Читать книгу Big Sky Reunion - Charlotte Carter - Страница 9

Head down, her footsteps as slow as a desert tortoise, Melinda left Knitting and Notions to walk the short distance to Aunt Martha’s house.

She hadn’t spent long in the shop after Daniel left. Realizing how much needed to be done to get the store up and running was a daunting prospect. First, a top-to-bottom cleaning would be needed, followed by rearranging the stock and ordering new yarns and notions. Advertisements would have to be created and placed in the local biweekly newspaper, flyers made and posted around town about classes and special activities.

To make the shop a profitable venture, she’d have to attract customers not only from Potter Creek and its five thousand residents, but from the surrounding area, as well. Which meant she’d be competing with shops in Bozeman, less than an hour away.

Daunting was an understatement.

For as long as Melinda could remember, Martha had lived in a small one-story stucco house facing Second Street, directly behind the shop. The large backyard used to be a riot of color during the summer, roses in full bloom, morning glories scampering up a trellis, beds of purple iris and lilac bushes. Ten years ago Melinda had helped her aunt put up jars and jars of vegetables she’d grown in her garden, most of which she’d given to the church’s food pantry to help the poor.

Now the yard had gone scraggly and overgrown. Only the indestructible morning glories struggled onward and upward, covering the trellis with bright blue flowers.

The house looked as ragged as the yard with its chipped paint and dangling window screens.

Guilt punched a hole in Melinda’s chest. A knot tightened in her stomach. So much had changed in the past ten years. She should have kept better track of her aunt’s situation instead of focusing only on her own problems.

For three agonizing years, she’d devoted her life, day and night, to Jason. The last two she’d rarely left his side or thought of anything but his well-being.

The steps wobbled as she walked up onto the porch where a wicker slider sat, dusty and abandoned.

In the kitchen, which featured a circa-1950 chrome-and-Formica table and a white tile counter, the dishes she’d washed after their lunch sat drying on the drain board. From the living room, she heard the sound of the TV playing.

Aunt Martha sat in her favorite wingback chair, the remote control in her hand, her walker right next to her chair. Her collapsible wheelchair was in the front entry if she needed it.

“Hello, Mindy, dear. Did you pick out some yarn while you were in the shop?” Due to the stroke, the right side of Martha’s mouth didn’t work quite right and her speech was slightly slurred. Her hair had long since gone from the blond of her youth to silver-gray, and her face was lined from a lifetime of Montana sunshine and hours of hearty laughter.

“Not today. I brought along a sweater I’ve been meaning to finish for ages. I’ll work on that first.” She picked up the newspaper Martha had dropped on the floor and set it on the coffee table. “Anything I can get for you?”

“No, I’m fine. I don’t want you to trouble yourself over me.”

“That’s why I’m here, Aunt Martha. Have you done your afternoon exercises yet?”

“Oh, pshaw, child. Those therapists at Manhattan Rehab purely wore me out. I’m taking today off.”

Frowning, Melinda picked up the rubber ball her aunt was supposed to squeeze multiple times during the day and handed it to Martha. “You aren’t going to be able to knit a stitch if you don’t get your strength back in your hands.”

Martha looked up over the top of her glasses at Melinda. “You’ve turned into a bossy little thing, haven’t you, child?” With a funny twist of her lips, and considerable effort, she held out her hand for the ball.

Melinda placed it in her palm. “Now squeeze.”

Martha did as instructed.

Sitting down in the floral-print love seat, Melinda stretched out her legs. She wiggled her toes in her sandals. She wasn’t wearing polish on her toenails and idly wondered if Daniel had noticed.

Rejecting the thought, she sat up straighter, pulling her feet closer to the sofa.

“Before your stroke, were you still teaching knitting classes?”

“Oh, my goodness, no, dear. Young people don’t seem so interested in knitting these days and most of the ladies who used to come into the shop have either died or moved into an old folks’ home in Bozeman or Manhattan. Unless someone called for something special, I’ve hardly opened the door for the past year or so.”

