Justified (3 page)

Chapter Seven

I sat on the third pew from the back in our white-frame church building and counted the number of women who passed me without speaking. So far, seven. Not that many, but considering there were only eleven females in the building, seven represented a fairly high percentage.

If someone asked them about it, they would have been shocked by the accusation, so unaware were they of their behavior. But I had been in their place before, throwing stones. Back in high school, a friend's parents got a divorce, and I treated her differently afterward, because I didn't know what to say.

Now I found myself on the dark side, paying penance.

Ruthie sat next to me, and her boyfriend, Dodd Cunningham, stood at the end of the pew, greeting his congregants as they entered the small chapel.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reeger,” he said. “It's good to see you today.”

“Hello, Dodd.” She shook his hand. “Ruthie.” She nodded politely, then cleared her throat and continued down the aisle.

What a jerk.
I decided to ignore them all.

“Don't let them get to you.” Ruthie adjusted her skirt. “Things will be better. Remember how they were when I came back.”

“Hardly the same. Most of them went out of their way to be kind.”

“Bless their hearts, they did.” She chuckled under her breath. “They were so kind, it seemed …
unbelievable
.”

Dodd's eyebrows pressed together, but soon his reprimanding scowl evaporated into a smile. “Ladies, things are not as bad as you make them out to be.”

“He's always telling me that,” Ruthie said.

The preacher bent down until his lips were next to her ear, but he spoke loud enough for me to hear. “Be a good girl during worship, and I'll give you a treat afterward.”

She turned her head so their mouths were inches apart. “What will you give me if I'm not good?”

The exchange took only a few seconds, but it served to remind me the Trapp congregation hadn't had a single minister for as long as I could remember—maybe not ever—so when the baptized believers walked past our pew, they already had a lot to chew on before they ever got to Ruthie and me.

“I can't believe you're making out in the church building.” Dodd's younger brother sidled into the pew next to us, his jaw hanging open. “Preachers these days.”

“It's about time you got here, Grady,” Dodd said. “Where's Mom?”

“Water fountain, but as soon as she gets here, I'm telling.”

The gentle banter of the brothers put my nerves at ease, but when I noticed my mother in the foyer, my muscles tightened.

“Grady, stop tattling.” Milla Cunningham sat next to Grady and opened the worship bulletin to scan the announcements. “Just when I think you've outgrown that.”

“But if Dodd will flirt with Ruthie right here in front of everybody, there's no telling what he'll try when we bow our heads to pray.”

Milla ignored him and smiled at Ruthie and me. “I hope my sons haven't been too obnoxious.”

“Not any more than usual.” Ruthie stuck her tongue out at Grady.

My mother came through the doors next, floating down the aisle like a beauty queen. She maintained her arrogant flair, but my father's absence from worship rendered her actions shallow and artificial.

“Good morning, Susan.” Dodd smiled, but he didn't hold out his hand. Undoubtedly he had been left hanging too many times and had learned to avoid the gesture.

“Hello, Dodd.” Her nose tilted above the rest of us, and our entire pew watched silently as she glided to her usual seat.

Mother's behavior sent my heart plummeting, but a slow rhythm of pity beat against my rib cage. Pity because she sat alone, without my father on the pew next to her.

Dodd walked to the front as the congregation began to sing “Wonderful, Merciful Savior.”

An occasional friend of my mother, Pamela Sanders, patted Dodd on the back as she and her husband scooted into the pew in front of us, late as usual. I smiled. For years they blamed their tardiness on their teenage daughter, but now that she was away at college, they had no excuse.

“Morning, Brother Cunningham.” The wooden pew creaked as she turned around and raised her voice to be heard above the singing. “Fawn, how you doing? You feeling all right?” She reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You look lovely today. Pregnancy sure does agree with you.” She blinked twice, then turned to Ruthie. “How's your momma, sweetie? She doing all right?”

Ruthie shrugged, seemingly unconcerned with the looks we were getting from a few rows up. “Oh, you know. Momma never changes.”

Pamela nodded with a knowing frown. “Well, you tell her I said
hey
. Tell her I think about her often.”

“I'll do that, Pamela.”

Mrs. Sanders turned to face forward, and as she did, I realized my heart had lightened. This simple, bumbling woman was
good
. And kind and thoughtful and Christlike, and surprisingly I admired her.

In my upside-down world.

But Pamela Sanders wasn't the only one topsy-turvy. Like the reflections in a fun-house mirror, Ruthie and my mother were warped distortions of what they had been a year ago. The girl I had always been expected to scorn was now my friend, and instead of me shunning Ruthie, my mother now shunned me.

