The Relatives by Christina Dodd Read Free Book Online Page A

Wildrose Valley. Wildrose Valley Road turns off the main highway, and rises up and up in hairpin turns that make flatlanders clutch and cringe. The surface is gravel, full of washboard stretches that beat a woman’s teeth together as she drives her rented black Jeep Cherokee toward the place where she had been born.
    She tops the summit and there it is—the valley, slung like a hammock between the mountains. Ranchers had settled here in the early twentieth century, carving out tracts of land where they raised cattle and children, grew gardens and alfalfa, fought freezing cold and the Depression and bankruptcy.
    But here and now, in August, the valley is wide, yellow with grass, dappled with cattle and antelope. Meadows stretch miles to the far horizon where the mountains close in. The Forest Service likes to think they protect the wilderness; in truth, the Sawtooth Mountains themselves are the sentinels and guardians of the land.
    Taylor Summers had spent her first nine years roaming the Sawtooth Mountains in search of a safe place, away from her home, away from her parents’ constant, bitter arguments about her father’s ranch, her mother’s ambitions, and Taylor, who had somehow become the heart of their conflict.
    Then, on her tenth birthday, she had moved with her mother to Baltimore, and was never again to see Wildrose Valley … until today.
    She drove slowly down the steep grade and into the flatlands, absorbing the changes. Where small craftsman-style ranch houses had once stood, mansions now sprawled. Not many mansions, though; rich people bought wide acreages and surrounded themselves by vistas that could not be blocked.
    Taylor didn’t blame them. Today, when she rolled down her windows, she heard nothing but the wind through the golden grasses and the occasional call of a bird. She recognized a few landmarks: a stand of maple trees where she used to play, the unpainted wreck of a barn where she’d swung in an exhilarating ride on a rope out of the hayloft and through the wide-open doors.
    And there! There was the turnoff to the Summers ranch, owned by her family for over a hundred years, until her mother forced her father to sell it in the divorce and divide the profits.
    Involuntarily, Taylor’s foot slipped off the accelerator and the car slowed.
    Look! The people who bought the place had put up a phony gate, and they had the guts to put up a sign calling the place SUMMERS FOREVER .
    They not only had claimed her heritage, they’d also claimed her name.
    The bastards.
    Taylor rolled up her windows, put her foot back on the gas, and drove through ruts and dust through the flats at the end of the basin toward her goal, where the mountains came together, squeezing the road like a vise.
    An hour of driving too fast got her at last to the serenity of mountains. Here was the forest she sought. The air was thin, sharp, fresh with the scents of pine and earth and growth and, yes, surely … inspiration.
    Taylor had always considered herself a true artist.
    Sure, she had gone to college to study graphic design, and sure, she had segued into interior decorating. But for all that she had besmirched her talent with good jobs that made gobs of money, she hugged close a strong sense of superiority. Deep inside, she had believed that if she flung away the trappings of success and became a full-time artist, her talent would change the world.
    So to celebrate the crashing destruction of her second engagement, she had flown to Salt Lake City, rented a vehicle, and driven north along the Wasatch Range. She stopped to sketch every vista, expecting that sensitive, brilliant, expressive art would form beneath her fingers ……
    No. Not once. Not a hint of genius, of uplifting emotion or self-knowledge or glory or pain. All these years of believing in herself, and this … this was it?
    Drawn by the conviction that if she got home, she would rediscover her muse, she drove north, into Idaho. In Sun Valley, she rented a