Courting Trouble (31 page)

“She was lying facedown in the ditch on the side of the road.”

Tulsa’s heart stutter-stepped and she held her breath. Her head jerked from Wilkes to Cade to Kyle. “Wait.” Tulsa breathed out. “My mother… she was… she was already there?”

Wilkes slowly nodded. His voice grew softer. “We stopped, and, well, we got her into the car—she was bloodied and battered and we wasn’t sure if she was breathin’ or not.” Wilkes shook his head and stared at the brown surface of the table that reflected the overhead lights. “Somebody did her a world of hurt that night.”

He was lost in thought—as though with each word the images of the night flashed before him. He closed his eyes, released a breath, then looked up from the table at Tulsa.

“Thing was, once we got to town, well, Hudd and me, we just left her at the hospital. Sure we got her inside and set up with the doc but neither one of us was in any shape to be talkin’ to the police, so once she was there… Well, we hightailed it out.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone? If you didn’t hit her, if you didn’t…”

Wilkes stared down at his hands. “There was lots of reasons. I guess one of them was, well…” His eyes landed on Tulsa and he softened his gaze. “I mean no disrespect to you or your family or even your mama… but with Connie…” Wilkes sighed and stared at his knuckles and then looked back up at Tulsa. “With her… You know… Wherever she went, trouble seemed to follow, and Hudd, he was already in pretty deep with Judith what with traveling back and forth to Denver and being out all the time. He come out to my place the next day ‘cause we still lived in Powder Springs and he asked me to keep it quiet. I was nearly ready to move and just figured once I left town, wouldn’t be no need to ever talk about that night again.”

The breath rushed from Tulsa and her shoulders slumped forward. Hot tears prickled her eyes. So much time, so much pain, so much anger, so much loss.

“We could have done more,” Wilkes said. “I should have done more. Stayed at the hospital. Come to see your grandma. Something to let her know, but I figured… well, I figured at the time that there wasn’t much more any of us could do.”

Tulsa pressed her lips together. She forced the tears from her eyes. She filled her lungs and sat tall. This was neither the story she expected nor the finality she’d sought, but she knew what Wilkes said was the truth—she felt it to her core. Her gaze roamed from Wilkes to Cade. Pain lined his face and his jaw was tight. He’d been right and he’d been wrong, but the truth was that while Hudd had been on Yampa Valley Road that night, Cade’s father hadn’t done Tulsa’s mother any harm.

*

After dinner, once the dishes were cleared and Ash was in her room, Tulsa told Savannah all of Wilkes’s story. Tulsa recounted the details of that night. The words scraped against her throat. Once Tulsa finished, Savannah stood, clasped Tulsa in a hug, and then without a word walked through the back door to her workshop.

Tulsa sat at the kitchen table, her hand wrapped around her long-cold coffee cup. Peace hadn’t come with the truth. The settled feeling that Tulsa expected with the knowledge of the events surrounding Connie’s death hadn’t arrived. She did feel the beginnings of a sense of closure. A completeness with regards to her adolescence. The charged wariness she always carried within—as if she were waiting for the next bad thing—hadn’t disappeared. And perhaps it never would. Perhaps she couldn’t ever completely fix that feeling, that fear, that uneasiness. Perhaps all she could do was acknowledge this quirk within her and create a work-around, a simple acceptance—that she would forever worry, but instead of letting her worry about the future drive her, maybe she could relax into the fear, breathe through it, accept that this was another part of her that she didn’t need to change as much as accept.

Tulsa didn’t feel different with her knowledge. She didn’t feel more whole or complete. She could stop with her questions. She could acknowledge who Connie had been and admit there were many gaps in her mother’s life that Tulsa would never be able to fill. She might never know the truth about her mother. And really, she didn’t need to. Tulsa stood and set her coffee cup in the sink. With the truth came knowledge and with knowledge came a choice. There was a lie she’d told—and now it was her turn to wash herself clean.

Chapter Thirty-One

Cade slumped in the vinyl chair next to Hudd’s hospital bed. His head rested on his hand and fatigue lay heavy in his limbs. Ache cemented his joints from hours in this chair. His father’s deep breathing was slow but not labored. The whisper of air was a metronomic melody in the dark and silent room. Under the thin blanket, the outline of Hudd’s body appeared as though a withered husk. What words could Cade say to his father? What words might his father even understand? His father’s tenuous grip on reality wavered like a translucent tether made real only by the past knowledge that Hudd had once upon a time entrenched himself solidly within this reality.

