In Place of Never (8 page)

Pru grabbed hers with a wide smile. I accepted the other.

Anton passed the cup in his left hand to Cross. “What’re you two lovely ladies up to this morning?” His deep baritone lifted a small smile on my cheeks. So far, Anton seemed as harmless as anyone I’d ever met but he looked like a freight train. It was kind of funny.

“Hey.” Mark stepped around Cross, towing the blonde with him. “We were talking.”

Cross lifted his chin a fraction of an inch. His deep-set eyes locked with mine. “You want to talk to him?”

“Nope.”

Anton turned on Mark with a smile. “Later, man.”

Emotions rolled over Mark’s face. The line of people waiting at White Water Coffee gawked. How would big-talking, fat-headed Mark Dobbs handle a confrontation with someone his own size and one quite larger? A fistfight on the street before lunch? Not very impressive. Especially not when Anton inevitably handed his ass to him.

The sign over Red’s fluttered in the wind and recognition dawned on Mark’s dumbfounded face. He threw his head back and laughed like a hyena. “Oh.” He slapped his thigh. “That’s perfect. Hysterical and really, really sad, but perfect. You always were just like your sister.” He shook his head and sauntered off, looking mighty proud of himself. “Wait till your daddy hears about this.”

Pru squinted at me, shading her eyes with one hand. “What?”

“Us.” Anton moved behind me, blocking the sun from Pru’s eyes. “He meant us. I knew your sister.”

* * * *

The four of us settled around a picnic table at the pavilion near the cemetery. Warm winds swept through the willows and cattails along the river.

I folded my legs on the narrow bench and chipped green paint off the wooden slats with my fingernails. “Are there two other people somewhere waiting on these coffees?”

Cross rested his elbows on the table beside me. “Nah. We were headed to your place with them.”

Pru blew a long raspberry. “That’s
not
a good idea. Dad’s hosting a planning party for his how-to-run-the-Lovells-out-of-town movement.”

Anton nodded. “That sounds about right.”

“That’s it.” Pru set her coffee down and looked at each of our faces. “I need a whole lot of answers. I got caught with my pants down on the worst day of the year and my whole world imploded. It’s like I woke up in Wonderland this morning.”

I smiled. It was the same thing I’d thought yesterday.

Anton snorted, but it didn’t stop Pru’s rant.

Pru pointed at me. “She’s smiling. I have no idea what that’s about. Dad’s lost his ever-loving mind. He thinks your sideshow somehow killed our sister. Oh, and it brings ‘trouble’ to the town.” She formed air quotes with her fingers. “He and his old-man crew are probably polishing their pitchforks as we speak. Mercy’s hanging with me on purpose and two hot guys bought us coffee. I don’t get it.” She raised both eyebrows. “Explain.”

I filled in the details as quickly as possible, avoiding the hard words like “death” and “suicide.” I concentrated on the dash of hope that had woken me before the roosters and focused on new possibilities. Faith wasn’t coming back, but it hurt less to think I might get some answers about the night she died.

Pru mulled over the mass amount of new information for an entire thirty seconds before her questions started again. “Dad knows Faith and her friends partied with you guys that night? Is that why he wants your family gone?”

Cross waved one finger. “Not me. I wasn’t part of the team that year.”

“Whatever.”

His eyebrows crowded together.

I bit back a laugh.

Pru turned to Anton. “You were with her though. How much did she drink? Were you swimming? Was she? Where was her boyfriend?”

The guilt in Anton’s eyes worried me.

Cross shifted on the bench beside me. He tipped his coffee toward Anton. “Tell them what you told me.”

Anton looked across the field to the cemetery. His all-black ensemble reflected his mood. He folded his hands on the table and wet his lips. “We came to town a few days early for our performances at the River Festival that year. I met Faith and some of her friends at the Festival one night. We hit it off.”

Pru interrupted. “She had a boyfriend.”

“Had.”

“That’s what I said.”

“No.” Anton squirmed. “Faith said they broke up the weekend before. She said he’d had enough waiting.” Heavy emphasis on his final word.

A long beat of silence followed the statement.

Pru’s eyebrows tented up. “For sex?”

Anton averted eye contact with everyone. No big guy on earth ever looked more uncomfortable. “Yeah. I’d just lost another girlfriend, so we were pity partners.”