Which explained both the obstinate key and the disarray in the shop. Melinda puffed out her cheeks on a long exhale.

“I was thinking… I thought I might reopen the shop.” She chose her words carefully. Her heart stuttered in the same uncertain rhythm. “Maybe stay in Potter Creek permanently.”

Eyes widening and a lopsided smile creasing her cheeks, Martha said, “That would be so nice, dear, but are you sure you want to be stuck in a small town like Potter Creek? There isn’t much for young people to do here.”

Then why had Daniel stuck around?

“You remember, I was managing a knitting and needlework store until—” her voice broke and she struggled to keep a tremor from her lips “—until Jason got so sick.”

“That poor little boy. I was so sorry—”

“The shop built up a really nice clientele,” she hurried on, unwilling and unable to talk about her son. “Mostly women, of course, but quite a few young mothers. Even some teenagers. The classes were filled all of the time and we kept adding new ones.”

Moving her right arm awkwardly, Martha put the rubber ball in her lap. “Is that what you’d like to do with my shop?”

“After your hospital social worker called me about your discharge plan, I got to thinking about the shop and how much you’d taught me that summer I visited. I wouldn’t do anything with the shop without your approval.” She did need to keep busy, though. She couldn’t go on wallowing in self-pity and isolating herself from human contact as she had for the past six months.

Using her left hand, Martha lifted her right hand and brought them both to her chest. “Praise the Lord! I’ve been praying He’d give me a sign of what I should do. Now God has answered my prayer and sent you to me.”

Slanting her gaze to the worn and faded Oriental carpet on the floor, Melinda shook her head. “I don’t think I’m God’s answer to anything. But I do need to work, Aunt Martha.” Regret and grief nearly choking her, she lifted her head. “I’m broke. I had to declare bankruptcy last month.” Enormous medical bills had taken every dime she’d received after her husband’s death—a death benefit from the defense contractor who’d employed him as a civilian truck driver in Afghanistan. An IED had blown up under his vehicle. Even then, she’d still owed thousands of dollars for Jason’s care. She’d had no choice but to file for bankruptcy and start over again.

Alone.

Desperately trying to stitch her life back together again.

“I’m so sorry, Mindy. If I’d known…”

She tried to shrug off her aunt’s sympathy, but it felt like ice picks were being jammed into her spine one after the other, cutting off the messages from her brain to her muscles. The pain paralyzed her.

“Of course you can run the shop, dear. I won’t be of much help, but I’m sure you have some wonderful ideas.”

The tension drained from her shoulders. The tightness she’d been holding in eased and her facial muscles relaxed.

She had a job and a task that was so daunting she wouldn’t be able to think of the past. Maybe she’d even be able to sleep at night without the dreams that had haunted her for the past three years.

One problem remained. Now that she was going to stay, what was she going to do about Daniel and the feelings she had for him that had never quite gone away?

Foolish feelings she should have discarded when she put on Joe’s wedding ring.

After dinner, Melinda decided to finish her unpacking. She’d brought only two suitcases with her. Her few other possessions she’d stored with a friend to be shipped later—if she decided to stay in Potter Creek.

She’d stayed in Aunt Martha’s guest room ten years ago, the narrow twin bed and varnished pine bedside table and matching dresser familiar to her.

Shaking out her clothes, she hung them in the small walk-in closet: casual blouses and slacks, the ubiquitous jeans that was the uniform in small Montana towns. A few pairs of shorts and tank tops for the scorching days of summer.

At the bottom of the suitcase she found her Bible. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she held it for a moment and rubbed her fingertip over the faux-leather cover. For years she’d read the Bible or a book of daily devotions every morning. And she’d prayed.

But no longer.

Tears sprang to her eyes, blurring her vision. Her chin quivered. The bitter taste of failure, of God’s censure, filled her throat. He would never forgive her. Nor could she forgive herself.

