“I don’t follow.”
“Like when I was eight,” she said, lifting her gaze to his again, “my mom and dad got into some child-support tussle. She called his bluff and sent me out to California to live with him and Emma and her mother. Dad said, ‘oh we’re going to have fun, Libby. We’re going to do this and that, and you’ll be so glad you came,’” she said, with an airy flick of her wrist. “But really? My dad couldn’t handle the responsibility of raising me and neither could Emma’s mother. So he sent me back to Pine River. Only by then, Mom was with Derek and she was pregnant. Once the twins were born, I was the fifth wheel.”
“Oh yeah?” Sam said, curious now. He’d met Mrs. Buchanan a few times and liked her. “Your mom seems really nice.”
“Don’t defend her, I’m on a roll,” Libby said.
Sam couldn’t help a small chuckle. “By all means, roll on.”
“After that was Act Two with my dad,” Libby said with a sigh. “I’ll let you in on a secret—my dad was not a nice person. At least not to me.” She paused. “I think he had a soft spot for Emma, though,” she said thoughtfully. “Anyway, I tried so hard to know him, I really did. He wouldn’t have much to do with me, besides an occasional dinner. And even then, he talked more on his phone than he did to me. And when he got sick, I thought I could help by taking care of him. He needed someone, right? I was willing to do that, but he wouldn’t let me in. Not even for a moment,” she said, with swipe of her hand.
“That must have been rough,” Sam said, meaning it. His own father wasn’t the warmest guy in the world, but at least Sam knew that in his own way, he cared.
“And you know what else?” Libby said, suddenly sitting up. “He never told me about Madeline. Even in the hospital, he didn’t tell me,” she said, punching the table with her finger with each word for emphasis. “He never told me about Homecoming Ranch. All I ever tried to do was be a good daughter to him, but I always felt as if I was bothering him when I showed up.”
Sam didn’t know much about Grant Tyler, other than he’d been a big man in Pine River. Luke had told him that Grant had tried to help Bob Kendrick out with a loan against the ranch when he needed the money for Leo. But Sam also knew that Madeline hadn’t known him at all, much less that she had two sisters out in the world. Sam didn’t know how a man could father children and then be so utterly irresponsible with their souls.
Libby pushed her bowl away and slid down into her chair, bringing one leg up so that she could prop her knee under her chin. “And then there was Ryan. Boy, oh boy, did I fall hard for him. Totally, completely, head over heels in love with him.”
“We’ve been down this road,” Sam said, because he didn’t want to hear again how in love she’d been with Spangler.
“You know I got fired because of him, right?”
Sam didn’t know it for certain, but he’d heard some talk. “How so?”
“When he . . . when he asked me to leave,” she said, swallowing hard on those words, “I started getting calls from school. ‘Who is picking Alice up today?’” she said, mimicking someone from the school. “It happened more than once. I started to worry about Alice and Max—Ryan couldn’t keep in mind Alice’s dance lessons or Max’s soccer games. One morning, Alice called me because she couldn’t find her backpack. It was eight forty-five and they were still at home and she didn’t know where her dad was. I freaked out, I admit it,” Libby said. “When I couldn’t get him on the phone, I left work to go and see if they were okay.”
“Were they?” Sam asked.
“Yes, they were fine,” she said with a sigh. “The reason Alice didn’t know where Ryan was is because his mother was keeping them. He’d gone on a hunting trip or something. I neglected to ask if anyone else was with them. But then, it happened again. The dance teacher called me one afternoon and said they were closing up shop but no one had come to pick up Alice. So I left work again.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “The long and the short of it is, I couldn’t stop worrying about the kids. I left work too many times to go and see about them, or to be at dance class or soccer, or just to make sure they were at school. I was fired for it. Me. Libby Tyler, the most punctual employee the sheriff’s office had ever had. God,” she groaned.