Montana Creeds: Tyler by Linda Lael Miller

been there,” Tess said sagely, with a little shrug. “And I could make new friends right here. Kristy said there were kids around for me to play with, and I really liked story hour, too.”
    Lily tried, but tears came to her eyes anyway, and Tess saw them.
    She sat up, threw her little arms around Lily’s neck and hugged her tightly. Another child might have clung; Tess was giving comfort, not taking it.
    Now, it was Lily who did the clinging.
    â€œDon’t cry, Mom,” Tess pleaded, her breath warm against Lily’s cheek. “Please don’t cry.”
    Lily sniffled bravely. “I’m sorry,” she said. “ I’m supposed to be the strong one.”
    Tess settled back on her pillows—the very pillows where Lily had dreamed so many Tyler-dreams—and regarded her mother with that singularly serious, too-adult expression that troubled Lily so much.
    â€œNobody’s strong all the time, Mom,” Tess said. There she was again—the Wise Woman, posing as a child. “You can be happy if you’ll just let yourself. That’s what Grampa said, while you were taking your nap and we were getting supper ready.”
    Privately, Lily seethed. Thank you, Parent of the Year, she told her feckless father silently. “I am happy, honey. I’ve got you, after all. What more could I want?” She fussed with the covers a little, looked around at all the mementos of her childhood, thinking, to distract herself, that the room could use updating. New curtains, fresh wallpaper, a few framed watercolors instead of all those dog-eared rock-star posters from her teens…
    â€œYou could want a husband,” Tess suggested, in answer to Lily’s question, which had been rhetorical. Not that a six-year-old—even one as precocious as Tess—could be expected to understand rhetoric. “And more kids.”
    â€œI have a job in Chicago, remember?” Lily pointed out. “One I happen to love. And I don’t think I want a husband, if it’s all the same to you.”
    Skepticism skewed Tess’s freckled face, wrinkling her nose and etching lines into her forehead. “You don’t love that job, Mom,” she argued. “You’re always saying you’d rather have your own company, so you could do things your way and set your own hours. And anyhow, we don’t need money, do we? Nana Kenyon says you have plenty, thanks to Daddy’s trust fund and the insurance payment.”
    Behind her motherly smile, Lily added Eloise Kenyon to the mental hit-list headed up by Hal Ryder. Whywould Burke’s mother mention matters like trust funds and insurance settlements to a child, unless she’d wanted the remark to get back to Lily? Using Tess as a go-between was inexcusable, downright passive-aggressive.
    As for Burke, whatever his other failings, he had kept his will up to date. He’d looked out for his daughter and, to some extent, his wife.
    The trust fund was safely tucked away for Tess, and Lily had used the insurance money to pay off Burke’s many credit card debts and the mortgage on the condo. Her job, though it sometimes made her want to tear out her hair from sheer frustration, paid well, and she and Tess lived simply, anyway.
    Lily was nothing if not sensible.
    Except when it came to Tyler Creed, of course.
    Why had she agreed to have dinner with him, when she knew no other man on earth, not even her own father, had the power to hurt her the way Tyler could?
    Was pain getting to be a way of life with her? Had she started to like it?
    â€œWe’re both tired,” she said at last. “Let’s talk about this another time.”
    She saw the protest brewing in Tess’s eyes. You always say that…and later never comes.
    Lily laid an index finger to her daughter’s lips, to forestall the inevitable challenge.
    â€œWe’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said. “I