She opened the drawer in the bedside table and tossed the Bible inside where it would be out of sight, no longer a reminder of lost hope.

As the Bible landed with a thump, the cover flew open. A snapshot slid out.

She covered her mouth with her hand to prevent a sob. Jason. Two years old. A towhead with a beatific smile, wearing his swimsuit, running through the sprinklers on a hot afternoon. A perfect child. As smart and quick as an Olympic athlete and just learning to talk. She could still hear him calling her.

“Mommy! Mommy! Watch me! Watch me!”

Tears rolled down Melinda’s cheeks unabated. In three short years he’d gone from that beautiful child to little more than skin and bones, racked with pain with every breath he took, unable to walk or talk.

A sense of panic, of not being able to breathe, started like a coiling snake in her midsection. Twisting and turning and spinning, a tornado of blackness rose into her throat. Her head threatened to explode. Muscles and bones lacked strength and began to crumble. She was falling, falling…

Brain tumor. No hope. Vegetative state.

“I’m so sorry, baby. So sorry.” She slid off the bed onto the floor and buried her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry.”

A counselor had told Melinda she’d effectively been in a war zone for three full years struggling to save her child. She was suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.

Knowing hadn’t changed a thing.

God hadn’t saved her baby boy.

The following morning, Aunt Martha insisted they go to church.

Melinda tried to talk her out of it. “You’re not strong enough yet.”

“Nonsense, child. I can sit in church as well as I can sit at home. And I need to thank the good Lord for saving my life and bringing you to stay with me.”

Clearly she could do her thanking right here in the living room, but it was impossible to argue with Aunt Martha.

No matter that she was sweet and syrupy and full of lopsided smiles, she wasn’t about to give an inch.

No matter that Melinda didn’t belong in any church.

So, with her teeth clamped tightly together and her jaw aching, Melinda wheeled her aunt out to her fifteen-year-old Buick sedan, helped her into the car and drove her to church.

And, of course, she couldn’t simply drop her aunt off and come back in an hour, although that’s exactly what Melinda would have preferred. Instead she had to help her into her wheelchair and push her up the walkway to the double-door entrance of Potter Creek Community Church.

The whitewashed structure wasn’t the largest church in town, but it did have the tallest steeple. Today, instead of beckoning her inside, it seemed to cast a shadow over Melinda that said she wasn’t welcome. She kept her head down and her arms close to her body as she pushed her aunt into the cool interior.

“Morning, Aunt Martha,” a familiar masculine voice said. “Glad you’re back home and out on the town.”

Melinda stopped stark still and her head snapped up. Daniel O’Brien? At church? Dressed in a fine-cotton Western-style shirt and slacks? Greeting folks as they arrived?

She blinked and shook her head. She must be hallucinating. The Daniel O’Brien she remembered wouldn’t have been caught dead in church on Sunday morning or any other time.

A smile curved his lips and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Good to see you, too, Mindy.” His dark brows lifted ever so slightly as he handed Aunt Martha and Melinda each a program for the morning service.

Melinda wanted to take it and run. Instead she gave him a curt nod and pushed her aunt past Daniel as quickly as she could. They didn’t get far. Several of Martha’s longtime friends spotted her. They gathered around, most of them as gray-haired as her aunt, welcoming her back home. A few looked vaguely familiar to Melinda, but she couldn’t recall their names.

“We’ve been so worried about you.”

“The prayer circle has been praying for you.”

“Isn’t it nice your niece could come stay with you for a bit.”

Melinda forced a smile that instantly froze on her face. She was annoyingly aware of Daniel standing no more than five feet behind her. In his deep baritone voice, he greeted new arrivals, all of whom he knew by name. They responded with the same warmth of friendship that he had extended.

She felt like Alice slipping down the rabbit hole and discovering Daniel was the king of hearts.

Where had his wild side gone? The risk taker who drove a hundred miles per hour down the highway. The fighter who’d landed in the town jail more than once. The daredevil who raced a train to the crossing—and won. Barely. Leaving her breathless that they had escaped death and releasing her own wild side that she’d never known lurked somewhere inside her.

