The Cowboy Way

“You must be Matt,” she said.

Matt nodded. “And you must be Steven’s cousin,” he replied. “I forget your name, though.”

“Meg,” she said gently.

Brad, looking like a rancher in his old jeans, long-sleeved chambray work shirt and ancient boots, jabbed a thumb in the direction of the house and said, “Looks like this place is in even worse shape than I thought.”

Meg surveyed it with her hands resting on her trim, blue-jeaned hips. Her white cotton top was fitted and sleeveless, and it didn’t seem possible that she was old enough to be married, let alone the mother of a couple of kids.

She could have passed for seventeen.

“Brad O’Ballivan,” she scolded, sounding wholly good-natured, “I’ve told you a thousand times that it’s a train wreck over here.”

Brad grinned. “It’s better than the barn, though,” he drawled.

Matt had recognized him by then. “Are you that famous guy who’s on TV sometimes?” he asked. Before Brad could answer, he went on. “We know somebody else with the same last name as yours. Melissa.”

“Melissa is my sister,” Brad said, obviously enjoying the exchange.

“You have a sister?” Matt made it sound like the eighth wonder. He was an only child, of course, and so was Steven. Did the child long for a sister, the way Steven himself had, growing up?

Brad crouched, so he could look directly into Matt’s face. “Actually,” he said, “I have three sisters. There’s Olivia—she’s a veterinarian and she can talk to animals. And Ashley—she and Melissa are twins.”

Steven felt a pang at the mention of twins, the way he always did when the subject came up. It made him think of his cousins Conner and Brody and their complex family history. They were a matched set, those two.

“Do they look alike?” Matt asked. “Ashley and Melissa?”

“Nope,” Brad answered. “They’re not those kind of twins.”

“Oh,” Matt said, absorbing the information. Then he brightened, looking from Brad, who straightened to his full height and must have looked pretty tall to the child against that sunlit Arizona sky, to Meg, then back again. “You’re famous, though, huh?”

“Yeah,” Brad admitted, sounding almost shy. “Sort of.”

Matt nodded and moved on, over the celebrity aspect of the encounter, evidently. “We’re going to get a tent and camp out!” he announced. “And we’re adopting a dog, too!”

Meg beamed. “That’s great,” she said.

Matt absorbed her approval like it was sunlight.

“You could use Brad’s old tour bus,” she told Steven, a few moments later. The two of them had only known each other for about six months; turned out Meg was something of an amateur genealogist, and she’d tracked him down on the internet and sent him an email. Steven didn’t have a lot of kin, and he wasn’t taking any chances on alienating his cousin by imposing on her generosity.

Brad nodded, though, and rested a light hand against the small of Meg’s back. “That’s a good idea,” he said, before Steven could get a word out. “It’s pretty well-equipped, and nobody’s used it in a while.”

Steven opened his mouth to say something along the lines of “It’s okay, I appreciate the offer, but the tent will be fine for now,” but Meg already had her cell phone out. She dialed, stuck a finger in her free ear, smiling fit to blow every transformer within a fifty-mile radius and asked whoever was on the other end to please bring the bus next door.

Brad, meanwhile, had wandered over to look at the barn. Or what was left of it, anyway. “Good for firewood and not much else,” he said, scanning the ruins.

Steven nodded in agreement, shoved a hand through his hair. “Listen, about the bus, I wouldn’t want you and Meg going to a lot trouble. We’ll be okay with a tent....”

Brad listened, grinning. But he was shaking his head the whole time.

Steven’s protest fell away when he heard Matt give a peal of happy laughter. He glanced in the boy’s direction and saw that Meg was leaning down again, her hands braced on her thighs, so she could look into Matt’s eyes. Her own were dancing with delight.

Matt must have told her one of his infamous knock-knock jokes, Steven thought. The kid did tend to laugh at his own jokes.

“Never look a gift bus in the grillwork,” Brad said.

Steven looked back at him, blinked. “Huh?”

Brad laughed. “Never mind,” he said, and started off toward Meg again.

It was almost as though the two of them were magnetized to each other, Steven observed, feeling just a little envious.

Ten minutes later, the gleaming bus was rolling up the driveway, and it was a thing of beauty.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS 5:30 P.M., by Melissa’s watch. The bus from Tucson and Phoenix would have disgorged any passengers it might be carrying—Byron Cahill, for instance—at 5:00 sharp, before heading on to Indian Rock and then making a swing back to stop in Flagstaff and heading south again. She was familiar with the bus route because she’d ridden it so often, as a college student, when she couldn’t afford a car.

