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