Linda Lael - At Home in Stone Creek

She kept herself busy by taking mugs down from the cupboard, filling Mrs. Wiggins’s dish with kibble the size of barley grains, switching on the radio and then switching it off again.

The kitten crunched away at the kibble, then climbed onto its newly purchased bed in the corner near the fireplace, turned in circles for a few moments, kneaded the fabric, and dropped like the proverbial rock.

After several minutes had passed, Ashley heard Brad’s boot heels on the staircase, and poured coffee for her brother; she was drinking herbal tea.

As if there were a hope in hell she’d sleep a wink that night by avoiding caffeine.

Brad reached for his mug, took a thoughtful sip.

“Well?” Ashley prompted.

“I’m not a doctor, Ash,” he said. “All I can tell you for sure is, he’s breathing.”

“That’s helpful,” Ashley said.

He chuckled, and the sound, though rueful, consoled her a little. He turned one of the chairs around backward, and straddled it, setting his mug on the table.

“Why do men like to sit like that?” Ashley wondered aloud.

He grinned. “You’ve been alone too long,” he answered.

Ashley blushed, brought her tea to the table and sat down. “What am I going to do?” she asked.

Brad inclined his head toward the ceiling. “About McCall? That’s up to you, sis. If you want him out of here, I can have him airlifted to Flagstaff within a couple hours.”

This was no idle boast. Even though he’d retired from the country-music scene several years before, at least as far as concert tours went, Brad still wrote and recorded songs, and he could have stacked his royalty checks like so much cordwood. On top of that, Meg was a McKettrick, a multimillionaire in her own right. One phone call from either one of them, and a sleek jet would be landing outside of town in no time at all, fully equipped and staffed with doctors and nurses.

Ashley bit her lower lip. God knew why, but Jack wanted to stay at her place, and he’d gone through a lot to get there. As impractical as it was, given his condition, she didn’t think she could turn him out.

Brad must have read her face. He reached out, took her hand. “You still love the bastard,” he said. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she answered miserably. She’d definitely loved the man she’d known before, but this was a new Jack, a different Jack. The real one, she supposed. It shook her to realize she’d given her heart to an illusion.

“It’s okay, Ashley.”

She shook her head, started to cry again. “Nothing is okay,” she argued.

“We can make it that way,” Brad offered quietly. “All we have to do is talk.”

She dried her eyes on the sleeve of Jack’s old shirt. It seemed ironic, given all the things hanging in her closet, that she’d chosen to wear that particular garment when she’d gotten dressed that morning. Had some part of her known, somehow, that Jack was coming home?

Brad was waiting for an answer, and he wouldn’t break eye contact until he got one.

Ashley swallowed hard. “Our mother died,” she said, cornered. “Our mother. And you and Olivia and Melissa all seemed—relieved.”

A muscle in Brad’s jaw tightened, relaxed again. He sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “I guess I was relieved,” he admitted. “They said she didn’t suffer, but I always wondered—” He paused, cleared his throat. “I wondered if she was in there somewhere, hurting, with no way to ask for help.”

Ashley’s heart gave one hard beat, then settled into its normal pace again. “You didn’t hate her?” she asked, stunned.

“She was my mother,” Brad said. “Of course I didn’t hate her.”

“Things might have been so different—”

“Ashley,” Brad broke in, “things weren’t different. That’s the point. Delia’s gone, for good this time. You’ve got to let go.”

“What if I can’t?” Ashley whispered.

“You don’t have a choice, Button.”

Button. Their grandfather had called both her and Melissa by that nickname; like most twins, they were used to sharing things. “Do you miss Big John as much as I do?” she asked.

“Yes,” Brad answered, without hesitation, his voice still gruff. He looked down at his coffee mug for a second or so, then raised his gaze to meet Ashley’s again. “Same thing,” he said. “He’s gone. And letting go is something I have to do about three times a day.”

Ashley got up, suddenly unable to sit still. She brought the coffee carafe to the table and refilled Brad’s cup. She spoke very quietly. “But it was a one-time thing, letting go of Mom?”

“Yeah,” Brad said. “And it happened a long, long time ago. I remember it distinctly—it was the night my high school basketball team took the state championship. I was sure she’d be in the bleachers, clapping and cheering like everybody else. She wasn’t, of course, and that was when I got it through my head that she wasn’t coming back—ever.”

Ashley’s heart ached. Brad was her big brother; he’d always been strong. Why hadn’t she realized that he’d been hurt, too?

“Big John stayed, Ashley,” he went on, while she sat there gulping. “He stuck around, through good times and bad. Even after he’d buried his only son, he kept on keeping on. Mom caught the afternoon bus out of town and couldn’t be bothered to call or even send a postcard. I did my mourning long before she died.”

Ashley could only nod.

Brad was quiet for a while, pondering, taking the occasional sip from his coffee mug. Then he spoke again. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “When the chips were down, I basically did the same thing as Mom—got on a bus and left Big John to take care of the ranch and raise the three of you all by himself—so I’m in no position to judge anybody else. Bottom line, Ash? People are what they are, and they do what they do, and you have to decide either to accept that or walk away without looking back.”

Ashley managed a wobbly smile. Sniffled once. “I’m sorry I’m late on the mortgage payments,” she said.

Brad rolled his eyes. “Like I’m worried,” he replied, his body making the subtle shifts that meant he’d be leaving soon. With one arm, he gestured to indicate the B&B. “Why won’t you just let me sign the place over to you?”

“Would you do that,” Ashley challenged reasonably, “if our situations were reversed?”

He flushed slightly, got to his feet. “No,” he admitted, “but—”

“But what?”

Brad grinned sheepishly, and his powerful shoulders shifted slightly under his shirt.

“But you’re a man?” Ashley finished for him, when he didn’t speak. “Is that what you were going to say?”

“Well, yeah,” Brad said.

“You’ll have the mortgage payments as soon as I get a chance to run Jack’s credit card,” she told her brother, rising to walk him to the back door. Color suffused her cheeks. “Thanks for coming into town,” she added. “I feel like a fool for panicking.”

In the midst of pulling on his jacket, Brad paused. “I’m a big brother,” he said, somewhat gruffly. “It’s what we do.”

“Are you and Meg going to the hospital tomorrow, when Livie…?”

Brad tugged lightly at her braid, the way he’d always done. “We’ll be hanging out by the telephone,” he said. “Livie swears it’s a normal procedure, and she doesn’t want everyone fussing ‘as if it were a heart transplant,’ as she put it.”

Ashley bit down on her lower lip and nodded. She already had a nephew—Mac—and two nieces, Carly and Sophie, although technically Carly, Meg’s half sister, whom her dying father had asked her to raise, wasn’t really a niece. Tomorrow, another little one would join the family. Instead of being a nervous wreck, she ought to be celebrating.