Looking for Trouble (10 page)

“No. I may as well stay. At least I’m slightly distracted here, and unfortunately this whole mess will be waiting for me whenever I get off work.”

Lauren glanced at the clock. “Are you here until six?”

Sophie nodded.

“I’ve only got a half shift until two. We’ll switch. You leave at two, and I’ll stay until six. You need to talk to your brother.”

“No. I need to talk to my dad. He’s going to be so...” She waved a frantic hand. “But I can’t do that to you.”

“Of course you can. I owe you. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have hooked up with Jake.”

That actually cheered Sophie up enough to snort. “You’re joking, right? With the way you stared longingly at the fire station all the time? He was bound to notice.”

“I wasn’t staring longingly at the station. I was staring longingly at his body every time he jogged to work.”

“Regardless, it was only a matter of time before you two fell on each other like hungry beasts.”

Lauren blushed and nudged her. “I still owe you. So get out of here at two if you won’t leave now. Okay?”

Sophie thought of her dad. And then of Alex and what he would think about all of this. “Okay.”

She got back to work weeding and somehow managed to keep distracted until the busy lunch hours. Those went quickly at least. And thank God for that, because she caught several people studying her as if they wanted to ask a question about the long-ago scandal. None of them did, though, and after a very long half hour of reading to preschoolers for story time, it was finally two o’clock. Lauren waved her out the door.

Sophie glared out the windshield as she drove. She’d tried her brother two more times, but he wasn’t answering. Of course he wasn’t. He knew exactly how pissed she was going to be.

Well, he
thought
he knew. He couldn’t have any idea that her day had started off so sweet and perfect, and that she’d been looking forward to an even sweeter evening with a man who probably wouldn’t be too keen on her anymore. Did the lawsuit involve him? It must. He would have inherited part of his grandfather’s estate.

“David, you little shit,” Sophie muttered to herself as she took the highway south toward her dad’s ranch. It was supposed to have been a perfect day and now she was driving to her family’s house wearing no panties and a scowl on her face. She passed by the pull-off from the other night and growled, “Unbelievable.”

At least she still had some clothes at the ranch. She wasn’t going to argue with her brother while the mountain breeze caressed her naked ass. “God,” she groaned out loud. She’d never be free of these stupid family nightmares. It was like her family was living out a Wyoming version of
The Thorn Birds
. At least there wasn’t a wayward priest involved. Yet.

She tried her brother one more time and then threw the phone onto the passenger seat hard enough to make it bounce. It was possible he wasn’t at home, but she doubted it. He never went anywhere except to weekly karaoke with the same people he’d hung out with since high school. Though he’d apparently added “trips to the county recorder’s office” to his habits.

The drive seemed to take forever, and when she finally skidded to a halt in the gravel yard that fronted the house, her heart fell. The house looked locked up tight. Her dad’s truck was gone. But maybe her brother was locked in his room, trying to hide from her wrath. Best of luck to him, the little shit.

Sophie walked through the silent living room and kitchen and headed straight down the hallway to her brother’s door. She pounded hard on it, hoping he was in there, hoping she would scare him half to death. But there was no gasp of shock and no response. When she tried the knob it was unlocked. Only her anger made her open it. She’d never have invaded his privacy otherwise, and when she saw that he wasn’t in the room, she closed the door immediately. She had too many of her own secrets to tempt fate by poking her nose into others’.

Speaking of... She grimaced and hurried to her own room. She dug through her top dresser drawer until she found a pair of pale pink panties and slipped them on. Even she wasn’t perverted enough to have a family meeting in this state.

Once that little housekeeping task was taken care of, she lost her momentum. She didn’t know what to do. She was standing alone in an empty house with too many feelings whipping through her, and Sophie was suddenly exhausted. Her knees began to shake and she finally gave up and sat down on her bed.

The springs squeaked and slumped under her weight. Amazing how old your childhood bedroom could make you feel. It was strange, because she’d lived here only a year ago, yet it felt like something from her girlhood. Probably because she still had high school pictures on the wall.