But now?

Now, his father slipped in and out, inhabiting this world and another. The permeable reality that was his father’s existence had been the reason Cade wrote off Hudd’s admission made when the winds whipped and a storm threatened the sky. Even with the chill that tingled the vertebrae in Cade’s spine, the prickles in his fingertips, even with the voice in Cade’s head yelling “TRUTH,” Cade had believed the words in the past that his father told him and disbelieved Tulsa.

Cade ran his fingers through his hair and looked past his father and out the window into the stillness of the predawn. Lights from downtown Powder Springs twinkled and beyond that, Thunderridge shot upward, a black outline against the inky blue sky.

“You know the truth now?”

Cade started at his father’s rough voice. His father’s eyes focused on him.

“We talked to Wilkes, and he told us what happened the night Connie died.”

“Tulsa too?”

“Tulsa too,” Cade answered. Anger simmered inside Cade with the sound of Tulsa’s name on Hudd’s lips. Cade had believed his dad. He’d trusted his dad. And now he knew that his trust had been misplaced. “Just one statement from you and everything would have been different.”

“Maybe.” Hudd took a deep breath, which caused his body to shudder. “And maybe not. You know things weren’t good back then with your mother and me, and I wanted the whole damn mess to go away.”

Cade bit back the accusations that flew through his mind. If things weren’t good then why hadn’t his father tried to fix them? Why instead did he manipulate? Why did he lie?

“What I did was wrong,” Hudd finally said.

Cade couldn’t absolve his father of his transgressions. Silence settled between them. A silence that Cade didn’t have the energy—at least not right now—to try to bridge. Instead he gazed out the window and watched the outline of the trees wave in the whisper of the wind. Cold and stark. The world beyond that window looked lonely.

His father’s voice sounded far away and slow, as if he hovered between here and some unknown realm. “I shouldn’t have chased her off,” he said.

A chill slithered down Cade’s spine. He pulled his gaze from the window and stared at his dad. “Chased who off?”

His father’s eyes closed and he seemed to drift away. Cade’s pulse quickened.

“Dad?” Cade said, his voice stronger, louder. “Dad?” Cade reached over and shook his father’s forearm. Hudd’s eyes flew open with Cade’s touch.

“Dad.” Cade reined hard on the emotion that threatened to gallop away from him. “Who did you chase off?”

At first his father’s eyes seemed dim—distant—his gaze wandered toward the darkness of the window and then his eyelids flickered closed once more. Three long breaths, then once again his father opened his eyes and looked at Cade.

“Tulsa, son. I shouldn’t have made her leave.”

Cade’s insides—his belly—his lungs—his heart dropped away from him. A buzzing filled his ears.

“You?” Cade squinted. He couldn’t say it. Had never thought it. Couldn’t believe it. His father’s eyes remained fixed on him.

“She was no good for you then, son. No good for any of us. She wouldn’t let it go and—”

A bolt of energy shot through Cade and he jumped to his feet. His fingers pulled at his hair as he tried to understand, he made tight circles in front of his chair, tried to make sense of his father’s words. Finally Cade stopped and stared down at the man he would always love and now knew he could never fully comprehend.

“You made Tulsa leave?”

The side of Hudd’s face that could still move, still respond to emotion, set hard, his lips a strong line without apology, without regret. “I did what was best for you—for our family.”

The fire, white-hot within Cade, blazed—so much anger and so many words. He opened his mouth and stopped. No good would come of these words, these thoughts, these emotions. There was nothing he could say to his dad, nothing that would ever convince his father of how wrong he was then and still was now. Hudd had built his world then and even now in a way that served only him.

“You didn’t know,” his father whispered out as his eyes again fluttered closed.

Cade bit back the shout that lay ready in his throat. He swallowed. He took a breath. “No, Dad,” Cade said. “I never knew, but I do now.”

*

The raw sting of fatigue clasped Cade. His mind buzzed with anger. The tremor of sunlight chased away the night. Cade didn’t bother to knock; he knew his brother was awake and that the front door was unlocked. He marched through the foyer and into the kitchen. Wayne sat at the table in boxers and a white T-shirt, eating his eggs.