Although she usually looked forward to going home after work, today was different. Home sounded like a lonely place, since there wouldn’t be anybody there waiting for her.

Maybe, she thought, she should give in to Olivia’s constant nagging—well, okay, Olivia didn’t exactly nag; she just suggested things in a big-sister kind of way—and adopt a cat or a dog. Or both.

Just the thought of all that fur and pet dander made her sneeze, loudly and with vigor. Since she’d been tested for allergies more than once, and the results were consistently negative, Melissa secretly thought Olivia and Ashley might be right—her sensitivities were psychosomatic. Deep down, her sisters agreed, Melissa was afraid to open her heart, lest it be broken. It was a wonder, they further maintained, that she didn’t sneeze whenever she encountered a man, given her wariness in the arena of love and romance.

There might be some truth to that theory, too, she thought now. She adored the children in the family, and that felt risky enough, considering the shape the world was in.

How could she afford to love a man? Or compound her fretful concerns by letting herself care for an animal? Especially considering that critters had very short life spans, compared to humans.

Feeling a little demoralized, Melissa logged off her computer, pulled her purse from the large bottom drawer of her desk, and sighed with relief because the workday was over. Not that she’d really done much work.

It troubled her conscience, accepting a paycheck mostly for warming a desk chair all day; in the O’Ballivan family, going clear back to old Sam, the founding father of today’s ever-expanding clan, character was measured by the kind of contribution a person made. Slackers were not admired.

Telling herself she didn’t need to be admired anyway, dammit, Melissa left her office, locking up behind her. She paused, passing Andrea’s deserted desk, frowned at the ivy plant slowly drying up in one corner.

It wasn’t her plant, she reminded herself.

It is a living thing, and it is thirsty, that self retorted silently.

With a sigh, Melissa put down her purse, searched until she found the empty coffee tin Andrea used as a watering can—when she remembered to water the indoor foliage, which was a crapshoot—filled the humble vessel at the sink in the women’s restroom, returned to the cubicle and carefully doused the ivy.

It seemed to rally, right before her eyes, that bedraggled snippet of greenery, standing up a little straighter, stretching its fragile limbs a bit wider instead of shriveling. Melissa made a mental note to speak to Andrea about the subtleties of responsibility—she wasn’t a bad kid. Just sort of—distracted all the time. And little wonder, given all she’d been through.

Andrea had arrived in Stone Creek as a runaway, when she was just fourteen, riding the same bus that had probably brought Byron Cahill back to town that very afternoon. Out of money and out of options, she’d spent her first night sleeping behind the potted rosebushes in the garden center at the local discount store.

Upon discovering her there, first thing the next morning, the clerk had called Tom Parker, a natural thing to do. Especially since Andrea sat cross-legged against the wall, stubbornly refusing to come out.

Tom had soon arrived, accompanied by his portly mixed-breed retriever, Elvis, who pushed his way right through those spiky-spined rosebushes to lick Andrea’s face in friendly consolation. After a while, Tom—or had it been Elvis?—managed to persuade Andrea to take a chance on the kindness of strangers and leave her erstwhile hiding place.

Over breakfast at the Lucky Horseshoe Café, since closed, the girl had confided in Tom, told him about her less-than-wholesome home life, down in Phoenix. Her mother was on drugs, she claimed, and her stepfather, who had done time for a variety of crimes, was about to get out of jail. Rather than be at his mercy, Andrea said, she’d decided to take off, try to make it on her own.

Of course, Tom checked the story out, and it held up to scrutiny, so agencies were consulted and legal steps were taken, and Andrea moved in with the elderly Crockett sisters, Mamie and Marge, who lived directly across the street from Tom’s aunt Ona, she of Parade-Committee fame, as a foster child. Andrea still lived in the small apartment above the Crocketts’ detached garage, proudly paying rent and looking after the old ladies and their many cats.

Melissa was thinking all these thoughts as she left the courthouse, head bent, rummaging through her purse for her car keys as she crossed the gravel lot.

“Did you get my email?”

The question jolted Melissa and she came to an abrupt halt, her heart scrabbling in her throat.

“Velda,” Melissa said, when she had regained enough breath to speak. “You scared me.”

Byron’s mother, probably in her early fifties and emaciated almost to the point of anorexia, stood near the roadster, dappled in the leaf shadows of the oak tree. Velda wore an old cotton blouse without sleeves, plastic flip-flops and jeans so well-worn that the fabric couldn’t have been described as blue, but only as a hint of that color.

