She’d thought him to be like his father, cut from the same cruel cloth, but she was slowly learning she’d been wrong. Or so it seemed on the surface. She wouldn’t go so far as to say he was pleasant—quite the opposite—but he’d been rock steady and was incredibly kind and tolerant of Morgan. So far he’d kept his promise, and though he was often gone during the day, at work on the Kincaid ranch or tending to his own place, he and Rambo returned in the old battered pickup each evening. Once he’d come back with a pizza, another time with sandwiches from a local deli, each at the request of Morgan. The girl flat-out adored her older half brother, while with Shiloh she’d continued to be petulant and distrustful, never missing a chance to sling some guilt her older sister’s way.
“Mom was always worried about you, you know,” she told her at breakfast on the first morning, after Shiloh had suffered a fitful night’s sleep. Nightmares had peppered Shiloh’s slumber, vicious dreams of Larimer Tate and Ruthie’s rape and her mother falling off a cliff and into a bottomless chasm as Shiloh desperately reached for her. She’d awoken with a headache.
Morgan’s remarks had cut deep, but Shiloh had sworn to herself she wouldn’t react, so she kept quiet.
Not so Morgan, who picked at the pancakes Shiloh had made her and added, “It killed her that you never called.”
“I did call.”
“When was the last time?” Morgan demanded, swirling a piece of pancake in a lake of maple syrup on her plate. She’d been perched upon a stool at the small table pushed against a window to the backyard.
How long had it been? Shiloh hadn’t remembered. As if realizing she couldn’t answer, Morgan had just stared at her.
Shiloh had reached for a nearly empty bottle of ibuprofen that had been left on the windowsill and plopped two in her mouth, swallowing them dry. That had ended the conversation.
There had been other attempts at communication between Shiloh and her half sister in the days that had passed since, but none had turned out any better.
Now, the screen door to the back porch creaked open, and Beau stepped into the kitchen. Shiloh’s muscles tensed a little, just as they always did when he was around. It was as if the air between them changed, a sudden electricity building, whenever he came near her.
“Hey,” he said, peering down the hall. “Where’s Morgan?”
“On her phone. In her room. Wasn’t interested in breakfast.”
“Maybe I’ll take her out for lunch,” he said. “Wanna come? We could all go to the funeral together.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly, her stomach in knots. “This isn’t going to be a walk in the park for Morgan.”
“For anyone,” he agreed, and his gaze touched hers for a moment, a bit of sadness and empathy in his eyes. For the first time, he seemed to acknowledge, if silently, that she too was hurting.
A lump formed in her throat, but she fought it back. No need to get maudlin now. Today was going to be tough enough as it was.
*
Morgan had barely touched her burger and ate only a handful of fries, and Shiloh also had no appetite and hadn’t been able to finish her salad. Beau, however, mowed through a French dip at the Lazy L Café. Afterward, they drove to the funeral home and sat through the short service in the front row of the stuffy central room. Morgan was pale but dry-eyed, while Shiloh was the one fighting tears. The windows were open, a warm breeze attempting to make up for the fact that the air-conditioning was on the fritz. The preacher, who’d never met Faye, stumbled through the biographical part of the service, which was based on her obituary and a few questions Shiloh had answered. Prayers were said, and a singer had tried her best but had trouble keeping with the pianist as she’d warbled her way through “Amazing Grace.”
Later, at the grave site, Morgan dropped a single white rose onto the lowered coffin, and at that point Shiloh stared at the trees across the way, tears running freely. It wasn’t so much a personal pain she felt, but empathy for the grief evidenced in her stoic little sister’s eyes. Dear God, what was she going to do? No way would she abandon this child, but obviously Morgan didn’t want anything to do with her.
Beau grabbed her hand and gave it a quick squeeze for half a second before he turned to Morgan. His tender gesture brought on a fresh spate of tears, which Shiloh desperately fought back. Head bowed, she stood as the preacher mumbled his way through another prayer, and bees buzzed through the cemetery, where dandelions and small daisies poked their heads through the fading grass growing between the headstones. The graveyard was positioned on a small rise and flanked by a copse of trees, the graves in rows marked by tombstones, the view toward the valley where, three miles away, the town of Prairie Creek was sprawled.
Shiloh thought of her mother, of the fact she’d never see her again and that there were so many things she hadn’t said. It was too late for recriminations. She would just have to live with the fact that she’d never resolved some issues.
She closed her eyes for a second, and in that moment she felt as if she were being watched, that someone was observing her. She glanced up, but saw no one staring, no one even glancing at her from the corner of their eye.
Why, then, did the hairs on the back of her nape lift? Why did she feel a darker presence?
Then her gaze dropped to the ground, and she understood.
Faye’s fresh grave was cut into the dry earth near that of her late husband, Larimer Tate. As best as she could, Shiloh kept her eyes averted from the final resting place of Beau’s father, where a single flat marker was etched with his name and the date of his entering and leaving the planet.
Rest in peace, you bastard, she thought; then, before she actually spit on his grave, she returned her attention to the last part of her mother’s burial service. Tate was dead. But being near his grave was what was causing her to feel nervous, that she was being watched by some sinister presence, just as she had when he was alive. She slid a glance in Beau’s direction and saw that he too avoided a glance at his old man’s final resting place.
She’d been wrong about Beau, it seemed. Dead wrong. He was nothing like his father. Since she’d been in town, she’d witnessed firsthand that he was hardworking and seemed to sincerely care about his half sister, their half sister.
No, Shiloh couldn’t fault him about his relationship with Morgan. It appeared solid. Genuine. Something she couldn’t say about hers.
On the way to her SUV, she caught sight of Kat, one of a handful of mourners who had shown up at the burial site.
Not now, she thought as Kat approached, but managed to pin what she hoped was a welcoming smile on her face.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Kat said.
“I guess we both know how it feels. I’m sorry you lost yours too.” Shiloh hadn’t been around when Marilyn Starr had passed away.
“It was tough, but you move forward,” she admitted. A pause, then, “Any chance you can find time to get together?” The seriousness in her eyes said that the conversation wouldn’t be girl talk or just catching up.
“Sure.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow? Today’s . . . well, you know.”
“How about at the Prairie Dog? Five-thirty, after work?”
“Sure,” she said. She didn’t ask about Kat’s job. Shiloh had already heard that Katrina Starr had followed in her father’s footsteps and now was a cop with the Prairie Creek Sheriff’s Department.
In Kat’s case, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.