Pamela turned around once more and patted Ruthie's knee, speaking in a loud stage whisper. “I heard about the Panthers being picked for state, and I don't doubt that cousin of yours could do it.”

Grady leaned across me. “Coach Pickett says with the roster he's got this year, any coach could take them.” His eyes cut toward Ruthie. “But I wouldn't go that far.”

“Naw, me either,” Pamela said. “JohnScott brings the team together.” She nodded firmly, then started singing.

But I stopped. At the mention of his name, I pictured my old history teacher leaning against the doorframe at the feed store, pointing out the similarities between me and the rapist Clyde Felton. JohnScott Pickett hadn't been a Christian very long, but he had certainly caught up to the rest of us, slicing me down with a mere cut of his tongue. Thank goodness he didn't worship in Trapp.

His accusation had hit its mark as intended, keeping me awake two nights running, but I hadn't yet spoken to him about it, neither to apologize nor to defend myself, and I might not ever. Probably he had already forgotten the incident.

Dodd strode to the pulpit, where he smiled at the congregation. Smiled and meant it. That was the refreshing difference about Dodd. He was real.

And he belonged to Ruthie.

I peeked at her out of the corner of my eye, wishing I weren't envious of her right-side-up life. Granted, she didn't have money or any of the pleasures it could buy, but she had her uncle Ansel and aunt Velma and JohnScott. And she had a mother she could relate to.

But my deepest shade of green resulted from Ruthie's relationship with the preacher.

Dodd's voice carried across the room as he gave his opening remarks, told his icebreaker joke, and launched into a lesson from Genesis. Adam and Eve and their fall from grace.

Don't get me wrong. I did not have feelings for Dodd, but I longed for the security a man could give me. And love. And trust. Dodd's ambition might not ever provide a cushy income, but his faith would keep him anchored by her side and loving her like Christ loved the church. And Ruthie didn't even realize what she had.

I sighed and rubbed my pinky against my stomach. Tyler could buy me anything I ever wanted—houses, cars, clothes, toys for my baby. But he would never be a spiritual giant, even though he'd been raised in church three times a week. Over and over, I had chosen him, but now in my upside-down state, I found myself yearning for the opposite. The impossible.

Dodd stood calmly with his fingertips pressed together at his waistline. “We all have our own serpents leading us away from the light.” He spoke gently. “Yours might be a person or a situation in which you find yourself. Or it could be nothing more than your own thoughts pulling you away from the Lord.”

Or it could be all three.
My shoulders relaxed into putty, like they did when mother's massage therapist worked on them at the spa, and I felt the urge to lie down on the wooden pew and drift into a restful sleep that would take me closer to God. But that never worked when I'd lie on my garage-sale mattress up on the Caprock, so it wouldn't work here, either.

I closed my eyes. If anyone saw me, they would think I was sleeping in church, but for once, I didn't care what they thought. I just wanted to pray.

I told God about my loneliness, and I begged Him not to leave me. I had studied the Scriptures since I was a toddler, so I knew all about God being omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Supposedly He would be with me. Always and forever. By my side.

I just couldn't feel Him.

A pudgy finger poked my knee, and I opened my eyes to see Pamela Sanders turned around in her pew yet again. Her shoulders bounced as she giggled.

I ran my hand across my forehead. Maybe someday I would be more like Pamela. Maybe someday I would stop calling people names like
jerk
and start loving them right where they were, even if they fell asleep in the pew. Maybe someday I would be as good a Christian as I used to think I was.

No wonder Pamela confused my prayer for a party-girl's nap. I hardly recognized myself.

Chapter Eight

JohnScott would have kept an eye on Fawn Blaylock even if his parents hadn't insisted he do so, but he never intended to repair her steps with her away from the house. She might view it as too familiar. Or an invasion of her privacy. Or poor manners. But if he was honest with himself, he had to admit another reason he regretted not catching her at home.

He unloaded lumber onto a bare spot in her yard on Sunday afternoon, and then he set to yanking the three boards off the front steps. They were so rotted, he could have done it with his bare hands, but he used a crowbar instead, enjoying the work.

He pulled the last board loose and tossed it onto a pile behind him, then peered into the shadowy crawl space beneath the house. Daylight shone through an uncovered opening at the back corner of the building, and he made a mental note to cover it later. No need to invite wildlife to nest beneath Fawn's feet.

