Jilted Page 6

  Clyde nodded but said nothing. There was nothing to say to such an absurd notion.

  Yet still I wanted to break something.

  “Let’s walk.” Clyde pushed himself away from the car and stepped to the front bumper. When I didn’t follow him, he started down the highway without me.

  After a few seconds of indignation, I caught up and matched his turtle pace.

  “I’ll keep it slow,” he drawled, “since you’re so much older than me.”

  When I swatted his shoulder, my hand stung. “I’m only a few months older. Besides, you’re the one who’s a grandparent.”

  He glanced at me, and his lip curled. “Your hand okay?”

  “If your muscles weren’t so dang hard, it would be fine.”

  “Can’t be helped. My doctor has me drinking Ensure.”

  My sour mood dissolved amid his light banter, and I laughed softly before my humor died. “Ansel drinks Ensure. A lot of good it did him.”

  Two cars sped past, and we moved closer to the muddy ditch, walking half on, half off the pavement. We continued in silence while the sun slid behind the Caprock and the turbines transformed into silhouettes against the orange-gold sky. In another hour, they would be hidden by darkness, yet even in the thickness of night, they would continue their endless toil. Suddenly I was weary. I was as small and inadequate and overwhelmed as a child, and I felt myself yearning to hold Clyde’s hand, remembering a day when I was tiny, walking through the pasture with my daddy on our way to Picnic Hollow. His palms were large, and as was our habit, I wrapped my chubby fist around his index finger, holding on tightly as I tripped along beside him. I felt secure that day, knowing he would protect me from varmints and cacti and whatever else we came up against in the pasture.

  Clyde cleared his throat softly. “Ansel doesn’t want to leave.”

  “I know.” I didn’t have to ask what he meant. It was no secret I hadn’t adjusted to Hoby’s exit very gracefully.

  As our shoes shuffled across the gravel on the side of Highway 84, I realized Clyde’s strength felt safe, and I toyed with the idea of slipping my hand in his. But that was impossible. My memories wouldn’t allow me to release the shadows from the past. The doubts.

  “I was just thinking about Picnic Hollow,” I said. “Remember when we used to go there back in high school?”

  “I forgot about that place. Think it’s still there?” His gaze slid across the horizon, where somewhere in the distance, a tiny bluff, covered with carvings from past generations, lay nestled between crags and boulders.

  Another car zoomed past us as I snickered. “Where else would it be?”

  “Could be underwater.” He frowned. “I ain’t been out there since they built the lake.”

  “I didn’t think about that.” I shut my mouth then, figuring I had said enough for a while, and I followed Clyde’s gaze, wondering if Picnic Hollow had been relocated to the bottom of Lake Alan Henry.

  That would’ve been a shame. My family had gone there many times when I was young, hiking through the ravines and down the riverbed, across to the sandstone cavity, whose walls were weathered smooth. Generations of people had hiked there with picnic lunches, spent the day in the cool shadows, and carved their names into the soft rock before making the slow trek home.

  Back in the day, I had allowed a boyfriend or two to take me there. Clyde and I had even been there at the same time once, though I had been with Neil, and he had been with Susan.

  Clyde stopped walking. “Neil acted strange yesterday.”

  So Clyde was thinking about that double date, too. “How so?”

  “He seemed … antsy.”

  I didn’t answer.

  The words Neil and antsy didn’t belong in the same sentence, and I certainly didn’t care why Clyde had perceived him to be nervous. I had enough worries without adding antsy Neil to them.

  Clyde started walking again, even slower. “You think the high school kids still go out there after the homecoming game?”

  “Ruth Ann never mentioned it when she was in school. Neither did JohnScott.” A short sigh cut from my throat. “It’s on private property.”

  He was silent for a while, and when he answered, he sounded hesitant, almost as if he were asking a question. “We should go look for it sometime.”

  I crossed my arms to protect myself from whatever he might be insinuating, but when peace settled across my shoulders, I dropped my hands back to my sides. “Maybe.”

