Jaded (29 page)

For a long moment the air between them vibrated with tension. “This was your uncle. Chief Ridgeway, right?” She ran through her few encounters with Lucas’s uncle. The man was as emotionless as they came, an older version of Lucas. Lucas’s grandmother gifted Lucas her house in the hopes he wouldn’t follow in Nelson Ridgeway’s footsteps. “Tanya’s father?”

A frown crossed Lucas’s face. “Yeah. Tanya’s father.”

Duke lifted his head at the knock at the door. Cody stood framed in the screen door. Alana took a quick step back from Lucas, then felt her face heat as the damned blush she couldn’t control when he was around bloomed on her cheeks.

She hurried past Lucas and opened the door. Cody ducked his head and stepped inside, his shoulders hunched over. He carried a large sketch pad and his messenger bag. “Come on in,” she said.

He glanced warily at Lucas, who gave him an assessing look, nothing more. Duke sniffed the air and whined, then looked at Lucas.

Oh, shit, Alana thought.

Lucas’s expression didn’t change. “Duke used to work on the drug squad with me in Denver,” he said evenly. “Right now he’s telling me he smells something he didn’t smell thirty seconds ago. I don’t smell anything I shouldn’t smell, but his nose is better than mine.”

Cody flushed as red as Alana, but he didn’t say a word.

“Well?” Lucas said.

“Well nothing.”

Lucas straightened and braced his weight on the balls of his feet. “Should I take a drive out to your place?”

“No! Don’t do that. It scares the little kids.”

“That’s not my fault,” Lucas pointed out. “I’m not the one bringing illegal substances into a house with three kids under the age of eight in it. You remember the conditions of your community-service agreement?”

“Fuck this,” Cody said and turned to leave.

“Wait!” Alana lunged for him. He shook off her arm, but didn’t open the door. She turned one beseeching look from him to Lucas. “Don’t go. Just . . . tell us what happened.”

“I got a ride into town with someone.”

“Someone who might have a little stash in the glove box?”

Cody’s face closed off even more.

“Who?”

“Lucas,” she hissed.

“Your brother, who’s on
parole
? Or one of his loser friends destined for another trip to the pen?”

“I’m not saying.”

Lucas shook his head, then shouldered past Alana to stand in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Excuse me,” he said in a tone of voice that carried easily.

All conversation halted.

“Did anyone see who was driving the car that just pulled out of the driveway?”

“I didn’t recognize the driver,” Mrs. Battle said, “but Colt and Cody Burton were in the car.”

“Neal Rogers from Hanover was driving.” This in Billy’s voice.

“Thanks,” Lucas said.

Cody seethed beside Alana. A muscle popped in his jaw, but the sheen covering his eyes tore at her heart. “It wasn’t Colt’s stash,” he said in a shaking voice when Lucas turned back to him. “It wasn’t.”

Alana took Lucas to the other end of the kitchen and lowered her voice. “I believe him,” she said, keeping one eye on Cody in case he bolted, and the other on Duke, in case he signaled or pointed or did whatever it was drugs dogs did to indicate the presence of illegal substances.

The look Lucas turned on her made her eyes widen. “Why exactly do you believe him?”

“Because the mural matters to him. This matters to him. He wouldn’t jeopardize that.”

“If he didn’t want to jeopardize his community service, he’d make better choices.”

“How? He doesn’t have a car. Unless I give him a ride he walks from home to the library for his service hours. It’s six miles, one way!”

Lucas looked at her, then at Cody, then finally at Duke, who still lay on the floor by the door. “Duke’s not interested, so I’m not, either,” he said.

Cody flinched, the movement confined to his eyes and not much more.

“I’ll be in the basement,” he said, and picked up the toolbox.

“Come into the living room,” Alana said as she held out her arm to Cody. “Do you want something to eat first?”

“No,” he said, clutching the portfolio to his chest.

