The Brands of Montana

Chapter Two

“It’s time for our storm plan, Hannah. Tell me what we need to do.” Brock pulled the screen door open to their house. The rain was still misty, but he knew from experience that that could change on a dime.

Hannah was faithfully rattling off the steps of their storm plan when they reached the foyer safely. They had created the storm plan years ago, not only to keep safe, but to keep Hannah feeling calm and in charge during an emergency.

“Good job, baby girl.” Brock shut the door firmly behind them. Now that they were inside the house, he could take his anxiety level down a notch.

Hannah was on the ground yanking off her wet boots and he was knocking the excess water off his cowboy hat when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Brock hung his hat on a hook by the door before he walked around the corner toward the sound of the noise.

“Oh!” Casey exclaimed, balancing a full glass of water in one hand and Hercules in the other. “Hey! You’re back!”

“Why aren’t you in the cellar?”

“The rain and the wind stopped, so I figured we were in the clear,” she explained to him offhandedly on her way to greet his daughter. “You must be Hannah. I’m Casey. I’ve heard so much about you from my sister, Taylor.” Casey smiled at the preteen who was nearly as tall as she was. “And this is the awesome Hercules.”

Casey knew from her sister that Hannah was on the spectrum, so she understood when Brock’s daughter didn’t look her in the eye. She also knew that Hannah loved animals and it showed by the way Hannah reached over to gently pet Hercules.

“You can get acquainted in the cellar.” Brock moved behind his daughter and put his hands on her shoulders. “It may look like it now, but we’re not in the clear.”

“No?” Casey asked him.

“No,” he reiterated. “We all need to get down in the cellar. Now.”

* * *

For two hours, the three of them hunkered down in the cellar while the worst of the storm stalled in their region of the state. The wooden house creaked and groaned as the storm reenergized. She couldn’t see it, but she had been able to hear that the force of the wind was blowing debris against the sides of the house. Casey was grateful that fate had landed her in Brock’s cellar instead of being stranded out on a desolate road in a rented moving van. But her gratitude was beginning to give way to discomfort and claustrophobia. It was cool and damp down in the cellar—her skin felt clammy and she still felt chilled even after Brock gave her a blanket to wrap around her shoulders. Worse yet, the air was stuffy, and even though she had hoped she would be able to eventually ignore it, she hadn’t grown accustomed to the smell at all. It was reminiscent of her middle school locker room—body odor and dirty socks.

“Do you think it’s safe to go up yet?” Casey asked her host expectantly.

It had been at least fifteen minutes since the wind had knocked anything into the exterior of the house. The pounding sound that the driving rain had made as it pummeled Brock’s antiquated farmhouse had died down.

“Give it a few more minutes. The last funnel touched down mighty close to here.”

With a heavy sigh, Casey shifted her body to take pressure off her aching tailbone. Sitting on the floor had stopped being a fun option when she reached her thirties. She preferred a comfy couch or squishy chair. Sitting on the floor was for the birds.

“God—my poor sister. She has to be scared to death wondering where I am.” Casey readjusted the blanket on her shoulders. “You know—my horoscope did say that this was a bad time to travel.”

“You don’t really believe in that, do you?” he asked her.

“Only when they’re right,” she said with the faintest of laughs. “I’d say a broken-down truck, a tornado and getting stuck in your smelly cellar are three very strong indicators that it was a bad time for me to travel.”

She heard Brock laugh a little after she spoke, and then she realized what she had said. “That sounded really ungrateful.”

“It’s okay.”

“I am grateful,” she added. “I could still be out there, stuck.”

“I knew what you meant,” Brock reassured her.

“And now I’m babbling. If you want me to zip it, just tell me. I won’t be the least bit offended. My mom has told me that I was a precocious talker and I’ve had the gift of gab ever since I was a toddler. Of course, Mom doesn’t really mean that in the most positive of ways.”

“Talking makes the time go faster,” Brock reminded her.

“Well, now you’re probably just being nice, but that’s okay.”

“I haven’t been accused of that trait too often,” he replied humorously.

Hannah made a content noise as she snuggled closer to her father. Ladybug, the golden Lab that Brock and Hannah called Lady for short, lifted up her head to check on Hannah before putting her head back down on her front paws. It was endearing to see the closeness between Brock and his daughter. They were so bonded that it was hard to imagine a third person in that dynamic.

Casey was sure that there were many sides of Brock that she hadn’t seen—wasn’t that the case with all people? But he’d been nothing but nice to her, and he was so gentle with Hannah.

“I’ve never seen anyone connect with Hannah as quickly as you did,” Brock told her quietly.

Casey heard the admiration in his voice and it made her feel good. “I work with kids with all sorts of disabilities for a living—I guess it’s just second nature to me now.”

