Redwood Bend

young.”
“She’ll be dancing on my grave,” Dylan said.
“She’s going to have a great-grandchild. My guess is she didn’t think she ever would. Tell her.”
“I’ll tell her when I’m ready,” he said.

Seventeen

D ylan wanted to languish in bed with Katie, but he was up, putting on the coffee she wasn’t drinking these days. His first overnight in her house, she had been the first one up, dressed, making coffee, greeting the day. But that probably had been the night he put the curse of sleepiness and morning sickness on her.
The cabin was very quiet and he didn’t put on his boots. He wanted Katie to sleep as long as possible. When the coffee was brewed, he took a cup outside to the porch. He moved quietly in his stocking feet; there was a little movement in the trees at the edge of the clearing and he spied a fawn, nibbling at the grass under a tree. This was so like home....
He remembered how shell-shocked he’d been when Adele had yanked him out of his mother’s eight-thousand-square-foot house and toted him off to parts unknown. Adele had had a maid help pack two suitcases… Dylan had never traveled with so little. Adele had said to Cherise, “The boy’s in trouble. My son is deceased, you’re filming in Sri Lanka for the next six months, there’s no one but staff to look after him and his best friend is dead…do yourself a favor—don’t argue with me. Give me a chance. I failed his father, maybe I won’t fail him…”
Cherise had replied, “I should call my lawyer…”
And Adele had said, “Have your lawyer call my lawyer. You know I only want Dylan. Whatever you want is undoubtedly easier.”
He remembered like it was yesterday.
Dylan was pulled out of his concrete world where everything was about him and taken to what seemed, at first glance, a jungle. An amazing, beautiful, astonishing wilderness, but still… Nothing in those suitcases worked for him so some grizzled old ranch hand who worked on the property drove him in an old pickup truck to the next big town to buy Wranglers, what he called a proper belt, some boots and most important, underwear that wouldn’t embarrass him in the high school boy’s locker room.
Dylan chuckled silently. In Los Angeles he had to have designer boxers, silk. In Payne he couldn’t drop his drawers unless he wore tightie whities. Really cheap tightie whities.
Ham washed his new clothes a dozen times so they wouldn’t look new. “One pair o’ new ain’t a bad thing,” he had said. “ All new’ll prolly get you beat up. Get out in the barn with those boots—work ’em over. And while you’re scuffing ’em up, muck them stalls.”
“Great,” Dylan remembered saying. And he had caressed his face. Get beat up? His primary job was to keep himself ready for the camera. If he was always ready to perform, he could have any other thing he wanted. In. The. World.
He’d been an actor since the age of six, starting with commercials, so he acted like a Montana kid in worn jeans, scuffed boots and really bad underwear. And while he was acting, he blended. While he blended, he started to like where he was—but he kept that to himself for as long as possible.
He had noticed things, however. It had been early spring when Adele snatched him and before he’d been in Montana long his shoulders had grown bulky from pitching hay and mucking stalls in the barn; his face had tanned and his hair was streaked from the sun, his Wranglers were worn in the knees and butt and he’d seen the shy appearance of new babies around his property—fawns, lambs, one foal, a couple of calves, cubs.
And old concrete jungle superstar Dylan Childress began to fall in love with the country, with nature.
The fawn at the edge of the clearing came into full view; the doe behind him was still half-hidden in the trees. And Dylan heard rustling in the kitchen. He put his coffee on the porch floor beside his chair and, moving slowly and quietly, peeked in the cabin. Andy was rooting around in the refrigerator.
“Psst,” Dylan whispered. When Andy looked at him he put a finger to his lips, warning him to be quiet. Then he crooked a finger for Andy to come to him. He very quietly led Andy to the porch. He sat down and brought Andy to stand between his legs and pointed toward the deer. “Look,” he whispered.
Andy let out a little excited gasp.
“Mother and child,” Dylan whispered. “The kid’s getting pretty big. You should see ’em when they’re brand-new, when they