“That could have something to do with it,” she muttered before collapsing back on the bed. Dust motes burst up and danced through the slanting rays of sunshine that sneaked past the blinds.

She should’ve transformed this room long before, but she’d somehow never managed it. It was her childhood room, after all. She didn’t plan to stay here
permanently
. She’d leave it behind. She knew that was true because aside from the photos from high school and a gigantic map of the world, all the other decorations were posters of faraway sights. Sandy deserts and ocean glaciers and African savannas. She’d once collected postcards from friends traveling closer to home, too. Washington, D.C., and New York City and San Francisco. But all those postcards had been cut up and used in scrapbooks.

That was okay. She’d get out there soon. She wouldn’t need scrapbooks or posters or postcards from friends, because she’d travel herself someday. For now, she was patient. Her dad needed her. Clearly, her brother did, too.

Sophie sat up with a sigh, thinking she may as well put dinner in the oven while she was waiting, but she didn’t have the will to stand up. Instead, she just slumped and stared at her dresser and tried not to freak out about her brother. Her eye fell on a new stack of mail and she snagged that and started going through it. All junk. Except one letter.

She froze at the sight of the return address. With everything else going on, she didn’t want to think about this right now. Or at any point.

It had taken the medical examiner’s office quite a while to complete their final examination of the remains. There hadn’t been much to work with, but with the vague possibility of a crime, they’d waited months for clearance from the sheriff’s office.

The clearance had come, her mother’s bones had been sent to a funeral home, and she’d been cremated. Sophie had taken care of all of that. But this part she couldn’t seem to manage. This part she couldn’t make herself do.

When she heard the rumble of an approaching engine, Sophie tucked the letter from the funeral home into a drawer and raced to the living room. A peek out the window revealed her brother and dad getting out of the truck, both of them dusty and sweat-soaked from whatever work they’d been doing.

Shit. She’d really wanted to speak to her brother alone, but she supposed her dad had to find out at some point.

David’s head was down when he walked in, his mouth drawn into a scowl. He always looked like that after being forced to do real work. Sophie wanted to grab him by the hair and shake him just for that damn look.

He glanced at her, then headed straight toward his room, as if he really thought she’d let him walk right past her.

“What the hell did you do?” she asked.

He shrugged one shoulder and tried to brush past. She pushed him. “What did you do?” she yelled.

“Hey!” her dad said, startled by the sudden tension. “What’s going on here?”

“Ask David!”

“Get over it,” he mumbled.

“Are you kidding me? Did you think Dad and I would have nothing to say about this?”

“I didn’t care what you had to say about this. It’s my name on the lawsuit, not yours.”

Her dad’s chin drew in. “Lawsuit? What are you talking about, David?”

Her brother crossed his arms and frowned at her, seemingly unwilling to admit what he’d done.

Fine. She’d do the hard work. She always had. “He filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Bishop estate,” she finally said, the words dry and bitter and sticking to her throat as she said them. Tears rushed to her eyes. This time she couldn’t stop them. “He’s suing the Bishops because this all wasn’t ugly enough without that!”

“David!” their father gasped.

Her brother shrugged again. “What? Whatever happened in that accident was his fault. He was driving. People file lawsuits when that happens. Their insurance will pay for it.”

Greg Heyer had never so much as spanked either one of them, and he rarely lost his temper. Even now, he didn’t. But he did point at his son and shake his head in disgust. “No.
People
might file lawsuits, but we don’t. She’s been dead for twenty-five years. Let it lie.”

David, face red and hands balling into fists, knocked their father’s hand away. “My
mother
has been dead for twenty-five years!” he screamed. Sophie’s heart nearly pounded out of her chest. She jumped in front of her dad and shoved her brother back before he could lash out further.

He barely noticed. “My mom is dead because of something Wyatt Bishop did. Someone has to pay for that!”

“His kids?” her dad yelled back. “That’s what you want? To make his kids pay?”

