The Lonesome Young (6 page)

“I have no idea, but you’d think some of these people were allergic to vegetables, to look at their plates,” Mom said disapprovingly, right on cue.

She was the Kentucky version of a health nut. We never had bean sprouts or tofurkey, or any of that crazy California stuff, but you’d never catch her within shouting distance of a deep-fried Twinkie, either, and there were always at least two veggies and a fruit with dinner. She’d almost passed out in shock the day in third grade that I’d come home with an empty Lunchables package in my lunch bag.

I’d traded my PB&J and apple to Lincoln Finn for it, I’d told her, proud of my bargaining abilities. She’d grounded me for a week, and I’d had to read a kids’ book about the evils of junk food. To her. Out loud.

I grinned at her. “I’m going to get a piece of Mrs. Finn’s store-bought cake.”

Mom sighed and shook her head. “Chemicals and sugar, topped with frosting that’s more of the same. Go ahead, rot your stomach. I’m off to rescue your father.”

She headed over toward the far side of the room, where Pa and a few men stood near a window that had a group of partially deflated balloons taped to it, probably from a wedding reception the day before. The orange and green balloons made me feel a twinge of sympathy for the bridesmaids. I’d been to lots of weddings—Mom and Pa knew a ton of people, and they used to drag me along all the time, before I’d gotten old enough to put my foot down. It had always seemed to me like weddings were an excuse for brides to make their best friends look as ugly as possible, but I wasn’t a girl, so I probably just didn’t get it.

I headed for the desserts, since it would probably be a while before Mom could drag Pa away. As the sheriff, he always had plenty of people who wanted to talk to him about “important” business, even when he was off duty. We’d once been trapped at Dairy Queen for an hour and a half while some old guy complained about his neighbor’s tree dropping branches on his lawn. On the bright side, Pa had let me have a second ice cream cone while we waited, after the familiar warning: “Don’t tell your mother.”

I smiled a little before the memory soured for me. Pa and I didn’t go out for ice cream these days.

I worked my way through a slice of homemade apple pie and a cinnamon roll and was contemplating a plate of cookies when somebody poked me in the back.

“Hey, bro,” Jeb said, staring past me at the dessert table. “How’s it going?”

I automatically scanned the reception hall for Ethan, but my brothers had quit attending church several years before, when their mother had stormed out in a huff over an insult to her chocolate cake recipe or something like that.

“It’s going. Surprised to see you here, though. Were you in church?”

He laughed, and a few girls in the vicinity looked over with interest. When Jeb laughed, he was one of the best-looking guys around, maybe because nobody noticed his shifty eyes.

“I don’t believe in this shit, you know that,” he said. “I’m just here to see you. You haven’t been answering your phone or texts, so I thought I’d try to get you in person. It’s not like your mom can kick us out of church, like she did with your house.”

“Us?”

He nodded toward the door to the kitchen. “Ethan’s in there, talking to one of the Orson girls.”

“Which one?” The eldest, Rebecca, was engaged, so it was probably her. Ethan loved nothing more than to cause trouble.

“The pretty one,” Jeb said, grinning at a group of girls who were too young and too nice for him.

“They’re all pretty,” I said grimly, weighing my options. I could go see what he wanted, or I could walk out the door and head home right now. Trouble might happen, but I wouldn’t be anywhere near it.

My mom’s laughter rang out from where she was chatting with one of her friends, and I sighed. She hadn’t been able to laugh at much recently. I wasn’t quite sure how or when I’d been elected family peacekeeper, but the last thing the Rhodales needed was another scene, especially at church. I headed for the kitchen.

Time to deflect trouble.

Ethan leaned against the stainless steel restaurant-sized refrigerator while he talked to—no surprise—Rebecca, the engaged Orson girl. He looked up when I walked in.

“That didn’t take long.”

“I like to get unpleasant chores out of the way first.”

Rebecca cast an alarmed glance at me and left the room, walking fast. After the batwing half-doors had swung shut behind her, I curled my fingers and made a come-on gesture.

“Let’s have it.”

Amusement faded from Ethan’s face. “I have a job for you.”

