Danny headed on down to the store, but once there his father told him that there wasn’t much happening, and that his mother wanted him to move some stuff. So, at home, he got out of the heavy clothing and helped his mother set up what he thought of as Tara’s old bedroom for Brianna and Chandler, Garth and Michelle’s kids.

The morning was pretty well shot by then. For the moment, he didn’t have anything to do. He didn’t want to start something, like perhaps reading the book he’d bought down at the Record-Heraldthe day before, since someone was likely to show up sooner or later. Besides, it was too good a time to get some one-on-one time with his mother. "Anything I can do to help with dinner?" he asked.

"Not really a lot," she said. "Oh, I suppose I could have you peel some potatoes. All I’m doing here is the turkey and dressing and potatoes. Blake is doing everything else. He and Jennifer offered to have this over at their place, but as far along as she is, I didn’t think it would be a good idea for her to have all the confusion around."

"I suppose," he said. "Is Brandy bringing anything?"

"I don’t know if you’re aware of it," her mother said dryly, digging out a bag of potatoes, while he opened the drawer where the potato peeler had been all his life – and there it was. "We all try not to let Brandy cook anything involving more than a can opener. She is a brilliant and talented person in many ways, but cooking is not one of them. She can quite literally burn water. Worse, Phil isn’t much better. They eat out a lot, order out a lot, and manage to be dinner guests at friends and relatives a lot. If they can’t manage any of that, then it’s TV dinners."

"You know, that doesn’t surprise me," he smiled. "I always knew she had to have an Achilles heel somewhere."

"That’s it," his mother shook her head. "After she quit Front Range and moved home last spring, both Blake and I tried to teach her a few basics. I don’t mean anything complicated either, stuff like Hamburger Helper and tuna noodle casserole. I guess I should have expected it, but Blake doesn’t like to fail at things." She shook her head. "He had to give up, too."

Now Danny shook his head. Over the years he’d been exposed to Blake’s cooking on a few occasions, mostly before Marsha. His mother was a great cook at conventional things, but Blake’s expertise was off in another country somewhere. Although as far as Danny knew Blake had never done any professionally, he was a master gourmet chef. Danny figured that Jennifer had to have about the best eating on a regular basis of anyone in the county, maybe the state. "Is Jennifer any good, assuming Blake ever lets her cook?"

"She’s not bad," his mother said. "Blake lets her cook once in a while if she happens to feel domestic. He’s actually been rather disgusted with her the last few months."

"Blake?" Danny frowned, "Disgusted with Jennifer?"

"Like any pregnant woman, she’s been having food cravings," his mother smiled. "Hers have been running toward junk food, especially the high-carbohydrate type. I think it makes him actually physically sick to his stomach to see her open a can of SpaghettiOs and pop them into the microwave."

Danny shook his head with laughter. "I really don’t know Blake that well," he said finally. "But yeah, well enough to imagine him blowing his cookies at the thought of SpaghettiOs."

"Especially Jennifer eating them," his mother smiled. "You know, they have the most incredibly caring relationship. Blake just about worships Jennifer, and babies her a lot. But, you know, she doesn’t worship him much less. Most people think that Jennifer wears the pants around that household, but I know them well enough to have figured out it’s not the case. Blake lets Jennifer seem to be in charge since she has the higher public profile, but they rarely do anything unless they’re in total agreement. At the same time, they manage to leave each other an awful lot of independence."

"Like I said, I’ve never gotten to know Blake that well," he replied. "But I realized early on that there’s more between the two of them than meets the eye, and on several levels. And, I haven’t seen them much in the last few years, but from the hints I’ve gotten, it seems like they’ve just gotten closer and deeper."

"That’s very true," his mother said. "In fact, just thinking about it, most of your memories of the two of them together probably goes back to when Blake was still working for Jennifer, although a lot of the time it was hard to tell. As far as I know, and I don’t know very far, since a lot of what goes on between them stays just between them, but the closest they’ve ever come to a real fight was, oh, about the time you got married, when Blake told Jennifer he wanted to quit taking her money. Not quit working for her, just quit being paid for it."

"I figured that had to have happened along in there somewhere," Danny nodded.

