A Triple Threat to Bachelorhood

Since Tracy, the woman who doubled as their secretary and dispatcher, was out to lunch, Quint picked up the receiver himself. “Sheriff’s office.”

This, Carl decided, would be a good time to go out to lunch himself. Maybe once he was back, Quint would have allowed the subject of Melinda’s return to die a natural death.

Mildly curious about the call, Carl found himself at the door, listening as Quint said, “Uh-huh,” “Hmm,” and “I see.”

He hung up just as Carl put his hand on the door-knob. “Hold up, Carl.” Carl turned to see Quint writing something on a piece of paper. “This one’s for you.”

This was nothing out of the ordinary. Unless it was something major, they took turns checking things out. “Domestic dispute?”

Quint finished writing and placed his pen down. “Nope.”

“Not a robbery, is it?” Though he liked Serendipity the way it was, there were times when Carl did want a little excitement that went beyond Sally McCormick’s grandfather Axel walking down Main Street wearing his rain boots and nothing else. “We haven’t had one of those since Billy Wesson took his old man’s car out for a joyride and the old man pressed charges.”

Quint allowed a slight smile to find a home on his face. “Nope.”

Carl’s wheat-colored brows drew together. Quint was playing this one very close to the chest. “Do I get a hint?”

“Think ‘cat’,” was all Quint said as he held out the piece of paper with an address on it.

Carl frowned as he took the paper from Quint. He scanned the address quickly. Recognition washed over him like a breath-sucking wave. He placed the paper back on the desk. “You go.”

Leaning back in his chair, Quint rested his feet on top of his desk. The personification of the immovable object. “Can’t.”

Where had this temper come from, Carl wondered as he struggled to keep it in check. He never used to be like this. “Why?”

Quint raised and lowered his shoulders. “I’m busy.”

Damn it, he was too old to be playing games like this. “Doing what?”

Quint’s grin grew wider. He wasn’t given to premonitions as a rule, but this time he had a hunch that things might actually work out for his cousin. If Carl didn’t suddenly turn mulish on him.

“Delegating.”

“Well, the guy you’re delegating to doesn’t want to take this call. You take it, I’ll take the next one. The next two,” he threw in obstinately.

But Quint shook his head as he tapped his badge. “No dice. This gives me the authority to tell you to take this call—unless you want off the force.”

He didn’t want off the force. Carl loved being a deputy, loved being there for the people, especially the children who seemed to take to him as if he was the embodiment of every single hero they had ever fantasized about. And he liked being that for them. Being the one who made them feel safe because he was around.

He stared down at the address on the paper. The place he’d been to too many times to count as a kid, then as a teen.

Her house.

Carl raised his eyes to Quint’s. “You know what this is, don’t you? It’s dirty pool.”

“No, it’s a cat in a tree.” Quint laced his fingers behind his head and rocked back in his chair. “And the cat is all yours. Mr. Whiskers, if you want to address him by his given name.”

Carl opened the door. Sheriff or no sheriff, he gave Quint a dirty look. “I’d like to address you by a name, but it wouldn’t be your given one. At least, not the one that was initially given.”

Quint laughed, the office absorbing the resonant sound. “I’ll tell Ma on you.”

His own parents were gone now. It concerned Carl every so often that the fact didn’t bother him, that their absence was nothing more than a vague notation on his brain. But his uncle and aunt, well, that was another story. Especially Aunt Zoe. All his fond memories of childhood centered around her and the long, wide kitchen table where everyone would gather—to do homework, to talk and, at times, to dream.

And now he was heading out to retrieve his dream’s cat. The world, he decided, was sometimes a very strange place.

Carl doubled back to get his hat. “If you talk to Aunt Zoe before I do, tell her that I’m really sorry her second-oldest son turned out to be such a sadist.”

“I kind of think she’d approve—if she knew,” Quint added before Carl had a chance to ask. What he’d been told was in confidence and Quint saw no reason, though they were all close, to share it with the others. If Carl wanted to share his feelings—as he clearly didn’t now—then it was up to Carl, not him, to say something. “Be gentle with the cat. It’s a Turkish Angora.”

