“You were judged guilty,” she said firmly. Her eyes flashed. “Everyone agreed. I don’t understand how you can stand there and pretend to be innocent.”
“I have no choice.” Clay hoped his face didn’t show his defeat. The two of them would never be friends again. Maybe they never had been. “I have to stand here and tell you what happened if I want you to know the truth. I’m sorry if you can’t accept it.”
Mr. Nelson cleared his throat as though he was going to speak. Clay held up his hand and looked at the older man. “I know my parole is tied to this job. If it doesn’t work out, you can call someone and they will contact the local sheriff—I’m assuming Carl Wall is the one here. Anyway, since the pickup is yours, I have to leave it here. The sheriff will see that I get back to prison. Thanks, too, for having the vehicle sent over. You can decide.”
Mr. Nelson was silent.
“You just got here,” the rancher finally mumbled, looking uncomfortable.
Clay nodded. He still wasn’t sure why he’d been asked to come, but he wasn’t going to stay if it was a problem. He’d learned his lesson about making sure he was wanted before he stayed anyplace.
“Everybody knows—” Allie started to say. She stopped when Clay looked at her.
“Everybody doesn’t know as much as they think they do,” he finally said.
She didn’t answer. It was so quiet in the kitchen that Clay thought he could hear the cat inside his coat purring. The heater in the pickup he’d driven over hadn’t worked very well, and the tabby was likely content just to be out of the cold. Clay sometimes wished he could be satisfied with the small victories in life like that. A good dinner. A moment’s comfort. They should be enough. Instead, he wanted people, especially Allie, to know who he was. And no one could claim to know Clay West if they thought he was a liar. He probably shouldn’t care, but he did.
“Do they still ask people in the church to stand up and say what’s wrong in their lives?” he asked. That was the only way he knew to address everyone in the area. He wouldn’t need to stay for the sermon.
“You mean for prayers?” Allie sounded surprised. Then her eyes slid over him suspiciously. “You want to ask us to pray for you?”
“The church will be happy to pray for you,” Mr. Nelson said as he waved the magazine in the air. “Everyone has read about you here. The hardware store got in a dozen copies. The ranchers are all talking about you as they sit around that stove in the middle of the store. You remember that stove? You’re practically famous there.”
Clay felt a sudden desire to sit down, but he couldn’t. Not yet.
He never should have done that interview for the Montana Artist Journal. Allie was looking at him skeptically.
“That reporter exaggerated,” Clay said. “I’m no Charlie Russell in the making—except for maybe that we both like to roam. I sketch faces and scenes. Simple pencil drawings. That’s all.” He’d had offers from a couple of magazines to print his prison sketches and had even gotten an art agent out of the deal, but Clay saw no reason to mention that. “And I’m not interested in anyone praying for me. I just want to set the record straight on what happened that night with Mark. I want the facts known.”
One of the few things Clay remembered from his early life was his father urging him to always tell the truth. Both his parents had died soon after that in a car accident. Clay clung to that piece of advice because it was all he had left of his family. He wanted to feel that he belonged to them no matter where he went.
Allie looked at him. “I won’t have you saying bad things about Mark.”
Clay studied her. She no longer seemed to be as angry, but she was wary.
“I’ll just tell what happened.” Clay paused before continuing. “That’s all I’m aiming for. And, after that, if you still don’t want me here, I will go back. I can’t make people believe me. I didn’t have high hopes coming here anyway. I can even stay somewhere else tonight. Tomorrow’s Sunday, right? Does Mrs. Hargrove still rent out that room above her garage?”
The older woman had been the only one to stand up for him at his trial, and he counted her as a friend. She had sent him cards every birthday and Christmas while he had been locked up. He’d done his best to send her cards in return. Usually he enclosed a few sketches; over time he’d sent her a dozen Dry Creek scenes. The café. The hardware store. Every main building, except for the church. He’d never managed a sketch of that. He wouldn’t mind spending a couple of nights in her rental room before he headed back to prison. He had sold enough pencil portraits to other prisoners over the years to have a tidy sum in a savings account. He could pay for the room easily.
“Mrs. Hargrove?” Allie asked, frowning. “I’m sure the parole board doesn’t want you speaking out and giving good people like her a hard time. She’s having trouble with her feet these days.”
“The parole board sent me here.” Clay felt guilty that he hadn’t known about the aches in the older woman’s feet. “They had to figure I’d talk to someone. Besides, I can even help Mrs. Hargrove out some if I’m at her place. It could be a good thing. She probably needs logs for that woodstove of hers. The winter is going on long this year. I could get her all set with more firewood. Some kindling, too. She’d like that.”
“The board probably doesn’t realize the harm you could do here.” Allie turned to face her father again, and Clay couldn’t see her expression. “But we know.”
Mr. Nelson cleared his throat, eyeing his daughter. “Don’t look at me that way. We’re not sending him away.”
“Why not?” Clay asked softly. Father and daughter both turned to him in concern. He had to admit he was a little taken aback himself, but nothing was ever gained by dodging the truth. He spoke to Mr. Nelson. “When I saw you last, you were determined to make me suffer for what happened. I remember what you said. ‘Let him rot in that black hole of a place. We don’t want him back here.’ So I’m asking straight out, what’s changed?”
The rancher paled at Clay’s words. “I suppose you want an apology from me, too, now?”
Clay shook his head impatiently. “I just want a plainspoken answer. Why am I here?”
Mr. Nelson stood there thinking for a minute.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” the older man finally said. “I said awful things to you and about you. No Christian should say such things.”
“People say a lot of things they shouldn’t,” Clay said. “Christian or not.”
Allie started to say something, but her father held up a hand to stop her. “He has a right to ask what’s going on.”
Everyone was silent. Clay watched as the older man debated something.
“I’m doing this for Mark,” Mr. Nelson finally admitted, his voice thick with emotion. The rancher continued speaking, his eyes on Clay. “I didn’t want to ask you, but I finally realized we need you. There’s no one else.”
Clay saw defeat in the other man’s eyes. Clay had been in prison long enough to recognize the look on a man’s face when he had no choice except the bitter one in front of him. The man was finally being honest.
“But you still blame me?” Clay asked. He wanted things to be clear.
The older man didn’t answer.
“Will you help us anyway?” Mr. Nelson finally asked.
“I don’t see how I—” Clay began to politely refuse the request. There were worse things than being locked up in a cell. Being around people who didn’t trust him was one of them. He’d be free on his own terms in two years. He could wait.
Allie had been silent, but now she sputtered indignantly a moment until she found words.