We heard Crane before we saw him. He called out a hello as he walked through the front door and there was a split-second pause where we all looked confused before we jumped up from the table and raced to the living room to meet him. Guthrie stood up so quickly that he knocked his chair backwards and Evan practically jumped over the table in an effort to get there quicker. All of us younger kids, including Daniel, threw ourselves at Crane, bowling him over and ending up in a tangled heap of arms and legs on the floor. There was a deafening din of "What are you doing here?" and "We missed you!" from everyone, speaking at once until Adam and Brian started unpeeling us, laughing, from the ground in order to save Crane who at this point was breathless and winded. Brian offered Crane a hand to help him up and then pulled him into a hug and then Adam put a hand on the side of Crane´s face and said, "Crane, not that we´re not thrilled to see you, but what are you doing here?"
That´s when I started to feel rising panic. I knew he had come because of what I had written in my letter and I knew that while I hadn´t misbehaved or anything, neither Adam, nor Brian would be pleased with me if they thought I was calling Crane back from college to deal with a family matter which they would argue they could take care of without him. But I should have known that Crane would be more sensitive to the situation.
"My Monday and Tuesday classes got cancelled this week because my professors are going to a conference and I missed you guys, so I thought it would be the perfect time to visit home," he said.
I breathed out a sigh of relief, not even having noticed that I had been holding my breath.
"How did you get here?" Ford asked him.
"I took the bus and then old Harrison was kind enough to drop me off."
"The bus must have been expensive though, right?" Brian asked.
"Don´t worry about it. I´m good at managing money, if you remember. Now if you´re done with the inquisition, I´m starving! What´s for supper?"
We all laughed. Adam put his arm around him and ruffled his hair and we all headed back to the table, everyone talking to Crane at once about what they had been doing and asking him questions about his life at college. As we were heading back to the table, Brian caught my eye. I smiled at him and he smiled back, but there was a look in his eye which I didn´t like- like he was suspicious of me or something. He didn´t say anything though so I imagined I was being paranoid and went to enjoy the fact that we were, if only for the moment, all together again.
/
Crane spent the rest of the evening telling us all about his life at college. About his classes and his professors and his dorms and the new friends he had made. Daniel and Evan asked about the parties and the girls and Crane winked at them and told them he would fill them in later.
Guthrie showed uncharacteristic stubbornness at bedtime when Adam announced it was time for the two of us to head upstairs.
"Please let us stay up, Adam," he implored, giving him his most piteous face. Guthrie had a really sweet looking face when he was younger: it worked on everybody except Adam.
"No, buddy, not tonight. Go on now," Adam said.
Guthrie crossed his arms in defiance and looked like he might be deciding to set in for an argument which surprised me. He would never win and he knew it. Maybe he was just feeling ornery.
"I want to stay down here with Crane," he said stubbornly, making no effort to move from his place on the couch.
"Guthrie," Adam said, quietly but sternly, pinning him with a hard look. He motioned with his head that Guthrie should go on up the stairs. If I were Guthrie at that moment, I would have run for the hills.
Ever the peacemaker, Crane said, "C´mon partner, how about I read to you and Heidi tonight," to which Evan said immediately, "But you won´t be long, Crane, right? I mean you´re coming back down?"
"Sure."
"Come on, Guthrie," I said softly, pulling his arm. It makes me really tense when Guthrie gets into trouble. I mean, I don´t much enjoy seeing any of my brothers go up against Adam or Brian, but when Guthrie does it, I feel really anxious and my heart starts to beat really quickly.
Adam was still fixing Guthrie with a look, which all of us knew too well. Guthrie seemed to come to his senses at the last minute and sighing, stood up to follow me upstairs.
I woke up once a little bit later to the sounds of faint murmurs coming from downstairs and felt happy and secure knowing that my three oldest brothers were sitting downstairs talking and hanging out, just like it used to be.
