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