Jilted Page 23

  Two weeks. Had everything between Clyde and me happened in only two weeks? A charred paper fragment tumbled across the porch, the words still visible in the black ash, and I smashed it with my thumb, marveling at the way my opinion of Clyde had changed in such a short time. When he came back from prison, he was little more than a pitiful drunk, and at that time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be his friend. But he had proved himself to the people down at the church, to me and his other friends, and most important, to his daughter. Now Fawn needed him more than he knew.

  He was hanging on to the shack because of her, so I could hardly ask him to tear it down, even for something as life changing as opening a restaurant. Pushing myself to my feet, I brushed my hand across my bottom, hoping I hadn’t dirtied my work uniform. I reached for the door handle, but then I froze, piecing together tidbits of memories not unlike how Hector was piecing together evidence from my past. Both of us were working our own jigsaw puzzles.

  The sun must have gone behind one of the cotton balls, because a shadow swept across the porch, darkening the steps where ashes had made their way to the ground. My body went cold as all the pieces came together to form a complete picture, a vision from the past. I realized I wasn’t the only one who had been hanging on to a psychological token.

  I lowered myself slowly to my hands and knees, and then lay down on my side and curled into a ball.

  But only for a minute.

  Chapter Forty-One

  When Clyde got off work that night, he drove straight to the diner, anxious to talk to Lynda about her discussion with Hector. That morning when the sheriff had placed her in his car, she looked so lost, terrified of getting arrested and being convicted of a crime she didn’t commit. He could imagine her sing-song voice. “This is Trapp, Clyde. No matter what you do, the town will gossip a different version of it.” And she had been right again.

  He saw her through the windows of Dixie’s Diner, sweeping the dining room, and he realized how worried he had been. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted her going around town alone. The sheriff had stopped by the Dairy Queen earlier and said enough to let Clyde know that they were searching for Neil and that they considered him armed and dangerous. Clyde never figured Neil to be brave enough to kill another human being, and Clyde had met a few murderers in his lifetime.

  But he had no intention of taking chances. Clyde tapped on the locked door.

  Lynda startled as though she’d heard a gunshot, but when she saw that it was him, her shoulders relaxed and she flipped the lock. “What do you want?”

  It was a strange greeting, but he let it go. “Thought I’d follow you home. They still haven’t found Neil.”

  “Blue and Gray figure him to be well past the border of Mexico by now.” She laughed, but it didn’t sound real. “Crazy, huh?”

  She propped the broom against the counter and turned a chair upside down on a table. Clyde hurried to help.

  “I talked to the sheriff,” he said. “Susan confessed that Neil has been liquidating assets.” He paused with a chair lifted waist high. “I have to agree with the Parker sisters, Lyn. I bet he’s long gone.”

  “I don’t think so. Susan’s still here. And Fawn and Nathan.”

  A pickup crawled past the front windows, and Clyde studied it before continuing to flip chairs.

  Lynda dragged the broom slowly beneath a table, forming a small pile of dust and bits of food, but then she paused. “When Neil suggested we leave town together, do you think he was trying to make us look guilty?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she said. “It’s like he staged the whole thing to exploit your temper and make you look guilty, but you have the most solid alibi a person can have. The Texas prison system.”

  “He’s desperate, Lyn, and thinking crazy. Like threatening to have me arrested because of Nathan. There was never anything to that. Just trying to make me look bad.”

  She continued sweeping. “And if we ran off together, I would look more suspicious.”

  “Yep.”

  “Is it all right if I hate him now?”

  He flipped the last chair over and leaned against the counter. “Hate’s too strong.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.” She sighed, seeming lost in thought. Clyde couldn’t get a feel for her mood. She’d had such a strange few days, her emotions were surely in a jumble, but she seemed detached, emotionless, numb. Maybe that was self-preservation. She gave a short grunt of a laugh and glanced at him. “Those stinking letters of mine came in handy after all.”

  “How so?” Clyde rubbed a palm over his mouth, not sure he should admit he had seen her burning them out on her back porch. Without a doubt, she had heard him calling her name, and she hadn’t wanted to be disturbed. This time he had let her be.

  “Turns out an old letter of Hoby’s put Neil and him together around the time of the”—she cringed—“accident.”

  “How do they know when it happened?”

  “Hoby got a speeding ticket on I-20 toward the end of December, but he never paid it. Hector says that could have been about the time it happened.”

  “But if you’re the one that got the letter from him, why are they looking at Neil instead of you?”

  She shrugged and swept under another table before she answered him. “I was in the hospital in December.”

  He leaned forward. “I never knew that.”

  “I was treated for psychological problems. You know, depression and all.”

  He studied her for a while, wanting to hold her but sensing she wouldn’t accept it at the moment. “You were suicidal.”

  “Yes.” She said it loudly. “Anyway, I have almost as solid an alibi as you.”

  The sound of her laughter, uncontrolled and sinister, forced him to move toward her, approaching as if she were a cottontail rabbit hiding in the brush. He took the broom in one hand and pulled her into his arms with the other. “I wish I had been there, Lyn, and I wish I could erase all the pain from your past.”

