Montana Creeds: Logan. Linda Miller Lael

smiled. “Joshua?”

      “Okay, it was the bratwurst left over from night before last,” Josh said. “It wasn’t my idea to give it to her. Alec did that.”

      Situation normal.

      “Will you come and get us?” he asked. “It’s boring around here, when we can’t even go outside.”

      “No time,” Briana said. “You’ll have to tough it out until I get home. I’m stopping off at the supermarket after work, so I might be a few minutes late.”

      “Alec really thinks Dad’s coming on Saturday.”

      Briana closed her eyes. “Maybe,” she said evenly. “Maybe he’s coming on Saturday.”

      “With Dad, it’s always ‘maybe,’”

      Josh replied.

      “True enough. Do me a favor, though, and hold the remarks. It really upsets Alec.”

      “He’s living in a fantasy world.”

      “You’re Alec’s big brother,” Briana said. “Be nice to him.”

      Josh sighed dramatically. “Okay, but only until you get home,” he said. “Then all bets are off.”

      “Fair enough,” Briana said, with a smile.

      Josh responded with a disgusted wail.

      “What?” Briana asked anxiously, thinking the house had caught fire or a serial killer was trying to break down the back door.

      “Wanda just cut one,” Josh lamented. “Again!” In the background, Alec whooped with manic delight.

      “Butt-face!” Josh yelled.

      “No name-calling, Josh,” Briana said. “You promised.”

      “All right,” Josh countered, “but if you’re not here by five-thirty, I’m going to have to kill him.”

      “I’ve only got one word for you, Joshua Grant.”

      “What?”

      “Babysitter,” Briana replied. Then she said goodbye and hung up.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THERE WERE TWO CARS parked in front of Cassie’s ramshackle place at the edge of town, and she’d scrawled With a client on the whiteboard nailed up beside the front door. Logan took the marker, dangling from a piece of tattered baling twine, and added I was here. 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