Dead Silence (14 page)

“I heard you were back,” the white-haired Mrs. Reese said when Grace greeted her.

“Yes, for a few months.”

“I see.” Her eyes scanned the items on display. “I must say I’m glad to hear you’ve turned your life around. Making assistant D.A. and all that. Came as a bit of a surprise, to be honest with you.” She focused on the Vicki Nibley For Mayor sign Grace had finally placed in the yard. “But I can’t say as I like your politics.”

“Then I can’t say as I like yours, either,” Grace responded.

Mrs. Reese’s mouth opened and shut twice, but nothing came out. Turning to Teddy, she frowned. “Your grandma know you’re over here?” she asked.

Teddy wouldn’t look at her. His chin bumped his chest as he nodded vigorously.

“I can’t imagine she likes it.”

Grace cleared her throat. “Did you stop for a reason, Mrs. Reese?”

The older woman glared at her, then waved at the jars of peaches. “Those Evonne’s?”

“They are. We brought them out of the cellar just yesterday.”

“I’ll take three jars.”

Grace let Teddy collect the money. Determined to remain polite, she nodded as Mrs. Reese glanced her way before returning to her car.

“What was that all about?” Grace asked Teddy as the older woman disappeared around the corner.

“I guess she doesn’t like Mrs. Nibley,” he said sheepishly.

Grace studied him more closely. Something was going on here, and she figured she’d waited long enough to find out what. “Mrs. Reese acted as though she knows your grandma pretty well.”

A pained expression appeared on his face. “
Everyone
knows my grandma.”

“Who is she?” she asked, but before he could answer, a 1950s truck stopped at the curb and her heart leapt into her throat. It was Jed Fowler. She knew because he’d been driving that truck ever since she could remember.

He emerged looking ruddier than ever. He’d obviously lost some weight, but he still had a barrel chest and wore the same style coveralls she remembered from when he’d come out to fix the tractor all those years ago. A tattered red ball cap advertising his auto shop covered his head, so she couldn’t tell if he’d lost any more of his hair.

Wondering what the police had told him about last night—if he knew it was Madeline who’d broken into his shop—she stood up as he walked over. “Hello, Jed,” she said nervously. “How are you?”

When their eyes met, she got the impression he could see right through her. Had Kennedy told him she’d been with Madeline? That she was the one who’d taken the reverend’s Bible?

She wiped her clammy hands on her cotton skirt and took a deep breath. “Something I can get for you today?”

“You make those cookies?” he asked, pointing to one of five platefuls at the far end.

“I did.”

He picked up a bar of soap, smelled the lavender, then grimaced and put it back. “I’ll have a jar of pickles.”

“That it for you?” she asked.

Teddy hovered eagerly at her elbow. “I’ll take the money.”

Jed’s eyes rested on the boy. He seemed as surprised as Mrs. Reese to see Teddy, but handed him a twenty while motioning toward the cookies. “Give me a plate of those, too.”

He was buying her cookies. That made Grace feel even worse about last night.

She helped Teddy calculate the change, which he dropped into the old man’s callused palm. Jed started to walk away—but Grace called him back. “Mr. Fowler?”

He turned.

Folding her arms across her chest, Grace forced herself to go on. “I—I heard about what happened last night. I’m sorry, truly I am.”

She swallowed hard, wondering how he might respond. But he didn’t say anything. Which wasn’t all that unusual. His gaze wandered to Teddy again. Then he nodded.

Grace’s heart was still pounding as she watched him climb into his truck. She hated the thought that she’d been an accomplice to breaking open his door and invading his privacy.

“What happened last night?” Teddy asked.

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t about to tell him. She had her own questions. “Why is everyone so surprised that you’re with me?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. But he was staring at his shoes again.

“Who’s your grandmother, Teddy?”

The sun nearly blinded them as midafternoon approached. He lifted a hand to shade his eyes. “Can I tell you later? When you meet my dad and he asks you to go camping with us?”

“Camping?”

“Yeah. I asked him if you could go and he said yes!”

“Teddy—” Grace shook her head, trying to stay focused on the bigger question. “Tell me about your family.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because we just got the stand going. And if you don’t like what I say, you’ll want me to go home.”

