Autumn (7 page)

“Baby, can’t you trust me?”

Abashed, Lou wiped her hands on her pants and stood, giving her grandmother an apologetic hug. The gesture felt forced since Lou barely knew her grandmother, apart from a few visits.

“I do trust you. I just wish people would tell me
why
.”

“He’ll leave. He might come across as charming and sweet, but he won’t stick around, dahlin’. The Reynolds men, they were born to leave. They always leave. Every single one of them. I want you to trust me, stay away from him, don’t get attached. Save yourself a lot of trouble because he ain’t nothing
but
trouble.”

Her grandmother appeared to be keenly aware of the personal history of the Reynolds family. Maybe it was true what people said about small towns, that there was no such thing as privacy. Yet, with a secret everyone seemed to know, no one was willing to tell her anything.

Granny Elle patted her cheek and reclaimed her apron from the back door. “Tell Mary Anne dinner is at seven. That should be plenty of time for you to finish your homework.”

There were no overhead lights in Lou’s new bedroom because so much natural light was let in during the day. She’d been outfitted with almost a dozen lamps to keep things bright in the evening. She was sitting in the window seat under the light of an old stained-glass lamp when she heard the first howl.

It was high-pitched and eerie, almost like a human scream at first. But the longer it rang out, the deeper notes of melancholy came through, followed by short yips. The sound was close, reminding her of the coyote she’d seen in the yard days earlier.

Lou clicked off the lamp and blinked away the haze from the light, trying to see something in the darkness. When she couldn’t get a good look through the glass, she unlatched the window. Cool night air assaulted her, making the hairs on her arms rise up.

First there was only silence, and Lou thought she might have imagined the animal wailing, but then it rang out again, loud and crisp, convincing her the creature had to be nearby. Noises might carry, but this sounded so close she was amazed the coyote wasn’t standing in the room with her.

She leaned halfway out the open window, chilly air stinging her face, and scoured the landscape for a sign of her vocal new neighbor. It howled again, and Lou started. The porch light flicked on, and a pair of eyes was illuminated in the darkness, cutting off the howl in the middle.

The coyote yipped and dashed into the woods.

Lou felt a slow chill creep up her spine that had nothing to do with the temperature outside.

Back in the woods, Lou was running. She cleared the tree line and tumbled forward into a dirty town square where a group of men and women had gathered, carrying lanterns and forming a tight circle.

Lou moved forward, strangely certain she wouldn’t be seen. When she reached the edge of the crowd, they parted before her, giving her a clear view of what they were all gawking at.

The woman with a braid wrapped around her head like a crown was standing in their midst, holding the bloodied boy, her face stained with the red from his skin. She shook his limp body, her voice high and shrill.

“
Look what has become of him,
” she shrieked.

A man came forward, holding his hands up as if to soothe or comfort her. She took a step backwards, and the crowd moved to accommodate the gesture.

“He has been
murdered
.”

“Morena, calm yourself,” the man said, his voice soft and low, the way one might talk to a wild animal it was trying to coax.

“Would you allow yourself to be
calmed
if your boy was dead?” Tears streamed down her face, and in the light of the lanterns, Lou could see the woman’s eyes were a startling honeyed shade of yellow.

“Look at his wounds. He has been attacked by wild dogs. It is tragic, yes, but we cannot go around shouting out accusations.”

“This is
murder
. Why won’t you do anything?”

“We will send a hunting party in the morning to find the animals.”

“The animal who did this is
here
. Among us.” She clutched the child against her and wept anew. “Don’t you see that?”

“Let us take the child, Morena. We will find the animals.”

“Find the
killer
.”

“There is no human killer.”

The air crackled around Morena the way a building storm might, and the townspeople all took several steps backwards. Her yellow eyes appeared lit from within, as the lanterns around her were. She crouched low and laid the child on the ground.

“I will ask you one last time. Help me find my child’s killer.”

