The Cowboy Way

“Velda,” Melissa said, after nodding to acknowledge that Byron Cahill might actually have an admirable side, like just about everybody else on the planet, “let me take you home. Maybe Byron’s there. Maybe he caught a ride with somebody instead of getting on the bus, or something like that.”

But Velda shook her head. A tear slipped down her right cheek. Then she pivoted on the worn heel of one flip-flop and marched off down the sidewalk, probably headed toward the trailer park where she rented a single-wide, but maybe not.

Melissa, feeling as though she’d aged a decade in the last half hour, watched as Velda’s thin frame disappeared into a copse of trees. She hoped Byron would be at home when his mother arrived but, at that point, nothing would have surprised her.

After checking to make sure the way was clear, Melissa pulled back out onto the road, executed a U-turn, and headed for Ashley’s B&B.

Mentally, she reviewed her original impressions of young Mr. Cahill. He’d been sixteen when he was convicted and sentenced. Against the advice of his duly appointed public defender, but apparently with his mother’s encouragement, Byron had waived a jury trial.

Melissa, in her capacity as prosecutor, and the public defender, a newly minted attorney imported from Flagstaff, had tried to negotiate some kind of deal, but in the end, they couldn’t come to an agreement.

The defense wanted probation, with no jail time, and comprehensive substance-abuse treatment in return for a guilty plea. After all, the argument ran, Byron was very young, and he’d never been in any real trouble before.

Melissa had been in favor of the treatment program, but probation wasn’t enough. Chavonne Rowan had been young, too. And thanks to Byron Cahill’s reckless actions, she wasn’t going to get any older. She would never go to college, have a career, fall in love, get married, have children. Naturally, the girl’s family was devastated.

Not that Byron’s going to jail would bring Chavonne back.

Secretly, Melissa had agonized over the case, but she’d presented a strong, confident face to the public, and even to her own family and close friends. She’d examined her conscience repeatedly, taken her responsibilities to heart, and she had the reputation as a ruthless legal commando to prove it.

Except for those few who knew her through and through—Brad, Olivia, Ashley and one or two close girlfriends—most people probably thought she was a real hard-ass. Even a ballbuster.

And when Melissa allowed herself to think about that, it grieved her.

Sure, she’d wanted an education and a career. She loved the law, complicated as it was, and she loved justice even more. Justice, of course, was an elusive thing, very subjective in some ways, too often more of a concept than a reality, but without the pursuit of that ideal, where would humanity be?

She thrust out a sigh. Shifted the car and her mood. She’d done the best she could with the Cahill case. And that had to be good enough.

With no reason to hurry home, Melissa decided she might as well stop by the B&B—the octogenarian guests were due in the night before—thereby fulfilling her promise to Ashley. She’d look in on the old folks, make sure they were having a good time. And still breathing, of course.

Five minutes later, she bumped up the driveway next to the spacious two-story Victorian house Ashley had turned into the Mountain View Bed and Breakfast several years before.

Ashley.

Melissa felt a stab, missing her twin sister sorely. Although they were different in many ways, Ashley domestic, Melissa anything but; Ashley blond, with a love of cotton print dresses and gossamer skirts, Melissa dark-haired, fond of tailored suits and slacks—they had always been close.

Hurry home, Ash, Melissa thought, as she parked and got out of the car.

A shrill wolf whistle from the front yard of the B&B stopped her in her tracks.

She shaded her eyes with one hand, since the sun was still bright, and spotted an elderly gentleman standing just inside the fence, in the shadow of Ashley’s prized lilac bush, wearing white Bermuda shorts, a white polo shirt, white shoes and white knee socks.

“Now that,” the old man said, gazing past Melissa to the roadster, “is some car.” He shook his leonine head of snowy hair. “Beautiful. Simply beautiful.”

Melissa smiled. At least he wasn’t a masher. “Thank you,” she said, pausing to look back at the car with undiminished admiration. “I like it, too.”

“You must be Mrs. McKenzie’s sister,” the man said, shifting his focus from the car to Melissa.

Mrs. McKenzie, of course, was Ashley.

Melissa was still getting used to that—Ashley married, and a mother. Sometimes, it seemed incredible.

