Easter In Dry Creek. Janet Tronstad

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СКАЧАТЬ make you some toast and you can be on your way,” she finally said.

      “I have no quarrel with you,” he answered quietly. He missed the girl who had been his friend. “Never did.”

      “Nobody here is quarreling,” Mr. Nelson said firmly as he frowned at Allie. “We know how to be civil.”

      Clay snuck another peak at Allie. The fire was gone from her eyes, but he did not like the bleakness that replaced it.

      “I just want to explain,” Clay said then. There was so much he wanted to say to Allie, and this might be his only chance to say anything. But he had to be wise.

      “You okay these days?” he asked.

      She didn’t even blink.

      He figured that all he could speak of was that night. “I should have convinced Mark to go back to the ranch earlier that night. But the robbery—it wasn’t my doing. That bottle of tequila wasn’t mine. I didn’t know Mark had it with him. I was driving. It was dark inside the cab of the pickup. I thought he was still drinking his bottle of beer. We each had one. And I was pumping fuel into the pickup when he took the rifle off the rack behind us and went into the gas station. I didn’t even see him at first. I had no idea what he planned.”

      “Are you saying Mark was the one at fault?” The fire in her eyes came back. Her voice was clipped as she faced Clay squarely. “That you didn’t know anything about it?”

      “I’m not saying he was at fault—” Clay stopped, unsure how to proceed. He didn’t need an apology for the way anyone had treated him. He didn’t want her to think that. He wanted her to believe him because she trusted him to tell the truth. Her opinion of him mattered, and he’d fight for it.

      “It’s cowardly to blame Mark when he can’t even defend himself,” she said, her voice low and intense. “I know Mark, and I know he wouldn’t plan any robbery. It had to be you. I thought all those years in prison would have taught you to tell the truth if nothing else.”

      Clay studied Allie’s face. She was barely holding on to her tears. He knew how that felt.

      “I already knew how to tell the truth,” he said softly. “I had barely stepped inside the place when the rifle went off. Mark and the station clerk were already struggling with each other when I saw them—I told everyone that at the trial. That’s why all they could charge me with was being an accessory to the crime.”

      Clay saw the battle inside Allie. She never liked fighting with anyone, but he could see she was determined to blast him away from here. At least her anger seemed to have pushed back her tears. He could take the hit if it made her feel better.

      “You were judged guilty,” she said firmly. Her eyes flashed. “Everyone agreed. I don’t understand how you can stand there and pretend to be innocent.”

      “I have no choice.” Clay hoped his face didn’t show his defeat. The two of them would never be friends again. Maybe they never had been. “I have to stand here and tell you what happened if I want you to know the truth. I’m sorry if you can’t accept it.”

      Mr. Nelson cleared his throat as though he was going to speak. Clay held up his hand and looked at the older man. “I know my parole is tied to this job. If it doesn’t work out, you can call someone and they will contact the local sheriff—I’m assuming Carl Wall is the one here. Anyway, since the pickup is yours, I have to leave it here. The sheriff will see that I get back to prison. Thanks, too, for having the vehicle sent over. You can decide.”

      Mr. Nelson was silent.

      “You just got here,” the rancher finally mumbled, looking uncomfortable.

      Clay nodded. He still wasn’t sure why he’d been asked to come, but he wasn’t going to stay if it was a problem. He’d learned his lesson about making sure he was wanted before he stayed anyplace.

      “Everybody knows—” Allie started to say. She stopped when Clay looked at her.

      “Everybody doesn’t know as much as they think they do,” he finally said.

      She didn’t answer. It was so quiet in the kitchen that Clay thought he could hear the cat inside his coat purring. The heater in the pickup he’d driven over hadn’t worked very well, and the tabby was likely content just to be out of the cold. Clay sometimes wished he could be satisfied with the small victories in life like that. A good dinner. A moment’s comfort. They should be enough. Instead, he wanted people, especially Allie, to know who he was. And no one could claim to know Clay West if they thought he was a liar. He probably shouldn’t care, but he did.

      “Do they still ask people in the church to stand up and say what’s wrong in their lives?” he asked. That was the only way he knew to address everyone in the area. He wouldn’t need to stay for the sermon.

      “You mean for prayers?” Allie sounded surprised. Then her eyes slid over him suspiciously. “You want to ask us to pray for you?”

      “The church will be happy to pray for you,” Mr. Nelson said as he waved the magazine in the air. “Everyone has read about you here. The hardware store got in a dozen copies. The ranchers are all talking about you as they sit around that stove in the middle of the store. You remember that stove? You’re practically famous there.”

      Clay felt a sudden desire to sit down, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

      He never should have done that interview for the Montana Artist Journal. Allie was looking at him skeptically.

      “That reporter exaggerated,” Clay said. “I’m no Charlie Russell in the making—except for maybe that we both like to roam. I sketch faces and scenes. Simple pencil drawings. That’s all.” He’d had offers from a couple of magazines to print his prison sketches and had even gotten an art agent out of the deal, but Clay saw no reason to mention that. “And I’m not interested in anyone praying for me. I just want to set the record straight on what happened that night with Mark. I want the facts known.”

      One of the few things Clay remembered from his early life was his father urging him to always tell the truth. Both his parents had died soon after that in a car accident. Clay clung to that piece of advice because it was all he had left of his family. He wanted to feel that he belonged to them no matter where he went.

      Allie looked at him. “I won’t have you saying bad things about Mark.”

      Clay studied her. She no longer seemed to be as angry, but she was wary.

      “I’ll just tell what happened.” Clay paused before continuing. “That’s all I’m aiming for. And, after that, if you still don’t want me here, I will go back. I can’t make people believe me. I didn’t have high hopes coming here anyway. I can even stay somewhere else tonight. Tomorrow’s Sunday, right? Does Mrs. Hargrove still rent out that room above her garage?”

      The older woman had been the only one to stand up for him at his trial, and he counted her as a friend. She had sent him cards every birthday and Christmas while he had been locked up. He’d done his best to send her cards in return. Usually he enclosed a few sketches; over time he’d sent her a dozen Dry Creek scenes. The café. The hardware store. Every main building, except for the church. He’d never managed a sketch of that. He wouldn’t mind spending a couple of nights in her rental room before he headed back to prison. He had sold СКАЧАТЬ