“Morena…” The man seemed to be losing his patience. He cast a glance from her to the men standing at his side who held ancient-looking rifles along with their lanterns. “I cannot give you what you’re asking for.”

When she spoke again, her voice was different, low and rumbling like a growl. “If I am not to see my son become a man, then neither shall you. If I am to believe my son was devoured by wild dogs, then so shall your sons be.”

“What are you saying?” The man’s voice was thick with fear, and those around him took a step away, as if he was somehow tainted now.

“So long as my son’s killer goes without being named, your sons will spend their adult lives from manhood to death living as the
animal
you claim killed him.”

As she spoke those final words, a rumble of thunder rocked the clearing.

Lou’s eyes opened, her own pulse shuddering as loud as the thunder in her dream had.

What the hell?

Chapter Nine

Lyndon slammed into Cooper with the entirety of his considerable weight, laying him out on the field. With the wind momentarily knocked out of him, Cooper wheezed, staring at the swirling stars dancing around his head.

“Reynolds, if you want to take a nap, find somewhere else to do it. This here is a football field, not a Mattresses and More.” Coach’s voice boomed from the sidelines, amplified by a megaphone.

Cooper rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up on his knees. His head still felt foggy, like his brain was wrapped in gauze, but that was par for the course when it came to a tackle by Lyndon.

Cooper hopped up and rejoined the line, getting set up for another drill. It was Saturday afternoon, and the sun beat down hot and merciless. The midafternoon heat was oppressive, smothering him in a blanket of breath-stealing humidity.

But still the drills had to be run.

As Coach was fond of saying, a winning team couldn’t rest on its laurels. So they practiced. And practiced. They’d practice until they puked, and then they’d line up and do it over.

“All right, you lazy crybabies, let’s do this again, and if one of you so much as bobbles that ball, you’ll be running bleachers for an hour. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” all the boys chanted as one, as if the coach were an Army drill sergeant—a job he’d have excelled at in another life.

“Then let’s do this thing.” He blew his whistle.

The ball snapped to the quarterback, and Cooper took off towards the end zone. Running brought a cool breeze across his face, temporarily chasing off the heat. For a moment the thrill of it swept him up, and he looked beyond the wall of the stadium to the cloudless blue sky and the tops of the pine trees beyond.

Run,
a voice within said, urging him to keep going, to clear the end zone and never stop.

A different, older instinct kicked in, making him pivot his head back in time to see the ball sailing at him. He snagged it out of the air, tucking the ball into his chest and lowering his head. If he focused, he could feel the rumble of feet through the ground as he was chased.

Cooper closed his eyes. He could find the end zone blindfolded, so he let his other senses take over. Someone dove at him, and he sidestepped, easily avoiding the tackle. Another player tried to assault him from the opposite side, and Cooper ducked, the big body sailing over his back and hitting the turf with a
thud
and a loud swear.

Eyes still closed, Cooper picked up his pace and plowed forward to his finish line. At the last second someone grabbed him around the knees, sending him sprawling down, but still he held the ball, squirming his way forward even as he was falling.

He fell half across the line, scoring the touchdown.

In an active game, the crowd would have ignored the name on his jersey and broken out in cheers. It was one of the only times the Reynolds name didn’t count against him. If he was playing, and playing well,
who
he was didn’t matter, because what he was doing mattered much more.

Football trumped everything else in Poisonfoot.

If Hitler could score touchdowns, someone would be around to make excuses for him to be on the team. No one in town liked Cooper, but he could score at least one touchdown a game, which made him first string. And it was the only time he mattered to anyone outside his family.

That was why he kept showing up. It was why he’d spent three years sharing a locker room with people who hated him and otherwise ignored him.

Because once every other week he was important, and it gave him something to look forward to.

But this wasn’t a game. It was practice. And no one here was rooting for his success. During practice games the points didn’t matter. It was just whether or not you were screwing things up.