“You must be one of the current guests,” she replied, smiling, extending a hand across the picket fence. “Melissa O’Ballivan,” she said.

“I’m John P. Winthrop IV,” the man replied, with a nod and a very wide—and very white—smile. “But you can call me John.”

“How’s it going, John?” Melissa asked, thinking she might be able to wrap up this interview quickly and dash off an honest email to Ashley when she got home, assuring her that the B&B was still standing. “Is there anything you or any of the other guests need?”

He beamed. “Well, we can always use another croquet player,” he said, making a grand gesture toward the nearby side gate, which led into Ashley’s beautifully kept garden of specially cultivated wildflowers.

A teenage boy from the neighborhood did the watering and mowed the lawn, so the flowers, a profusion of reds and blues and pinks and oranges, looked good, if a little weedy here and there.

“I wouldn’t be an asset to any self-respecting croquet team.” Melissa smiled. She ran two miles every morning, but that was the extent of her athletic efforts. “But I would like to meet your friends.”

John P. Winthrop IV rushed to work the latch and swing the gate open. “You look like you could use an ice-cold glass of lemonade,” he said.

Try a shot of whiskey, Melissa thought wryly, recalling the Velda debacle. She hoped Byron Cahill had been waiting when his mother got home. If he’d taken off for parts unknown, he was in all sorts of trouble.

“Thanks,” she said aloud, bringing herself back to the moment. “Lemonade sounds good.”

Mr. Winthrop closed the gate and sprinted to catch up to Melissa on the flagstone walk. He seemed pretty agile for a man of advancing years.

Maybe it was the croquet playing.

“There is one thing,” he said hastily.

Something in his tone, a sort of mild urgency, made Melissa stop and look up into his kindly and somewhat abashed face.

“We’re a little—different, my friends and I,” Mr. Winthrop said.

“Different?” Melissa asked, while inside her head, a voice warned, Here we go.

Mr. Winthrop cleared his throat. “Mabel should have told your sister in advance, when we booked the rooms,” he said. “But we were all counting so on this little getaway and when it turned out we were going to have the whole place to ourselves, well, it all just seemed meant to be—”

Melissa squinted, still several beats behind. “Mabel?”

“Mabel Elliott,” Mr. Winthrop said helpfully. “We’re all retired, living in the same community, and relatively comfortable financially, and we take a lot of these little jaunts. Mabel knows how to use the internet, so she’s in charge of arranging accommodations.”

“I see,” Melissa said, still mystified, and beginning to wish she hadn’t agreed to that glass of lemonade. She could be home in a couple of minutes, taking a cool shower, donning shorts and a tank top and sandals, puttering around in her struggling vegetable garden and generally minding her own business.

Mr. Winthrop took her elbow, in a courtly way. “And with all the foliage surrounding the backyard,” he added, dropping his voice, “there’s really no harm done anyway, now is there?”

He still sounded nervous, though. And Melissa could relate, because she was feeling downright jittery by now. What could possibly be going on?

They rounded the back corner of the house, and Melissa froze, her mouth open.

Five people, three women and two men, all having a grand old time, were playing croquet in the green, well-shaded grass.

And every last one of them was stark naked.

* * *

THE PICTURE OF JILLIE and Zack, taken on their honeymoon, showed them parachuting in tandem, somewhere in Mexico, their faces alight with celebration as they mugged for the skydiving photographer jumping with them.

There were lots of photos of the St. Johns, but this one was Matt’s favorite.

“Tell me again about when this picture was taken,” Matt said, snuggling down into his sleeping bag, while Steven perched on the edge of the lower bunk and Zeke made himself comfortable on an improvised dog bed nearby.

Holding the framed photograph in his hands, Steven smiled, taking in those familiar faces. Even now, it seemed impossible that two people with so much life in them could be gone.

“Well,” Steven began, as he had a hundred times before, since he’d become Matt’s legal guardian and then his adoptive father, “we all went to school together, your mom, your dad and me, and right from the first, they were a real pair—”

“Tell me about the wedding,” Matt prompted, with a yawn. It was all part of the pattern—he would fight sleep for a while, then lose the battle. “You were the best man, right?”

“I was the best man,” Steven confirmed huskily.

“And you and my daddy had to wear penguin suits.”