  “I do, too.” She pulled away from him, and her eyes looked lost and abandoned. She took the broom from him and swept the debris into a dustpan.

  Something didn’t feel right. She was closing herself off again, and Clyde scrambled for a way to bring her back. They’d had such a good time before everything fell apart. Cooking together, exploring the turbine, making plans at his property on the Cap. He stepped toward her. “I don’t have to work till late tomorrow. I was thinking maybe you’d come over and let me cook for you. I could make you a little batch of homemade ice cream.”

  She dumped the dirt in the trash and stored the dustpan with the broom on a hook in the corner. She didn’t answer.

  “Or we could just head out to the turbines again …” His spirits fell as she stopped, exhaled, didn’t look at him. “Or just whatever,” he finished softly.

  She stared at the side of the cash register for so long, he began to think she hadn’t heard him. But no, of course she had. He shoved his hands in his pockets to wait her out.

  “I guess I better not,” she finally said.

  Better not what? Talk to him? Sit with him? Love him?

  She shook her head. “I can’t do this.”

  His stomach sank to the floor beneath him. She didn’t want him anymore.

  “It’s not that I don’t care about you. Of course I do, but I’m not up to any more drama right now. What with Hoby and all. And Ansel dying. And I haven’t even had time to think about Ruthie and what she must be feeling through all this.”

  She was telling him she was too busy? She still hadn’t looked at him, but Clyde kept staring at her, not believing. “You must be tired after all you’ve been through today,” he said. “Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow? I’ll pick you up, and we can take some muffins to the Cap again. Get away from everything down here in town.”

 
“No.” Her eyes met his then, and her chin quivered. “I’m not going up there with you.”

  The hatred in her eyes matched any glare she had ever leveled at Neil Blaylock, and it shook Clyde’s confidence to have the same look directed straight at him. But it irked him, too. “What’s up, Lyn? Talk to me.”

  Her hands locked together loosely on the counter, giving the impression she didn’t care much about the outcome of the conversation, but Clyde doubted that was the case.

  “I know about your house on the Caprock.” Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “I figured it out.”

  Women had always been confusing to Clyde, but right now he thought Lynda was a complete mystery, and he had no earthly idea what she was talking about. “Do you mean my plans to move up there?” He rubbed the side of his jaw with his thumb. “I don’t mind reconsidering that notion. That’s something we can figure out together. But there’s no rush,” he added quickly.

  “You don’t even understand it, do you?” She looked at him then, with exhausted eyes. “You told me you wanted to keep the house because you had memories of Fawn there. I assumed when she lived there last year, but that’s not what you meant.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is it?”

  Clyde felt as if he were falling down a dark tunnel, three hundred feet above the ground, with nothing to cling to and no hope of release.

  Lynda’s lips curved upward ever so slightly, but her eyes remained empty. “You don’t have memories of Fawn living in your grand­pappy’s house. You have memories of her being conceived there.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “Clyde Felton is making me crazy.”

  “Aw, Lynda.” Velma tittered softly. “You were already pretty loony.”

  Sunday evening we sat alone at the rickety picnic table in her backyard, watching the sky darken. “I don’t need any more loony in my life, Velma. I’ve had enough of it to last awhile.”

  “I’m beginning to think crazy is the new normal.” She picked at a chip of flaking paint on the tabletop. “Just when I think things will settle down, something happens to stir them up again. Makes me wonder what’s next.”

  It was strange to hear Velma talking so pessimistically, and it reminded me that I was supposed to be comforting her, not whining about Clyde. “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “No matter.” She peered far across the pasture, where all the cedars leaned slightly to the left, pushed over the years to the same angle by a gentle yet persistent wind. “Storm’s blowing in.”

  “They said the worst of it will pass us by.”

  “Good,” she said. “It’s nice out here. Calm.”

  At that moment Velma’s backyard was the only place on the property that wasn’t crowded with family members. Her grandchildren had been put to bed on pallets, air mattresses, and roll-away beds—both in her house and in Fawn and JohnScott’s double-wide fifty yards down the fence line. Her children and their spouses were congregated in her living room, talking and laughing, remembering good times with their dad.

  All except JohnScott. He and Fawn had decided to go into town for worship, since they had missed services that morning. JohnScott had told his mother and sisters he needed the strength that would come from meeting with the saints, and even though they silently clucked their tongues in speculation, I got the impression that a few of them were envious of his connection to the church … even if they didn’t understand it.

  “How you holding up?” I asked.

  Her mouth curved downward in a facial shrug. “I’ll be all right.”

  In the past three days, I had seen Ansel’s family—my family—slip back and forth between grief and joy, one minute crying from their loss and the next minute laughing at a recollection of happy times. But through it all, they bolstered each other up, and even though Velma didn’t realize it, they were all being extra careful of their mother’s feelings. “You can be sad, you know,” I said. “Your kids expect it.”