“What do you do again? I think your sister told me once, but I apologize—I forgot.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to remember something like that, anyway.” Casey uncrossed her legs to relieve the ache that had shifted from her tailbone to her knees. “I’m a special education teacher for Chicago public schools. I provide services for students who have individual education plans and need extra support to access the curriculum.”

“Is that right?” Brock asked. “Chicago has a reputation for having some pretty rough neighborhoods, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. Those rough areas were one of the main objections her father, a prominent judge in Chicago, had to her desire to become a teacher. For her mother, it was all about the prestige of the job and the money. Or lack thereof.

“I do work in a high-poverty school. It’s not easy, and, yes, there are too many problems to count, but my kids make the challenges worthwhile. Most of the kids I work with—they’re good kids. Great kids. They just need someone to care enough about them to help them succeed—to help them supersede their backgrounds.” Casey’s voice became more passionate as she continued. “Do you know that so many of the kids I serve wouldn’t have needed the services of a special education teacher if they hadn’t been born into poverty? They would have had the exposure to print and early literacy development, and different experiences to build background knowledge. And it’s not that the parents don’t want to provide their kids with the best start possible, but living hand-to-mouth...” Casey counted things on her fingers. “Food insecurity, illiteracy, lack of education and job opportunities, so many factors, that parents don’t have the time, or the energy, or the resources to read to their children, or provide them with those vital foundational skills. By the time these kids get to kindergarten, they’re already behind in all of those fundamental skills, like vocabulary and phonemic awareness... It’s really sad. Shameful, really.”

When Casey spoke about the kids she worked with in Chicago, her face lit up with excitement. It turned a rather ordinary face into one that was really quite extraordinary.

“You love your job.”

Casey gave him a little smile that was self-effacingly saying, What tipped you off?

“I really appreciate your passion for your work.” Brock seemed like he wanted to reassure her. To validate her. “Kids like my Hannah need teachers who are dedicated, who genuinely care about her success. You’re a hero to parents like me. I mean, the way you redirected Hannah and kept her calm... It was impressive.”

In the low light cast off from the lantern between them, their eyes met and held for the briefest of moments before Brock looked away. His dark hair, threaded with silver near the temple, was slicked back from his long face. His jawline was square, his brows heavy above deeply set blue eyes. When she was a scrawny teenager, and Brock was eighteen, she had thought he was so handsome—and she still did. But all signs of youthfulness had been worn from his face. The wrinkles on his forehead, around his mouth and eyes, were evidence of frowning and stress. This was a man who was under a major amount of pressure—she recognized the signs. She also recognized the signs of a devoted father. Whatever marital problems he was having—and she had heard from her sister that there were many—he hadn’t let them interfere with his dedication to Hannah.

“Well, thank you.” Casey felt her cheeks get a little warm. “I’m glad I could help.”

Hercules picked that moment to sit up, stretch, yawn and then take a large leap off her thigh and onto the blanket.

“Is that a real dog? Or do you have to wind it every morning?” Brock had turned his attention to her teacup-sized poodle that had just made the large leap off her leg onto the blanket.

“Hey! Don’t pick on Hercules!” Hannah scooped Hercules up and kissed him several times. “Though he may be but little, he is fierce!”

“Now it’s getting serious. You brought Shakespeare to the table?” Brock teased her.

Hercules gave a little yap and ran around in a circle.

“A little Shakespeare never hurt anyone.”

“Speak for yourself,” he retorted. “I took a class on Shakespeare in college. Worst semester of my life.”

“It pains me to shift the subject away from Shakespeare, because I happen to be a fan, but I think—” she nodded her head toward her pocket poodle “—he needs a bathroom break. He does have a microscopic bladder, after all—poor baby.”

“Okay.” Brock shook Hannah’s shoulder to wake her. “I think it’s safe to go topside.”

Ignoring the stiffness in her joints from sitting for too long in one position, Casey stood up quickly, shed the blanket, scooped up Hercules and tucked him into the crook of her arm.

She was the caboose, and followed Brock, his daughter and their dog up to the main floor.

“Oh, wow.” Casey walked to the closest window.

The storm had torn through the ranch, littering the yard with large, broken tree branches, overturned equipment and missing shingles from the roof of the barn.

“What a mess,” she said to Brock.

“I’m going to check on the horses.” The ranch foreman shrugged into a rain slicker. “Will you watch Hannah?”

She agreed to watch his daughter, of course. And, once both dogs had the chance to take care of business, Casey and Hannah took their canine companions back inside. It was drizzling outside, and the gray sky was so dreary, but it seemed as if the worst of the storm had finally passed them by.

“Do you have a landline, Hannah?”

Hannah showed her the phone on the other side of the refrigerator. She had periodically tried to get reception with her cell phone while they were in the cellar, without any luck. Now that they were out of the cellar, she still wasn’t having any luck with reception.

Relieved to hear a dial tone when she picked up the receiver, she dialed her sister’s number and silently begged her sister to answer.

