“I’m not sure what kind of father Mr. Carmody was,” she began, “but I know he wasn’t up for any awards as a husband.”
Offering no response, Hutch rested his forearms on the tabletop and settled in for some serious listening.
When she went on, Opal seemed to be picking up in the middle of some rambling thought. “Oh, I know he wasn’t actually married to your mother when he got involved with Callie Barlow, but she had his engagement ring on her finger, all right, and the date had been set.”
Hutch guessed the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, as the old saying went. He hadn’t cheated on Brylee, but he’d done the next worst thing by breaking up with her at their wedding with half the county looking on.
“That was hard for Mom,” he said. “She never really got over it, as far as I could tell.”
Opal nodded. “She was fragile in some ways,” she replied.
Hutch felt the sting of chagrin. He’d loved his mother, but he’d always thought of her as weak, too, and maybe even a mite on the foolish side. She’d gone right ahead and married the old man, after all, knowing that he’d not only betrayed her trust, but fathered a child by another woman.
A child—Slade Barlow—who would grow up practically under her nose and bear such a resemblance to John Carmody that there could be no doubt of his paternity.
“I guess she liked to think the whole thing was Callie’s fault,” Hutch reasoned, “and Dad was just an innocent victim.”
“Some victim,” Opal scoffed, but sadly. “He wanted Callie and he went after her. She was young and naive, and he was good-looking and a real smooth talker when he wanted to be. I think Callie really believed he loved her—and it was a brave thing she did, barely grown herself and raising Slade all by herself in a place the size of Parable.”
Hutch recalled his encounter with Callie at the hospital, how happy she was about the new baby, her grandson. And his heart, long-since hardened against the woman, softened a little more. “I reckon most people are doing the best they can with whatever cards they were dealt,” he said. “Callie included.”
“It’s a shame,” Opal said after a long and thoughtful pause, “that you and Slade grew up at odds. Why your daddy never acknowledged him as his son is more than I can fathom. It just doesn’t make any sense, the two of them looking so much alike and all.”
Hutch considered what he was about to say for a long moment before he actually came out with it. Opal knew everybody’s business, but she didn’t carry tales, so he could trust her. And he didn’t want to sound as if he felt sorry for himself, because he knew that, for all of it, he was one of the lucky ones. “When it was just Dad and me,” he finally replied, “nobody else around, he used to tell me he wished I’d been the one born on the wrong side of the blanket instead of Slade. I guess by Dad’s reckoning, Callie got the better end of the deal.”
Opal didn’t respond immediately, not verbally anyway, but her eyes flashed with temper and then narrowed. “Slade is a fine man—Callie did a good job bringing him up and no sensible person would claim otherwise—but he’s no better and no worse than you are, Hutch.”
Hutch just smiled at that, albeit a bit sadly. Sure, he wished his dad had shown some pride in him, just once, but there was no point in dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed. To his mind, the only way to set the matter right was to be a different kind of father himself, when the time came.
He pushed back his chair, stood up and slowly carried his plate and silverware to the sink.
Opal was right there beside him, in a heartbeat, elbowing him aside even as she took the utensils out of his hand. “I’ll do that,” she said. “You go on and do whatever it is you do in the evenings.”
Hutch smiled. “I was thinking I might head into town,” he said. “See what’s happening at the Boot Scoot.”
“I’ll tell you what’s happening at that run-down old bar,” Opal said, with mock disapproval. “Folks are wasting good time and good money, swilling liquor and listening to songs about being in prison and their mama’s bad luck and how their old dog got run over when their wife left them in a hurry.”
“Why, Opal,” Hutch teased cheerfully, “does that mean you don’t want to go along as my date?”
“You just hush,” Opal scolded, snapping at him with a dish towel and then giving a laugh. “And mind you don’t drink too much beer.”
AFTER TAKING A quick shower and putting on clean clothes, Hutch traveled a round-about road to get to the Boot Scoot Tavern that night—a place he had no real interest in going to—and the meandering trail led him right past Kendra Shepherd’s brightly lit rental house.
In simpler times, he wouldn’t have needed a reason to knock on Kendra’s door at pretty much any hour of the day or night, but things had certainly changed between them, and not just because she had a daughter now. Not even because he’d almost married Brylee Parrish and Kendra had married Sir Jeffrey, as Hutch privately thought of the man—when he was in a charitable frame of mind, that is.
No, there was more to it.
The whole time he’d known Kendra, she’d coveted that monster of a house over on Rodeo Road. As a kid, she’d haunted it like a small and wistful ghost, Joslyn’s pale shadow. As a grown-up, she’d found herself a prince with the means to buy the place for her and after the divorce she’d held on to it, rattling around in it all alone for several years, like a lone plug of buckshot in the bottom of a fifty-gallon drum.
Now all of a sudden, she’d moved into modest digs, rented from Maggie Landers, opened a storefront office to sell real estate out of and switched rides from a swanky sports car to a Volvo, for God’s sake.
What did all of that mean—beyond, of course, the fact that she was now a mother? Did it, in fact, mean anything? Women were strange and magnificent creatures, in Hutch’s opinion, their workings mysterious, often even to themselves, never mind some hapless man like him.
Kendra had, except for staying put in Parable, turned her entire life upside down, changed practically everything.
Was that a good omen—or a bad one?
Hutch wanted an answer to that question far more than he wanted a draft beer, but since he could get the latter for a couple of bucks and the former might just cost him a chunk of his pride, he kept going until he pulled into the gravel-and-dirt parking lot next to the Boot Scoot.
The front doors of that never-painted Quonset hut, a relic of World War II, stood open to the evening breeze, and light and sound spilled and tumbled out into the thickening twilight—he heard laughter, twangy music rocking from the jukebox, the distinctive click of pool balls at the break.
With a smile and a shake of his head, Hutch shut off the headlights, cranked off the truck’s trusty engine, pushed open the door and got out. The soles of his boots crunched in the gravel when he landed, and he shut the truck door behind him, then headed for the entrance.
Once the place would have