In the living room, she made sure everyone knew Cody. He opened the portfolio and took out several exquisitely detailed drawings of the mural, then stumbled through an explanation of what he’d drawn and why he’d drawn it. “I’d been in the library on school visits,” he said. “But not at all since grade school. It was just books, you know? I didn’t care about books. But then I started my community service there, and I realized it was so much more than that. It’s easy to say it’s our connection to the world outside Walkers Ford, but the other thing I realized is that it’s a place where we connect with each other. We have the community center and the school stuff—sports, the plays, church stuff—but the library is the only place that’s open most of the week to anybody. You don’t have to be smart, or a jock, or able to buy a soda or coffee to sit in a booth. You just go, and Miss Wentworth makes you feel like you belong there, even when you don’t.”

Tears sprang into Alana’s eyes.

A respectful, slightly shocked silence followed as the drawings made their way from hand to hand around the room.

“That’s why the building is the central focus of the mural. It’s a visual way of reminding everyone who uses the library what’s at the center of our community. Most folks have cable or satellite. Some folks have high-speed Internet access and computers. I don’t,” he said. Alana wondered what it cost him to admit to a room full of patrons who thought he was a loser and a delinquent that he was one of those people. “But the more we isolate ourselves from each other, the less of a community we are. The library brings us together. Because we all have something to offer.”

“These are absolutely gorgeous,” Delaney said.

As if everyone was waiting for a verdict from a representative of the town’s leading family, the dam opened. To Alana’s surprise, Cody didn’t blush or downplay his abilities. He talked confidently about the techniques he used, how he’d replicate them on the mural, got into a very technical discussion with Billy about the properties of plaster and when the surface would be ready to receive paint.

Watching him, Alana felt total certainty steal over her soul. He’s good at this. He knows what he’s good at, what he’s supposed to do. I can’t leave him here any more than I could leave Marissa here. He needs training, he needs exposure to other artists, to techniques, to the wider world to nurture a brain that could easily turn on itself with drugs, alcohol, or the sheer devastation of being trapped.

Mrs. Battle and another older woman were looking over the most detailed rendering of the mural, identifying each of the town’s residents. Gina stood outside her diner, and Superintendent Miller stood on the steps of the county’s high school, watching the football coach run players through practice on the field. The man who owned the gas station was at his pumps, and the shopkeepers on Main Street chatted or watered the flowers lining the business district. Delaney’s father and father-in-law shook hands in the space between the Herndon law offices and the bank. Two uniformed officers were getting into police cars outside the station, but Lucas was nowhere in sight.

Cody had revised the drawings since the first time she saw them. He’d captured the marble steps leading up to the front doors. A blond woman dressed in a tweed skirt and cream sweater stood on the steps. That was her, so the man in a suit jacket and slacks with a gun and badge on his belt was Lucas, one step below her, his dark head level with hers as they surveyed the rest of Main Street. Alana felt heat rush into her face when she recognized herself, and Lucas, in a pose that could either be construed as intimate or attentive, depending on how much the looker knew about their relationship. On the grass in the building’s shadow stood a russet-haired boy, his skinniness exaggerated into a looming emaciation. Cody.

Her heart clenched in her chest. She didn’t belong in the picture. The attitude of both Cody and Lucas, turned toward her as if they needed her, left an unsettled feeling in her stomach. Cody gave her too much credit. All she’d done was her job, her real job, the one where she compiled information, got buy-in from stakeholders. The picture implied she’d made a difference, when all she’d done was her job.

She cast a quick glance at Cody, and found him watching her. She couldn’t tell from his expression what he’d deduced, if anything. “It’s sweet of you to put me in the mural,” she said. “Can you paint over it when the new library director starts?”

“What do you mean? You’re the library director.”

“Acting library director,” she corrected. “I’m leaving in a couple of weeks.”

Shock froze his features. “What?”

Did he not know? How could he not know that she was a contract librarian? “I’m not a permanent hire, Cody,” she said gently. “I was only here for a few months while the town conducted a search for a full-time librarian. I should have left yesterday, but Mayor Turner and the council approved the renovation. I’m staying to complete it, but then I’m going home to Chicago.”

The room had gone quiet again. Suddenly Cody looked as young as his grade-school brothers. His eyes were bright, and his lower lip softened into a quiver until he got it under control. “Sure,” he said. “I knew that.”

