support her, as she cried, and cried, and cried some more, until her sobs settled into shaky sighs. She rummaged in her jeans pocket with a hand stinging from self-inflicted abuse, found a mashed tissue, blew her nose. If nothing else, she had to take it as a sign that, as the tree had not been struck by lightning, she was probably meant to live. At least until after this dang wedding.
She took several deep breaths of the rain-fragrant air until she felt some semblance of normalcy return, then stuck out her chin. She’d made it this far; she’d be fine. All she had to do was stay out of Dean’s path.
And get the truth tucked safely away again where no one could find it.
After God knew how long, Dean finally forced himself off the porch steps and back into the house before he started an epidemic of eyebrow-raising. Not that it would have mattered, as it turned out: his brother and future sister-in-law were far too busy oohing and aahing over the newest batch of wedding presents, as well as each other, to have noticed his absence, and Sarah’s mother was in the kitchen, judging from the sounds of pans clanging and the familiar contralto voice belting out a dimly remembered hymn.
Only Katey was unoccupied, perched cross-legged on a window seat, her chin resting in one hand while the other hand automatically stroked a large, smug-faced Siamese cat lolled across her lap. Situated as far from the lovebirds as possible, the child stared out at the approaching storm with that long-suffering expression kids get when they’re forced to make the best of a bad situation.
Dean felt a smile tug at his lips; he’d seen that expression before, many times, on another face, an expression that usually presaged some prank or other that like as not had gotten both Sarah and him in trouble. The cat shifted, cantilevering one splayed paw out over Katey’s knee, and Dean frowned slightly, trying to remember the beast’s name. Something weird Sarah’d thought up when she got the kitten for her twelfth birthday. Which meant—good Lord!—the animal had a good fifteen years under its belt. Maybe it wasn’t the same cat.
Hands in pockets, Dean drifted over to Katey and nodded toward the empty half of the window seat. “Mind if I join you?”
The child flashed him a holey grin that would have suckered him into buying ice in January. Then she eyed the couple as if they’d suddenly developed oozing sores over most of their bodies. “Kinda makes you sick, don’t it?”
“Doesn’t it,” Dean gently corrected her as he eased himself onto the seat, then stretched out his long legs, crossing them at the ankles. He could still hear his mother declaring there was no excuse for shoddy grammar. Ever. Just pure laziness, if not contrariness, far as she was concerned, stringing words together every which way the way people did. There were times he still expected his mother’s hand to descend from heaven and whomp him one on the backside for some linguistic infraction or other.
Dean slanted Katey a smile, remembering he was in the middle of a conversation. “Yeah, I guess watching your sister and Lance drool over each other’s a little hard to take. But you know…” He reached over and scratched the cat’s chin, eliciting a blissful rumble. “They are in love, you know.”
“It’s disgustin’.”
Dean chuckled. “When you come right down to it, though, that’s what most people want.” While Katey seemed to contemplate how on earth she’d managed to be born into the human race, it suddenly came to him. “Balthasar!”
“Huh?” Katey said, her nose wrinkled under wide eyes. Her resemblance to her big sister made his heart stumble.
“Isn’t that the cat’s name?”
The little girl looked from him to the cat and back to him. “How’d you know that?”
In an instant, he realized she’d been told nothing. That she had no idea he’d known her sister before. Eventually, she’d figure it out, but right now she probably thought he’d just sprung up like a mushroom after a rainstorm. Nor was it his place to tell her any differently.
His shoulders hitched in a nonchalant shrug. “Oh…I think…Lance must’ve told me. I’d just forgotten for a moment, sugar.”
Enormous eyes shot to his, brimming with tears. “Why’d you call me that?”
The child’s sudden mood change threw him. “I…don’t know. It just kind of popped out. Does it bother you?”
One tear slipped down a soft cheek. “My daddy used to call me that.”
“Oh…” Dean hesitated, then leaned forward, his hands loosely clasped together. “You really miss him, don’t you?”
Katey nodded, then wiped her nose with the back of her hand, jutting out her chin. Sarah’s chin. “Sarah says I’ll always remember him, but—” she shook her head, straight maple-colored hair swishing softly against delicate shoulders “—but I think she’s just trying to make me feel better.” She swallowed and looked out the window again. “Every night, I imagine him sittin’ beside me on my bed and sayin’ my prayers with me, just like he used to. But I can’t hear his voice no more.” Dean saw her lip quiver, then the effort exerted to control it, and decided to let the grammatical slip pass. Then the child leaned her head to one side, considering. “Are you lonely, Dean?”
He choked on his own startled laugh. “What makes you ask that?”
“Lance said you don’t have a wife or girlfriend or nothin’. I just thought most grown-ups had somebody, ’less they were widows like Mama.”
He slowly shook his head. “Nope. Not me, honey,” he said, then stiffened, wondering if that endearment, too, would provoke a reaction. Apparently not. The child continued the conversation without missing a beat.
“You know,” she said in a low voice, “Sarah’s all alone, too.”
His heart lurched like a fish out of water. “She is, huh?”
“Uh-huh. Well, sometimes she goes to the movies with Dr. Stillman from the clinic, but they’re just friends.”
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
Katey shrugged, scowling at her sister and her fiancé. “Because they don’t look at each other like that—”
“Katharine Suzanne!” rang out from the kitchen. “What about this corn?”
Then, just like Sarah would’ve done, Katharine Suzanne shoved the disgruntled cat off her lap and took off out the front door, her waist-length hair flapping against her narrow back.
A mixing bowl in a choke-hold between one arm and her bosom, her other hand clamped around a wooden spoon, Vivian Whitehouse pushed through the swinging door and glanced around the room. Not seeing her quarry, her questioning eyes lit on Dean. He cleared his throat and nodded toward the front door, still ajar.
A sound that was half sigh, half chuckle, rumbled from Vivian’s throat. “Figures.” Then she added, “Sarah’s not here, either?”
“Uh…no, ma’am.” Why did he suddenly feel so self-conscious? Wiping the palms of his hands on his thighs, Dean said, “Last I saw her, she was headed toward the kennels.”
A pair of shrewd gray eyes bore into his. “You talked to her?”
“For a moment.”