His mother shook her head. "I never heard a word about it until years later," she said. "They are pretty private with each other, even among the family. I was told afterward that they called Mike in to mediate a solution, since he wasn’t part of the family, and it was Mike who told me, several years later. That’s when they set up Jenny Easton Productions. Jennifer holds a slight majority of the stock, at Blake’s insistence. I mean, I knew they did it at the time, just not why. So, she’s still paying him, just not directly."

"That’s pretty different," Danny shook his head. "Of course, I’m looking at it from the viewpoint of someone who regularly got screamed at over who got to use the toilet first in the morning."

"Oh, it’s very much a team effort," his mother smiled, shaking her head at the thought of Danny and Marsha. "I guess it’s just understood that Jennifer has to have the higher public profile. But I realize now that Jennifer’s career would have collapsed fifteen years ago if Blake hadn’t supported her every inch of the way. Her career is very much their career, and they both realize that."

That was food for thought, and Danny hadn’t thought of it quite that way before. Despite not knowing Blake well, he’d been darned impressed at what he did know of him. Blake was a Renaissance Man, a man of many talents, good at most of them. Martial arts, yes, he was considered far and away the most skilled of the group around his father. Yes, he was a gourmet cook – some of the things he cooked might not have been easily identifiable, but all tasted good. And, he was an incredibly talented musician and music teacher.

Danny remembered Jennifer back in high school, and it had seemed like she could play the guitar pretty well then. He now realized it was just a beginner’s strumming. She was now a highly accomplished guitar player, and one review he’d read of Back Porch, her album before Saturday Night, the writer called her "just about the best female picker in the business." When that business was country music, that was high praise indeed – and it was Blake who had taught her. He was a master of any stringed instrument within minutes of picking it up for the first time, excellent on keyboard, good on percussion, and not bad on both brass and woodwinds. He’d done much of the musical backup for several of Jennifer’s recent albums, sometimes playing several parts and mixing them on the incredible sound system in their house out on Point Drive. Much of that music he and Jennifer had written together; while some of Saturday Night was old country favorites, the rest was original with them, and all of her previous four albums had been entirely their writing, as well.

It was hard to believe that a man with those kinds of talents happily walked in his oldest sister’s shadow – and it said a heck of a lot about his sister, as well.

He and his mother continued to talk as they worked in the kitchen for the next half hour or so – mostly just catching up on family, catching up on events. It was a good and friendly discussion, the first real one on one without Marsha around that he’d had with her in years, and without Marsha around, they could talk about things that had been touchy otherwise. He came to realize that his mother and father had been treading as lightly around Marsha and her temper as he had been, and once again, he found himself wondering why he had put up with it for so long.

He was still wondering about it when he heard the doorbell. His mother went to answer it, and he glanced out toward the front door when he heard his mother say, "Tara! Good to see you! You could have just walked in, you know."

"I didn’t know if I should," she said shyly, as Danny dried his hands and headed for the living room. His first sight of Tara was . . . not what he expected. Always slender, she was thin to the point of being emaciated; her skin almost a pasty white. Shorter than he was, she was up close to his eye level on a pair of huge platform spiked heels. He’d thought Marsha’s hair was short, but Tara’s black hair was even shorter, cut in a fifties-style men’s flattop with fenders. She was dressed all in black, a loose black sweater, tight black stretch pants. She wore an elaborate silver, well, plastic, necklace, matching bracelets, and huge hoop earrings – and black lipstick. She also had a considerable number of piercings, including nose, lip and eyebrow; Danny didn’t even want to think where there might be more out of sight under her clothes, but if there were some where he thought they might be they had to have hurt. There was a definite aura of Goth around her. More than an aura, in fact; she pretty well defined it. "Hi, Danny," she said thinly and uncertainly, as if not sure how she’d be received.

Danny’s year older sister had always been a little distant and, well, different, when she was in high school – artistic, intense, and on a different plane than everyone else. Of the Evachevski kids, she had been the one most counting the days until she got out of Spearfish Lake. For whatever reason, he knew she’d been distant from the family the last few years, at least as distant as he had been, and in the last several years their paths had only crossed once since the wedding, and then only for a few minutes. Danny pushed back his surprise at her appearance, which was distinctly out of place in a small-town place like Spearfish Lake, opened his arms wide, and smiled, "Hi, Tara. Long time, no see."