“Sorry,” Velda said, her voice scratchy from several decades of smoking unfiltered cigarettes and half again that much regret, probably, her expression insincere. Lines spiked out around her mouth, giving her lips a pursed look. “I wouldn’t want to do that. Scare anybody, I mean.”

“Good,” Melissa said, steady enough by then to be annoyed instead of frightened.

Velda stood between Melissa and the driver’s-side door of the car, her skinny arms folded. Her hair was iron-gray, with faint streaks of yellow, and fell well past her shoulders. Pink plastic barrettes, shaped like little hearts, held the locks back at the sides of her head, creating an unfortunate effect of attempted girlishness.

“Did you get my email?” Velda asked again.

“Yes,” Melissa replied, holding her keys in her right hand. “And I answered it. The situation is really pretty simple, Velda. As long as Byron stays out of trouble, he won’t have to worry about my office or the police.”

Velda smiled wanly, shrugged her bony shoulders. She sidled out of Melissa’s way, rather than stepping, as if it would be too much trouble to lift her feet. Clearly, there was more she wanted to say.

Melissa got behind the wheel of her car and turned the key in the ignition, but she didn’t drive away. She waited.

“It’s hard enough for him,” Velda went on, at last, as if Melissa hadn’t said anything at all, “knowing that poor young girl died because of what he did. Byron’s got to live with that for the rest of his life. But he’s not some hardened criminal, that’s all I’m saying. He’s not some monster everybody ought to be afraid of.”

As she’d spoken, Velda had curled her fingers along the edge of the car window, so the knuckles whitened.

Melissa sighed, something softening inside her, and patted Velda’s hand. “Byron is your son,” she said quietly, looking straight up into the faded-denim blue of the other woman’s eyes, “and you love him. I understand that. But, Velda, the best thing you can probably do to help Byron right now is to lighten up a little. Give him some time—and some space—to adjust to being back on the outside.”

Tears welled up in Velda’s eyes; she sniffled once and stared off into some invisible distance for a long moment before looking back at Melissa. Her voice was very small when she spoke.

“Byron wasn’t on the bus,” she said slowly. “He was supposed to be on that bus, and he wasn’t.”

Melissa felt a mild charge of something that might have been alarm. “Maybe there was some kind of delay on the other end—didn’t he call you?”

Velda’s expression was rueful. The bitterness was back. “Call me? Not everybody can afford a cell phone, you know.”

Melissa looked around. Except for Tom’s cruiser, the roadster was the only vehicle in the lot. “Where’s your car?”

“It’s broken down,” Velda said, still with that tinge of resentful irony. “That’s why I was late getting over to the station to meet the bus. It was gone when I got there, and there was no sign of Byron. I asked inside the station, and Al told me he didn’t see my boy get off.”

“Get in,” Melissa said, nodding to indicate the passenger seat, leaning to move her purse to the floorboards so Velda would have room to sit down.

Velda hesitated, then rounded the hood of the car and opened the door. Once she’d settled in and snapped on her seat belt, she met Melissa’s gaze.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

Melissa leaned to dig her cell out of her purse and handed it to Velda. “Call Byron’s parole officer,” she said, by way of an answer, certain that Velda would know the number, even if she couldn’t afford a mobile phone of her own. “He—or she—will know if there was some sort of hitch with his release.”

Velda hesitated, then took the phone from Melissa. She studied the keypad for a few moments, while Melissa shifted into First and gave the roadster some gas, but soon, Byron’s mom was punching in a sequence of numbers, biting her lower lip as she waited to ring through.

* * *

BRAD O’BALLIVAN’S TOUR BUS, it turned out, was equipped with solar panels, satellite TV, and high-speed internet service. It boasted two large bedrooms, a full bath and a kitchen with full-size appliances.

“Must have been tough,” Steven joked as Brad showed him and Matt through the place, “having to rough it like this while you were on the road.”

Outside, a couple of workers from Brad and Meg’s ranch were already hooking up the water supply and installing the secondary generator. That would serve as backup to the solar gear.

Brad grinned modestly, shrugged, slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans in a way that was characteristic of him. “The band used it, mostly,” he admitted. “I traveled by plane.”

“Right,” Steven said, amused. “More like a private jet, I think.”

