Linda Miller - Montana Creeds - Logan

That done, he turned and swung his gaze across the property.

Sidekick was sniffing around the edge of the teepee, the closest thing to a tourist attraction that Stillwater Springs, Montana, had to offer. It was authentic, built in the old way, by Cassie’s father, of tree branches and buckskin, and she charged fifty cents per visit.

Logan approached, dropped two quarters into the rusty coffee can that served as a till—Cassie believed in the honor system and so did he—and ducked into the cool, semidarkness where he and Dylan and Tyler had played as boys.

Except for the long-cold fire circle in the center, rimmed by sooty stones, the teepee was empty. Gone were the ratty blankets he remembered, the gourd ladle and wooden bucket, the clay cooking pots. No sign of the mangy bearskins, either.

He sat down, cross-legged, facing the fire pit, and imagined the flames leaping before him. Sidekick took an uncertain seat beside him, leaned into his shoulder a little.

Maybe the animal knew that in the old times, he might have been on the supper menu.

Logan wrapped an arm around the dog, gave him a reassuring squeeze. “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “Nobody’s going to boil you up with beans.”

Sidekick stuck close, just the same.

As Logan sat, he drifted into a sort of meditation, recalling other visits, sometimes alone, sometimes with his brothers. They’d always built a fire, filling the place with hide-scented smoke, and taken off their shirts. Sometimes, they’d even painted their chests and faces with cosmetics left behind by one or the other of their mothers.

Jake never threw anything away.

Except, of course, for three wives and three sons.

Something tightened inside Logan, and Sidekick seemed to feel it, as though the two of them were tethered together by some intangible cord. The dog gave a low, throaty whine.

The warp and woof of time itself seemed to shift as Logan sat there, waiting. It stretched and then contracted, until, finally, he could no longer measure the passing of seconds or minutes or even hours.

Outside, car doors slammed.

Engines started.

Sidekick eased away from his side, restless, and headed for the opening to look out.

And still Logan didn’t move.

He knew the bulky shadow at the entrance was Cassie, but he didn’t look up or speak.

“You’ll have to make peace with him, you know,” she said quietly.

Logan didn’t respond, even to nod, nor did he meet her eyes. He knew she was referring to Jake, the man he both loved and hated, with such intensity that most times, he couldn’t separate one emotion from the other.

“He won’t rest until you do,” Cassie went on. She stepped into the teepee then, sat down on the ground across from him, graceful despite her size.

Logan blinked, came out of the meditation, or whatever it was. He smiled. “Still telling fortunes, I see,” he said, referring to the client she’d been with when he arrived.

“It’s a living,” she said, with a little shrug and a partly sheepish smile.

“You don’t need to read cards to make a buck, Cassie,” he pointed out, as he had at least a hundred times before. “You get a regular check from the tribal council.”

“Maybe it isn’t about the money,” Cassie suggested mildly, laughing a little when Sidekick gave her a nuzzle with his nose and tried to sit in her ample lap.

“What do you tell them?” Logan asked. “Your clients, I mean?”

“Depends,” Cassie answered, “on what I think they need to hear.” She regarded him with a focus so sharp that it was unsettling. “Did you call Dylan and Tyler?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Dylan basically blew me off. I left a message for Ty, but he hasn’t called back.” He grinned. “Off the hook,” he finished.

“In your dreams,” Cassie said.

“Is this the part where you tell me what you think I need to hear?”

“Yes,” she replied succinctly.

He huffed out a sigh.

Sidekick arranged himself on Cassie’s broad thighs, and she didn’t push him away. Instead, she stroked his back idly, though her attention was still on Logan, one hundred percent. It felt a little like a ray of sunlight coming through the lens of a magnifying glass, searing its way through the brittle inner shell meant to hide his secrets.

“Jake won’t rest until you’ve come to terms with being his son,” Cassie said.

Logan bristled. “What do you mean, he won’t rest? He’s dead, gone, crossed over, whatever. Maybe they let him into heaven, but I’m betting he gets his mail in hell.”

“So bitter,” Cassie said, in a tsk-tsk tone. “No one is all bad, Logan. Including Jake Creed.”

“He was a son of a bitch.”

Cassie frowned. “Wrong. Your grandmother was a fine woman.”

Logan said nothing. He’d never known his grandmother, or his grandfather, either. They’d both died long before he was born, and Jake neither told stories about them nor kept their pictures around.

“People come into this life with agendas to fulfill, Logan,” Cassie told him quietly. “Sometimes they’re simple. Sometimes they’re complicated. Jake did what he was supposed to do.”

“What? Raise hell?”

“He made you strong.You and Dylan and Tyler.You’re as tough as the walls of this teepee, all three of you.”

“It would have been easier,” Logan said, “if he’d just named me Sue.”

Cassie laughed. “Easier isn’t necessarily better,” she pointed out.

Logan wanted to refute that statement, but even with all his legal training, he couldn’t come up with a solid argument. “I called my brothers,” he said. “The ball is in their court. What else is there to do?”

“You haven’t been to Jake’s grave, have you?”

Logan stiffened, shook his head. Cassie, it seemed, had eyes everywhere, in the bushes, in the trees, in the walls. She’d always known, somehow, what he’d done and what he hadn’t done. Worse, she believed she had the right to comment.

“His things are still packed away, too. That’s convenient, isn’t it? Because then you don’t have to remember quite so readily.”

“I came back here, didn’t I?”

Again, Cassie executed a half shrug. “You won’t stay if you don’t settle things with Jake,” she said. “I know what your dream is—to make the name Creed mean something good—and I can tell you that it’s more than just a dream. It’s a quest—the most important thing you’ll ever do.” At this, she paused and looked up and around at the interior of that teepee, as though her ancestors were hovering in the air or something. When her brown gaze collided with Logan’s, he felt like a butterfly with its wings pinned to a mat. “You’ll fail if you don’t own who you are—all of it. Not just the law degree, and the fancy silver belt buckles you won at the rodeo, and all that money you’re pretending you don’t have. You’ve got to accept that you’re flesh of Jake Creed’s flesh, bone of his bone, blood of his blood, and nothing is going to change that.”

Logan shifted, got to his feet. “He was a bastard,” he said. “If I could be anybody else’s son— anybody’s —I would.”

“Well,” Cassie said implacably, moving Sidekick gently off her lap and then accepting Logan’s hesitantly offered hand so she could stand, “you’re not. That’s one thing I know for sure.”

“Maybe you should have told him,” Logan said, seething. “He used to say otherwise. He said Teresa was a whore—did you know that? Practically every time he got drunk, which was often, he told me she’d been catting around, and I probably wasn’t his.” He leaned in a little, despite the flinch he saw in Cassie’s broad, kindly face. “And you know what? I wished to God it was true back then, and I wish it now!”