"Yeah, it has," she smiled, and gently put her arms around him. In a very small voice she said, "Danny, I was really sorry to hear about you and Marsha."

"Don’t be," he told her quietly. "It was for the best. I was sorry to hear about you and Roger." Sometime after he’d married Marsha, she’d married a guy she’d met in the Twin Cities. They had struggled along for two or three years before she left him; he didn’t know the details, but he and his sister did have a divorce in common.

"Don’t be" she smiled, the first real smile he’d seen on her since she came in the door. "What you said. It was for the best, too."

"Yeah, but you were smarter," he said. "You didn’t drag out the agony as long."

"I thought you were going to bring Sylvia," his mother observed conversationally.

"She was going to come," Tara said, speaking up a little but slipping back into her shyness, "but she got to do a reading tonight, filling in for someone who got sick, and she didn’t want to pass up the opportunity."

"Sorry to hear that," his mother said. "She seemed like a nice person when you brought her last summer."

"Who’s Sylvia?" Danny asked.

"Oh," Tara shrugged, "she’s the woman I’m living with."

"Well, come on in," his mother said. "There are chairs in the living room for a purpose, you know."

"Oh, all right, Mom," Tara said uncertainly. Danny frowned internally – she seemed really uncomfortable about being here, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. Well, dressed like she was, she was obviously out of place, but her discomfort seemed to indicate that something even deeper was going on. Apparently she must lead a pretty avant-garde lifestyle, he thought, not that it surprised him very much, remembering what she had been like as a kid. Well, try to be friendly and open, he thought. Maybe it’ll come out.

They headed on into the living room. Danny found a chair – not a familiar one, either, the living room furniture was new since he’d last lived there. Tara sat down on the floor in front of the Christmas trees, and crossed her legs in Lotus position. Somehow that didn’t surprise him much. "So, what it is you’re doing these days?" he asked conversationally. "Mom said you were an artist, but I’m afraid I don’t know much more than that."

"That’s what I’m doing," Tara said, a little more at ease now. "A little to my surprise, I’m doing pretty well."

"Something modern and impressionistic?" he asked. Everything considered, that seemed to be a good bet.

"No, something pretty unconventional, for my tastes," Tara smiled. "I needed to do something where I could actually make some money, and I found a couple of commissions doing conventional portraits. I was about as surprised as anyone to find out that I was both good at it and liked doing them."

"Portraits?" Danny smiled, genuinely surprised. "Grandma and grandpa on the living room wall kind of thing?"

"Well, yeah," Tara grinned. "That kind of thing. I work from photos some, but I try to work in at least some sittings. It turns out to be interesting, and you meet some interesting people."

"You’ve seen one of her portraits," his mother told him. "She did that one of Brenda Hodunk down in the Record-Herald office."

"That was pretty good," Danny nodded. "I didn’t really take a very close look at it, but it’s certainly a striking portrait that reaches out and grabs your eyes."

"She is a good-looking woman, if on the conventional side," Tara smiled. "But I do have to say that’s the only time I’ve ever had to work handcuffs into a portrait. They weren’t the easiest thing to paint, but they do grab your eyes." She leaned back a little, obviously relaxing by talking about something familiar that she was interested in. "I actually did the sittings down in her apartment in Camden. She is a very interesting person, very friendly, but she makes it clear that she’s very professional on the job and not very tolerant of mediocrity."

"That’s an understatement, if what we hear through the newspaper grapevine has any truth to it," Carrie smiled. "I’m told that down at the Press, they used to call her ‘Brenda the Hun.’"

"I met a woman sort of like that not long ago," Danny snickered. "Very personable woman off the job, when she’s relaxed, easy to talk to and very interesting, but on the job they call her ‘Attila Lynn.’"

"Sounds like birds of a feather," Tara laughed. "Brenda told me that on her job, some of the people who worked for her would have liked to have had her in handcuffs, but they knew it wouldn’t do any good."