Brad shrugged again and looked away for a moment, the grin still tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Steven had never met a famous person before—not one from the entertainment world, anyway—and he was pleasantly surprised by this one. O’Ballivan was not only a down-to-earth guy, he was generous. He clearly loved his wife and kids more than he’d ever loved bright lights and ticket sales.

“I appreciate this,” Steven said.

“Just being neighborly,” Brad answered, his tone easy. No big deal, was the unspoken part of the message. He turned, paused beside the door to scrawl a couple of numbers onto the small blackboard above the desk. “Let us know if you need anything,” he said.

Steven nodded. “Thanks,” he replied.

He stood in the doorway and watched as Meg and Brad drove away in their truck. Matt was so excited, he was practically bouncing off the walls.

“This is amazing,” he marveled. “Can I have the room with the bunk beds?”

With a chuckle, Steven turned to look down at Matt. The kid’s face was joy-polished; his eyes glowed with excitement.

“Sure,” Steven replied.

“Can we go back to town and get a dog now that we don’t have to live in a tent while our house gets fixed up?” The question itself was luminous, like the boy.

Steven felt like a heartless bastard, but he had to refuse. “Probably not a good idea, Tex,” he said gently. “This bus is borrowed, remember? And it’s pretty darn fancy, too. A dog might do some damage, and that would not be cool.”

Matt’s face worked as he processed Steven’s response. “Even if we were really, really careful to pick a really, really good dog?”

“Good has nothing to do with it, Bud,” Steven said, sitting down on the leather-upholstered bench that doubled as a couch so he’d be at eye level with the child. “Dogs are dogs. They do what they do, at least until they’ve been trained.”

Matt blinked. Behind that little forehead, with its faint sprinkling of freckles, the cogs were turning, big-time. He finally turned slightly and inclined his head toward the blackboard over the desk. “Maybe you could call Brad and Meg,” he ventured reasonably. “You could ask them if they’d mind. If we had a dog, I mean.”

“Tex—”

“I’d clean up any messes,” Matt hastened to promise. He seemed to be holding his breath.

Steven sighed. Got out his cell phone. “You’re the one who wants to get the dog now instead of later,” he said. “So you can do the asking.”

Matt beamed, nodded. “Okay,” he said, practically crowing the word.

Steven keyed in one of the numbers Brad had written on the board, the one with a C beside it in parenthesis. When it started to ring, he handed the device to Matt.

“Hello?” he said, after a couple of moments. “It’s Matt Creed calling. Is this Mr. O’Ballivan?”

The timbre of the responding voice was male, though Steven couldn’t make out the words.

“My new dad says we can go to the animal shelter in town and adopt a dog if it’s all right with you,” Matt chimed in next. Inwardly, Steven groaned. My new dad says...

The boy listened for a few more seconds, nodding rapidly. “If my dog makes any messes,” he finished manfully, throwing his small shoulders back and raising his chin as he spoke, “I promise to clean them up.”

Brad said something in response, after which Matt said thank you and then goodbye and finally snapped the phone shut, held it out to Steven with an air of there-you-go.

Steven accepted the phone, dropped it into his shirt pocket, and ran a hand through his hair. “Well?” he asked, though it was pretty obvious what Brad’s answer must have been.

“It’s okay to get a dog,” Matt announced, all but jumping up and down with excitement by then. “Let’s go.” He grabbed for Steven’s hand, tried to pull him to his feet. “Right now!”

Laughing, Steven stood up. Mussed up Matt’s hair again.

Someone rapped at the door just then, and Steven answered. The ranch hands Brad had sent over were standing outside, thumbs hooked into the waistbands of their jeans, sun-browned faces upturned beneath the brims of their hats.

“Electricity ought to be working,” one of them said, without preamble. “Water, too.”

“Mind flipping a switch and turning on a faucet to make sure?” the other one asked.

“No problem,” Steven said. “Come on in.”

He’d spent a lot of time on a ranch, so he wasn’t surprised to glance back and see they hadn’t moved.

Matt was already switching the light on and off.

The faucet in the kitchen sink snorted a blast of air, chortled out some brown water, then ran clear.

“All set,” Steven said. “Thanks.”

The ranch hands grinned and nodded, and then they got into their beat-up work truck and drove away, dust pluming behind them.

Steven locked up the bus. Matt scrambled into their old pickup and expertly fastened himself into his safety seat, but Steven still checked to make sure every snap was engaged, just the same.

A minute or so later, they were on the road, making a dust plume of their own.