Pru raised her hand. “When you say you
lost
another girlfriend…”

Cross snickered. “She left the show a couple towns before yours. It happens. The kind of people who join traveling sideshows aren’t always cut out for long-term commitments. He didn’t, you know…hurt her or anything.”

Pru nodded and raised her hand again. “And when you say pity partners…”

“Pru!” I kicked her under the table.

“Well.”

Anton’s face pinked. “We complained to one another and shared a bottle of homemade wine. That’s it.”

Cross stretched his neck and sighed. “They shared it in his camper. Alone.”

“When you say
it
…”

I lifted my hand to Pru. “Stop.” I walked around the tables to clear my head. “You were the last one to see her alive?”

Anton shrugged. “Maybe.”

My lungs flattened. “What maybe? Did you walk her home?”

“No. I fell asleep.”

Cross met me across the pavilion. “He passed out. It wasn’t his first bottle of wine that night.”

Pru laid her hand on Anton’s arm. “You’re sad? Is it because Faith never made it home? Do you think you could’ve changed that?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know anything happened to her until last night. Mom woke us all at four, ready to hit the road by dawn. She gets these feelings sometimes, and we honor them, no matter the request. That was one of those nights.”

Pru plucked the material of his shirtsleeve. “What kind of feeling?”

My breathing stopped. His face twisted with emotion I couldn’t name.

“Well?” Pru pressed.

Anton looked at Cross before answering. “Mom gets weird sometimes. She gets happy out of the blue and something good will happen, or she gets sick and withdrawn or she aches. At times like those, we pull up camp and leave.”

“Is she psychic?”

“Pru!” The venomous look on Anton’s brother’s face at the campfire rushed into my mind. He’d been livid, convinced I’d come to ask them about Gypsy curses or something. “Stop.” Maybe there was a reason to ask.

Pru jerked her hand from Anton’s arm and grabbed her cell phone. “Dad’s calling. What do I do?”

Anton, Cross, and I responded in sync. “Answer it.”

She walked a few paces away and answered.

I caught Anton’s attention. “Sorry. She doesn’t know not to ask.” Not that it would stop her.

Anton examined his pant leg, smoothing his palms over the material. “It’s okay. Tom’s the one who gets bent about our ancestry. I know it’s weird we travel and live privately in a world where the population shares its collective breath online. We’re a dying breed.”

My cheeks heated. Cross had asked me to be his friend so he’d know someone in town, but I hadn’t understood the stakes. My gaze drifted to Cross’s careful stare. A month must feel like a lifetime to people without roots. I was certain in that moment. I wanted to be Cross’s friend.

“I think it’s honorable your family carries on the traditions of your lineage. I barely know my family outside West Virginia.”

Anton adjusted his position at the table. “It’s not a tradition as much as a compulsion. Roma travel because they come from a life and time when they didn’t have homes. They traveled Europe in search of work. When the work dried up, they moved on. My parents traveled with their grandparents. They have hundreds of stories from their childhood and they try to recreate that time for us. They don’t care how much everything else changes. Our parents came to America as teens, already married. When they arrived, some family members found jobs and bought property. A few couldn’t stop traveling.”

“Like your parents.”

“They were too young to buy property. We traveled with my grandparents and a circus family from Indiana when I was young. Eventually, we branched out on our own, but my parents never gave up on the notion of following the work. They never bought a home. Never settled.” He lifted tired eyes to the sky. “We are travelers because it’s our way.”

I breathed in the sunny summer air, accepting the resignation in Anton’s voice. He didn’t like their ways, but he loved his family. The divide between Dad and me came to mind. Maybe it was the humidity from extended rains, but the air seemed heavier, headier, kissed by wildflowers and thick with possibilities.

Cross pressed a hand against my shoulder. “Pru’s taking all the information pretty well. How are you doing?”

I pursed my lips. “Our dad blames the Lovells for Faith’s death. For Mom. For the mess we became after that night. The sheriff and some other town officials do too. I had no idea until this morning. I’m not going to lie. I’m confused. This is hard to process. You should’ve heard them.”

“Hey.” Anton twisted free from the picnic table. “I think I saw Mouse by the coffee shop. I’m going to go check it out. Meet me later to jam?”

