A Creed in Stone Creek (23 page)

Brody’s look was sharp as he turned his head toward Steven. “Is one of them sick—Davis or Kim, I mean?”

Steven shook his head. Was Brody implying, by deliberately omitting a third name, that it would be just fine with him if
Conner
were sick? “No,” he said. “And neither is your brother. But you ought to know as well as I do how fast things can change.”

Before Brody could reply, Matt rushed them, head back and arms out like airplane wings, as good as flying. Zeke ran, barking, behind him.

“I’m
starved!
” Matt declared loudly.

Brody reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Me,
too,” he said. He looked at Steven again. “What’s for supper, Boston?”

“Leftover meat loaf and canned ravioli,” Steven said, leading the way toward the door of the bus.

“How come you call my dad ‘Boston’?” Matt piped.

“’Cause that’s where he’s from,” Brody said. “
Steven
’s too formal for me—can hardly bring myself to say it—and he won’t answer to
Steve.
So I call him Boston.”

They were inside now.

Matt picked up Zeke’s empty bowl, ready to hike back to the little room where the water heater and the washer and dryer were, that being where the kibble was kept. So far, he’d kept his promise to look after the dog.

“I’m from Denver,” Matt said to Brody, “that’s where I was born. But nobody calls me that.”

Brody pretended to size up the little boy, take his measure the way he might do with a grown man.

It made Matt throw back his shoulders in pride and puff out his chest a-ways.

“I don’t reckon
Denver
suits you all that well,” Brody said, after some time had gone by. “Nope. If I was going to give you a nickname, I’d pick the
Colorado Kid.
”

Matt’s face lit up. “Like
Billy
the Kid?”

“Yeah,” Brody said, grinning. He’d never met the man, woman or child he couldn’t charm straight into next week.

“Feed the dog,” Steven told Matt.

Matt nodded and started down the hallway, followed by said dog.

“Do me a favor,” Steven said to Brody, keeping his voice down.

Brody’s grin faded. “What?”

“Don’t set Matt up for a fall, okay?”

Brody took offense, which was more like him. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he rasped, glaring at Steven.

“You said it yourself. You’re just passing through. So go easy on the avuncular charm, because I don’t want Matt to get too attached to somebody he might never see again.”

Brody didn’t get the opportunity to respond, because Matt and Zeke reappeared. Matt set the bowl down in its accustomed place and the dog began to crunch loudly on his supper.

Steven, who could do with some supper himself, washed his hands and then went to the full-size refrigerator and took out the leftover meat loaf. There was a lot, because Melissa hadn’t eaten much and, as for him, he’d wanted second helpings of something else entirely.

“This is quite a rig,” Brody said, looking around.

“It belongs to Brad O’Ballivan,” Matt said. “And he’s
famous.
”

“I figured that,” Brody replied, “from the big head painted on the side, along with his name airbrushed in letters three feet tall.”

Steven put the meat loaf in the microwave and took a family-size can of ravioli, the old standby, out of the cupboard. He was annoyed, and he was worried, but he couldn’t help the grin that tugged at one corner of his mouth.

“It’s just like a house,” Matt said, raising his voice to be heard over the dog chomping on kibbles. “There’s
even a washer and dryer. And I’ve got my own room, with bunk beds.”

Brody gave a low whistle of appreciative exclamation. “Is there a shower? Because I’ve been on the road for a while, and I could sure use a good sluicing off and a close shave.”

Steven opened the ravioli can and dumped the contents into a saucepan. Turned on the gas underneath.

“Yep,” Matt said. “There’s a shower. Did you know Brad O’Ballivan is famous?”

Brody grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I like his music. Looks like you and him must be pretty good buddies.”

“He’s a
grown-up,
” Matt responded, as though that precluded friendship. “His son, Mac, is my friend, though. I slept over last night, at Mac’s, I mean. We rode on his pony before
and
after supper.”

It was the first Steven had heard about the pony ride; Matt hadn’t mentioned it that morning, on the way to day camp. He smiled at the thought.

“I see,” Brody said.

The timer on the microwave dinged. Steven let the meat loaf sit while the ravioli heated up and he put three plates and some silverware on the table. Surveying it, he realized he’d forgotten to buy milk again. Good thing there was melted cheddar on top of the meat loaf.