Steven chuckled, wondering if the kid was picturing him and Zack dressed up like short, squat birds from the Frozen North.

But, no—he knew what a tuxedo looked like. Matt had seen the wedding pictures a million times—usually, he asked why he wasn’t in them.

The answer—you weren’t born yet—never seemed to sink in.

“Yeah,” Steven said belatedly. “We had to wear penguin suits.”

“Mommy had on a pretty white dress, though,” Matt chimed in.

“Yep.”

“And out of all three of you, she was the best-looking.”

“A rose between two thorns,” Steven said, playing the game.

“A petunia in an onion patch,” Matt responded, on cue.

They laughed, the man and the boy. There was a ragged quality to the sound.

“Tell me more about my mommy and daddy,” Matt said.

Steven talked, his heart in his throat much of the time, until the boy finally nodded off. When he was sure Matt was asleep, he left the room, stepping carefully around the dog.

Out in the living room/kitchen area, Steven opened his laptop, booted it up and logged on. He hadn’t checked his email in a few days.

Once he’d weeded out the junk, and the stuff he didn’t feel like dealing with at the moment, he opened a recent message from his stepmother, Kim. It was dated that afternoon.

“Are you there yet?” she’d written. “Let us know when you get settled in Stone Creek, and your dad and I will come for a visit.”

Smiling, Steven tapped out a brief reply. Kim had always treated him with warmth and good humor during those growing-up summers, never trying to take his mother’s place. “We’re here,” he wrote, “and living the high life in a country-music star’s tour bus. There are bunk beds in Matt’s room, so you and Dad could sleep there.”

The thought of that made his grin widen.

He added a description of Zeke, the sheepdog, recounting the pet-adoption saga, assured Kim that he and Matt were both fine, and signed off with love.

A second message came from Conner. “I’ll be in Stone Creek for the rodeo next month,” it read. “Save me a bed.”

And that was the whole thing.

Steven chuckled. His cousin was definitely a man of few words.

He hit Reply and told Conner he was always welcome and there would be a bed waiting when the time came. Compared to his cousin’s email, Steven’s was downright verbose.

A low whimper distracted him from the computer; he looked up and saw Zeke standing with his nose to the door crack, wanting to go outside.

Steven left the laptop on the table and accompanied Zeke out into the yard.

It wasn’t quite dark, but a few stars had begun to pop out here and there, and the ghost of a three-quarter moon peeked over the horizon, like a performer waiting in the wings.

Zeke sniffed around for a while, did his business and went back to the door, ready to go in.

Steven opened the door and the dog mounted the steps, then went directly back to Matt’s room.

Wide-awake, already bored with the internet and in no mood to watch TV, Steven sat on the fold-down metal steps in front of the threshold and looked out over what he could see of his ranch.

Some ranch, he thought. Most of the fences are down, the barn probably collapsed ten years ago and the house is a disaster.

He sighed and combed the fingers of his right hand through his hair, something he always did when he was questioning his own decisions.

His dad and Conner had both tried to persuade him to stay in Colorado and raise Matt on the family’s spread. Set up a law practice in Lonesome Bend.

He wasn’t sure they understood, his father and his cousin, why he’d needed to strike out on his own, create something new for himself and Matt and any generations that might follow.

He wasn’t sure he understood, either.

The Creed ranch was rightfully Conner’s, Steven figured, Conner’s and Brody’s. Their dad, dead since the brothers were hardly more than babies, had been Davis’s older brother and, therefore, the heir to the kingdom.

Not that anybody knew exactly where Conner’s identical twin brother was keeping himself these days. He’d had some kind of knock-down-drag-out with Conner, Brody had, and except for a Christmas card every few years, with a terse message scrawled somewhere inside, the family hadn’t heard from him in a decade.

Conner, like the good elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son, had worked shoulder to shoulder with Davis to make the ranch prosper, and it had. Even with the ups and downs of the economy and the ever-changing beef prices, it was a profitable operation.

When he was younger, shuttling back and forth between his mother’s place back East, where he lived fall, winter and spring, and the ranch, which he’d thought of as home, Steven had been more than a little jealous of his cousins. Two years younger than he was, the twins got to live on the land year-round, and Davis was a substitute father to them, the kind he couldn’t be to Steven, for the better part of every year, because of the distance between Lonesome Bend and Boston.