  The low rumble of a car coming to a slow stop beside us caused my mood to collapse like a wad of tinfoil.

  It was the blue- and gray-haired sisters.

  “You having car trouble, Lynda?” Blue rode in the passenger seat and leaned her head out the window, but she was so small, her bluish hair touched the door lock.

  I bent to look in at them. “Just getting a little exercise.”

  Gray braced one hand on the seat so she could lean across and scowl at Clyde, but her skin smoothed when she shifted her gaze to me. “You sure everything’s all right, hon?”

  Blue didn’t wait for me to answer her sister’s question. “What you doing exercising on the highway?”

  “Sounds suspicious to me.” Gray muttered the words, but they were loud enough that Clyde and I could easily hear them.

  “Actually, we came out here to look at the windmills.” I fluttered my hand, indicating the army surrounding us, but the two women only stared at me.

  Gray’s eyes scrunched until they were nothing more than a tangle of wrinkles. “Why would you do that? Those things are eyesores.”

  “It’s peaceful out here.” Clyde shifted his weight, and his boot ground a pebble into the asphalt.

  Both women startled when he spoke, and Gray’s foot slipped off the brake, causing the car to jerk forward before she caught herself.

  He bobbed his head politely. “We’ll see you ladies back in town, I’m sure.”

  When he turned his back and continued strolling down the highway, I followed him. “Thanks for stopping to check,” I called over my shoulder.

  As the sisters’ car eased away from us, the passenger window slowly slid up again, and my worries cranked up from the pit of my stomach to my throat. “I can’t believe Blue and Gray saw us together.”

  Clyde glanced down as though he might find his clothes covered with soot.

  “I mean, I don’t mind walking with you …” Or maybe I did. I scrambled to finish my explanation. “They just tend to blow things out of proportion.”

  He squinted at the taillights fifty yards down the road. “You call them Blue and Gray?”

  “Ruth Ann does. She can never remember their names, and neither can I.”

  “Hmm.” Clyde’s face was expressionless. “I don’t have a problem remembering their names. The older one—Gray as you call her—her name is Algerita. Algerita Parker. And the younger one …” He chuckled. “You know what I mean. Younger than Algerita, but not young. Her name is O’Della.”

  “No wonder I can never remember.”

  “Tricky ones, for sure.”

  The taillights shrunk to tiny red dots. “How is it that you know their names? Do you talk to them?”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever talked to them—until today.” He shrugged, looking smaller than normal once again. “But they talk about me so much, they’re on my mind pretty often.”

  I stared at the spot where the Parker sisters’ lights had disappeared, and the gentle giants on either side of the highway no longer comforted me. I stopped walking, and when Clyde looked back at me, I tilted my head toward the hatchback.

  His eyes turned to slits. “You’re not going to hide in your house.”

  “It’s tempting.”

  “Lyn, you don’t know what they’re going to tell people.”

  My eyes blinked slowly, and in the momentary
blackness, I felt the all-too-familiar dread of truth. “It doesn’t matter, Clyde. They saw us together, and they’ll make up the rest.”

  Chapter Ten

  Clyde wondered if he would always attend worship alone. As he slipped through the double doors of the Trapp church building and stood in the tiny foyer, he could hear Dodd Cunningham teaching a Bible lesson behind a hollow door. Good man, Ruthie’s husband. After Fawn and JohnScott had married, Dodd encouraged Clyde to come back to the small congregation, and somehow the young preacher had smoothed things over enough that the congregants tolerated his presence. Mostly.

  When the bathroom door opened and Corky Ledbetter clambered through, pulling a small child by the hand, the entry shrank around Clyde.

  He bobbed his head. “Ma’am.”

  “Morning, Clyde.” She took three quick steps, then slowed. “So … you and Lynda Turner?” She smiled. “Y’all are a good match.”

  Clyde’s back straightened, but just then a bell rattled, sounding as if it were mounted inside the wall. The thin paneling vibrated, producing a squawking hum that signaled the end of Bible class. The door to Dodd’s classroom opened, and congregants began filtering past Clyde, so he shuffled to a corner, feeling huge in the tight space.