She pulled him into the kitchen, away from the listening ears, and looked at the mural design as if seeing it for the first time. Who else would get the position of honor at the top of the library steps? The composition wouldn’t make any sense to have Lucas gazing ever-so-slightly up at the new hire, especially if the town hired a man.

The drawing only made sense if she stood there.

Don’t be ridiculous. One person doesn’t make a difference in a place like this. Community matters.

He looked at the rendition as if realizing that his entire worldview was completely wrong, that he’d spent the last few weeks thinking the world was round only to discover it was flat.

“You can redo it,” she said encouragingly. “Move Luc—Chief Ridgeway to the station, and add the new library director when he or she starts. These are small changes, easy to do, right?”

But even as she said it, she knew what she suggested changed the entire composition. The color scheme depended on Lucas’s dark suit and dark hair against her lighter colors. The whole thing depended on her and Lucas together. Which wasn’t going to happen.

He looked at her. “Right. Small changes. I’ll just shift some people around.”

“Cody, I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I thought you knew.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Of course I knew people leave. It’s what people do.”

Her heart broke a little more. “Look,” she said. “When I get back to Chicago I’m going to talk to a friend of mine who runs the summer program at the Art Institute. It’s past the application deadline, but I think I can pull some strings and get you a spot there this summer. That will give you an edge when you apply to colleges in the fall. The school takes quite a few students from their summer programs. You’ve got the talent to make art a full-time career.”

The disbelief in his face held tones of a world-weary cynicism. “I’m not going to art school this summer,” he said.

“Why not? There are scholarships—”

“Who’s going to take care of the little kids?”

Her mouth shut with a click.

“Mom works nights. Colt’s not going to be around for long. That was his stash in the car,” he said, magnificently unconcerned about Lucas’s presence in the basement. “The little kids love him, and someone has to pick up the pieces when he goes to jail again.”

“Surely there’s someone who can . . .”

“You’re looking at that someone, Miss Wentworth,” he said, so gently she wanted to cry. “I’m not going to summer school, or art school. I’ll graduate. Probably. Get a job. I’ll look after my brothers, and my mom. On the plus side, when I have a job, I’ll be able to buy art supplies.”

“I’m going to ask anyway,” she said. “We can figure something out. There must be something, a program, something through the state.”

“You can find day cares that take kids at night,” he said. “But we can’t afford it, and anyway, I wouldn’t put my brothers in one. I appreciate the offer,” he said. “But that’s not how we do things around here.”

His voice was deeper, expressive, an indication of how he’d sound when he made the full transition into adulthood.

“Can your mom go to the day shift?”

“Sure,” he said. “But the night shift gets a pay differential. She can afford to do that when I’m working. Until then, it’s a choice between feeding us all or being around at night.”

Alana looked around the kitchen overflowing with food. Without a word she got up and started packing leftovers into pans and plastic tubs. Macaroni and cheese, pasta salad, a casserole made from tater tots, ground beef, and cream of mushroom soup. “I’ll give you a ride home,” she said.

“I’d appreciate it,” he said in return.

When she got back to the house, the street and driveway were empty of cars, except for Mrs. Battle’s. Pastor Theresa helped her into the passenger seat, then waited when Alana called out her name.

She explained the situation as quickly as possible. “Do you know of anything that would help the Burtons?”

“I can look into it,” she said. “But I can’t think of anything that would let Cody leave for school.”

“I’m afraid I just broke his heart,” she confessed.

“Are you a person of faith?” Pastor Theresa asked gently.

“We’re Methodist,” Alana responded tentatively, not sure where this was headed.

“I believe that we all have a purpose in life, that God created us to fulfill a responsibility here on earth. We all have a place to be, where we’ll make an impact on the world. We can choose to listen to that call, or we can ignore it. The question is, when you hear the call, will you respond with your whole heart?”

That was easy enough to answer. Her whole heart belonged in Chicago, working for the foundation on issues like global poverty, health care for developing nations. Next year they were focusing on human trafficking, and Freddie was getting married. Chicago was where her family and her work was. It would be selfish to ignore the call of national service just because she felt validated.