Chapter Fourteen
Sheridan once again felt a wave of sadness wash over her when her headlights swept over the body of the dead cow moose as she neared the Pickett house in the dark.
Ravens had already found it, and they took off en masse through the trees.
She knew they’d need to fire up her dad’s tractor to move the carcass farther into the forest off the road.
She couldn’t stand the idea of watching the moose be eaten away on a day-to-day progression by predators.
Seeing the moose again gave her another reason to find “Jason Witten” and “Marion Barber” as soon as possible. Those bastards.
As she arrived at the house, she was surprised to see Nate Romanowski’s battered Jeep parked out front next to April’s pickup. She pulled in beside it and turned off her lights and engine.
Sheridan glanced inside the Jeep when she walked past it, to note that Kestrel’s black plastic car seat was buckled in the back. It looked incongruous in Nate’s vehicle, which was usually filled with rifles, shotguns, climbing gear, animal parts, and hooded falcons perching on the headrests.
In fact, Sheridan nearly decked Kestrel when she opened the side door to the mudroom.
April was chasing the little girl, who whooped at the close call.
Kestrel managed to avoid the door as she ran athletically through the obstacle course of boots and shoes on the floor.
She escaped by ducking under April’s Frankenstein-like extended arms. After being eluded, April waved a quick hello to Sheridan, and then resumed her role as the monster-like pursuer of children.
Sheridan kicked off her shoes and she joined Lucy and Nate at the table in the dining room. There were several à la carte boxes of fried and rotisserie chicken on the table, with several pieces of each left. She grabbed a fried breast and bit a large hunk out of it.
“It was the best we could do,” Lucy said. Then: “What did you find out in town from…Steve?”
Sheridan ignored the “Steve” jibe. “It turned out to be mostly a bust. The hunter was the guy who called in the ambush, we think. But he had credibility issues.”
“Well, crap.”
“Yeah. But we might have learned some things. I’ll tell you all about them.”
Nate said nothing.
Sheridan eyed Nate closely as she ate. He was tall and rangy, with a long blond ponytail secured by a falcon’s jess.
As always, there was an almost surreal stillness about him.
She couldn’t tell from looking at him how much he knew about the ambush, or about the actions the Pickett sisters planned to take to find the shooters.
“I talked to Mom for a long time,” Lucy told Sheridan. She had to raise her voice because April was roaring in the hallway as she chased Kestrel. Sheridan could hear the furious pitty-pat of Kestrel’s stocking feet on the hardwood as she ran to avoid capture.
“What did she say?”
Lucy got her phone out and opened a notes app. “I wrote some of it down because I didn’t want to mess up the terminology,” she said. “This is all pretty complicated.”
Sheridan looked up at Nate. “So you know.”
“I do now,” Nate said in his whispery voice.
“Well, it’s not like we can just call you,” Sheridan said a little defensively.
It was true. Since Nate had returned from hunting Axel Soledad and was reunited with his daughter, he’d deliberately chosen to resume the ways he’d adopted for years before.
He stayed off the grid the best he could, meaning no cell phones, no social media, no computer even.
His presence on the internet stopped two years before, back when he was attempting to go legit as a husband, a small businessman, and then a father of a little girl.
Nate was still the primary owner of Yarak, Inc.
, the bird abatement company Sheridan managed.
She delivered monthly profit and loss reports to his mailbox herself, and she went to his house on his distant compound in person if she needed to talk anything over with him.
He seemed pleased with the way she was running the business, and he showed no inclination at all to step back in.
He was making up for lost time, he’d explained to Sheridan. Joe and Marybeth had taken Kestrel in while he was gone. Marybeth made no secret of the fact that she relished having a little one around her house again. So had her dad, although he wasn’t as ready to admit it.
But as far as Sheridan could tell, Nate was doing a surprisingly good job as a single father to Kestrel since Liv had been killed and Nate had returned.
He was singularly attentive to the little girl.
He read to her, kept her away from screens, and cooked her meals.
He also took her along with him everywhere he went.
When Nate needed someone to look after Kestrel, he relied on Joe and Marybeth primarily and Sheridan on occasion.
Kestrel seemed amazingly well-adjusted, Sheridan thought, even though the four-year-old had rarely interacted with children her age.
If she recalled the circumstances of her mother’s murder, it didn’t show.
And if she’d rather be playing at home instead of helping her father field dress and skin out a pronghorn antelope or elk, or feed a mews of falcons fresh chunks of meat, she didn’t protest that, either. Yet.
Kestrel was rambunctious, intelligent, and exceedingly verbal. She never stopped chattering, and Sheridan often wondered where she’d obtained her vocabulary living with the notoriously taciturn and at times obtuse Nate Romanowski.
Sheridan wasn’t yet comfortable having the conversation with Nate that she assumed her mother had brought up with him: What will you do when she gets older?
—
“Mom said the neurosurgeon had an important talk with her today,” April said. “They’re doing a hemicraniectomy.”
“What does that mean?”
“They’re cutting a hole in the side of his skull,” Lucy said.
“My God,” Sheridan said, lowering the piece of chicken. “He goes into the hospital with a bullet wound to his head and their way of treating it is to cut another hole into his head?”
“It’s normal, I guess. Opening a hole in the skull allows the brain to sort of ooze out. It’s a way of dealing with swelling.”
