vaccinated against it. “When are you coming home? I miss the pity suppers.”
Ashley laughed again, but the underlying tone was gentle, and betrayed a slight degree of worry. “‘Pity’ suppers, is it?” she countered. “You know when we’re coming home. I’ve told you nineteen times, it’ll be early next week.” She paused, drew in a breath. “Melissa, what’s going on? Besides the nudist uprising, I mean?”
“Interesting choice of words,” Melissa commented dryly, giving up on the lasagna and shoving it toward the back of the counter. “And it’s already Friday, so ‘early next week’ might be—”
“Okay, Tuesday,” Ashley said with a chuckle, then waited stubbornly for an answer to Melissa, what’s going on?
“Byron Cahill got out of jail this morning,” Melissa told her.
“Yes,” Ashley prompted, sounding only mildly concerned.
“He didn’t show up on schedule,” Melissa said. “Velda was upset.”
“What else is happening?” Ashley pressed. “Velda’s been upset for years, and you knew Byron’s release date all along.”
I met a man, Melissa imagined herself saying. His name is Steven Creed. He’s all wrong for me, and I think he’s beyond hot.
While she might well have confided in Ashley in person, she wasn’t ready to talk about Steven over the telephone. And, anyway, what was there to say? It wasn’t as if anything had happened.
Still, Ashley was an O’Ballivan and, among other things, that meant she wouldn’t give up until she got a story she could buy.
So Melissa threw something out there. “I was roped into heading up the Parade Committee,” she said.
“Oh, my,” Ashley replied, sounding taken aback. “How did that happen?”
“I’m not sure, beyond the fact that Ona Frame can’t serve on the committee this year because her gallbladder exploded.”
“It—exploded?”
“Not literally, Ash. And thank heaven for that, because you can just imagine the fallout—”
“Melissa,” Ashley groaned.
“Sorry,” Melissa lied brightly. She had always loved grossing Ashley out.
Another chuckle came from Ashley’s end. “Not that you deserve this,” she began, “but as soon as Jack and Katie and I get back from Chicago, I’ll see what I can do to help you get the parade—well—rolling.”
It was Melissa’s turn to groan. “Bad pun,” she complained, but she was grateful—wildly and instantly so—and she wanted Ashley to know it. “You’re merely saving my life,” she said next.
“How hard can it be?” Ashley asked. “One small-town parade with—what?—fifteen floats, a high-school marching band, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the sheriff’s posse riding their horses?”
How hard can it be?
“Don’t tempt fate,” Melissa said. “Just because poor Ona has made it look easy all these years, that doesn’t mean it is.”
Ashley sighed. “Try to stay calm,” she said, but she still sounded buoyantly optimistic, and why wouldn’t she? Ashley was happy. Completely in love with her husband, Jack, and thoroughly loved in return. The mother of beautiful Katie and expecting a second child in six months or so. “And since when are you superstitious enough to worry about tempting fate?”
Maybe since always, Melissa thought.
In many ways, their childhoods hadn’t been easy—their mother had left home for good when she and Ashley were small, and their father had been killed in a freak accident while herding cattle on Stone Creek Ranch, struck by lightning.
After that, the four young O’Ballivans had been raised by their grandfather, Big John. While Big John had really stepped up, loving them with all his strong, kindly heart, of course there were issues. Weren’t there always issues?
Did anybody make it to adulthood unscathed? Melissa didn’t think so.
“Melissa?” Ashley said, when she’d been quiet too long.
“I’m perfectly fine,” Melissa insisted. She bit her lower lip, peering into her fridge now, finding nothing that appealed to her. “But what do you want me to do if the vice squad raids your house on grounds of lewd conduct?”
Ashley laughed.
It was a sound Melissa knew well, and loved.
As much a part of her as it was of her sister since, at some level, it sometimes seemed they were one and the same person.
“What do I want you to do?” Ashley teased. “Well, you could maybe loosen up a little. Sign up for the croquet team or something.”
“You are just too hilarious.”
“Melissa?”
“What?”
“Thanks for calling. I love you, I’ll see you in a few days and goodbye.”
Melissa made a face at the receiver and hung up.