Cross nodded. “Five o’clock at Red’s?”

Anton smiled. He shook my hand, waved a two-finger salute to Pru, and left.

I frowned. “Did he say he saw a mouse?”

“Yeah. His sidekick, Mouse.”

Huh. “Is she small?”

Cross’s lips twitched into a lazy half smile. The split second move revealed a dimple in one cheek. Dimples didn’t go with the persona I’d pinned on him. “Nah. She’s quiet. Like a church mouse.”

Pru strode across the pavilion floor. “Who?”

Cross squared his shoulders. “Anton’s woman, Mouse, is quiet…like a mouse.”

“Gross.” She turned her face away. “He has a girlfriend?”

“Yes.” I groaned. “And he’s at least six years too old for you.”

“Whatever. Dad said come home and never leave again.” She popped a hip. “What else were you two talking about?”

Cross tilted forward at the waist, fingers wedged in his pockets. He rocked on his heels. “I’m playing at Red’s tomorrow night. You should come listen.”

Pru bounced. “Excellent. Playing what?”

He looked at me for a long beat before turning his attention back to her. “Guitar. I’m a songwriter. A talent scout’s coming. It could be my big break. We came here early so I could make this show.”

Pru clapped silently. “We’ll be there.”

I sighed. “What happened to going home and never leaving again? What about the old-man mob and the pitchforks?”

She beamed.

Cross nodded. “Great. I’ll walk you as far as Main Street.”

We headed back across the field in a row with Cross at the center. Pru supplied the conversation in her typical interrogation format. “What kind of songs do you write?”

“Country mostly.”

“Poems?”

He cleared his throat with a rasp. “Never.”

“Songs are like poems.”

He snorted. “No.”

“Is Cross your first or last name?”

“Neither.”

“Oh.” She dug in her pocket. “You like my sister.”

He slid careful eyes my way without speaking.

“Knew it.” She freed her phone and scrolled through texts. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Lorraine saw Jason with Marcy Tucker this morning. Asshole.”

Cross tapped his temple with one silent finger.

Pru growled into her phone. “Effing snake!”

He bumped me with his elbow. “Told you.”

“Yep.”

Cross hadn’t argued when Pru said he liked me. I shook my hands out at the wrists. I’d think about that later. I had a more immediate question. What kind of feeling did Nadya have the night Faith died? Whatever the feeling was, it was enough to wake a dozen people and insist they leave town. I needed to talk to Nadya.

Some People are Broken

Housebound again.

I’d lost days in my room, unaware of time. Why couldn’t I manage one afternoon without losing my mind? Questions roared through my restless mind. What had Anton meant, Nadya had a feeling and insisted they leave? A bad feeling? Had she known something would happen to Faith? Had she seen something happen to Faith? Maybe the feeling was unrelated. She could’ve foreseen a better campsite in the next town if they got an early start.

I opened a search engine and carried my laptop to my bed. Settling against the pillows, I began my ritual. It’d been years since I exhausted this particular vein. My fingers fell against the keys in a rush, opening multiple windows and refining the terms. Roma Gypsies. Gypsy abilities. Gypsy psychics. All the things I’d dismissed as junk two years ago.

“Mercy?” Dad’s voice carried up the final set of stairs.

I slapped the laptop shut and shoved it under the pillows beside me.

“Mercy?” He stood in the doorway. “You okay?”

“Fine. Why?”

He motioned through the doorway. “May I?”

I nodded and sat upright, pulling a small pillow into my lap for protection. My heart ached preemptively. He never came to my room. Something was wrong. Again.

Dad examined me. “You look shaken.” His gaze drifted to my arms.

“I’m fine.”

“You heard some things at breakfast you weren’t meant to hear.”

I pressed my lips together before speaking. “I’m not made of glass. You can tell me things. I need to know things.”

“You know too much about all the wrong things.”

His thinking was royally screwed.

“Dad. I’m seventeen. I’m leaving next month, and I’ll be on my own for four years. You can’t shelter me anymore. I mean, what do you think will happen? Do you think on my eighteenth birthday or my first day of college or some other random moment in time, I’ll magically transform into someone who can handle all the things you keep from me now? You have to give me a break. Trust me with things. I’m tougher than you think.”