“Right.”

A Turkish Angora cat. What the hell kind of cat was that, anyway? He wasn’t up on his cats, or most other creatures for that matter, either. To him, the animal species, other than horses, of course, because ranching was in everyone’s blood here, were divided into categories that bore just their names. Dog, cat, bird. He didn’t pay much attention to subvarieties. It was people, not animals, who had always caught his attention.

When he was younger, he’d liked hanging back and observing. Hanging back had always been safer in those days. Opinions, whenever he’d voice them, would like as not get him a wallop from a father who knew sobriety only fleetingly. It taught a guy to be closemouthed for reasons of self-preservation.

Melinda Morrow felt overwhelmed.

She was trying, she really was. But there was just so much to do, so many details to attend to when it came to starting a new life from scratch that, at times, she couldn’t even catch her breath.

Well, not scratch exactly, she amended silently a second later. Starting from scratch would mean that she was alone and she wasn’t. She had Mollie, Matthew and Maggie and that was far from being alone or starting from scratch. That was starting with a full house, she thought. A fun house like the ones in the carnivals that used to come through Serendipity when she was a child.

There was no doubt about it. Her triplets kept her hopping.

They also kept her hopeful, she thought, grounding her in reality while holding out the promise of a wonderful tomorrow. She hadn’t known she was capable of loving as much, as strongly, as she found herself loving these three little half-orphans. Half-orphans because the man she had given her heart to in an almost-rebellious act of defiance wanted no part of the small beings he’d had a hand in creating. They were “all hers,” as Steve had said when he finally called it quits.

That was the humiliation of it, she thought, circling the giant oak tree again, looking for a path Mr. Whiskers could take down. She’d told everyone that it had been her idea to leave, that Steve had refused to grow up—and that much was true—but in truth it had been his idea to leave their marriage. She would have stuck it out, hoping that he was a late bloomer and would eventually catch up to her. That fatherhood would finally sink in instead of sinking what they had between them.

But it turned out that what they’d had between them were good times and a future that promised more of the same. Their life together wasn’t real. It was a fairy tale into which true responsibility was not allowed access. And, as it turned out, a fairy tale where the prince and princess had no place for children in them.

Steve had wanted to palm off the triplets on his parents, or her father, it didn’t matter to him who or if there was any love waiting to greet the children. When she’d told him that there was no way she was going to give her children up, even for a little while, Steve had said goodbye.

“And that,” she murmured aloud, looking up at the tree where her children’s beloved Mr. Whiskers was housed, “was that.”

So she’d returned home because she had nowhere else to go and little money to go with. And because of all the towns in the country, Serendipity was the one place where she knew she could safely raise her children. Since they were deprived of their father, she wanted at least that much for them. Melinda wanted them to be safe and feel safe.

The day-care center would be her way of getting back on her feet. If that, too, didn’t turn out to be a dream. At the very least, it would be putting her teaching experience to good use.

“Mama, Whiskers, Whiskers,” Mollie cried, pointing impatiently up into the oak tree. “Make him come down. Now.”

Melinda ruffled the little girl’s blond hair. “You have the makings of a first-class dictator, my love,” she told the oldest of her triplets. “We’ll get him down, sweetie, I promise.” Her hands fisted at her waist, she looked up at the tree. I’m just not sure how at the moment, that’s all.

Why was it a cat could go up a tree, but couldn’t come down?

Chewing on her lower lip, Melinda shoved her hands into her pockets and circled around the tree again slowly, thinking. She’d called the sheriff’s office, asking for help, but if no one showed up soon, she was going to climb up into the tree herself.

The way she used to, she thought with a half smile. When she’d been young and fearless and every day had been an adventure. The problem with growing up, she mused, was that you realized the consequences of your actions. If she fell out of the tree, who would take care of her children? Her father had taken them in, but she knew that was only temporary.

When had life gotten so complicated and difficult?