Montana Creeds: Logan Read Online Free PDF Page A

“You can’t change the past—or other people. And the truth is, while things were pretty hard a lot of the time, I don’t regret marrying your dad.”
    Josh sniffled, perplexed. “You don’t?”
    Briana shook her head.
    “Why not? He’s chronically unemployed. When he does send a child-support check, it always bounces. Don’t you ever wish you’d married another kind of man? Or just stayed single?”
    Briana reached up, ran a hand over Josh’s ultrashort summer haircut. “I never wish that,” she said. “Because if I hadn’t married your dad, I wouldn’t have you and Alec, and I can’t even imagine what that would be like.”
    Josh ruminated. They’d had the conversation before, but he needed to be reminded, even more often than Alec did, that she was there for the duration, that she’d fight monsters for him, or walk through fire. For a year after Vance had left them, Josh had had nightmares, woke screaming for her. Alec had suffered, too, wetting the bed several times a week.
    “We’re a lot of trouble,” Josh said finally. “Alec and me, I mean. Fighting all the time, and not doing our chores.”
    “You’re the best things that ever happened to me,” Briana said truthfully, standing up straight. “It
would
be kind of nice if you and your brother got along better and did your chores, though.”
    The door to the boys’ bedroom creaked partway open, and Alec stuck his head out.
    “I’m done being mad now,” he said. His glance slid to Josh. “Mostly.”
    Briana laughed. “Good,” she replied, getting out the electric skillet to fry up chicken legs. “Both of you need to clean up. Josh, you go first. Shut down that computer and hightail it for the bathroom. Alec, you canwash here at the kitchen sink, and then we’ll go over your multiplication tables.”
    For once, Josh didn’t argue.
    Alec dragged the step stool over to the sink, climbed up and scrubbed his face and hands. “It’s
summer,
Mom,” he protested. “I bet the kids who go to
real
school aren’t worrying about any dumb old multiplication tables.”
    “Alec,” Briana said.
    “One times one is—”
    “Alec.”
    Alec rattled through his sixes, sevens and eights, the sequences that usually gave him trouble, before he got down off the step stool. Then he stood facing Briana, hands and face dripping.
    “I know Dad’s cell-phone number,” he said.
    Briana’s heart pinched. Alec lived for any kind of contact with Vance, no matter how brief or limited. He probably expected her to shoot down the visit like a clay bird on a skeet-shooting range, but he was willing to give her the information anyway.
    “That’s okay,” she said, a little choked up. Alec was only eight. Even after all the disappointments, and all Briana’s cautious attempts to explain, he simply didn’t understand why the four of them plus Wanda didn’t add up to a family anymore. “You know, of course, that your dad… changes his mind a lot? About visits and things like—”
    Alec cut her off with a glum look and a nod. “I just want to see him, Mom. I know he might not come.”
    Briana’s throat cinched tight. Vance was always chasing some big prize, some elusive victory, emotionallyblindfolded, stumbling over rough ground, trying to catch fireflies in his bare hands. Their marriage was over for good, but he still had their sons. They were smart, wonderful boys. Why were they always at the bottom of his priority list?
    “I know,” she said, at last. “I know.”
    C ASSIE STROKED the dog as she regarded Logan in her thoughtful way, seeing way inside. She looked completely at home in her skin, sitting there on the porch step. Unlike most of the women Logan knew, Cassie never seemed to fret about her weight—it was simply part of who she was. To him, she’d always been beautiful, a great and deep-rooted tree, sheltering him and his brothers under her leafy branches when they were young, along with half the other kids in the county. Giving them