“Hello?”

“Taylor! Thank goodness I got you!”

“Casey! I saw Brock’s number on caller ID. I wasn’t expecting to hear your voice, but I’m so glad it’s you! I’ve been trying to get you on your cell phone for hours!”

“I knew you had to be freaking out. I’m sorry—the truck broke down, then the tornado... It’s been a crazy day. How did you fare through the storm?”

“We’re fine—we’ll have to clean up the loose branches in the yard, but it could have been much, much worse. I’m just glad that you’re okay,” her sister said. “I didn’t want you to drive all of my stuff here by yourself, anyway. And you said the truck broke down?”

“Small fire in the engine, yes.”

“Ca-sey! I knew it was a bad idea!”

Casey heard the sound of her niece crying in the background. Penelope had been born premature and was prone to ear infections. She didn’t say anything to her sister, but Taylor sounded exhausted.

“Tay—I wanted to do it, so I did it. I’m fine. Brock happened to show up at an opportune time, so no harm done.”

There was a pause on the end of the line.

Then Taylor said, “I was wondering how you wound up with Brock.”

When her sister said her brother-in-law’s name, there was an underlying dislike in her tone. Casey knew from many conversations with her sister that Brock and her new husband, Clint, had a long-standing fractured relationship. From what she understood, Clint didn’t like Brock any more than Brock liked him. And the only glue that bound them together was Hannah.

“He kept me safe. And he’s been really nice to me.”

“Well.” Her sister seemed reluctant to give Brock a compliment. “That’s good at least.”

Casey smiled at Hannah, who was sitting at the table with an iPad while Lady took her position at Hannah’s feet.

“And I’ve had a chance to make friends with Hannah,” she said. “I hear my niece. How’s she doing?”

“She’s sick again.” This was said with the tired voice of a first-time mother. “She hasn’t slept, so I haven’t slept. Clint broke his collarbone down in Laredo...”

“Oh, no, Tay—I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“It couldn’t be worse timing—the only upside is that he’s coming home early. His best friend, Dallas, is going to drive him back and then we’ll buy her a plane ticket to get her to the next stop on the circuit.”

Taylor’s husband was a professional bull rider; Casey didn’t know how her sister, who was once married to a metrosexual man, could have wound up marrying a cowboy. But they seemed to just fit.

“He’ll be home all summer then.” Casey said the thought as soon as she thought it.

“That collarbone is going to be a tough one to heal, so I think he’ll be out of the running this season. Maybe this will be the one that makes him rethink his career.”

Still thinking about Taylor’s small bungalow on the outskirts of Helena, Casey didn’t respond right away. It must have clicked in Taylor’s mind what she was thinking, because her sister hastened to say, “There’s plenty of room here, Casey. I still want you to stay with us for the summer.”

“Let’s not worry about it now.” Casey rubbed her temples. “First thing I need to do is find out from Brock if the roads are even passable now so I can check on the truck. I don’t think he’ll mind taking me all the way into Helena if it saves you a trip.”

“Call me as soon as you know the plan. Promise?”

“Of course. I love you, sis. Give Penny a kiss from me. I’ll see you soon.”

Casey used the restroom and then joined Hannah at the table. Hannah was looking at a large diagram of a ladybug’s anatomy. Like many children diagnosed with autism, Hannah had become fixated on a topic, and that topic was ladybugs. The bathroom was decorated with ladybugs—ladybug shower curtain, ladybug toothbrush holder, ladybug towels. There was a ladybug on Hannah’s shirt and Casey had spotted a ladybug backpack hanging on one of the hooks in the foyer. Their dog was named Ladybug. One of the ways she had distracted Hannah from being scared in the cellar was to redirect to conversations about ladybugs. Once Hannah got started talking about the topic that interested her most, she forgot about the storm and talked at length about the insects. Although Brock was impressed with her ability to pinpoint Hannah’s interest, it wasn’t rocket science. All she had to do was pay attention to observable details, which was part of her job as a special education teacher.

“What else do you have on your iPad?” she asked, curious to see Hannah’s reaction.

“Stuff,” Hannah replied without looking up from the screen.

Brock’s daughter wasn’t interested in showing her any other apps on the iPad—not in the middle of looking at ladybugs.

The door to the house swung open. Brock peeled off his wet rain slicker and tossed it onto a rocking chair just outside the front door. He stepped into the foyer, stomped his feet on the rug and slapped the rain off his hat by hitting it across his thigh a couple of times.

“How’s it looking out there?” Casey asked.

Brock shook his head as he closed the front door tightly behind him. “It’s a mess.”

He joined them in the kitchen—it wasn’t a tiny kitchen, but with Brock in it, it seemed to shrink before her eyes. He had been a tall, lanky young man the last time she had seen him. Now he was a large man, taller than most and burly. He was active and strong, but he had developed a bit of a paunch around the middle. A lumberjack. That’s what he reminded her of—a Paul Bunyan lumberjack. Not many of those running around Chicago.