/
The next morning, I was out doing my chores, collecting the eggs in the chicken coop before breakfast. I had just finished and was dusting off my hands on my jeans and reaching for the egg basket when I heard the sound of someone coming up behind me.
"Hi, little one."
I turned, to see Crane standing there, wearing his chaps.
"Hi. Have you been out riding already?" I asked.
"Yea, been up for a while. Adam and I cleared some brush."
"Oh," I said. I felt a bit awkward, not because of Crane or anything, just because I didn´t know whether to mention my letter or whether to let Crane bring it up.
"I´ll probably go into Murphys later this morning, and I was wondering if you wanted to go with me?" he said, reaching out to take the basket of eggs from me.
"Just you and me?"
"Yea. Would be nice to spend some time together, don´t you think?" he said.
"What about the others?" I asked.
Crane looked at me in confusion.
"What about them?"
"Won´t they want to come with us? And don´t you want to spend some time with Daniel?"
Crane smiled at me and then put his arm around me, leading me up the house. "You just let me worry about the others and Daniel, ok?"
"Ok."
/
Crane dropped me off at the library and told me he would come and pick me up when he was done at the bank and the feed store. He told me to use the clock on the library wall to meet him outside in 45 minutes. When I hopped back into the truck, I told him all about the new books I had taken out and then he said, "Want to go for an ice cream sundae with me at The Scoop?"
I nodded eagerly. "Uh huh! Can I get one to myself?" Adam always made me share with someone as he said I´d never finish a whole one.
Crane looked at me out the side of his eye. "You think you can finish a whole one?"
"I don´t know," I admitted. "But I´d like to try!"
Crane laughed. "Ok."
When we got there, Crane and I were the only customers, probably because it was mid-morning and not the most apt time to be eating ice cream. We sat facing each other in a booth at the back and were served by Bonnie Bryson according to her name tag, who seemed to know Crane and asked him all about college with a lot of smiling and giggling.
"She was a year below me in school," Crane said by way of explanation once Bonnie had left the table.
I shrugged. "K."
"So," said Crane quietly, absently tearing at a napkin from the dispenser, "Let´s talk about your letter."
I shifted slightly in my seat. "I didn´t mean for you to come, Crane. I just thought you´d call and talk to Daniel and then he would feel better," I said quickly.
Crane stopped tearing strips out of the napkin and put it down, pushing it away.
"I know that. What I said was true. I came because I missed you guys and had some cancelled classes."
We fell into silence for a second when Bonnie brought Crane his cup of coffee and me my lemonade. She told us our sundaes wouldn´t be too long.
I took a sip of my drink which had come with a straw. "How come you didn´t tell Adam or Brian?" I asked him curiously.
Crane shrugged as he poured some milk into his coffee. "I just didn´t want to make a big deal out of anything. But if you want the truth, I think they already know."
I looked at him in horror. "How come?"
Crane fixed me with a wry look. "I love you, little one, but you´re not as slick as you think you are."
"Oh man… do you think they´re mad?" I said.
He shook his head. "I don´t think so." He took a sip of his coffee. "Tell me about what´s been going on with Daniel."
So I told Crane in detail all about how Daniel seemed to be on another planet half the time and about how mad Adam had been when he had come home drunk.
"It´s just not the same at home now that you´re away. Daniel´s so sad and it´s like he doesn´t even like any of us anymore. And no one does my reading with me," I finished, my eyes filling up with tears I didn´t even know were threatening. I hastily wiped them away.
"Well… you don´t really need anyone to read with you. You´re a fantastic reader. Always have been," he said, choosing not to acknowledge my tears.
"Then how come you always read with me?"
"To spend time with you, I guess." He smiled at me. "I read to you a lot when Mom and Dad first died. You and Guthrie both screamed the house down every night for almost a year. Guthrie would only go to sleep if he was in a moving vehicle so Adam or Brian would put him in the car and drive around nearby with him until he fell asleep. You on the other hand, would quieten down if we read to you. So I used to do a lot. And then when you started to read on your own, I never stopped."