He chuckled. Fancy little Fawn was out of her element living here. Sure, she'd been raised in the country, but not alone. Neil Blaylock ran his ranching business like a well-oiled machine, with hired hands doing most of the labor.

JohnScott retrieved a circular saw from the cab of his truck and unrolled an extension cord before scanning the porch. He groaned. Of course the old place wouldn't have an exterior outlet. He gripped a post and pulled himself up onto the porch. Maybe she'd left a window unlocked. He tested two by the front door, but from the looks of it, they were cemented shut with layers of house paint. The panes had recently been scrubbed clean, though, in stark contrast to the rest of the house.

Fawn and her view.

He turned to survey the landscape. Jagged uplifts, shallow ravines, and choppy fields created a crazy patchwork quilt of muted earth tones far below. And through it, Highway 84 snaked down the Caprock, curled through the low-lying buildings of Trapp, and slinked away into the distance.

He shook his head. Maybe the girl had a point. He might consider living in harsh conditions if it meant he could wake up to that panorama every morning.

As an afterthought, he reached for the doorknob, growling softly when it turned in his hand. “Fawn …” He swung the door open and stepped into her living room, scoping the walls for outlets. In the end, he scooted the loveseat away from the wall to access a plug behind it.

Surveying the room, he realized she needed a rocker for the baby, but then he smiled. He couldn't picture Fawn in a rocking chair.

She had made the place homey since he'd dropped off the garage-sale furniture, though the temperature inside the house still made him sweat. An oval rug partially covered the worn hardwood floors, and one of his mother's crocheted afghans rested on top of the loveseat where the stuffing fluffed through the upholstery. He could tell Fawn burned scented candles to mask the stale odor from the house being shut up so long.

The bedroom was just as plain. Fawn and Ruthie found a mattress at a garage sale, but with no frame or box springs, the bed rested right on the floor. Fawn covered it with a not-too-ratty quilt, but the pillow looked as flat as a pancake. She probably had to fold the thing into a ball just to get comfortable.

His chest tightened in shame as he realized
he was snooping.
He turned and tossed the end of the extension cord across the porch and closed the front door behind him, having no trouble maneuvering the cord beneath it. He cringed as a tiny mouse followed him outside.

Swinging down to the ground, he reached for a board, but just as he positioned it to make a cut, he noticed a cloud of dust approaching. He bent to make the quick slice, and then lay the board across the support beams to test the length. He turned in time to see Fawn's maroon Chevy, his mother's car, slow at the bend in the road.

His parents were crazy about her, a fact that surprised them as much as him. When she turned up pregnant with no roof over her head, Dodd Cunningham had asked them to take her in, but their decision had been swayed more by their animosity toward Neil Blaylock than their compassion for his daughter. They hadn't expected to take to her like they did.

“Hey, Fawn.” He reached for a fistful of nails as she got out of the car.

“There's really no need for this, Coach Pickett.” She walked toward him carrying a brown paper grocery sack and her snazzy handbag.

“There is.” He hammered two nails in place. Fawn must have been seven months along by now—maybe more—but other than her midsection, she didn't look pregnant at all, and sometimes he imagined her pulling a volleyball out from under her shirt and laughing about the joke she had played on all of them. He looked at her. “How are things?”

“I think the air's out on your mom's car.”

He smiled but didn't let her see. “Might be the Freon.”

“Oh, right. You mentioned that the other day.” She hesitated at the vacant steps, then scooted onto the porch on her bottom and swung her legs around. “You shouldn't have torn off all the steps,” she said. “You could just replace the one.”

“And come back when the others give way?”

“I wouldn't mind.” She went in the house, leaving the door wide open behind her.

He considered closing it, but the measly air conditioner wasn't running anyway. She walked into the kitchen, tossed her purse on the table, and moved out of sight. What had she meant by
I wouldn't mind
? His stomach tensed.

Truth be told, he wouldn't mind either. At all.

But Fawn was one of his students—or had been—and it felt wrong to even toy with the idea. Besides, he had no business taking a shining to a single, pregnant girl. Especially a Blaylock. He scoffed at the possibility as he ran his hand over a board, snagging a splinter.

Fawn called from the house, “Want some iced coffee? It's mocha.”

“Sure.” He pinched at the tiny sliver in his skin, but his fingers were too big and his fingernails too short.

“Splinter?” She squatted to hand him a glass.

“Yep.” He lifted the coffee to his lips and watched her over the curve of the plastic cup as she turned his palm back and forth. Her delicate hands were still cool from carrying the glasses, and her long fingernails tickled his palm.

He pulled away. “It's nothing.”

“I've got tweezers.”