So, Steven had essentially lived a double life. Summers, he’d been a ranch kid, a cowboy. He’d herded cattle on horseback, mended fences, skinny-dipped in the lake, brawled with his cousins like a wolf cub in a litter, competed in rodeos.

All too soon, though, fall would roll around, and he’d find himself on an airplane, wearing preppy clothes instead of jeans and a T-shirt and old boots, with his hair cut short and brushed shiny.

In Boston, Steven played tennis and held a spot on the rowing team. He dated girls with trust funds. Even as a relatively little kid, he had his own suite of rooms in his grandfather’s sprawling mansion, and it was generally agreed—make that, assumed—that he would one day join the prestigious law firm, founded well before the Civil War broke out, where his mother, two uncles and, of course, Granddad, carried on the family business.

School was difficult for Steven, at least in the beginning, a fact that troubled his mother to no end, but he’d worked hard, gotten the grades, made it through college and law school, and joined the company as a junior clerk, just like any other newbie.

Within a year, both Steven’s mother and his grandfather were gone, his mother having died of pneumonia, which had started out as an ordinary case of the flu, Granddad of a heart attack.

Steven had soon realized he couldn’t work for his uncles.

They resented the fact that he’d inherited his mother’s share of the family fortune, as well as a chunk that had been set aside for him at birth and gathering interest ever since. His uncles had never understood what had possessed their sister to hook up with a cowboy in some shithole town out West during a summer road trip with her college roommates, get herself pregnant and compound the everlasting disgrace by keeping the baby.

But there were other reasons for the break, too; Michael and Edward Fletcher had never shared their father’s commitment to excellence, not to mention integrity, and his death hadn’t changed that. Nor could they match their sister’s keen intelligence.

A few months after the second funeral, his grandfather’s, Steven had called his best friend from school, Zack St. John, and Zack had recommended him for a position at the Denver firm where he worked.

The rest, as they say, was history.

In Boston, in the operation his mother had referred to as the “store,” Steven had practiced corporate law. As soon as he’d made the move to Denver, however, he’d switched to criminal defense.

And he’d loved it.

He and Zack had worked together a lot, and they made a crack team. Steven was proud of their record, not just the wins, but the losses, too.

In every case, they’d done their absolute best.

Just then, Steven’s cell phone rang in his pocket, and the sound jolted him. For the briefest fraction of a moment, he’d forgotten that Zack was dead and gone, expected to hear his voice.

“Hello?” he said, still sitting in the doorway of the tour bus, realizing that the night was turning chilly.

“Why didn’t you call?” Kim asked, with a smile in her voice.

Steven went inside, shut the door, kept his reply low because he didn’t want Matt waking up. The boy needed his rest, especially since he’d be starting day camp on Monday morning.

“Because I sent an email instead,” he answered. His dad and stepmother had never had any children of their own, which was a pity, because they both had a real way with kids. They were good people, decent and responsible, and he loved them.

“So tell me all about Stone Creek,” Kim said.

* * *

MELISSA PLUCKED HER formerly frozen diet dinner out of the microwave and plunked it on the kitchen counter to cool, getting a mild steam-burn in the process. With her other hand, she held the cordless phone to her ear.

“I tell you that there are eighty-plus-year-old nudists cavorting on your property, Ashley O’Ballivan, and all you can do is laugh?”

“The name is McKenzie,” Ashley replied cheerfully. “What did you expect me to do, Melissa? Call out the National Guard to restore order?”

“I didn’t think you’d laugh, that’s all,” Melissa said, miffed and not entirely sure why.

“Why wouldn’t I laugh?” Ashley asked reasonably. “It’s funny.”

“Not to mention illegal.” A belated giggle escaped Melissa. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted, eyeing her food warily. The microwaved dish looked more like a plastic replica of lasagna than the real thing, the kind that might be sold in a joke shop—assuming there was even a market for stuff like that. “But trust me, it was also a shock. You haven’t lived, my dear, until you’ve seen a pack of bare-ass naked senior citizens engaged in a lively game of croquet.”

“And you without a fire hose,” Ashley quipped.