I nodded. “Yeah. No ‘hi, Mickey, nice to see you, kiss my ass’ or anything. Just right to the point, as always.”

“I don’t have time to waste. I’ve got supply problems, and demand keeps going up, up, and up,” he said.

“Supply problems because you stepped on somebody else’s toes, burning down that trailer?”

He glanced over at the doors, and I could see the back of Jeb’s head. Standing guard, no doubt.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, little brother, but let’s just say that I’ve learned that these aren’t great toes to have stepped on.” Ethan looked a little bit worried, and Ethan
never
looked worried. He’d had a half smile on his face even when the jury had found him guilty, so this was practically hysteria.

There was a commotion outside the kitchen, and then Reverend Dohonish entered the room. Mom had almost taken my head off the one time I’d said it out loud, but our minister was shaped like a bowling pin or a turkey vulture. I sometimes entertained myself during the most boring of his sermons by imagining that his long, skinny neck, undersized head, and enormous belly were covered with feathers and he was going to take flight any minute.

“You boys planning on doing the washing up?” His words were pleasant enough, but there was a hint of steel underneath them.

“Just having a simple conversation between brothers,” Ethan drawled.

The minister’s sharp gaze took in Ethan’s carefully studied relaxed posture and my tenseness. “Maybe you can have it someplace else. The girls want to get in here and start doing the cleaning.”

“Throwing me out, Reverend? I thought you’d at least preach a little bit about wages of sin at me,” Ethan said, mocking the man and everything he stood for in two sentences.

I didn’t want to be around when he snapped.

“I already gave two sermons today. You tell Anna Mae that we’d surely love to see her back here. Any Sunday. That goes for you, too,” Reverend Dohonish said. He turned to me. “Mickey, you’re finally right with the law and with God. Don’t start this up.”

I felt my spine stiffen at his words. The worst part of small-town life was the blithe way everybody stepped right into your business and felt entitled to offer opinions or advice. But I tried not to let any of it show on my face, for my mother’s sake.

The reverend pointed at the doors to the hall. “Why don’t you go help your mother rescue your pa? The mayor’s talking to him, and that woman couldn’t get to a point slower if she walked there backwards. City-council meetings would test Job himself these days.”

“I will in a minute. I just need to finish up here,” I said.

The minister hesitated, looking at me and then Ethan, but then he shook his head and left.

“Yes,
sir
, Reverend Dohonish, sir. Of course we want to be right with
God
,” Ethan said, mocking again. He headed for the door to the parking lot. “I’ll be in touch, little brother.”

“Don’t waste your time,” I told him.

“Got nothing but time,” he called after me.

Jeb grabbed my arm to stop me when I started to walk past him. “Did he ask you? Are you going to do it?”

I yanked my arm out of his grip and gave him a look. “Since when have I ever had anything to do with Ethan’s business? Never have, never will.”

Jeb bit his lip, and he looked scared. “Mickey, we need help. There’s a problem, and it’s bad. If you—”

“I can’t, Jeb. I can’t do it. I
won’t
do it.”

“But you’re blood. Our
brother
,” Jeb said fiercely. “You owe us.”

I’d been starting to feel sorry for him, but “you owe us” put paid to that. “I don’t owe you anything, but I’ll give you some advice for free.
Because
you’re my brother, I don’t want anything to happen to you. Get out of Ethan’s business before you end up in jail. Or worse.”

I knew it was a waste of breath, but it somehow eased my conscience to say the words.

Jeb shook his head, his eyes bleak. “You don’t understand. It’s too late. I’m screwed. Leave, stay—it doesn’t matter. It’s six one way, half-dozen the other. They know who I am now, and they know I’m the one who messed up.”

“Who’s
they
?” It didn’t sound like he was talking about Ethan.

He shook his head, misery plain on his face. “I can’t. I’m already in deep enough.”

“So you want to pull
me
in, too?” I’d known he was weak, but I’d never thought he was this selfish. A trace of guilt sliced through me at the expression in his eyes, though. Ethan played him like a fish on the line, and Jeb was clearly over his head in whatever this was. Whoever
they
were.

