Was. Past tense. The word rang through Beau’s brain. He braced himself and felt, rather than saw, Shiloh do the same.
“I’m sorry. We did everything we could, but your mother was too compromised when she came into the hospital. We tried to revive her, but it couldn’t be done.”
Beside him, Shiloh took in a sharp breath.
“But she’s okay?” Morgan demanded, hearing the unspoken message but refusing to believe. “She’ll be okay, right?” Tears began drizzling down her cheeks as she turned to him. “Mom’s sick, but she’s going to be okay.”
He put his arm around her. “I’m afraid not, honey.”
Morgan protested, “But she has to come home, she has to—”
“She was just too sick.”
“No!” Morgan fell into broken sobs.
Beau turned away from Shiloh and guided Morgan toward the door. She clung to him and wept against his neck. Hot, pained tears. His heart ached for his sister, but he couldn’t stay in the hospital a second more. There was just no reason. Let Shiloh work things out with the hospital accounting department, let her decide what would happen to her mother’s remains, let her deal with the mortuary. For now, he needed to get his broken twelve-year-old sister home.
Not a whole lot else mattered.
*
By the time Shiloh drove back to her mother’s home, it was dusk, the sun no more than a brilliant glow beyond the western ridge, the first stars winking high in a lavender sky. She’d rolled down the driver’s-side window, allowing the warm Wyoming air to tangle her hair and kiss her cheek. It had been a long, emotionally wrought day, with hours in the ER, then more time spent making funeral arrangements before meeting with Faye’s lawyer, all the while dealing with the brutal fact that her mother was dead. As in forever.
Heavy bands seemed to tighten over her chest, and she found it hard to believe that she hadn’t made it in time to say “good-bye” or “I love you.”
Fingers clutching the wheel, eyes squinted into the gathering night, Shiloh felt a growing numbness deep inside. She’d not been close to her mother, not for years, but the finality of Faye’s passing, her death, hit her harder than she’d imagined it would. A small part of her had irrationally believed that Faye Renee Wilson Silva Tate would always be there for her. Oh, maybe not just around the corner, but always just a phone call away. The fact that this wasn’t the case, that Faye had died, was a shock. Already there was a hole in her life, an empty space she’d never thought she’d feel. Apparently just knowing that Faye was living here had been emotionally settling for Shiloh.
“Don’t be such a basket case,” she muttered under her breath as she eased into the corner of the lane leading to the ranch house.
What now? She couldn’t help but wonder. The future stretched out before her, in many ways no different than it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but in other ways it was vastly changed.
She was now responsible for her sister, a girl she barely knew. Morgan. She’d heard Morgan was headstrong and smart, and, right now, she was shattered, her life imploded. It was up to Shiloh to provide some stability.
Not exactly her strong suit.
Then again, neither had it been Faye’s.
But that was just the beginning of the life changes. Shiloh would also have to deal with her stepbrother, the son of a man she detested, a cowboy who was outwardly sexy, she’d give him that, but inwardly, she suspected he was as distant and cold as a Canadian blizzard. Then again, he seemed to care for Morgan and the little girl for him. So there might be a chance that Beau Tate’s chest wasn’t empty, that somewhere deep inside he actually had a beating heart. Not that it mattered. She’d deal with him, heart or no. She had to. She had already stopped by Faye’s attorney’s office, paid a past-due bill to the taciturn receptionist, and gotten a copy of the will from C. Lewis Cranston. Faye’s meager belongings were in trust for her underage daughter, and the kicker was that Faye had appointed both Shiloh and Beau to be Morgan’s guardians. Together, as each was related equally to their sister.
“Swell,” she said under her breath, the beginning of a headache starting to throb at the base of her skull. “Just damned peachy.” Her SUV bounced along the rutted drive, weeds scratching the undercarriage. Shiloh had only planned to be in Prairie Creek a week, maybe less, though she’d made arrangements to have her job in Montana covered for longer. She was a horse trainer and worked out of a ranch near Grizzly Falls in the Bitterroots and had found someone to help her out. However, she doubted Carlos would appreciate her being gone indefinitely as her absence doubled his workload at the Rocking M.
And then she’d have to deal with the police and the people who thought she’d vanished along with Rachel Byrd and Erin Higgins. Another girl, Courtney Pearson, had disappeared soon after the others, just before the monster had attacked Ruthie. Shiloh winced at the thought. They should have known better than to sneak out at that time. By going to the pond, had they inadvertently set up Ruthie’s rape? Had Ruth’s rapist been involved in those other girls’ disappearances, or were they runaways, as she’d always believed? These same torturous thoughts had dogged her for fifteen years.
She sighed and brought herself back to the present and the gathering gloaming. The lights in the house had been turned on, warm patches of yellow glowing over the darkening landscape. The dog, Rambo, was lying on the porch and lifted his head, perking his ears and giving a soft “woof,” announcing her arrival as she parked near Beau’s beat-up truck.
Cutting the engine, the headlights of her Explorer dimming, she sat in the dark for a few minutes, content to stare through the bug-spattered windshield at the coming night. She thought of Kat and Ruthie, girls she’d steadfastly pushed from her mind, but who had haunted her dreams, the nightmares that punctuated her sleep.
She yanked her keys from the ignition.
She was out of the cab and walking up the path to the house before she noticed Beau seated on the darkened porch, his hips resting on the railing. “’Bout time you showed up,” he drawled.
“I’ve been busy.” She couldn’t keep the snap from her voice. “You left me to deal with all the paperwork.”
“Had my hands full.”
She couldn’t argue the point and instead asked, more calmly, “How is she?”
“Not great, as you can imagine.” He turned his head, stared across the shadowy fields. “She’s resting.” He frowned, dark eyebrows drawing together. “Exhausted. Can’t say as I blame her.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s gonna be rough for a while.”
Maybe longer. “Do you know anything about Faye’s will?” she asked and saw him scowl.
“Nope.”
“Then you probably don’t realize that you’ve been named as Morgan’s guardian.”
“Is that so?” He didn’t seem surprised.
“You and me.”