Big Sky Summer. Linda Miller Lael

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СКАЧАТЬ up and go to bed,” Brylee told him.

      “I’ll do that,” Walker replied, thinking that they must have slipped into a time warp and been transported back to their teens, when they couldn’t be in the same room without needling each other.

      She made a disgusted sound and thumped the tops of a few loaves with one knuckle. She’d be up for a while, waiting for the last batch of bread to cool off so she could wrap it.

      Walker saluted her with a lift of his sandwich and headed for his room, shaking his head as he went. He wondered when he was going to learn. Ninety-five percent of the time, reasoning with a woman, especially when that woman happened to be his kid sister, was a waste of breath.

      * * *

      IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT when the last guests took their leave and the carousel finally stopped turning.

      Surveying her backyard, empty except for the caterer’s helpers and the guys taking down the big canopy and dismantling the dance floor, Casey was reminded of her childhood and the feeling she got when the carnival moved on after its yearly visit, leaving a bare and somewhat forlorn patch of ground behind.

      “Mom?” Clare stood at her elbow, barefoot but still in her party dress. She was already taller than Casey, and so was her brother, and she had the elegant carriage of a young woman. “You okay?”

      Casey turned her head, smiled at her daughter, thinking that if she loved her kids even a smidgeon more, she’d burst. “I’m fine, sweetheart,” she said. “Just a little tired.” She paused, enjoying the night air and the sky full of stars and the bittersweet remnants of a happy day. “Speaking of which—shouldn’t you be in bed by now?”

      Named for Casey’s late grandmother, Clare resembled the woman more with every passing year. Now she made a face. “Mom,” she said, “I’m almost fifteen and, anyway, it’s Saturday, so I can sleep in tomorrow.”

      “We’re going to church,” Casey reminded the woman-child. “There’s a bake sale after the eleven o’clock service, and I promised Opal I’d help out. And you won’t be fifteen for another eight months.”

      With a dramatic sigh, Clare turned and started across the darkened sunporch, toward the kitchen, and Casey followed with some reluctance, turning her back on that big sky full of stars.

      “Well,” the girl argued, since teenagers couldn’t go more than ten minutes, it seemed to Casey, without offering up some kind of back talk, “you didn’t promise Opal that I’d help, did you?”

      Shane stood at one of the sleek granite-covered counters in that gleaming, cavernous kitchen, eating leftover wedding cake with his fingers. He gave Casey a look of good-natured guilt, shrugged once and reached for another slice.

      “You’re disgusting,” Clare informed him.

      Shane stuck out a crumb-covered tongue and made a rude noise.

      “Yuck,” Clare wailed, drawing the term out to three times its normal length. “Mother, are you just going to stand there and let him act like a baboon?”

      Casey pretended to consider the question. “Yeah,” she said finally, with a little grin. “I guess I am.”

      Shane laughed in obnoxious triumph, snorting more crumbs. The three dogs, clustered around him, waited eagerly for scraps.

      Clare made a strangled, screamlike sound of truly theatrical proportions and stomped off toward the rear stairway, bound for the sanctuary of her upstairs bedroom, a private preserve where Shane was not allowed.

      “That’s enough cake,” Casey told her son. “Have the dogs been outside?”

      Shane nodded, his mouth full, and dusted frosting-sticky hands together. Once he’d swallowed again—actually, it was more of a gulp—he answered, “Only about five times. Rockford ate a crepe paper streamer and part of a balloon.”

      Rockford, the baby of the chocolate-Lab trio, gave a mournful little howl of protest, as though objecting to being snitched on.

      Casey walked around, took a gentle hold on the dog’s ears and looked him over closely. “He seems all right,” she said.

      “He’ll be okay,” Shane confirmed nonchalantly. “He already barfed. That’s how I knew what he ate.”

      “Ewwww,” Casey said, taking her son by the shoulders and steering him toward the stairs. “Be sure to wash up before you turn in for the night,” she added as he followed the trail blazed by his older sister.

      The dogs trooped after him, the way they did every night.

      Doris, the cook and housekeeper, poked her head out of her apartment off to the side of the kitchen, wearing face cream and curlers and a pink chenille bathrobe. “Is the party over?” she asked pleasantly. It was, of course, a rhetorical question; Doris had to have heard all the goodbying and the slamming of car doors and the crunch of gravel in the driveway. She’d stayed until nearly ten, socializing, then retired to shampoo and set her hair so she’d look good at church the next morning.

      “Yep,” Casey replied with a smile. She locked the back door, set the alarm and padded over to the counter to brew a cup of herbal tea. The stuff helped her sleep—usually.

      Doris nodded a good-night and retreated back into her nest, shutting the door softly behind her.

      Casey lingered in the kitchen for a few minutes, sipping tea and listening to the familiar sounds overhead—the dogs’ nails clicking on the hardwood floor of the upstairs corridor, Shane laughing like a villain in a melodrama, Clare calling him a choice name and slamming her bedroom door hard.

      With a sigh, Casey crossed the kitchen—it seemed to cover two acres, that room—and, reaching the foot of the stairs, flipped off the lights.

      Shane was still baiting Clare from the hallway when Casey reached the second floor, and Clare made the mistake of opening her bedroom door and calling him another name, which, of course, only egged him on.

      Casey whistled shrilly through her teeth, the way Juan, her grandparents’ gardener and all-around handyman, had taught her to do when she was eight. The sirenlike sound was an attention-getter, all right, and it had served Casey well over the years, not only with the kids, but with the band, the road crew and every dog she’d ever owned.

      “The fight is over, and I’m calling it a draw,” she announced with authority when both Clare and Shane stared at her, startled, along with all three of the dogs.

      “Dickhead,” Clare said to Shane in an undertone.

      “Pizza face,” Shane shot back.

      Casey put her hands on her hips and puckered up to whistle again.

      The mere threat made them both retreat into their rooms, the dogs ducking in ahead of Shane, probably keeping a low profile in case they were in some kind of trouble themselves.

      “My sweet children,” Casey said wryly, and went on to her own room.

      Actually, the word room fell a little short of accurate description—the place was the size of a small gymnasium, or one of those swanky penthouse hotel СКАЧАТЬ