Thunder Creek

Chapter 1 It had rained the day Katy Templeton left her family ranch in Thunder Creek, Wyoming, for a new life far from all of her childhood memories, and it rained the day she came home. Pouring, gunmetal-gray rain that tumbled in violent sheets, soaking the towering Laramie Mountains and drenching the grazing lands all through the beautiful winding bluegrass country where she'd spent the first eighteen years of her life. The first fourteen of those years had been happy, carefree, and sunny--the last four hell on earth. The girl who'd left was running away from the pain of loss and loneliness that had left her shaken and reeling inside, a pain that made her never want to look back--but the woman now returning was trying to find something she'd lost. She wasn't sure what it was or where she'd lost it, she only knew that when her mother called her in New York on Sunday morning and told her about her grandmother getting pneumonia and Bessie's Diner all boarded up and closed, about her parents' planned trip to Paris, their first vacation in fourteen years, which her father was all set to cancel, it had seemed like the only right thing to do was go home. Home. What did that mean anymore? Katy wondered wryly as she wheeled her bag through the Natrona County airport in Casper. For the past few years, home had been too many places--and she didn't really belong to any of them. She wasn't sure she belonged here either, not anymore, but she was needed, at least for a while, and so she had come. But the moment she saw her father striding toward her, his grim face looking grayer, sterner, and even more downcast than usual, a knot tightened in her stomach and she wondered if this was really what she needed after all. Dad hadn't been the same since the accident, since Matt died, and neither had she. Actually, nothing had. Certainly not Thunder Creek. That's why she'd left. But Gram needs you, and so does Mom, she told herself--and in a way, her father did too. He was going to take Mom to Paris if they both had to drag him by the boots kicking and screaming all the way. The image of her plump little ash-blonde mother dragging Big John Templeton by his boots had her grinning even as she dropped her bag and threw her arms around her father. "Hi, Daddy, you didn't have to come. I told you I could rent something." "Reckon I can pick up my own daughter when she comes to town," he grunted. Their hug was brief--he broke it first, as always withdrawing from any physical or emotional contact beyond the bare minimum. His gray eyes, the color of the rain torrenting down, squinted at her beneath his hat, taking in her aqua silk sweater and chic black skirt, the delicate diamond drop at her throat, as if wondering where this strangely citified creature had come from. "You look mighty fancy," he grunted. "I hopped a plane straight from work." "When are you going back?" "When I'm good and ready." She spoke evenly, then softened her words with a smile that had beguiled bankers and CEOs in half a dozen states and a few European capitals. Almost, Big John Templeton smiled back, but he managed to swallow the urge just in time. He gave another grunt and seized the handle of her wheeled bag in one calloused fist. "Let's go, your mother's waiting to see you. But if you think your being here is going to make me go on that damned trip, you can just turn around and scoot back on that plane." We'll see about that, Katy thought, but merely fell silently into step beside him, sensing this was not the time to argue. She'd inherited her father's iron will and felt herself every bit a match for him, but she'd also learned to pick her battles and when to fight them. And the moment she set foot in Natrona County was not the right moment to fight. So instead she tried to let herself adjustGregory, Jill is the author of 'Thunder Creek', published 2003 under ISBN 9780440237327 and ISBN 0440237327.