  “I know they do.” She peered at a bank of clouds far on the horizon. “But with all of them here, I’ve got other things to think about—Lilly’s lost tooth and what’s for dinner and will the toilet paper last through the week—so my grief is on hold for a while. You know what I mean … the hardest part of it.” Her plump arms wrapped across her abdomen, and she patted both elbows. “It’s sure nice having them here, though. They’re reminding me of Ansel’s life, and it don’t leave much time for me to harp on his death.”

  “That’ll come later?”

  “And then some.” She slid off the picnic bench and hobbled to a flowerpot, which she picked up and set beneath the faucet on the back wall of the house. She eased the water on. “Sometimes I wish Momma was still around,” she said, “just for her hugs.”

  The cloud bank was rolling in, and a cool breeze came with it. “I had forgotten how much she did that. Her hugs were long and lingering, weren’t they?”

  “Annoyingly so,” Velma said. “I’ve never been one for physical contact, but now I’d give anything for her touch.”

  Ansel’s blue heeler, Rowdy, trotted around from the side of the house and stopped to lap water from Velma’s overflowing flowerpot. She scratched his head, then bent to turn off the water, leaving the pot where it sat.

  “Daddy’s the one I miss most.” I surprised myself with this declaration. “When he died, I felt lost without him.”

  Stepping past the table, Velma picked up a football one of the kids had left outside. “We all need someone to take care of us.”

  For years I had fought to keep people at a distance, not wanting to admit I needed them. “I never really got that, did I?”

  She held the ball under her elbow like a running back. “But now … Clyde?”

  “I guess he could take care of me.” Maybe.

  “You could take care of each other.”

  Turning slightly I let the wind blow me straight in the face. “Is that how it’s supposed to be?”

  “Ideally.” She set the football on the table, then sat down. “Men need just as much taking care of as women do. But in a different way.”

  “It just seems like everyone leaves me, but I guess if Momma and Daddy hadn’t left, I would’ve handled it better.”

  “Don’t say they left. That sounds like they had a choice in the matter.”

  “Okay, when they died.”

  She nodded emphatically. “They died.”

  “That’s all they did.” My voice trailed off. “They died.”

  She gave the dog another pat. “How’s your grieving coming along?”

  “All right,” I said. “It’s not as bad for me, since Ansel was my brother-in-law.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Land sakes, girl. I wasn’t talking about Ansel.”

  For a moment my thoughts swirled, and when they settled, I mumbled, “You mean Hoby.”

  “We’re both widows now.”

  My chest expanded, but then it fell back into its normal pattern of intake and exhale, and I thought I knew a little how Velma felt. With the investigation and Ansel’s death and Clyde’s … whatever, I had too many things distracting me from my grief, but I could figure it out later. And then some.

  Velma squinted, and her nose scrunched slightly. “Will they bury him? I suppose they’ll have to.”

  “Eww. There have been way too many gross thoughts associated with that husband of mine.”

  “It’s been a bizarre week. That’s for sure. By the way …” She studied me for a second while she pursed her lips. “Sophie Snodgrass was out here earlier today. Supposedly to drop off a casserole, but it seemed more like a ploy to dump gossip on a slew of out-of-towners. Anyhoo. She was blabbering about that old pistol of Neil Blaylock’s. You heard anything?”

  I felt relief at the change in topic. “Hector explained it, but it still seems sketchy. He thinks Hoby was killed around Christmas, which would have been h
andy for Neil, because his gun was stolen the first week in December.”

  Velma frowned but nodded.

  “The problem with his story is that he didn’t file the insurance claim until January. So according to Hector, Neil looks like he’s lying about the gun being stolen.”

  “So if they can find the gun, then they can match the bullet?”

  “Apparently.”

  “But what good will that do if they can’t find Neil himself?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t picture Neil ever leaving Trapp. This place is in his bones.” A shiver raced up my spine and down my arm. “I can’t believe I said that. It’s creepy.”

  “Sure enough. Bones are creepy.” She said it as though it didn’t matter one bit, and I began to think it didn’t.

  Rustling movements came from the house, and through the sliding-glass door, we heard the weather radio blaring. The laughter in the living room increased in volume as the monotone voice described the coming storm.

  “Time for me to go home.”

  “You’re welcome to stay.”

  I chuckled. “Velma, if a storm hits, you don’t have closet space for all your grandkids, much less me.”

  “Aw, Lynda. We’re a couple weeks past tornado season. Besides, nothing ever comes of those radio alerts … except to get the young ones excited. Now they’ll be asking for flashlights to play with.” We stood, and Velma snapped her fingers to get the dog to follow her to the mudroom.

  I pulled my car keys from my pocket and turned toward the hatchback. I’d go home and wait for the storm to pass, then find Ruthie and try to comfort her like Velma comforted me. After that, I’d call Clyde and make peace with him. If I could give up my memories, he just might be able to give up his.

  Velma wasn’t the only one who could have a family that laughed and talked together. She wasn’t the only one who deserved it.