“Why not? Everyone has been making us pay for decades! And now
they’re
the ones getting all the sympathy, holding that bastard up like a fucking community hero.”

“Watch your language,” her dad snapped.

“Watch my
language?
” he shouted. “Are you kidding? Watch my language, keep my head down, keep my mouth shut, calm down. That’s all you ever had to say about
any
of this. ‘Ignore them, David. You give them more power if you respond.’ Well, guess what? That’s not fucking true. I should’ve fought all of them a long time ago!”

Her dad blew out a long breath behind her. “What are you talking about?” he asked wearily.

“I’m saying I’m not going to be weak anymore. I’m going to take what belongs to me.”

“And what belongs to you is someone else’s money?” he sighed.

“Fuck you!” David snarled.

Sophie pushed her finger into his chest. “Don’t you speak to him that way. Ever.”

He knocked her hand away, too, startling her so much that she stepped back.

“Fuck you, too, Sophie. You’re not my mom and you never have been.” He finally spun away and stalked to his room. The slam of his door shook the whole house.

Sophie stood frozen in shock. Her brother had always seemed sullen and childish, but this was a new low.

“Hey, don’t cry, princess.”

Her dad turned her into his arms and hugged her. She hadn’t realized she was still crying, but as his arms closed around her, she sobbed.

“It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to David once he’s settled down and find out what’s going on. Maybe he just needs to talk it out and then I can get him to drop this nonsense.”

“But he’s already done it. Everybody already knows.”

He patted her back in that way he’d done since she could remember. He’d probably been doing it since she was a toddler and her mom had married him. “It doesn’t matter what they think, Sophie. What matters is that we do the right thing. You know that.”

Yes. She knew that. He’d always told her and David that. She hadn’t believed it, and neither had David apparently, but Sophie had always appreciated it at least. Her brother clearly hadn’t seen it the same way.

“Why would he do it?” she whispered, as if her dad could have any sort of answer.

He squeezed her hard again. “He was only one. He doesn’t remember your mother at all, sweetheart. All he’s ever known about her is anger and shame. You and I, we knew something more than that. We knew how funny she was. How quick to laugh. We knew the good things. He never got that. He’s mixed up about it.”

Well, Jesus, Sophie was mixed up, too, but she had some damn common sense. She did sometimes wonder if David would’ve been a better man if Mom had been around, but maybe he would’ve been just as weak and whiny. Maybe he would’ve been worse.

“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away to wipe her tears. Her dad pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “This must all be tough for you. The memorial service and the memories, and now this....”

He shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m a grown man. I can handle a little gossip. Anyway, I’ve got this place, and a great daughter to take care of me. It’s not so bad.”

When she’d been young, she’d wondered if he’d even heard the rumors that had flown. After all, he lived way out here on his own. She and David hadn’t had the choice to be isolated. They’d had to go to school. Had to face the taunting.

In fact, her dad had been so good at facing things stoically, she’d wondered whether he missed her mom at all. But sometimes when she’d been a little girl plagued by bad dreams and afraid to sleep, she would sneak down the hall toward the faint light of her dad’s reading lamp. And every once in a while she’d find him sitting in his big easy chair, head in hands, and a bottle of Scotch open on the table next to him. The night when she’d finally realized he was quietly sobbing, she’d stopped sneaking out to the living room. It was too scary to know her big strong stepfather was just as hurt as she was.

But just like he always did, he assured her he’d be fine about this new blow. She didn’t know how to figure out if he was really fine or not, so she mopped up her tears and did what she always did. She got to work.

“What were you doing today?” she asked as she moved to the kitchen to wash the few dishes that had been left in the sink.

“Looking for the last few strays. We’re selling a little early this year.”

“Any luck with the strays?”

“We found two. I suspect the last one made a good meal for something. He was that steer with the bad eye, remember? Anyway, I’ll try one more time tomorrow.”

She set a pot of coffee on to brew and opened the fridge. “I’ll put a chicken in for you two, if that sounds good.”

“I can make a chicken,” he said, just as he always did, and she answered just as he knew she would.