Hunger finally drove her to get back to her car, drive to the supermarket, and invest in a salad from the deli department, a carton of low-fat yogurt for breakfast and the new issue of Vanity Fair.
She was on her way back to her car, shopping bag in hand, when she saw Andrea drive up. Spotting Melissa at the last moment, it seemed, the girl didn’t have time to hide her guilty expression.
Melissa smiled cordially and waited until her assistant got out of her old car, slung her purse strap over one shoulder, and nodded a shy “Hello.”
“Feeling better?” Melissa asked, keeping her voice sunny. “Cramps can be pretty terrible.”
Andrea’s taste in clothing was questionable, and so was her memory for watering plants and things like that, but she was basically honest, and Melissa knew she was intelligent, too. If Andrea ever learned to believe in herself, there would be no stopping her.
“I was faking,” the girl said miserably, her confession coming in a breathy little rush. “I didn’t really have cramps.”
“No kidding?” Melissa chimed.
Andrea didn’t catch the faint sarcasm in her boss’s tone. “I went to pick Byron up,” she said, looking down at the asphalt of the parking lot instead of directly at Melissa. “Byron Cahill, I mean.”
“I see,” Melissa said, though she was genuinely surprised. She’d had no clue that Andrea and Byron were friends.
With obvious effort, Andrea made herself meet Melissa’s eyes. Now, there was an obstinate set to the girl’s jaw as she waited for—what? Recriminations? A lecture? The verbal equivalent of a pink slip?
“Byron’s mother was pretty worried when he didn’t get off the bus this afternoon,” Melissa said, feeling weary again. “She thought something bad must have happened.”
Andrea nodded, and her shoulders dropped a little. “I know,” she said, small-voiced. “But everything’s all right now. I took Byron home, and his mom was there, and she’s making pizza. I just came up here to get some sodas and rent a couple of movies.” She had the good grace to blush. “Since it’s Friday night and everything.”
“And everything,” Melissa said lightly.
Andrea straightened her spine. “Are you going to fire me?”
“Probably not,” Melissa answered, thinking how ironic it was that Andrea, Velda and Byron would spend a chummy evening eating pizza and watching DVDs together, while she dined alone on a deli salad. “For future reference, though, if you have personal plans that will take you away from work, just say so. Unless there’s something pressing I need you to do, Andrea, I’ll be happy to give you time off.”
Andrea took that in, looking ashamed again. “It’s just that I thought you’d disapprove. Of Byron and me going together, I mean.”
Melissa looked around to make sure none of the local gossips were hovering nearby, with an ear cocked in their direction. “‘Going together’?” she repeated. “How could you and Byron be—‘going together’—when he’s been in jail for the better part of two years?”
“We were pen pals,” Andrea said. “I’d see Velda around town sometimes, and she’d tell me how lonesome Byron was, locked away like some kind of criminal—”
Melissa put up a hand. In a courtroom, she would have snapped out, “Objection!” In the supermarket parking lot, facing a young woman who’d had a drug-addicted mother and the very elderly Crockett sisters for her main female role models, she took a different tack.
“Hold it,” she said, very quietly. “Byron did get high, consume alcohol, then climb behind the wheel of a car and get into a terrible accident. And someone died in that accident, Andrea.”
Andrea’s eyes widened. She swallowed visibly and then nodded. “I was just telling you what Velda told me,” she said reasonably, softly. “I started writing to Byron, because I know what it’s like to feel all alone, and he wrote back. We got to be friends.” She paused, drew in a breath. “Byron understands how wrong it was, what he did, and so do I.”
Melissa closed her eyes for a moment, surprised to find that they were scalding with tears. “Yes,” she said. She was remembering Chavonne’s funeral, and the graveside service, and how the dead girl’s mother had let out a cry of such raw grief when the coffin was lowered into the ground that Melissa could still hear it, sometimes, in her nightmares.
Andrea stooped a little, peered at Melissa. Moved to touch her arm and then drew back. “Are—are you all right? You look sort of—I don’t know—pale or something.”
Melissa shook her head, not in answer but to indicate that she didn’t want to talk any more that night, and stepped around Andrea to get into the roadster.