  Lee Roy Goodnight hobbled toward him, leaning heavily on a wooden cane, and stopped in front of Clyde to shake his hand.

  “That grandson of yours is getting big.”

  “He is.” Clyde’s pride swelled not only because of Lee Roy’s mention of Nathan but also because the old man had no qualms about referring to him as Clyde’s grandson.

  “Walking yet?” he asked.

  “Just.”

  “Twelve months old. Right on time.” Lee Roy wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and index finger.

  “Cyde!” Nathan’s baby voice rang from the hallway.

  They turned to see Fawn coming toward them with Nathan in her arms and two bags hanging from her shoulder.

  Lee Roy chuckled. “You have a good week, son. Keep enjoying that boy.”

  “Will do, Lee Roy. You have a good one, too.”

  “Cyde!” Nathan kicked his feet against Fawn’s hips as though trying to propel himself out of his mother’s arms.

  She smiled. “He can almost say your name.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Clyde didn’t trust his voice to speak. He had gone twenty years without seeing a small person, and now there was one screaming his name.

  “He’s not going to calm down until you hold him,” Fawn said.

  Clyde reached for Nathan, resting one palm beneath the boy’s rump and the other behind his back.

  “You coming to the birthday party this afternoon?” she asked.

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “It’ll be hot as blazes at the park, but that seemed like the best option.”

  A mental image flashed across his mind—Neil Blaylock and him in the same living room—and he grunted. “I see what you mean.”

  Nathan stretched his hand toward a lock of Clyde’s hair.

  “No,” Fawn said firmly.

  “Aw, he ain’t hurting nothing. People say I’m hardheaded.” The child yanked a lock of hair back and forth, but Clyde only smiled. “Go back with your momma now.”

  “Sit with us today?” Fawn asked.

  “Better not, but thanks.”

  A spicy scent overpowered the cramped space, and Clyde knew Susan was near even before he saw her. He frowned, running memories through the movie projector in his mind, but he couldn’t remember her smelling that strong when they were young.

  Her bracelets jangled as she patted Nathan and greeted Fawn, but Clyde kept his eyes trained on a tumbleweed rolling down the front sidewalk.

  Two years ago, when Clyde returned to Trapp, Susan had been as cold as a norther blowing in from Colorado, but back then, Neil had been sitting on the pew next to her. Like two stone pillars, the Blaylocks had reigned from the second pew, the faultless church elder and his pious wife. When Neil stopped attending worship, Susan had been forced to thaw, but only slightly.

  Now she and Clyde would greet each other real quick-like, just enough to show they were acting like Christians, but not enough for church members to make up crazy stories about them.

  Fawn watched as her mother pranced away from them. “Did everything go all right when they picked up Nathan Friday?”

  “I guess so.” Clyde didn’t bother mentioning Neil’s peculiar behavior to Fawn, but she brought it up herself.

  “Dad’s been stressed lately.”

  Clyde wondered what sort of things would stress Neil Blaylock.

  “Mother thinks it’s a midlife crisis.” She shrugged. “Here comes JohnScott.”

  “Hey there, Clyde.” Fawn’s husband approached with a cluster of teenagers, hung back to let them pass, then shook Clyde’s hand.

  “Good game Friday night,” Clyde offered. Every person in town greeted the coach with one of two greetings, depending on stats, but Clyde didn’t bother to get creative. “We at home again this week?”

  “Yep.” JohnScott grinned. “One more home game, and then we head to Tahoka.”

  The four of them went through the double wooden doors together, but Fawn continued down the aisle to sit near her mother while JohnScott settled next to Clyde on the back pew. Clyde knew the coach would sit with him until a moment before the service started.

  “Sorry to hear about your dad,” Clyde said softly. “Ansel’s one of my favorites.”

  “He’s everybody’s favorite.” JohnScott’s eyes drooped.

