Call Me Cowboy. Judy Duarte

      He nodded. “Yep. And Rebecca Mae Epperson is still living in Cotton Creek.”

      Reality slammed into her chest like a fist, and a knot formed in her stomach. She found it hard to breathe, hard to speak.

      For the longest time Priscilla couldn’t seem to grasp what Cowboy had told her.

      “My mother is alive?” she finally managed to ask. “What about the fire?”

      “I don’t know anything about a fire. But from what I’ve gathered so far, your father was accused of a noncustodial kidnapping.”

      Oh, dear God.

      Her pulse pounded in her head. And although she wanted to deny it, to call Cowboy a liar, to scream obscenities and run back home, she knew in her heart what he’d just told her was true.

      She blew out a wobbly sigh as she pondered the first of her father’s lies. “He told me that we left my mother behind to wait for the moving van and take care of odds and ends. She was going to fly to Rapid City, where we were supposed to take her to our new home. But the night before she was to leave, while I was asleep, he claimed to have received the call about the fire. The news of her death.”

      But it had all been a lie.

      A tear slipped down her cheek, and she brushed it away, only to have it replaced by another. Her lip quivered, and she bit down to hold it still. To hold herself together.

      It was too much.

      She didn’t have the foggiest idea what to do next, where to start. So she turned to Cowboy for direction.

      “Now what? Where do we go from here?”