“That’s silly. I don’t care who your family is.”

“You don’t?” He seemed relieved.

“Of course not.” She tugged on the bill of his ball cap, and he grinned.

“That’s good,” he said. “Because it won’t be
my
fault if my dad beats Vicki Nibley, right?”

His
dad?
Grace’s knees went weak. “What’d you say?”

Obviously confused by her response, he glanced between her and the Vicki Nibley sign closest to them. “I won’t be mad at you if Mrs. Nibley wins,” he told her.

She brought a hand to her chest. “You’re not telling me you’re Kennedy Archer’s son!”

He nodded, but only halfheartedly as if he was afraid to admit it.

“You can’t be,” she said.

He bit his lip. “Why not?”

“Because you don’t look anything like him.”

“I don’t?”

“No!” she said stubbornly. But now that she knew, she could see
some
resemblance. Teddy had his father’s square jaw, wide mouth and confident, All-American smile. He also had the Archer bone structure, which would probably make him a very handsome man some day.

“Everyone says I look like my mom,” he said.

That was true, too. In certain ways. How had she missed it?

Grace hadn’t expected Kennedy Archer’s son to be running around on his own at eight years old—that was how! She hadn’t expected Kennedy Archer’s son to be allowed to get dirty or rip out his knees or mow other people’s lawns. But most of all, she hadn’t expected to
like
anyone so closely related to Kennedy Archer.

“Why isn’t someone watching you?” she asked. She was trying to curb her disappointment, to hide it—but that wasn’t easy.

“I told you, my grandma watches me.”

“She can’t. She lives out of town, down by the—”

“She moved,” he broke in. “A long time ago.”

“Where?”

“Around the block.”

“What?”

“Grandpa wanted to be closer to the bank,” he explained.

Around the block. Closer to the bank.
Of course. It all made sense. Teddy had lost his mother, so someone had to watch him during the day. Why not Grandma Archer?

Which meant…

Grace pressed her fingers to her temples. That
had
been Kennedy in the black SUV the morning she’d been caught unawares. He’d probably been dropping his boys off at his mother’s house and gotten quite an eyeful.

“Oh, boy,” she muttered, dropping into her seat.

After several long seconds, Teddy tentatively tapped her on the shoulder. “Grace?”

“What?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No, of course not,” she said, but she didn’t know what she was going to do. She couldn’t hang out with Kennedy’s son. Kennedy might’ve let her go last night, but she was pretty sure none of this was over yet.

“What’s wrong, then?” he asked.

She rubbed a hand over her face. “Um…I just need some time to think, okay, Teddy? Why don’t you…” Her mind grasped for something that might make him happy and buy her some time. “Why don’t you take all the cookies home with you? And…and we’ll talk later, okay?”

“You don’t like me anymore,” he accused.

As she looked into his troubled face, her heart threatened to break. “Teddy, that’s not it at all. You see, your father and I…we’ve never been friends.”

“He thinks
you’re
nice.”

“No, he doesn’t. We…I can’t believe he’d even allow you to be here. He doesn’t know about it, does he?”

“He knows,” Teddy insisted. “He said to thank you for the lasagna. And he asked me to bring him some more cookies. He
loves
your cookies.”

She’d made dinner for Kennedy and his sons last night. She’d thought she was sending food to a poverty-stricken family with a darling little boy who
needed her. She hadn’t realized she was wasting her time and effort on the likes of Kennedy Archer, who could buy his children the best of everything.

“He even said you could go camping with us,” Teddy added, as if that might help.

Camping again. Grace couldn’t imagine that Kennedy had plans to invite her anywhere. “Teddy, you have a family who loves you and takes good care of you. You don’t need me.”

Tears filled his eyes. “I’m never coming back here!” he cried and ran away.

Numb, Grace sat staring at the food spread out on the table before her, and thought about the books she’d planned to check out at the library. Teddy had never heard of Lemony Snicket. She’d wanted to read him the whole “Series of Unfortunate Events.”

But she was running into too many unfortunate events of her own.

