Born To Die

of Leanna came up, the questions were always unexpected and difficult to answer truthfully.

Get used to it. They’re not going to get any easier as time goes on.

They walked through the kitchen, where Sarge had taken up his favorite spot under the kitchen table. He thumped his tail as they grabbed gloves and hats from the hooks near the back door.

“She should call.” Eli’s little face was drawn into a frown of concentration. “She should call me.”

“Yeah, that she should.” Trace had tried to be honest with his boy from the get-go, but it hadn’t always been easy, especially with the trickier queries.

“Can you call her? Right now?”

That one stopped him cold. He snagged his jacket from a hook and shoved his arms down its sleeves. “I don’t know,” he said, holding his son’s gaze. “I think it would be best if she found us. She knows where we are.”

“You need to call her. Maybe she’s hurt! Maybe she’s dead like Miss Wallis!”

“She’s not dead,” Trace assured him.

“How do you know!”

“If anything happened to your mom, someone would phone us.” He jammed his Stetson onto his head.

“Not if they don’t know our number!”

Trace placed his hands on his son’s shoulders. Even with the padding of his quilted vest and down jacket, Eli’s body felt thin and small. “After Thanksgiving, I’ll call her.”

“Tell her to come back.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Tell her to come back!”

“Eli, it’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Trace sighed. “Because. . grown-ups always make things complicated.”

Eli’s jaw jutted out. “Then they should stop.”

“Probably.” He opened the door to the porch and felt the chill of winter seep into the house.

“She should be here.”

“She should be here, but she’s not.” He managed a thin smile. “But you and I, we’re solid.” With a gloved finger, he forced Eli to look into his eyes. “Right?”

“Yeah,” his son said without a lot of conviction, and one more time Trace found himself mentally berating his ex-wife for how callously she’d left her son.

“Are you gonna be okay?” he asked, knowing damned well the boy wasn’t.

Eli lifted one shoulder.

Trace took his kid’s hand and helped Eli down the back steps. “Okay, let’s go see Tilly and Ed.” They trudged through the broken path of snow to the truck. “I think Tilly mentioned something about taking you on at checkers again.”

“She’ll lose,” Eli predicted.

“Big talk.”

“I’ll show you.” For the first time that day, Eli almost flashed his smile.

“Don’t show me. Show her.” Feeling that this latest emotional storm had been weathered, Trace bustled his kid into the truck. The boy really did need a mother, but he’d be damned if he’d go out looking for some woman for the sole purpose of helping him raise his son.

No reason for that.

For a second he thought of Eli’s doctor, Acacia Lambert. She, like Leanna, had auburn hair and a wide mouth, but that was where the resemblance faded. Where Leanna had blue eyes, the doc’s were closer to green and sparked with intelligence.

He wondered about her, what she was doing on Thanksgiving and, as he drove the quarter mile to the Zukovs’ place, had the unlikely pang that he wanted to spend more time with her.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered, turning off the plowed road and onto the rutted lane, where several cars had already parked around the Zukovs’ garage and pump house.

“What?” Eli asked.

“Oh, I was just thinking,” he covered up, nosing the truck into a space beneath a winter apple tree where clusters of red fruit were visible as they dangled on leafless, snow-covered branches.

“About what?”

“About what you’re gonna want for Christmas this year.”

“You said ‘Ridiculous,’ ” his son charged.

Trace cut the engine. “That I did, because I imagined you wanted a mountain bike.”

“Sweet!” Eli said, then paused and skewered his father with his concerned gaze. “Why would that be ridiculous?”

“Because you’re wearing a cast, kiddo!” He rumpled his son’s already unruly hair. “How dumb would that be to put you on a bike when you already have a broken arm?”

“I’ll be fixed by then!” Eli said, unbuckling his seat belt and reaching for the handle of the door. He hopped down to the snowy ground and was racing to the front porch before Trace could climb out of the truck.

The boy’s exuberance was infectious, and Trace felt only a smidgen of guilt for lying to his son. But he didn’t want to admit the cold, hard truth to Eli. Nor did he really want to think it himself.

But the fact was, he’d been having trouble pushing Acacia Lambert out of his mind.

And that spelled trouble, plain and simple.

The kind of trouble he didn’t need.

CHAPTER 11

Kacey didn’t like the place.

No matter how many “stars” or “diamonds,” or whatever the ranking was as far as retirement homes went, Rolling Hills just wasn’t her idea of “independent” living. But it didn’t matter. Her mother loved it here in this lavish, hundred-year-old hotel that had been converted into individual apartments. Her mother’s place, a two-bedroom unit on the uppermost floor, had an incredible view of the rooftops of Helena and, farther away, on the horizon, the mountains.

There was a pool and spa, exercise room, and car service, if one preferred not to drive their own vehicle, though each unit came with one parking spot in an underground garage.

The building was spacious, the amenities top-notch, and still, when Kacey walked through the broad double doors and signed in at the reception desk, she felt a pang of sadness for the home she’d once shared with her parents, a little bungalow with a big yard.

That’s what it is, she decided. There was nothing wrong with Rolling Hills other than it wasn’t the place she’d grown up and this was the place where her father, after suffering a stroke, had died.

“She’ll be right down,” the receptionist, a petite woman with narrow reading glasses and lips the color of cranberries, advised Kacey. “If you want to take a seat. .” She waved a hand toward a grouping of oversized chairs and a love seat near a stone fireplace that rose two full stories. Kacey crossed the broad foyer and stood before the glass-covered grate, where warmth radiated to the back of her legs.

For the past three years, ever since her divorce, Kacey had spent her Thanksgivings here, and she couldn’t help feeling a bit of nostalgia. Don’t go romanticizing your childhood. You know better. .

Maribelle, her mother, when invited to Kacey’s, had steadfastly refused, insisting Kacey make the trip to Helena instead.

“You must come here,” she’d intoned. “Chef Mitchell is a god when it comes to the menu, and neither one of