Montana Creeds: Logan (3 page)

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.

T
HE 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.”

C
ASSIE 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.

“You look so much like Teresa,” she said quietly. “Especially around the eyes.”

Logan didn’t answer. Cassie was thinking out loud, not making conversation. She
never
made conversation, not the small-talk variety, anyway.