“It’s Dillon. Dillon McKenna. Turn it up. Cat, turn it up!” When Cat didn’t move, Adora frantically fumbled around under the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed and came up with a remote control, which she pointed at the television. The sound came on.
“So, Dillon.” The host held up a book with a photograph of a gruesomely wrecked motorcycle on the dust jacket. Beneath the crumpled motorcycle, the word Daredevil was printed in letters that seemed to be on fire. “Tell us about this book you’ve written.”
Cat made a low noise of disbelief. “Oh, please. Dillon McKenna never wrote a book. I don’t buy that for a minute.”
“Shh!” Adora hissed and craned forward toward the small screen. “Oh, God. He looks wonderful.... You can’t even see how bad he was hurt in that awful crack-up in Las Vegas. He looks just like before.”
On the screen, the dark-haired hunk began to talk. “Well now, if you look down in the corner there, you’ll see that I didn’t write it.” He nudged the slender, serious-looking man sitting next to him. “Oliver here did that. He’s the writer.”
Oliver picked up his cue. “But the story is authentic. Just as Dillon told it to me. From his early days in rodeo, through his years as a movie stuntman, right up to the challenges he set himself. Nothing’s missing. There’s every jump he ever accomplished, including that baker’s dozen Peterbilt semitrucks at the Anaheim Speedway. And, of course, the story finds its climax in Dillon’s spectacular, near-death experience in Las Vegas just a year and a half ago.”
Cat watched her sister watching Dillon McKenna. Adora’s face wore a dreamy, faraway look. Farley Underwood might never have existed.
“Dillon really did turn out to be a fantastic-looking man, didn’t he, Cat?” Adora asked.
Cat didn’t even bother to look at the man on the screen. One answer was expected of her. She gave it. “Sure.”
On the television, the host asked, “So what’s up next for Dillon McKenna?”
“You know, I gotta say I’m not sure.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. Things are going to be different for me, that’s all I know for certain. I think what I need right now is a real change of scene, a little time away from it all, to decide where I’m going from here.”
Cat only half listened to the rest. She busied herself gathering up some of the drifts of discarded tissues and tossing them into the wastebasket in the corner, waiting for the next commercial break.
At last, her sister raised the remote control and punched the Mute button again. Then Adora sighed. “Oh, Cat. He made good, didn’t he? Dillon really made good.”
There was no arguing with that. Cat smiled. “He certainly did.”
“Did you hear what he said, about not knowing what he was going to do next? About how he’s thinking he needs a little time away from it all?”
“Yeah, I heard it.”
Adora’s emerald eyes were shining. “Do you imagine he might come back home?”
Cat imagined no such thing. The way she saw it, there was absolutely no reason on earth why an international celebrity like Dillon McKenna would want to return to the tiny mountain town of Red Dog City.
“Well?” Adora prompted.
“Well, what?”
“You heard me. Don’t you think that he might come home?”
“No, I don’t.”
Adora frowned. Cat’s answer had not been the one she’d hoped for. But then she brightened again. “If he did, you’d be the first to know, wouldn’t you? After all, you take care of his house.”
Cat picked up a few more tissues and aimed them at the wastebasket, achieving a swift series of slam dunks. Then she pointed out patiently, “Adora, he hasn’t stayed there even once since I’ve been caretaker of that place. He rents it out through the real estate agency that hired me to take care of it. It’s just income property to him.”
“Well, I know. But still. It’s a nice house. If he wanted to get some time to himself, to think about life and things, that house would be just the place to go.”
Cat reached for her sister’s hands and clasped them firmly in her own. “Look.” She put her forehead against Adora’s. “Will you forget Dillon McKenna? Think about yourself. Are you feeling better now?”
Adora pulled her hands free and fiddled with her shredded tissue. “I guess you want to go home and go back to bed, huh?”
“I’d be lying if I said no. But I’ll stay if you—”
“No. Really. Seeing Dillon again kind of cheered me up. I suppose I’ll be all right now. At least all right enough to make it through the night.”
“Good.” Cat bent forward to brush her lips against Adora’s cheek.
Adora forced a brave smile. “Thanks again. I mean it.”
Cat stood. “I’m at home if you need me.”
“I know.”
Two
Dillon McKenna climbed down from his Land Cruiser, ignoring the dull throb in his artificial hip joints as he did it. The snow on the ground made a crisp, crunching sound under his boots.
The house looked good, he thought. From this side, it was all natural colored wood and soaring angles. The other side, which faced the deck and a deep ravine, was floor-to-ceiling windows so that even on the darkest days, the place was full of light.
Dillon took in a big breath, savoring the cold, mountain freshness of the air. From a nearby fir tree, a chickadee trilled at him. And from somewhere not far away came the thwacking sound of an ax splitting wood. Be- neath a spruce tree at the side of the driveway a blue pickup was parked: the caretaker’s, Dillon imagined. Dillon shut the door of the Land Cruiser, flipped up the collar of his sheepskin jacket and followed the sound of the ax.
He didn’t have to go far. Around the other side of the house, on the little ledge of level ground that extended below the deck before the land dropped off into the ravine below, he found the caretaker. The man’s back was turned to Dillon and for a moment, Dillon stood and watched him.
Rhythmically and efficiently, the man sunk his ax into a log, lifted the log high and brought it down on the chopping block. Bemused, Dillon admired the grace of movement, the economy of each stroke.
He smiled to himself. Nineteen months ago, he wouldn’t have looked twice. But there was something about having half the bones in your body broken, about being put back together with plastic and metal and a good surgeon’s gall, that made a man appreciate the simple things—like watching a skinny caretaker whack up the firewood.
Just then, the caretaker seemed to sense that he was being observed. He brought the ax down so it bit into the block. Then, leaving the ax stuck there,