  “You all right?”

  “Not really.”

  Clyde nodded. “Might take a while yet.”

  “You hear about those bones out at the lake?” JohnScott seemed to shake the gloom from his thoughts, and Clyde went along with it.

  “I’m not deaf, right?”

  “Last I heard, they’re definitely human remains, but they don’t know who it is.”

  Clyde lifted an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

  “Aw …” JohnScott ran the tip of his tongue across his lips. “I’m figuring it to be a lost Boy Scout mauled by a mountain lion, but nobody ever reported him missing because he was such a toot in the first place.”

  “You think?”

  “What about you?” JohnScott asked. “What’s your take on it?”

  Clyde rubbed the back of his index finger along the bottom of his chin. “Skydiving expedition gone bad?”

  “And … why didn’t anyone ever report him missing?”

  “They did, but the wind carried him for miles.”

  JohnScott opened his mouth in a wide grin. “Maybe it’s the same kid. Jumped from an airplane, then got mauled by a mountain lion.”

  “It could happen.”

  Fawn’s husband pulled a dry washcloth from his pocket and dabbed a blob of moist cookie crumbs on Clyde’s shoulder. “I see you held Nathan this morning.”

  “Sure enough.”

  The coach smiled, then joined Fawn and Susan near the front.

  Clyde stared at the backs of their heads, wondering, remembering, thinking about the past. Life had turned out to be a strange, unpredictable storm, but he had long since determined to ride it out. Fawn’s curly ponytail fell across the back of the pew, and Clyde marveled at her beauty, then studied Susan’s puffy, blonde hairdo. He quickly compared her looks to other women in the congregation, but none of them had the same large mass.

  For the hundredth time since coming home, he wondered what he had ever seen in her. No, that wasn’t quite right. What he had seen in her twenty-two years ago was now gone. She’d been sweet and innocent back then, but now she was hard and brittle, and he cursed himself, realizing he was at least part of the reason she had changed.

  He stood with the congregation and hummed along with �
�I’ll Fly Away.” When he was locked up, he had enjoyed booming the hymns, but here in this place, it didn’t seem acceptable.

  Like a bird from prison bars has flown …

  He felt a slap on his back, and Troy and Pamela Sanders scooted past to the pew in front of him, coming in late from whatever Sunday school class Pamela had volunteered to teach.

  Troy leaned toward him and whispered loudly, “There’s a task force coming in tomorrow to rappel down the rotors. You should come and watch.”

  “Aw, now … I don’t know, Troy.”

  “Sure,” Pamela said, not bothering to whisper. “You can wait on the ground and catch them when they fall to their deaths.” But then her frowning eyebrows lifted into soft arcs. “I heard about you and Lynda, and all I can say is it’s about time.”

  “Pam,” Troy mumbled, “I’m not sure that’s honest news.” He looked at Clyde, and his eyes held a question.

  “Probably not,” Clyde admitted.

  As the song ended and they sat down, Clyde realized Lynda had been right after all. The Parker sisters had been on a rampage, and it hadn’t even been twelve hours.

  Dodd mounted the stage, traipsing back and forth behind the podium and pulling Clyde’s attention back to where it belonged. The preacher had mellowed in the two years he’d been at the Trapp church. His accent had softened into a drawl, and his homespun Bible training had given way to a broader version of the gospel. Not that Ruthie’s husband would ever be a pushover, but he could no longer be called naive.

  “God doesn’t want us to sit back and wait for Him.” Dodd’s eyebrows bounced. “He wants us to run into His arms, to get busy and work, to show others His love.”

  Clyde didn’t see how his own mundane routine would please or displease God either way. He kept to himself, stayed out of other people’s business, and worked hard to pay his bills. He tithed regularly and was kind to others … whenever they got close enough. What would he change about his life … if he wanted to?

  Dodd’s mother coughed into a tissue, and Clyde’s gaze slid from her to Ruthie, then down the pew to Fawn, JohnScott, and Susan. His insides tightened.