Did his new persona merely mask the man who had kissed her so thoroughly and wanted more? He would have gotten it, too, if Aunt Martha hadn’t returned home earlier than expected.

Heat flamed Melinda’s face as she remembered that memorable August evening ten years ago. She’d left town the next day right after an older girl, DeeDee Pickens, had flaunted the ring Daniel had given her.

“Hope you know you don’t stand a chance with my Danny boy,” DeeDee had crowed.

Melinda parked Martha’s chair at the end of a pew near the back of the church and slipped past her to take a seat.

Reverend Arthur Redmond, the pastor according to the program, looked to be in his early fifties and graying at the temples. His voice carried to the back of the room with ease as he welcomed the congregation to his church.

Melinda lowered her gaze, pretending to study the program. Tears blurred her vision. No matter what the pastor said, she knew her sins were too great to be forgiven.

The service seemed excruciatingly long. She sat with her eyes cast downward, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, knowing she didn’t belong in church. Wishing she could flee back to the knitting shop to scrub it clean and start over, in the same way she’d start a new knitting project with clean needles and a fresh skein of yarn.

Finally Reverend Redmond released his grip on the congregation and allowed them to file out into the warm sun. As though she’d been released from prison, Melinda drew in a deep breath of fresh air tinged with the scent of sage.

“Pastor Redmond surely knows how to preach, doesn’t he?” Martha said. “I feel renewed every time I hear his sermons.”

Melinda didn’t respond. She’d spotted Daniel off to the side of the parking area shooting baskets with a half-dozen high school boys. It appeared to be a two-on-six game as he agilely dribbled past two boys, sank a banked shot, then stole the ball back from another youngster. He flipped the ball to a man in a wheelchair, who neatly made a lay-up shot.

Her forehead furrowed and she squinted. Could that be Daniel’s brother, Arnie?

She dragged her gaze away and pushed her aunt’s wheelchair toward the car. After settling Aunt Martha in the front seat, Melinda walked around to the driver’s side. She took one last look at the basketball game.

A young woman, probably in her twenties, wearing heels and a floral-print dress, went tiptoeing out onto the basketball court and snatched the ball away from Daniel.

“Hey!” he complained, trying to grab it back.

The brunette scooted toward the basket without bothering to dribble the ball. “What’s the matter, Danny? Don’t you let girls play in your league?”

The teenage boys hooted and hollered. A couple of teenage girls, who’d been preening as they watched the game, shouted, “Way to go, Ivy.”

Standing with his legs wide apart, hands on his hips, Daniel watched the young woman with an amused smile on his lips.

She launched the ball underhanded toward the hoop. It fell well short and one of the teenagers snagged it on the bounce.

“Oh, well.” The brunette cocked her hip toward Daniel and gave him a long, leisurely smile. “You coming in for the Sunday special, Danny?”

He intercepted a pass between two teenagers. “Nope, I’ve got a date with April.”

Melinda chose not to watch any longer. Daniel hadn’t changed. He still had an eye for the women, and they reciprocated the feeling.

Which was of no concern to her.

As she backed the Buick out of its parking spot, she said, “I was surprised to see Daniel O’Brien at church.”

“Oh, yes, when he was a youngster he was a bit wild, but he’s become a fine young man. Not at all like his no-account father, God rest his soul. Daniel’s taken an interest in the church youth group.”

Probably to lead them astray, Melinda thought uncharitably. “Was that his brother in the wheelchair?” Arnie had been the solid, responsible older brother. So far as Melinda knew, he’d never gotten into trouble or broken any laws. Daniel had had almost as many battles with his brother as he had with his father.

“Yes, that was Arnie. Poor boy. Had a terrible accident a few years back.” Martha pulled a hankie from her purse and dabbed at the perspiration on her face and neck. “Can’t remember just how long ago. It left him paralyzed from his waist down. The past few years, those two boys have been nearly inseparable.”