Sheridan interrupted again. “I thought that’s why they induced a coma in the first place—to reduce the swelling.”
“And it’s worked to a degree, Mom said. But this is the next step.”
“I think we need a second opinion. How many holes are they going to drill in his skull?”
Lucy shook her head. “It’s not like the brain shoots out or anything like that. Instead, it kind of swells out through the new hole like the top of a muffin.”
“A muffin?”
“That’s exactly the word she used. Think of a muffin top.”
“I’d rather not,” Sheridan said.
“Again, Mom stressed that the surgeon said it was standard operating procedure. The hole might remain open for a while, even when the brain stops swelling and it recedes back inside the skull.”
“What about the piece of skull they remove?” Sheridan asked. “What happens to that?”
“I asked the same question,” Lucy said. “I had this image of Dad walking around with a hole in his head. Well, apparently they can either fit the piece of skull right back into the hole, or they can make a new one with a 3D printer. Can you believe that?”
“It’s hard to imagine,” Sheridan said. “Do they know how bad the damage is yet?”
“Mom refuses to give us too much hope,” Lucy said.
“I think she’s protecting us, like we’re still little kids.
She doesn’t want us to think that he’ll definitely survive this, and if he does, she doesn’t want us to think he’ll be back to his old self.
I guess it all depends on where the bullet is lodged and how much damage it did on the way in.
It also depends on how much damage is done when they take it out.
“But I got a vibe from her,” Lucy said. “I got a vibe that maybe things aren’t as bad as they could be. That if it all goes well, he might come through okay. She didn’t say that, but I read it in her voice.”
“Does she want us there?” Sheridan asked.
“She didn’t say that.”
Sheridan and Lucy looked at each other for a few seconds, each with their own thoughts. They came to the same conclusion at the same time.
“If she thought he was going to die, she’d want us there,” Sheridan said.
“Exactly,” Lucy said.
“He’ll be fine,” Nate said, weighing in. “Joe has never really used all of his brain before, anyway.”
“Thanks for that,” Sheridan said with a sigh.
“I’ve known him a long time,” Nate said.
“So have we,” Lucy said. “All of our lives, in fact.”
—
“Did you tell her what we’re doing?” Sheridan asked Lucy.
“Not really. If I did, I think she’d want to get too involved,” Lucy said. “Or she’d insist that we stick tight and not take any chances. Either way, I made the executive decision that her time is best spent being up in Billings with Dad and not trying to run everything here.”
“Which she’d do,” Sheridan agreed.
“Can I say something that isn’t sarcastic?” Nate asked.
“Go ahead,” Sheridan said.
“Don’t underestimate your mother. You may want to bring her in if things get hairy. In fact, you may want to bring me in.”
“You can’t just start ripping the ears off of three ranch families in Twelve Sleep County,” Lucy said.
“That’s too bad,” Nate said. “They probably deserve it.”
—
At that moment, Kestrel zoomed into the dining room and buried herself in Sheridan’s arms. April appeared from the hallway and grinned.
“Is that monster after you?” Sheridan asked Kestrel.
“She is,” Kestrel said, breathing hard.
“April is very scary,” Sheridan said.
“She’s diabolical,” Kestrel said with emphasis.
“Where did she learn that word?” Sheridan asked, looking at Nate. He shrugged.
Back to Kestrel, Sheridan asked, “What do you think? Should Lucy and I go get her for you?”
Kestrel looked up, her eyes gleaming. “Yes, go get her.”
Sheridan looked over at Lucy, who was already placing her phone on the table. Lucy was game.
The two sisters tore out from their chairs and April turned and ran down the hallway. Their footsteps thundered through the house. Sheridan and Lucy pinned April to the bed in the guest room and held her down until Kestrel could catch up with them.
“Tickle her!” Lucy said. “Get the monster.”
Kestrel hesitated a second, then tickled April gently in her ribs with a single tiny finger. April knew to overreact. “Please, Kestrel, that’s enough! Stop it, Kestrel!”
So Kestrel did it again. And again. Until April gave up.
When they were through and untangling, April looked at her two sisters and said, “You know I can take you both, don’t you?”
“Yeah, we know,” Sheridan confessed.
“Speak for yourself,” Lucy said. “I’ve gotten stronger.”
“Ha!” April snorted.
It felt good, Sheridan thought. It had been years since the three of them had wrestled like that.
It had been years since they’d all been together for a meaningful length of time.
Usually in the past, when they tangled, April would do something underhanded to break up the scrum, like give Sheridan a wet willy or elbow Lucy in the throat. But she’d restrained herself this time.
As soon as they were all up off the bed and standing, Kestrel called out, “Monster, come get me!”
She ran from the bedroom looking over her shoulder at April, beckoning her to follow.
“She’s wearing me out,” April confided before once again giving chase.
—
Back at the table, with Kestrel watching Bluey in the family room, Sheridan briefed Nate on everything they knew thus far. Lucy and April added context and embellishments.
As they talked, Nate narrowed his eyes in anger twice. Once when Sheridan described her interaction with Deputy Bowkley and again when the sisters described their brief entrapment of Jason Witten and Marion Barber.
When they’d caught him up, Nate placed his hands flat on the table and looked from Sheridan to April to Lucy.
“Let’s go over your plan again,” he said.