His mother was calling—again. Sometimes Kennedy wished he could go through a whole day without being interrupted by her. She always had some complaint or suggestion. If Rodney Granger had surplus peaches on his trees, she called to see if he and the boys wanted to go pick a few pounds. She called to let him know she’d be renting a carpet-cleaning machine and to ask if he’d like to borrow it. She called to tell him she’d won him another vote whenever she convinced a Vicki Nibley supporter to switch sides. For the most part, it was pretty thoughtful stuff. It was just…constant. Sometimes she made him feel claustrophobic. But there wasn’t much he could do, since she was watching his boys every day. He certainly didn’t want to leave them with anyone else. Maybe his mother wasn’t the most soft-spoken person
in the world, but she was very responsible. And she was family. If Raelynn’s death and his father’s cancer had taught him anything, it was to value those relationships.

Stifling a sigh, he pushed the Talk button on his phone because he knew she’d only call back if he didn’t. If she reached his voice mail twice in a row, she called his secretary and started tracking him down that way. “Hello?”

“Kennedy?”

“What?”

“We have a problem.”

“What’s wrong now?”

“Teddy’s upset.”

“Why? Did he get in trouble for coming home late again?”

“No. He came home early. But he went straight to the tree house and won’t come out. Something happened while he was over at that woman’s house.”

Grace.
Besides Irene, Grace was the only one his mother called “that woman.” “Do you know what it could be?”

“He won’t say.”

The disapproval in her tone screamed, “I told you he shouldn’t have been allowed over there!”

“Put him on the phone.”

Kennedy waited several minutes. He was beginning to believe his mother wasn’t able to coax Teddy into talking to him when his son finally picked up. “Hello?”

“Hey, buddy. What’s going on?”

“I’m not in trouble,” he grumbled sullenly. “I came home on time.”

“I know,” Kennedy said. “I’m just calling to see what happened at Grace’s today.”

“Nothing happened.”

“When I drove past her place at lunch, the stand
was up, but you two weren’t around. Didn’t you open the shop?”

“We opened it for a little while, but—” his voice cracked “—she doesn’t want me over there. She doesn’t like me anymore.”

Kennedy remembered them reading together at the patio table. “What makes you think that?”

“She told me to take all the cookies and go home.”

“Maybe she was tired and wanted to have a nap.”

“She wasn’t tired.”

Kennedy switched the phone to his other ear. “How do you know?”

“Because I told her you were my dad.”

He sat up straighter. “She hadn’t figured that out?”

Silence.

“Teddy?”

“I couldn’t tell her, Dad. She wants Vicki Nibley to be the next mayor.”

“So why’d you tell her today?”

“I wanted to wait till you could ask her to go camping. But Mrs. Reese came to buy some peaches and said Grandma wouldn’t like me being there.”

It was easy for Kennedy to picture the old battle-ax doing that. Grace had been in her English class, too. She’d sat in the back corner, where Joe’s girlfriend threw spit-wads at her and Mrs. Reese wondered aloud why Clay’s little sister couldn’t keep up with the rest of the class. “I’m sure that went over big.”

Teddy sniffed. “I don’t think she likes Mrs. Reese.”

“Probably not.” Kennedy could certainly understand. Mrs. Reese was a busybody who took too many liberties in dispensing advice. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”

There was a momentary lull in the conversation, but when Teddy spoke again, Kennedy heard a surge of hope in his voice. “Dad?”

“What?”

“Do you think you could go over to Grace’s and show her that you’re a nice guy?” he asked plaintively.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah! She said you’ve never been friends. But you could say you’re sorry.”

“Teddy—”

“You made
me
say I’m sorry to Parker McNally, even though he hit me first.”

“You bloodied his nose.”

“He started it—but you said sometimes being big enough to say you’re sorry is more important than who started it.”

“This is different.”

“How? You want to be friends with Grace, don’t you?”

Kennedy had walked right into that one. “Of course I do. It’s just…I don’t know, bud.”

“Come on, Dad. We were going to open the stand every day next week. And camping won’t be any fun without her.”

Kennedy rested his head in one hand. “Teddy—”

“
Please,
Dad? She’s my
best
friend.”

Kennedy’s heart felt as if it had jumped into his throat. He couldn’t speak. Teddy used to say his mother was his best friend.