That was the first time that anyone had ever told me that. No one really talked about the early days when our parents had first died. I think remembering the chaos was too much to bear for them.
I smiled at Crane. "I miss reading with you," I said and he smiled at me. "Me too."
Bonnie brought our order then. We had both ordered hot fudge sundaes but mine had vanilla ice cream and Crane had chocolate. It truly was huge and I understood why Adam always made me share. Crane must have seen me looking at it dauntingly because he said kindly to me, "Just eat what you can."
I took a spoonful of my sundae which tasted so good and then I said with a full mouth, "Do you think you can help Daniel to feel better."
Crane looked like he was considering and then he said, "I´ve got a couple of ideas but don´t expect any miracles, ok?"
We talked about other things then over our sundaes. I told him in more detail about Olivia although I´d mentioned her before and I said that I hoped that I would be able to sway Adam and Brian on the subject of pierced ears to which Crane smiled and said, "Fat chance."
I also told him about the book I was reading and about Evan reading a rodeo magazine in church and he laughed and rolled his eyes. And then I mentioned that I had been sick and about how often Mr Atwood had visited. Crane didn´t look particularly surprised.
"You know already!" I exclaimed. "Did they tell you? It´s so unfair, Crane- you get to know everything and I get to know nothing!"
"You´re a child, Heidi. It´s not your place or your problem to know everything that goes on," Crane said, more firmly that he usually talks to me, which subdued me slightly but not much.
"Well, when am I going to know why he was over so many times?" I demanded.
Crane raised his eyebrows at my tone. "When and if it turns out to concern you," he said, in the same firm tone. "Now, eat your ice-cream."
Crane changed the subject then and even though I knew what he was doing, I allowed myself to be distracted. I could only manage three quarters of my sundae until I was stuffed to the brim.
"You´ve done a fair job on that," Crane said.
"I´m so full. I´m not sure I can move!" I told him, patting my stomach.
He laughed. "You´ve definitely had your sugar fill for the month. Come here, you´ve got sauce all around your mouth." He wiped my face with a napkin before I took it from him and finished it myself.
Crane signaled to Bonnie that he wanted to pay and then we slid out the booth. I really felt like I would have to roll home, I was so full of ice cream and I told Crane so.
He knelt down and patted his shoulder. "In that case, hop on. I´ll give you a piggyback ride to the car."
/
It was later that day when I heard a car drive up outside. Adam and Brian were out on the ranch, Evan and Guthrie were down at the stables with Diablo, and Crane had taken Daniel out somewhere so it was just Ford and me in the house. Ford had a big science project due in a week and he was working on making his presentation on colored cards. I was just hanging around, talking to him and watching him.
I pulled back the netting at one of the windows in the living room to see a youngish woman with short, really blonde hair get out the car holding a cake. She was slim and pretty, in a kind of obvious way, but her clothes were really tight. She didn´t look like anyone who came from around here. She looked around her for a second and then she took a deep breath and walked up the path to the house.
"Ford, there´s a lady coming to the house holding a cake," I said to him from where I was standing.
Ford looked up from what he was doing. "Who is it? Someone from church?"
"No, I´ve never seen her before," I said.
I went to answer the door but Ford pulled me back. "I´ll get it," he said.
He opened the door and I stood, not far behind me, looking at the woman curiously. Up close I could see that her nails were really red and long, like talons almost.
"Hi… can I help you?" Ford said to her.
The woman looked kind of nervous but she smiled at us. "Hi… uh… I was hoping to speak to… well, I´m looking for Adam McFadden."
"He´s not in the house," I offered and Ford turned to glare at me.
"He´s around somewhere on the ranch," he said. "I don´t know when he´ll be back."
If the visitor had been a man, I don´t think Ford would have felt comfortable doing what he did next. It´s not like we had been raised to be scared of strangers as it was such a small town, but it was a bit weird to have a complete outsider just show up at the door. In any case, she looked completely non-threatening.
"Do you want to come in and wait for him?" Ford asked, stepping back.