"That was really the most amazing thing," his mother said. "We all thought she was crazy but it worked for her. Debbie was saying yesterday that she thought it was something of a vision quest for her, and you know, I think she’s right. Brenda was only with us about nine months, but you would not know she was the same person when she left. She was already very serious and professional about her job when she came, but she had an attitude, not a good image of herself, and it reflected in her appearance, and she lacked confidence. When she left, she’d cleaned up all of that, and knew that she could handle anything thrown at her. If that’s what a vision quest is all about, it sure changed her life."

"Debbie?" Tara said brightly. "That’s the Indian woman you have working with you? We talked for a while last summer. She’s a very interesting and striking woman herself. There’s a lot of depth to her. She has some very interesting perspectives about the relationship between man, Earth, and spirit."

"Yes, she does," his mother replied. "She’s changed a lot in the seven years or so she’s been with us, too." She sighed. "I don’t exactly know how to say this, but the fact that she was an Indian didn’t apparently mean a lot to her when she came to work at the paper. Well, except maybe for the fact that it was a difference that she felt she had to overcome, and mostly a pain in the butt for her. Then, she got interested in her heritage and her tribal beliefs, and now she takes a lot of pride in what she is. We’ve talked over the lunch table about some of her beliefs fairly often. There’s a certain amount of fantasy there, and she admits to it, more that it’s a teaching tool and something to help remember truth, like a parable. But, get past that, there’s a tremendous amount of underlying wisdom."

"I detected that," Tara said, warming to the conversation. "I’d certainly like to get to know her a little better sometime. In fact, I’d like to paint her someday. I would love to try and capture some of that spirituality that hangs around her."

"I have to admit," Danny said, "it sure sounds like you’ve gotten into this portraiture."

"For something I didn’t know much about, and frankly, something that I rather disdained," she replied, "it’s turned into a true passion. When you do a portrait, you are trying to capture more than the image of a person, you’re trying to capture something of their spirit, their identity, who they are, why they are who they are. Their karma, if you will. It’s hard to find the word to describe it. I find it a rewarding challenge."

"How many portraits do you do in a year?"

"Last year, I did forty-one," Tara said. "Some were more elaborate than others. It takes a while to do one since there’s often time spent waiting for oils to dry, so I usually have several going at once. If I’m blocked on one, sometimes working on another one will get me going again. And, I tend to work in fits and starts. Sometimes, I’ll go a week or two without touching a brush, then I’ll go on a tear and work eighteen hours straight through, collapse on the couch in my studio for a few hours when I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, then get up and work another eighteen or twenty hours. Somewhere along in there Sylvia usually has to yell at me to get me to eat something. It sort of involves when the mood hits me."

"If you don’t mind my asking just out of sheer curiosity, how much do you charge?

"It depends," Tara told him. "It varies on the size of the portrait, the number of sittings, travel involved, and other factors. The range is about a thousand to five thousand. That one of Brenda was $2500, but since it was in the family I cut the Record-Herald a little deal."

"Not bad," Danny said while doing the math in his head. Say for round figures, an average of $2000 a portrait, forty portraits a year – not bad at all. "You’re not exactly a starving artist, then."

"I went through several years when I was," she admitted. "And then Roger pretty well took me to the cleaners living off me while we were together, back when I was first starting to make a name in portraiture. I’m still paying off some of the bills he built up. There’s no way he’s going to pay a cent on them, of course, and I’d just as soon my credit didn’t get loused up any more than it is."

"Been there, done that," Danny nodded. "Fortunately, I had the good sense to not let our credit card bills get out of hand, and I cancelled them all the first thing when I left Marsha, so I couldn’t get stung too bad."

"So what was it you were doing?" Tara asked. "Still the herbal remedies?"

"Yeah," Danny sighed. "Wholesale sales. The money was lousy and I felt like I was a con man at best, but Marsha thought it was the greatest thing on earth, so I couldn’t dump it. The last few weeks I worked as a bartender. I made better money, and I felt a hell of a lot more honest about it." He let out another sigh and changed the subject. "I have to say, I have got three very impressive sisters. I envy all of them their talents, their drive, their passion. The three of you make a damn tough yardstick to measure up to."

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