“I got ahold of Taylor.”

Brock had just downed a glass of water and he was filling it up again. “Good. She doing okay?”

“Penny’s sick again and Clint broke his collarbone, so he’s heading back from Texas. She said that she weathered the storm okay, though. Just a couple of small branches in the yard. Nothing major.” She noticed that Brock’s demeanor didn’t change at all when she mentioned that his stepbrother had gotten hurt. “What’s the chance of you getting me into Helena tonight?”

“Zip.” He put the empty glass on the cluttered counter. “Downed trees are blocking the major roads into town.”

“You’re not serious?” Casey said with a frustrated sigh. “You are serious.”

“I can take you to Bent Tree or you can bunk with us tonight,” Brock said. “Hannah—it’s time to feed Lady. Turn off the iPad.”

Hannah didn’t respond.

“Hannah.”

“Just one more thing.” Hannah didn’t look up—her entire focus was on the screen.

Brock was tired and she could see that he was losing patience.

“Here—let’s do this, Hannah. I’m going to set my timer to one minute and when the timer goes off, you can turn off the iPad.”

The timer on her phone was set, the one minute ran out and Hannah, albeit reluctantly, turned off the iPad and tended to Lady’s needs.

Brock didn’t say it with words, but there was a definite thank-you in his eyes when he looked at her.

“I don’t know if I have the energy to face my aunt and uncle right now. But are you sure it would be okay if I crashed here tonight?”

“It’s no problem. You can take my bed upstairs and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No—I’ll take the couch.”

“No—you’ll take my bed. I sleep on the couch most nights, anyway.”

Sleeping in a bed instead of on a couch sounded like a much better scenario. If the bed were usually empty anyway, what would it hurt to take him up on his offer?

“All right—but only if you’re sure.”

He didn’t respond to that comment, but instead moved the conversation forward. “We’ll get a good night’s sleep, have breakfast and then we can stop off and check on the truck on our way to Helena.”

“Oh.” Casey groaned the word. “Geez. The truck. I hope the Beast is okay.”

Chapter Three

By nature, she was a light sleeper. Always had been. But the night she had spent in Brock’s massive California king-size bed had been one of her deepest sleeps on record. Perhaps it was the fact that she had been flat-out exhausted, or maybe it was the silky-soft material of the sheets. Either way, she had awakened from her sound sleep in the dead center of the bed, surrounded by a pile of plump pillows that had to be Brock’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s doing, feeling happy and content. She didn’t even scramble out of bed, as was her usual practice. Instead, she opted to linger a bit, staring up at the ceiling with the comforter pulled all the way up to her nose.

“Dad says get up!” Hannah burst into the room without knocking.

Shocked out of her random, drifting thoughts, Casey popped upright, her long auburn hair a mass of tangles. Hercules was vaulted forward, but he landed on all four paws. He waggled his tail and yapped at Hannah.

“If you want to come into someone’s room, what is the polite thing to do?” Casey asked.

“Knock.”

Casey gave the preteen two thumbs-up. “Okay—try it again.”

“What?”

“Knocking before you come in. You knock, wait for an answer and then you come in. But only if I say it’s okay. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Hannah slammed the door shut, causing Hercules to yap wildly. Casey heard a knock on the door, but she waited for a couple of seconds before she answered just to make certain Hannah wouldn’t burst in without getting the green light.

“Come in!”

Hannah flung open the door again with a laugh. “Breakfast!”

“Thank you, Hannah. Nice waiting, too.” Casey smiled at the girl. “Can you do something for me? Would you take Hercules out to use the bathroom while I get dressed?”

Brock’s daughter’s face beamed at the thought of being able to carry Hercules for the first time.

“I know you’ll make sure he’s okay.” Casey was reassuring herself as much as she was reassuring Hannah. It was hard to let Hercules out of her sight. He was so small and vulnerable. But she had heard about Hannah’s affinity for animals from Taylor, and she had seen how kind she was with her own dog, Lady.

Casey yawned several times, wiped the sleep out of her eyes and stretched her arms high above her head, before she scooted to the edge of the bed with a dramatic sigh. Rest time was officially over for her. Today, she had to go see how the Beast had fared in the storm, figure out how to get it towed if need be and then figure out whether or not she was just going to stay for a short visit with her sister and then head back to Chicago. She wanted to stay in Montana for the summer—it was too late to put in a request to work summer school. And she had been looking forward to this trip for months. She’d hate for it to all fall apart, but she couldn’t imagine staying with Taylor and Clint, in their small rental, for three months. Even though Taylor would try very hard to make her feel like she wasn’t a bother, she knew that she would, in fact, be an intrusion on the newlyweds.