Stone Creek’s animal shelter was a sight to behold, a two-story brick structure with Dr. Olivia O’Ballivan Quinn’s veterinary clinic occupying part of the first floor. The entrance to the shelter itself was at the other end of the building, so Steven and Matt headed that way.

The walls of the reception area were decorated with original paintings of dogs, cats and birds, of the whimsical, brightly colored variety, and there were plenty of comfortable chairs. A display of pet supplies occupied a corner, fronted with a handwritten sign saying all proceeds went toward the care of the four-legged residents.

There was no one behind the long, counter-type desk, but a young man in jeans and a lightweight sweatshirt crouched on the floor, a scruffy duffel bag beside him, ruffling the lopsided ears of a black-and-white sheepdog.

The girl Steven had seen at Melissa’s office that morning stood by, watching, and for some reason she blushed when her gaze connected with his.

“You could adopt him,” the girl said, addressing her companion.

But the young man shook his head, straightened with a sigh. “Not without a job, Andrea,” he said quietly. His hair was brown, a little long, his eyes a pale shade of amber, and full of sadness. “How would I pay for his food? And what if he gets sick and needs to go to the vet?”

“I’ve got a job,” Andrea said. “I can help out with expenses for a while.”

“You work for Melissa,” Matt piped up happily, smiling at Andrea.

Her smile faltered slightly, but it was friendly. She nodded, then turned back to her friend. “Byron—” she began.

But Byron silenced her with a shake of his head.

Just then, a chubby woman with frizzy brown hair came out of the back, greeting Steven and Matt with a cheerful hello and an I’ll-be-right-with-you before turning her attention to Byron and Andrea and the sheepdog.

“Well?” she asked hopefully. “Have we made a decision?”

Steven thought he detected a note of compassion in her tone.

Once again, Byron shook his head. “It just won’t work,” he said. “Not right now.”

The woman sighed. Her nametag read Becky, and she wore print scrubs in bright shades of pink and green and blue. “Your mom must be happy to have you back home,” she said gently.

By then, Matt was down on one knee, petting the sheepdog, and Byron watched with a sad smile.

“She doesn’t know I’m here yet,” Byron answered, his gaze bouncing off Andrea once before landing on Becky. “I got off the bus to hitchhike the rest of the way, but then Andrea came along and picked me up just this side of Flagstaff. I needed to be around a dog to get myself centered, so we came here first.”

Andrea winced slightly, as though Byron had inadvertently revealed some vital secret.

Byron looked at Steven briefly, then at Matt. “He’s a nice dog, isn’t he?” he asked, indicating the hopeful critter.

Matt nodded. “We’re here to get ourselves a dog,” he told Byron. “We have a ranch. Right now, we live in a bus, but we’re going to have a house and a yard pretty soon.”

Byron smiled, but there was still something forlorn about him. “Sounds like you’d be a good match for this fella, then.”

“Don’t you want him?” Matt asked. He might have been only five years old, but he was perceptive. He’d picked up on the reluctance in Byron’s decision not to adopt this particular dog.

“He needs a home,” Byron said. “Just now, I can’t give him one—not the right kind, anyway. So if you think he’s the dog for you, and your dad says it’s okay, you probably ought to take him home with you.”

Andrea started to cry, silently. She turned away when she realized Steven was looking at her.

Becky, on the other hand, was still on the other subject. “You’d better let your mom know you’re home, Byron,” she said in motherly tones. “Velda’s been looking forward to having you back in Stone Creek. She probably met the bus. And when there was no sign of you—”

Byron’s shoulders drooped slightly, and he sighed. Nodded. Turned to Andrea, who had stopped crying, though her eyes were red-rimmed and her lashes were spiky with moisture. “Give me a ride home?” he asked her.

“Sure,” she said.

“We can always use volunteers around here, Byron,” Becky added. “Folks to feed the animals, and play with them, and clean out kennels.”

Byron smiled at her. “That would be good,” he said. Then after pausing to pat the sheepdog on the head once, in regretful farewell, he followed Andrea out of the building without looking back.

“That poor kid,” Becky said, and her eyes welled up as she stared after Byron and Andrea. Then she seemed to give herself an inward shake. Turning her smile on Steven and Matt, she said, “May I help you?”

“We’re here to adopt a dog,” Steven answered, still vaguely unsettled by the sense of sorrow Byron and Andrea had left in their wake.

“Well,” Becky said, with enthusiasm, gesturing toward the sheepdog, “as you can see, we have a prime candidate right here.”