The woman smiled at him and said, "That´s kind, thank you."
She stepped into the house and then handed me the cake. "I brought a cake. It´s chocolate. Does your family like chocolate?"
"Everybody!" I said to her and she looked a bit relieved. I took the cake and put it down on the kitchen table. When I went back to the living room, the woman was sitting on one of the couches with her bag next to her, sort of looking around her.
"How do you know Adam," I asked her curiously. She wasn´t much older than Adam but she didn´t look like the kind of woman he would ever be interested in. She didn´t even look much like Brian´s type either, but he was more non-discerning.
"I know your family… kind of…," the woman said softly.
Ford and I exchanged a look. This was just plain strange.
She got up and walked over to the fireplace and picked up a picture of our parents which sat there. In it, they have their arms wrapped around each other and they´re laughing into the camera. She ran a finger over the frame, as though she were caressing it or something.
"These are your parents," she said, more like a statement than a question.
"Yea… they died six years ago," I said.
The woman looked up from the photo sadly at me and Ford. "I know…" she said quietly.
I was feeling really creeped out now. It´s not that the woman was emitting an air of danger, it was more like I sensed that something wasn´t quite right. I know that Ford sensed it too, because he came to stand right next to me.
"Uh… maybe you should come back later; Adam could be a while," Ford said to her.
But the woman shook her head and went back to sit on the couch. "No thank you, I´d like to wait."
She asked us a bunch of questions about ourselves, including our names, and then she asked questions about the family and our lives. Ford and I answered her politely but we didn´t give any more information than was necessary. We asked her her name and she said it was Stacey but she didn´t volunteer her last name.
Thankfully, it wasn´t too long, maybe only 30 minutes or so until we heard the thump of boots coming through the back door and the rumble of Adam and Brian´s voices. I heaved an internal sigh of relief and said to the Stacey, "That´s Adam now."
I ran to the kitchen where Adam was putting on the coffee maker and Brian was washing his hands at the sink.
"Adam!"
"Hi honey. Where´d the cake come from?" he asked, pointing to the cake on the table.
"A lady brought it. Her name is Stacey. She´s in the living room- she says she wants to speak to you."
Brian laughed and slapped Adam on the back. "Got somethin´ to tell me, brother?" he said.
Adam ignored him and muttered to himself, "Stacey… I don´t know a Stacey." He walked round into the living room, followed by Brian and me.
Stacey had stood up from the couch by now and was wringing her hands nervously. Ford was perched on the piano stool.
There was a second of silence while Adam and Brian registered her presence and then Brian held up his hands and yelled, "What the hell?! I don´t believe this! How dare you just show up at our house?"
"Brian," Adam said, in warning to him, trying to get him to calm down like he always does when he loses his cool, but Brian wasn´t to be deterred.
"No, Adam. She has no right. This is our house and she can´t just show up like this uninvited and especially unannounced!"
"How long as she been here?" he demanded to Ford and I.
"Less than an hour," Ford said softly, "Brian, what´s the matter, who is she?"
Stacey was still wringing her hands and she looked really upset at Brian´s yelling. "I just wanted to show you that we want to make amends. He really wants to see you all. Tell you and show you how sorry he is," she said.
"Sorry for what?" I asked, confused. Stacey opened her mouth to answer me but she didn´t get far before Adam cut her off.
"Brian´s right. We heard about your father´s request and we´re dealin´ with it in our own way. It´s not acceptable that you just turn up here."
He walked to the door and opened it. "Please leave."
"Adam what´s going on?" Ford said shakily but Adam ignored him.
"Adam!" he said again.
"Hush, Ford," he said."
Stacey looked around her for a moment pleadingly and then she picked up her bag from the couch and walked out the door and down the path. Adam shut it behind her. Brian´s face was still a storm cloud of anger and he was pacing muttering, "Unbelievable!" His whole body was tense, like he wanted to pounce.
There was a moment of silence and then Brian looked at Adam and said, "Call Atwood."