Montana Creeds: Dylan. Linda Miller Lael

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СКАЧАТЬ years since she’d seen him. He’d been in town recently—the busybodies had made sure she knew—but he hadn’t sought her out, and she’d been half again too proud to chase him down.

      Looking at her own reflection in the dark glass of the kitchen window, Kristy saw a slender woman with fashionably mussed, midlength blond hair, blue eyes and good bone structure. But there were shadows under those eyes, her hair needed a trim, and what the hell good did bone structure do a person, anyway? She looked okay in the picture on her driver’s license—that was the extent of the advantage, as far as she’d been able to determine.

      Winston, ignoring his food bowl, gave a loud and plaintive meow and slithered across the cuffs of Kristy’s black jeans, leaving a dusting of snow-white hair.

      Now, she’d have to lint-roll—again.

      Other women carried mints and lipstick in their purses—Kristy had a tape-covered stick.

      “I know,” she told Winston gently. “You want to cuddle and watch Animal Planet, but I’ve got to work tonight.”

      Winston’s reply was another meow—this time, he’d turned the “pitiful” meter up a few notches.

      “You can have an extra mackerel treat when I get home,” Kristy promised. “I won’t be late—nine-thirty at the outside.”

      Winston, unappeased, turned and made his way between the various paint cans and wallpaper samples littering the kitchen floor. With a disdainful flip of his bushy white tail, he disappeared into the dining room.

      Kristy had been renovating her big Victorian house forever, or so it seemed. She was used to tripping over stuff from Home Depot, and so was Winston, but all of a sudden, it seemed more like a never-ending hassle than the noble restoration effort she’d undertaken as soon as she’d signed the mortgage papers.

      “I’m tired of my life,” she told her reflection. “I want a new one.”

      “Too bad,” her reflection replied. “You made your bed, and now you have to sleep in it. Alone.”

      No husband. No children.

      A few more birthdays, a few more cats, and she’d qualify as a crazy old maid. Kids would start saying she was a witch, and avoid her house on Halloween.

      Kristy turned away from her window-self, tugged her purse strap onto her shoulder, dropped her cell phone into the bag, along with her notes and a copy of that month’s book-club selection, and headed for the back door.

      No matter how blue she might be, the sight of the Stillwater Springs Public Library always lifted her spirits, and this evening was no exception. She loved the squat, redbrick building, with its green shutters and shingled roof. She loved being surrounded by books and readers.

      She and a few other people who’d grown up in or around the small western Montana town had fought some hard battles to get the funding to build and stock the library after the old one burned down.

      Parking her dark green Blazer in the spot reserved especially for her, Kristy hurried toward the side door, keys jingling. The main part of the library had closed early that night for plumbing repairs in one of the rest-rooms, but the two small meeting rooms would be open—the reading group in one, AA in the other.

      She hung her purse on a peg, washed her hands at the sink in the little kitchenette between the meeting rooms and started wrestling with the big coffee urn.

      Sheriff Floyd Book was the next to arrive—he carried in a box of books from his personal car and greeted Kristy with a smile and a nod. “I knew if I didn’t get here too quick, you’d make the coffee,” he teased.

      Kristy laughed. “Everything in place for your retirement?” she asked, setting out columns of disposable cups, packets of sugar and powdered creamer and the like.

      “Everything except me,” Floyd replied, through the open doorway leading to the AA side, already setting out books and pamphlets for that night’s meeting. In Stillwater Springs, nobody was anonymous, but for the sake of what was called The Program, everyone pretended not to notice who came and went from the side entrance to the library on a Tuesday night. “I can’t hardly wait for that special election. Hand my badge over to Jim Huntinghorse or Mike Danvers, and kick the dust of this town off my feet—for a few weeks, anyhow. Dorothy and I are all packed for that cruise to Alaska.”

      “Soon,” Kristy soothed good-naturedly. She’d been too busy, until the mention of the woman’s name, to notice that Mrs. Book was nowhere around. “Dorothy isn’t coming to the reading group meeting? She signed up.”

      Dorothy Book was confined to a wheelchair, following an automobile accident some years before, and there were people who said she wasn’t right in the head. Kristy had always liked Dorothy—so what if she was a little different?—and she’d been looking forward to having her come to the group’s first meeting.

      Floyd shook his head. He’d looked weary lately, worn down to a nubbin, as Kristy’s late mother used to say. Maybe it was the buildup to his retirement, the stresses of his job, and the uncertainty of the special election, but it seemed to Kristy that he was more strained than usual.

      “It’s hard for her to get in and out of the car,” the sheriff told Kristy. “And she hates fussing with that wheelchair. I’m hoping the cruise will put some color back in her cheeks and a twinkle in her eyes.”

      Kristy stopped fiddling with the coffee things. Floyd Book was the sheriff of a sprawling county—he’d been elected to the office when she was in the second grade and had held it ever since. Until her dad died, just six months after her mother’s passing, Floyd had been a regular visitor out at Madison Ranch. He and Kristy’s father had been best friends, sharing a love of fishing, horseback riding and herding the few cattle Tim Madison had been able to afford to run on that hard-scrabble place.

      A pang struck Kristy as she started to ask Floyd, straight out, if something was wrong and if so, what she could do to help. This was a night, it seemed, for painful memories to come up.

      “You all right, Kristy?” Floyd asked, crossing the hallway to lay a brawny hand on her shoulder. “You went pale for a second there. I thought you were going to faint.”

      “I’m fine,” Kristy lied. She’d been raised as a tough Montana ranch kid, expected to say she was fine whether she was or not.

      But the ranch was abandoned now, the barn leaning to one side, the sturdy old house empty. The last time Kristy had forced herself to go out there and stand on the high rise where she used to ride Sugarfoot, her beloved palomino gelding, she’d actually felt her heart break into pieces.

      Her parents were both dead, and she had no brothers or sisters, no aunts—now that Great-Aunt Millie had passed away—or uncles, no cousins.

      Sugarfoot was gone, too, buried in a horse-size grave in the middle of a copse of trees bordering the Creed ranch. After sixteen years, more than half her life, Kristy still cried when she visited her best friend’s final resting place. People urged her to get another horse—she’d loved riding, and she’d been uncommonly good at it, too—but somehow, she just didn’t have the heart to love something—or someone—that much and risk another loss.

      She’d lost so much already.

      Her parents, Sugarfoot.

      And СКАЧАТЬ