Big Sky Summer

“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 suites that take up a whole floor all by themselves.

Again, she had that sense that things had shifted. Everything looked the same—the fancy antique bed rescued from some crumbling Italian villa and sporting a museum-quality painting of nymphs frolicking with various Roman gods on the gilded headboard, the massive dresser, the couch and chairs and elegant marble fireplace, the expanse of floor-to-ceiling windows specially made to give her a sweeping view and, at the same time, ensure her complete privacy.

It was just plain too big a space for one lone woman, but at least it didn’t have wheels, like the tour bus, or a reception desk downstairs, like a hotel. This was the home she’d hungered for all her life.

Oh, yes, she’d wanted this house, she reminded herself, wanted to park herself and the children somewhere solid and real and finally put down some roots. So what if she and Clare and Shane sometimes seemed to rattle around in the place like dried beans in a bucket? She hadn’t bought the mansion because it was grand, so she could play lady of the manor or live in the style to which the public probably believed she was accustomed; she’d bought it because it was big, with room for the band and the backup singers and the roadies and a host of other staffers who came and went. Downstairs, there was a soundstage for filming videos and a recording studio, both of which she used constantly.

Try fitting all that into a three-bedroom, split-level ranch, she thought, glancing at her reflection in the big three-way mirror, encircled with lights, above her vanity table.

Vanity was certainly the operative word for that setup, Casey reflected with a shake of her head as she turned away and set her course for the bathroom. Like the rest of the house, the room was almost decadently luxurious—the shower stall could have accommodated a football team, and she’d seen backyard hot tubs smaller than the mosaic-lined pool she bathed in.

Shutting the door—it was a habit one developed after years of living in a bus—Casey washed her face at one of the three gleaming brass sinks, brushed her teeth and finally pulled her dress off over her head, tossing it dutifully into the laundry hamper, along with her underwear, before pulling on flannel boxer shorts and a T-shirt commemorating her most recent European tour. Once again, she faced her own reflection.

Wearing the shirt should have made her feel nostalgic, she supposed, since that tour had been a record breaker, every concert sold out months before she and the gang had flown over a dark ocean in a jet with her name emblazoned on its sides to visit the first of twelve cities. She’d loved singing in front of huge audiences—thrived on it, in fact—and instead of wearing her out, those performances had energized her, flooded her system with endorphins, provided a high no drug could have matched. Unlike some of her colleagues in the music business, she’d never burned out, had a breakdown, played the home-wrecker or floated into rehab on a wave of booze and cocaine.

So why didn’t she miss all that excitement and attention and applause? She supposed it was because, for her, life was and had always been all about singing and plucking out new tunes on her favorite guitar, the scarred and battered one her grandfather had given her for Christmas when she was around Shane’s age. She’d done what she’d set out to do, pursuing her goals with near-ruthless resolve, but somewhere along the line, she’d noticed that her children were growing up faster than she’d ever thought possible. All too soon, she’d realized with a road-to-Damascus flash of insight, they’d be heading off to college, starting careers of their own, getting married and having children.

Figuratively blinded by the light, Casey had finished the tour, called Walker and asked him if he knew of any houses for sale in his part of Montana. Suddenly, she wanted her children attending a regular school, saluting the flag every morning and making friends their own age. And she’d wanted Clare and Shane to see a lot more of Walker, too, though she hadn’t been sure why and still wasn’t, considering the effort she’d gone to to keep the truth under wraps.

If he’d been surprised by this turn of events, Walker hadn’t given any indication of it. He’d said he knew a real estate broker—who turned out to be Kendra, now a dear and trusted friend to Casey, like Joslyn and Tara—and before she could say Jack Daniels, she’d found herself smack-dab in the middle of Parable, Montana, taking one good look at this house and promptly signing on the dotted line.