Brody went off to wash up for supper, and Steven hoisted Matt up so he could soap his hands and rinse them off in the kitchen sink.

“I like Brody,” he whispered to Steven, as though imparting a confidence.

“Me, too,” Steven answered.

Brody came back, and they all sat down to supper.

Brody told stories about his life on the rodeo circuit,
both in the States and north of the Canadian border, all of them noticeably devoid of personal information. His cousin might have been an alien from another planet, posing as Brody Creed, for all the connection Steven felt. Once, they’d been as close as brothers, the two of them.

Except for Brody’s looks—even in need of a shave and a haircut and decent clothes, he was still a dead-ringer for Conner—he was practically a stranger.

It bruised something in Steven, even thinking that.

Brody. A stranger.

How was that possible?

After supper, Matt reluctantly agreed to take his shower and get into his PJs.

Brody cleared the table, and when everything was in the sink, he paused to pick Matt’s drawing of the stick family up from the desktop, pondering it solemnly.

“Everybody wants the same thing,” he murmured, holding the sheet of paper as though it were somehow sacred. “A family.”

Steven’s throat tightened. “Yeah,” he managed, when he could get the word out. He went to check on Matt next, because his eyes were burning, and while the boy probably wouldn’t notice, he couldn’t risk letting Brody see.

When he came back, after toweling Matt off and digging out the pajamas he’d forgotten to bring into the bathroom with him, the door was standing open and Brody was gone.

Had he left again, already, without even a goodbye?

Considering the possibility, Steven felt his heart skip
a beat or two before common sense overtook him. The dog was outside, and Brody was with him.

He went to the doorway.

Brody was hauling a suitcase from under the tarp in the back of his truck. That piece of luggage looked like it was bought at a thrift store, beaten with a tire chain and then dragged down five miles of rough road behind a tractor.

But, then, so did Brody. Life had used him hard, that much was clear.

He might want to talk about it eventually, or he might never say a word. Cussed-stubborn as he was and, conversely, unpredictable, it might go either way.

Brody brought in the suitcase, along with a couple of tattered blankets, the kind they sell cheap in the markets of Tijuana and Nogales, and set everything down on or near the couch.

Steven didn’t say anything. He just went to the door and whistled for Zeke, who was chasing some kind of flying bug around the yard. It was a comforting sight, somehow, a dog playing in the twilight, with the old house standing watch in the near distance.

“I’m done with my shower!” Matt announced turning up at the end of the hall. “And I brushed my teeth, too!”

“Good deal,” Steven said.

“I don’t need a story tonight,” Matt added manfully. “You probably want to talk to Brody and everything.”

Steven smiled. “There’s always time for a story,” he said. Ever since Matt had come to live with him, scared and small and confused, clinging to his blanket and his toy skunk, they’d read out of a book every night. Even
when Steven wasn’t home, he’d made sure the babysitter kept up the ritual.

“I’d just like to look at my picture for a while,” Matt said. He sounded mighty philosophical, for a short guy.

My picture.
The photo of Zack and Jillie, skydiving on their honeymoon, Steven thought. He was about to say it was right where they’d left it, on Matt’s bedside table.

But the boy scampered across the living-room–kitchen and claimed the drawing he’d made at day camp.

That’s you, and that’s Melissa, and that’s me.

Steven’s eyes started burning again. “If you change your mind about the story,” he said, his voice hoarse, “just let me know.”

Matt nodded, then gave a wide grin. “’Night, Dad. ’Night, Brody.”

Steven just nodded.

“Good night, Colorado,” Brody said seriously.

Matt beamed at that. Summoned the dog. “Come on, Zeke,” he said. “It’s time for bed.”

Zeke, who had been sniffing at his empty kibble bowl, obediently trotted over to Matt, and the two of them vanished down the hallway and into the second bedroom.

“All right if I take a shower?” Brody asked Steven when they were alone again.

“Of course it’s all right,” Steven said, maybe a touch more abruptly than he should have. “You need anything?”

Brody grinned. “You mean, like a toothbrush, Boston? Hell, I haven’t sunk
that
low.”