There Melinda went, sliding down the rabbit hole again.

The whole world had slipped off-kilter since she’d seen Daniel at church.

That wasn’t an image she’d ever had of him. She couldn’t believe what she’d seen and learned about him. It had to be an act, all smoke and mirrors.

A wolf couldn’t change his killer instincts.

Daniel couldn’t change his instincts, either. Beneath the charade, he was still Potter Creek’s baddest of bad boys.

He had to be.

Back at the ranch, Daniel made himself a roast beef sandwich with mustard and lettuce, and washed it down with a soda. In the upcoming Potato Festival in Manhattan, he and April, his best cutting horse, were entered in the cow-cutting and trail-riding events. Last year Charlie Moffett from Three Forks had beaten him in both events, Daniel’s first loss in six years.

Charlie had lorded it over him for nearly a year.

Daniel took a big bite of his sandwich and chewed down hard. That wasn’t going to happen again. The reputation of the quarter horses he raised and trained was at stake. Not to mention the income they produced for O’Brien Ranch.

The double prize money when he won both events would punch up the bank account so they could pay the balloon installment on this year’s mortgage bill, a result of refinancing the ranch to modernize the place seven years ago.

Outside the afternoon had heated up. In the distance, dark clouds had begun to form over the mountains. They wouldn’t amount to much this time of year. Along about August they’d bring some much-needed rain, even a few gully washers, and plenty of thunder and lightning. Maybe even start a wildfire or two.

In the shade of the barn, Daniel saddled April. A sorrel with a blond mane and tail, she was a sturdy girl with strong legs and a sweet disposition.

“You’re a sweetheart, aren’t you, love.” He tightened the cinch under her belly and checked the stirrups. “This time we’ll leave Charlie and his swayback nag in the dust. He’ll stop his crowing on his Facebook page. Best Quarter Horse Breeder in Montana, my foot.”

Arnie and his dog, Sheila, arrived at the corral on his ATV. “You’re sure spending a lot of time with April. The other horses are getting jealous.”

Daniel snorted. “She’ll keep them in their place.” He tugged the reins loose from the fence rail and mounted. “Time us, will you?”

“As always, your wish is my command.”

Eyeing his brother skeptically, Daniel settled his Stetson more firmly on his head. “Since when?”

“Since you started telling Ivy to get lost.”

“Not lost, exactly. She’s not my type. She’s too young. Too clingy.” Although a few years ago the waitress at the diner might have been. But not now. The kind of female that was looking for trouble no longer appealed to him.

The picture of Mindy walking into church with Aunt Martha popped into his head. A summery dress that skimmed her calves. Golden curls bouncing as she pushed her aunt along. Blue eyes that sparked like a summer wildfire, challenging him to keep his distance.

Like the upcoming riding events, he’d always loved a challenge.

Too bad she hadn’t still been at the knitting shop when he went back to town for Arnie’s prescription.

Daniel reined April into the ring where he’d set up an obstacle course—a low bridge to walk over, logs laid out in a path to be daintily stepped over, a rail to straddle. Although the trail event wasn’t timed for speed, the time to finish the course was limited, and time penalties were added for every misstep or refusal the horse made.

“Okay, here we go.” With the almost imperceptible pressure of his knees, he urged April toward the bridge.

“The clock is ticking,” Arnie announced.

Without faltering, April went up and over the bridge. Daniel maneuvered her to the next obstacle, the row of logs, which she took with ease. Throughout the course, she didn’t falter once. Even when he dangled the required bundle of burlap on a rope in front of her face, she didn’t flinch.

They reached the end of the course, and Daniel trotted April over to the fence. “How’d we do?” he asked Arnie.

“A perfect ride. More than two minutes under the limit, bro.”

“Ha!” He gave April a congratulatory pat on her neck. “Eat your heart out, Charlie Moffett. This year you’ll meet your match. And eat our dust.”