“Never mind. Ethan wants you, he’ll get you. He always does.” Jeb took off after delivering that parting shot, and I watched him all the way out the door as my flash of sympathy died.

Reverend Dohonish walked up next to me, and he was watching Jeb, too. “You in any trouble, son?”

“Not yet,” I answered grimly.

I wondered how long it would be the truth.

CHAPTER 7

Victoria

G
ran and I sat alone, the weight of hundreds of staring eyes practically boring into the back of my head, and I pretended to concentrate on Father Troy’s sermon about redemption. Too bad my parents had refused to come. If anybody in the family needed any redemption, it was them.

The front pews of the Saint Francis Episcopal Church had wooden partitions in front of them, and when I was a little girl and Gran had taken me to Sunday services with her, I’d always wondered why. To keep the congregation herded back from the priest? To keep Father Troy from looking up our skirts as we sat there, all alone in the Whitfield pew?

Gran had shushed me when I’d asked, pretending to be scandalized, but I’d seen her lips quiver as she’d fought back a smile. She hadn’t always been Episcopalian; I knew that much. She’d grown up in the Methodist church, but then she’d married my grandfather and been inexorably sucked into a new life, a new social class, and even a new religion—Whitfields
always
went to this church.

In fact, they’d built it. Back in 1890 or something, and it even had been known briefly as the Whitfield Episcopalian church, until the congregation had voted to change it in the mid-1950s. I wasn’t sure why the name change had happened, either, but I was glad that it had. It was creepy enough being a Whitfield in Whitfield County and having our last name plastered all over everything, like we were the Donald Trumps of Kentucky. I couldn’t imagine attending a church named after my family. A little too “pride goeth” and all.

“Don’t make faces, Victoria,” Gran whispered, and then it was time to stand up for the doxology and sit back down for the offering.

When I was little, I’d also wondered why, if we were praising “God from whom all blessings flow,” we had to give the church our money, especially since Gran had always made me give up an entire quarter out of my one-dollar allowance.

If the blessings all flow from God, why does He need my quarter?

Be quiet and sit down.

When the service was over, we filed out, and I dutifully smiled and shook hands with everyone who wanted to say hello to the Whitfield granddaughter. Father Troy, standing at the door to say good-bye to everyone, smiled sympathetically.

“Are you starting to settle in, young lady?” He had a booming baritone voice that worked beautifully for singing hymns and preaching sermons, but not so much for private conversations. Everyone in a fifty-yard radius turned to look at me as they headed to their American-made cars and trucks—none of that foreign crap in God’s country—most of which had bumper stickers proclaiming their owners’ personal beliefs and accomplishments:

JESUS IS IN MY DRIVER’S SEAT!

PROUD SUPPORTER: KENTUCKY HIGHWAY PATROL

MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT

Gran cleared her throat, and I realized that I was being rude. Right. Father Troy had asked me about settling in. It was “tell us about yourself ” all over again, but this time even the parents of all those honor students who supported the highway patrol were staring at me.

“Yes, thank you,” I mumbled.

“It’s important to stand by your father through his career setbacks,” he boomed, and my glance at Gran told me it wasn’t just me suffering the humiliation of his loud comments.

“Of course she’s doing well. She’s my granddaughter,” Gran cut in, and there was a hint of bite in her voice. I guess when you wrote most of the checks that paid the church’s bills, you were brave enough to stand up to the nosy priest.

She waited until we were in the truck to say anything else.

“He means well, Victoria,” she sighed. “People in small towns can’t help sticking their noses into everybody’s business. It’s what they do for sport. Before there was TV or the Internet, gossip was the ultimate entertainment, and the people here are world champions.”

“If lightning strikes the truck, it’s your fault. God might not appreciate your lumping Father Troy’s priestly concern in with ordinary small-town gossip,” I told her, not altogether joking.

“Forget that,” she said, smiling. “Tell me about school.”

“There’s not much to tell,” I said, concentrating on the road and the American flag sticker pasted to the rear window of the Chevy Silverado in front of me—bumper sticker: MY KID CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT—all so I didn’t think about Mickey. “I’m ahead in most classes, a little behind in one, I met a nice girl named Denise, and I think it will be okay.”