It wasn’t until she’d set the grocery bag on the passenger seat, fumbled for her keys, started the engine and driven to the edge of the lot that she looked into her rearview mirror and saw that Andrea hadn’t moved.
She was still standing in exactly the same spot, staring down at the ground.
CHAPTER FIVE
MATT, STEVEN AND ZEKE the Wonder Dog were up early the next morning, even though it was a Saturday, normally a sleep-in day.
Steven showered, then Matt, and both of them dressed “cowboy,” in jeans and boots. Matt wore a T-shirt, while Steven pulled on an old cotton chambray shirt, a favorite from years ago when he was still riding and roping on the ranch.
“Here’s the plan,” Steven said, sipping from a mug of instant coffee while Matt fed Zeke his morning ration of kibble and put fresh water in his bowl. “We’ll go into town, have some breakfast at the Sunflower Café, or whatever it is, then take a spin by the day camp so you can get a look.”
“Can Zeke come, too?” Matt asked, stroking the animal’s back as he spoke.
Zeke didn’t slow down on the kibble.
“Sure,” Steven replied. “Today, anyway.”
Matt nodded, but it was obvious that he had reservations.
“What?” Steven asked, setting his coffee mug in the sink.
Matt looked up at him, eyes wide with concerns that probably wouldn’t even have occurred to most five-year-olds. “Zeke can go to work with you when I’m in day camp, right? And this fall, after school starts?”
“Right,” Steven said, reaching for the truck keys and his cell phone. “But there will be days when that won’t be possible, Tex.”
“Like if you have to be in court or something?”
Steven smiled, gave the boy’s shoulder a light squeeze. “Like if I have to be in court or something.”
“But sometimes he’ll be out here all alone? Shut up in the bus?”
Steven dropped to his haunches. Some conversations had to be held eye to eye, and this was one of them. “I plan on having the contractors put in a yard and fence it off as soon as the renovations are under way,” he said. “We’ll outfit Zeke with a nice, big doghouse and he’ll be fine while I’m working and you’re at school.”
By then, Zeke had wiped out the kibble and moved on to lap loudly from his water bowl.
“What if the coyotes get him?” Matt asked.
Back home in Colorado, it hadn’t been uncommon for people to lose the occasional pet to coyotes, even in the middle of town; as their habitats shrank, the animals were getting ever bolder. Because they traveled in packs, even large dogs were often at a disadvantage in a confrontation.
“We’ll make sure the fence is real high, so they can’t get over it,” Steven said, straightening up because his knees were beginning to ache a little in the crouch.
“How high?” Matt persisted.
“Really, really high,” Steven promised.
Matt brightened. “Okay,” he said, making for the door, with Zeke right behind him. “Let’s roll.”
Steven laughed and, fifteen minutes later, they were nosing the truck into a parking spot in the lot beside the Sunflower Bakery and Café. Recalling yesterday’s parking ticket, he made sure there were no fire hydrants within fifty feet.
They brought Zeke as far as the front of the restaurant and secured one end of his leash to a pole with a sign on it that read, “Park pets here.” An oversize pie pan full of fresh water waited within reach.
Steven was just straightening his back, about to follow Matt inside the café, when Melissa O’Ballivan came jogging around a corner and up the sidewalk, straight toward him.
She wore pink shorts, a skimpy white T-shirt, and one of those visor caps with no crown. Her abundance of spirally chestnut-brown hair bobbed on top of her head in a ponytail.
Her smile nearly knocked Steven over—even if it was focused on Matt and the dog with such intensity that he might as well have been invisible.
Holy crap, Steven thought, because the ground shook under his feet and the sky tilted at such a strange angle that his equilibrium was skewed. He gave his head a shake, in an effort to clear away some cobwebs.
“Morning,” Melissa said, jogging in place.
All the right things bounced, Steven noticed, grinning down at her like a damn fool. “Morning,” he responded, after clearing his throat.
She looked up at him with a surprised expression in her blue eyes, as though she’d momentarily forgotten that he was standing there. Or never noticed him at all.
She apparently wanted to give that impression, anyway, and he was intrigued.
“Would you mind opening the door?” she asked, unplugging the white earbuds attached to an armband MP3 player from her head.