The dog’s name was Zeke, Steven and Matt soon learned, and he was about two years old, housebroken and, for the most part, well-behaved. His former owner, an older gentleman, had gone into a nursing home a few weeks ago, suffering from an advanced case of Alzheimer’s, and his daughter had brought Zeke to the shelter in hopes that he’d find a new home.

“Can we have him?” Matt asked, looking up at Steven. “Please?”

Steven was pretty taken with Zeke himself, but then, he’d never met a dog he didn’t like. He’d have adopted every critter in the shelter, if he had his way. “Wouldn’t you like to check out a few others before you decide?” he asked.

Matt wrapped both arms around Zeke’s neck and held on, shaking his head. “He’s the one,” he said, with certainty. “Zeke’s the one.”

Zeke obligingly licked the boy’s cheek.

Steven glanced at Becky, who was beaming with approval. Clearly, she agreed.

“Okay,” Steven said, smiling.

He filled out the forms, paid the fees and bought a big sack of the recommended brand of kibble. Zeke came with a leash and a collar, left over from his former life.

He rode back to the ranch in the bed of the truck, since there was no room inside, but he seemed at home there, in the way of country dogs.

Matt sat half-turned in his car seat the whole way, keeping an eye on Zeke, who’d stuck his head through the sliding window at the back of the cab.

“I bet Zeke misses his person,” the boy said.

Steven felt a pang at that, figuring there might be some transference going on. It was no trick to connect the dots: Matt missed his people, too.

“Might be,” Steven agreed carefully.

Matt had referred to him as “my new dad” that day, as he sometimes did. It was probably the only way he could think of to differentiate Steven from Zack. And the boy wanted desperately to remember his birth father.

He had slightly more difficulty recalling Jillie, since he’d been younger when his mother died.

“Do you miss anybody?” Matt asked. His voice was slight, like his frame, and a little breathless.

“Yeah,” Steven said. “I miss your mom and dad. I miss my own mom, and my granddad, too.”

“Do you miss Davis and Kim? And your cousins?”

Davis was Steven’s father, Kim his stepmother. They were alive and well, living on the Creed ranch in Colorado, though they’d turned the main house and much of the day-to-day responsibility over to Conner.

Brody, not being the responsible type, had left home years ago, and stayed gone.

“Yes,” Steven answered. They went through this litany of the missing whenever the boy needed to do it. “I miss them a lot.”

“But we can go visit Davis and Kim and Conner. And they can visit us,” Matt said, as the sheepdog panted happily and drooled all over the gearshift. “My mommy and daddy are dead.”

Steven reached across to squeeze Matt’s shoulder lightly. As much as he might have wanted to—the kid wasn’t even old enough to go to school yet, after all, let alone understand death—he never dodged the subject just because it was difficult. If Matt brought up the topic, they talked it over. It was an unwritten rule: tell the truth and things will work out. Steven believed that.

Matt lapsed into his own thoughts, idly patting Zeke’s head as they traveled along that curvy country road, toward the ranch. Toward the borrowed tour bus they’d be calling home for a while.

Steven wondered, certainly not for the first time, what Jillie and Zack would think about the way he was raising their son, their only child. Also not for the first time, he reflected that they must have trusted him. Within a month of Matt’s birth, they’d drafted a will declaring Steven to be their son’s legal guardian, should both of them die or become incapacitated.

It hadn’t seemed likely, to say the least, that the two of them wouldn’t live well into old age, but neither Jillie nor Zack had any other living relatives, besides their infant son, and Jillie had insisted it was better to be safe than sorry.

He’d do his damnedest to keep Matt safe, Steven thought, but he’d always be sorry, too. Much as he loved this little boy, Steven never forgot that the child rightly belonged to his lost parents first.

He slowed for the turn, signaled.

“Will you show me my daddy and mommy’s picture again?” Matt asked, when they reached the top of the driveway and Steven stopped the truck and shut off the engine.

“Sure,” he said. The word came out sounding hoarse.

“I don’t want to forget what they look like,” Matt said. Then, sadly, “I do, sometimes. Forget, I mean. Almost.”

“That’s okay, Tex. It happens to the best of us.” Steven got out of the truck, walked around behind it, dropped the tailgate and hoisted an eager Zeke to the ground before going on to open Matt’s door and unbuckle him from all his gear. “Now that we’re going to stay put, we’ll unpack that picture you like so much, and you can keep it in your room.”