“All right. Good job, Reynolds. Don’t let it get to your head. Let’s set this up again.”

No one helped Cooper to his feet, and no one cheered. The points didn’t count for anything here, so his effort went unrewarded. He dusted himself off, fresh grass stuck in his yellow vest, and rejoined the rest of the team on the line of scrimmage. He was falling into formation when his gaze landed on the bleachers.

Lou Whittaker was sitting on the bottom step, wearing a black shirt with an undistinguishable art print on the front that was falling off one shoulder, her light brown hair in a messy ponytail. And she was staring right at him.

When she noticed she’d captured his attention, she lifted her hand and waved. He could see her blush, obviously self-conscious of the scrutiny she was now under.

An elated thrill rushed through him, his pulse hopping as a shy smile crossed her lips. He was happy to see her, bizarrely overjoyed she had found her way here, regardless of the reason.

A part of him hoped like hell she was there for him, as improbable as that might be.

Then the logical half of his mind told him not to be stupid, and that same part grew bitter, wondering why she had to show up and interrupt the one bit of his life she wasn’t meant to be a part of. It was bad enough he saw her every morning in chemistry, but now she was sneaking into his weekends, mocking him with her very presence.

He sighed and looked away.

The rest of the practice went as well as could be expected—meaning he scored another touchdown, withstood several tackles, and managed to only get screamed at by Coach seven more times.

As the players jogged off the field, Lou got to her feet to meet whoever she’d come to watch. The guys ran past her with a few curious glances, but none stopped. Cooper was last off the field, and when he approached the bleachers, she waved again.

He looked behind him.

Nope, she was definitely waving at him.

“Hey,” she said, putting her hands in her pockets. The knees of her jeans were worn through, giving him a glimpse of her tanned legs. He glanced back at her face, trying not to imagine her in a skirt.

“Hi,” he muttered in return. He was sure to woo her with his linguistic prowess.

“Good game.”

“That was just practice.”

She raised a brow that clearly said,
Do I look stupid?
“I know. I’m just saying…you’re good.”

“Thanks.”

They stared at each other.

“Do you have to be so weird?” she asked suddenly.

“I’m weird? You came to
my
game.”

“Your practice.”

He laughed, his own self-imposed stony façade crumbling. “Has anyone ever told you you’re really annoying?” He tucked his helmet under his arm.

“I prefer to think of myself as charmingly persistent,” Lou corrected. “Anyway, what are you doing right now?”

Cooper checked himself before he could do another glance over his shoulder to make sure she meant to address the question to him. Or to decide if this was some kind of prank.

“Why?”

“I thought guys in the South were supposed to be
gentlemen
. I want you to show me around.”

“Lou, I thought we already talked about this. You spent all week eating with Marnie and her friends. You know you can’t keep doing that if you hang out with me.”

“Look, I don’t see Marnie here, and I honestly don’t know why everyone is so anti-Cooper. Since no one is willing to give me a good reason—or
any
reason—why I should steer clear of you, I’m throwing caution to the wind. Now go hose your stink off and give me the ten-cent tour of this town of yours. Deal?”

Cooper hesitated. She was nice, and she clearly didn’t appreciate how bad things could get for her if she was nice to the wrong people. But his loneliness overwhelmed his sense of common decency. The right thing to do would be to blow Lou off and
give
her a reason to avoid him. If he was mean to her, she’d stop trying to be his friend and she’d be better for it.

He wasn’t that kind, though.

He wanted a friend so badly it ached inside him like a disease, and here she was offering him exactly what he most craved. Naturally he was suspicious of a pretty girl demanding to spend time with him—what boy in his right mind wouldn’t be?—but in that moment he didn’t care what her motives were.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back in ten. But just so you know, it’s more of a five-cent tour. There’s not a hell of a lot of town to see.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it interesting.”

Was she&flirting with him?

He regarded her carefully, trying to figure her out, but Lou just smiled.