“Did you know?” Cade shot out.

Energy buzzed through him, jumping from cell to cell. He couldn’t sit. He couldn’t be still. From the expression on Wayne’s face, Cade realized that he looked like a crazy person. Heat circled through his limbs, seeking an escape. To hit anything or anyone would be a relief.

“Morning, brother,” Wayne said. He picked up his plate, ignored Cade’s obvious agitation, and headed toward the sink. “For me to answer that question, you’re gonna need to be more specific.”

The kitchen was barely big enough for Wayne plus another person, so Cade walked into the family room. He paced and the heels of his boots made a hard tap with each step on the hardwood floor—from the fireplace to the sliding glass door, from sliding glass door to fireplace, forward and back. His fingers ran through his hair. His mind turned over the facts as he searched for answers. He listened; he waited. Wayne rinsed his plate and put it into the dishwasher.

Finally, Wayne’s frame filled the kitchen doorway between the kitchen and the family room. “Now what is it you want to hear about?” Wayne asked.

Cade stopped. He stared at Wayne. They had such different ideas about Hudd. Such different experiences. But now, Cade wondered if Wayne’s beliefs weren’t closer to the truth of who Hudd actually was.

“Did you know Dad sent Tulsa away?” Cade asked.

Wayne shifted his weight and leaned his arm against the doorframe. He scrubbed one hand over his jaw. “I’d heard something like that.”

Cade’s heart hammered harder and a giant chasm opened beneath his ribs. As if his whole being—his body, his organs, every bit of him, might tumble into the giant hole that wrenched through him. Not only had his dad lied by omission, but then he’d coerced a grief-stricken Tulsa into leaving. Convinced her to run.

“And you never said anything?”

“I thought you knew.” Wayne settled his shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. “You didn’t look for her. You didn’t call her. You never wrote her. It was like she left and you checked out. You went to college, then law school, got married. Hell, I wasn’t for sure you still carried a torch for Tulsa ‘til I knocked you on your ass at the gym.” Wayne turned and Cade heard him walk down the hall toward the bedrooms.

Knew? Knew?
The only thing Cade knew for certain on this morning was that he didn’t know shit about anyone or anything. He’d thought Tulsa ran away because she didn’t love him. He’d thought his dad had nothing to do with the Connie McGrath case. He’d thought Wilkes Stevenson was a myth. So far everything he’d thought was true was actually false and right now his world spun from this new awareness. Wayne returned to the family room now wearing his uniform.

“I’m going to stop by the hospital and see Hudd,” Wayne said and strapped his Murphy belt around his waist. “Want to come?”

“Nope,” Cade said.

Wayne put his sheriff’s hat onto his head. “You really didn’t know about Hudd chasing Tulsa away?”

“Not a bit of it,” Cade said. A hardness settled around his heart. “I’ve got some things at the ranch that Dad needs at the hospital. Can you drop them by?”

“Sorry, brother,” Wayne said. His hand glanced across Cade’s shoulder in an attempt at condolence.

Cade didn’t blame Wayne. He knew where the blame rested. With an old man lying in a hospital bed.

“What are you going to do now?” Wayne asked.

Cade looked at his brother. “I’m going to find some truth.”

*

Now wasn’t the best time to have this conversation with Tulsa, but now was when Cade intended to have it. The pinprick of nerves scraped beneath his skin—their trails deeper with the lack of sleep, the cloaking of fatigue. He stood in the McGrath family room beside the kitchen counter and waited. Ash had let him in and then scooted out the door and into Dylan Conroy’s truck on her way to school. He could hear the creaks of the old house as Tulsa and Savannah walked around upstairs.

He turned toward the front of the house as he heard the sound of boots on wooden steps.

“Morning, Cade,” Savannah said.

She wore her curly hair in a loose bun on top of her head and a brown turtleneck, jeans, and work boots. Her smile was freer than what he’d seen the last few months. Savannah’s biggest worry had cleared. Swept away with the agreement between her and Bobby. She had Ash. She even had Tulsa. The McGraths grew tighter while fractures cracked through the Montgomery family.

“Morning.” He stood in the center of the family room with his hands on his hips.