“You’re not going to tell me about the time you’ve been away, are you?” Steven asked, already knowing the answer.

“Not yet,” Brody said, with sadness in his eyes, briefly resting a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “You asked me for a favor earlier. Now, I’m asking you for one. Let me get around to talking in my own way and my own time. I’m still sorting through things myself.”

Steven nodded in agreement.

Brody left the room without another word, and a few seconds later, Steven heard the shower running.

F
OR THE NEXT FOUR DAYS
, Melissa’s life ran smoothly.

She worked. She gained two pounds after having supper with Ashley and Jack and the one-time flashers on several nights. The tenants, meanwhile, remained on their best behavior, probably because, one, there was a child in the house and two, Jack clearly wasn’t the sort to put up with any nonsense.

After work, she happily weeded her little patch of garden. She mediated more disagreements, thankfully minor, between the members of the Parade Committee, and ran into Steven fairly often—in the post office, in the grocery store, once at the Sunflower Café, when she stopped for a bottle of water during her run, and another time at the dry cleaner’s next door to his new office. He introduced her to his visiting cousin, Brody.

These encounters, mundane as they were, both unnerved and excited Melissa, but she’d said it herself: Things had been moving pretty fast between her and Steven. She was grateful for a breather—and equally grateful that she saw him almost every day.

On top of all this, the weather was flat-out perfect. Warm, but not hot. Sunny, but not glaring.

Happily, there were no confrontations with Velda and no calls from Eustace Blake, lodging his interminable complaints about space visitors.

Nathan Carter had apparently left town again, because Melissa hadn’t seen him around, which was a weight off Deputy Ferguson’s mind, and hers, too.

Her cuts and bruises healed, and the last of the soreness faded away, although she could still feel ecstatic little catches of physical pleasure sometimes, when she allowed herself to remember how it was, making love with Steven Creed.

Rummaging through Ashley’s closet one evening, she even found a killer dress to wear to the dance on Saturday night—an aqua-blue sundress with thinnest-of-thin vertical silver stripes shimmering through the silky fabric.

Life was downright idyllic, all things considered. Which was precisely why she should have been prepared, she would think later.

On Saturday morning, she met with the members of the Parade Committee, as agreed, for the walk-through—a sort of rehearsal, but without the costumes and the floats.

Bea Brady and Adelaide Hillingsley were still on the outs over the toilet-paper question, but the ice was broken when Tessa Quinn and a few assistants showed up at the meeting place in the park with coffee and a big bag of fresh doughnuts, her contribution to the community effort.

Melissa, suitably clad in blue jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, her hair pulled up into a Saturday ponytail,
her face bare of makeup, shepherded everybody into line—Tom had temporarily closed Main Street by placing a sawhorse at each end—and appropriate gaps were left for the high-school band and drill team, the sheriff’s posse, and the annual offering from over in Indian Rock.

Stone Creek and Indian Rock tended to be a little competitive, as far as their town floats were concerned, but that only served to up the quality of the event.

Oscar Vernon, who owned a used-car dealership and salvage yard outside the city limits always put the Stone Creek float on the road, and he was invariably secretive as far as colors and subject matter were concerned. He was keeping his mouth shut this year, too—wouldn’t give so much as a hint of what he planned—but since he’d done the place proud every year since 1978, nobody really pushed him for answers.

Everyone was poised to begin when Steven and Matt sprinted across the grassy expanse of the park to join in.

Melissa’s heart did a thing her granddad Big John would probably have called a twenty-three-skidoo, whatever that was, and she wished she’d bothered with lip gloss and mascara and maybe even a little perfume.

“We’re here to help,” Matt informed all and sundry, in a piping voice. “What are volunteers supposed to do, anyhow?”

Steven chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair, but he’d locked gazes with Melissa as soon as he came to a stop, and he wasn’t letting go.

“Well,” Melissa fumbled, reminding herself that Steven had graciously offered to help out on the Parade Committee, managed to shift her eyes to Matt’s upturned
face, “you could walk where the sheriff’s posse will be riding on the big day. That’ll give us a better sense of—spacing. Between the floats, I mean.”