“Ha-ha,” Melissa said, carefully peeling the cellophane cover from her lasagna. Ashley was the one with the cooking talent; Julia Child was her patron saint. Melissa had never really caught the culinary bug; in fact, she’d all but had herself vaccinated against it. “When are you coming home? I miss the pity suppers.”

Ashley laughed again, but the underlying tone was gentle, and betrayed a slight degree of worry. “‘Pity’ suppers, is it?” she countered. “You know when we’re coming home. I’ve told you nineteen times, it’ll be early next week.” She paused, drew in a breath. “Melissa, what’s going on? Besides the nudist uprising, I mean?”

“Interesting choice of words,” Melissa commented dryly, giving up on the lasagna and shoving it toward the back of the counter. “And it’s already Friday, so ‘early next week’ might be—”

“Okay, Tuesday,” Ashley said with a chuckle, then waited stubbornly for an answer to Melissa, what’s going on?

“Byron Cahill got out of jail this morning,” Melissa told her.

“Yes,” Ashley prompted, sounding only mildly concerned.

“He didn’t show up on schedule,” Melissa said. “Velda was upset.”

“What else is happening?” Ashley pressed. “Velda’s been upset for years, and you knew Byron’s release date all along.”

I met a man, Melissa imagined herself saying. His name is Steven Creed. He’s all wrong for me, and I think he’s beyond hot.

While she might well have confided in Ashley in person, she wasn’t ready to talk about Steven over the telephone. And, anyway, what was there to say? It wasn’t as if anything had happened.

Still, Ashley was an O’Ballivan and, among other things, that meant she wouldn’t give up until she got a story she could buy.

So Melissa threw something out there. “I was roped into heading up the Parade Committee,” she said.

“Oh, my,” Ashley replied, sounding taken aback. “How did that happen?”

“I’m not sure, beyond the fact that Ona Frame can’t serve on the committee this year because her gallbladder exploded.”

“It—exploded?”

“Not literally, Ash. And thank heaven for that, because you can just imagine the fallout—”

“Melissa,” Ashley groaned.

“Sorry,” Melissa lied brightly. She had always loved grossing Ashley out.

Another chuckle came from Ashley’s end. “Not that you deserve this,” she began, “but as soon as Jack and Katie and I get back from Chicago, I’ll see what I can do to help you get the parade—well—rolling.”

It was Melissa’s turn to groan. “Bad pun,” she complained, but she was grateful—wildly and instantly so—and she wanted Ashley to know it. “You’re merely saving my life,” she said next.

“How hard can it be?” Ashley asked. “One small-town parade with—what?—fifteen floats, a high-school marching band, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the sheriff’s posse riding their horses?”

How hard can it be?

“Don’t tempt fate,” Melissa said. “Just because poor Ona has made it look easy all these years, that doesn’t mean it is.”

Ashley sighed. “Try to stay calm,” she said, but she still sounded buoyantly optimistic, and why wouldn’t she? Ashley was happy. Completely in love with her husband, Jack, and thoroughly loved in return. The mother of beautiful Katie and expecting a second child in six months or so. “And since when are you superstitious enough to worry about tempting fate?”

Maybe since always, Melissa thought.

In many ways, their childhoods hadn’t been easy—their mother had left home for good when she and Ashley were small, and their father had been killed in a freak accident while herding cattle on Stone Creek Ranch, struck by lightning.

After that, the four young O’Ballivans had been raised by their grandfather, Big John. While Big John had really stepped up, loving them with all his strong, kindly heart, of course there were issues. Weren’t there always issues?

Did anybody make it to adulthood unscathed? Melissa didn’t think so.

“Melissa?” Ashley said, when she’d been quiet too long.

“I’m perfectly fine,” Melissa insisted. She bit her lower lip, peering into her fridge now, finding nothing that appealed to her. “But what do you want me to do if the vice squad raids your house on grounds of lewd conduct?”

Ashley laughed.

It was a sound Melissa knew well, and loved.

As much a part of her as it was of her sister since, at some level, it sometimes seemed they were one and the same person.

“What do I want you to do?” Ashley teased. “Well, you could maybe loosen up a little. Sign up for the croquet team or something.”

“You are just too hilarious.”