“So do I, back at the house.” He set his coffee on the porch and reached for another board. “By the way, Dad said the owner of your house is sending a couple window units.”

She gasped. “Air conditioners?”

“Yep.”

She leaned her head back and laughed softly. “Thank. You. God.”

She had fumbled her blonde hair into a mess on top of her head, but a few stray curls clung to the moist skin on the side of her neck.

JohnScott concentrated on the steps.

“I'll install them as soon as they come in.”

“
Yep
,” she teased.

He ignored her. “So you're taking some classes this semester.”

“Start tomorrow.”

“How many hours do you lack?”

“A million.” She paused, and JohnScott wondered if she considered him nosy. She shrugged as though she had nothing to lose by disclosing her plans, but she didn't look at him. “I'm not really sure what I'm going to do. The baby and I can't live off my feed-store salary.” Her bottom lip quivered once before tucking beneath her teeth. “But I've got a lot of options, right?”

Twenty questions popped into his head. How much money would she need? Could she stay in college with the baby? What options was she considering?

He nodded. “Yep.”

“Coach Pickett, stop saying
yep
.” She slapped her hands against the porch, and her blue eyes sparkled with teasing laughter.

He rose to his full height and lifted his chin in a challenge. “Only if you stop calling me
Coach Pickett
.”

Her nose wrinkled. “I forgot about that. I'm supposed to ignore your age and treat you as an equal.”

He stuck a nail between his teeth, preparing to cut the next board. “I'm not that old,” he said around the nail.

The squeal of the electric saw temporarily cut off the conversation, but she picked up again when it silenced. “If I'm twenty-one …”—she counted on her fingers—“you must be, what? Twenty-eight?”

“Seven.”

“That's practically thirty.”

He enjoyed her taunts but wished he didn't. “I see what you're saying, Fawn. Thirty is fossilized.”

She raised her palms as though he'd stated a fact that couldn't be debated.
“Yep.”

He reached for his cup. “What year were you in my class?”

“Sophomore. Sixteen years old.”

That made him feel even worse, and he took a long drink to avoid looking at her. He remembered her in his class. Bubbly, happy, immature like all the others. “You changed sometime after that,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He lifted his cap and scratched his head, questioning why he had mentioned something so personal. “You sort of … stopped smiling as much.”

“Did I?”

JohnScott couldn't read her expression.

She squinted at the clouds, wrinkled her nose, shrugged. “I think I got snottier my junior and senior years.”

His laugh came from deep in his lungs, releasing some of his tension. “Well, I didn't want to say so.”

“I was awful, wasn't I?”

“Of course you were awful. You were a teenager.”

She smiled as she stood to lean against a post and look out over the mesa. “You don't seem that old anymore.”

At her words, his heart throbbed against his chest, and he almost fumbled his cup. But when he looked up at her, she stared absentmindedly into the distance. She hadn't meant anything by it.

He bent to grasp a hammer. “Maybe I feel old because I hang with Clyde so much.”

She crossed her arms then, and JohnScott realized he had made her uncomfortable again, like the other day at the feed store. He hadn't intended to get in her face about Clyde, but her attitude about the ex-convict tugged at his sense of justice.

She swirled ice in the bottom of her cup. “Clyde Felton is old enough to be your dad.” She said it lightly, as though to keep the topic safe.

“Not quite. He's only a few years past forty, so unless he did the hanky-panky at fifteen, it wouldn't pan out right.”

“Not a pleasant thought.”

A drop of defensive adrenaline leaked into his veins. “Because it's hanky-panky or because it's Clyde?”

“Both.” She rotated slowly, scrutinizing the porch and deliberately turning her back on him.

JohnScott decided to give her a gentle nudge. “He's old enough to be
your
father, though. You being such a spring chick and all.”

“Eww.”

The drop of adrenaline increased to a steady stream, and he tossed his hammer on the porch. “Has he done something to offend you?”

Her eyes widened. “Well, no. Not personally.”

“Has he ever been kind to you?” He knew the answer.

“I suppose so.”

“Then what's the hang-up?”

“For goodness' sake, Coach Pickett, he went to prison.”

“Well, he's out now. And he repented.”

She stomped into the house and returned holding the end of the extension cord. “You don't have to be so touchy about it.”

He stared up at her, frustrated with himself because he still found her attractive. “Clyde's a friend of mine.”

Her expression softened, but only slightly. “I'm sorry, JohnScott. I'm just tired.”

When she shut the door behind her, JohnScott's insides exploded, and he yanked the orange cord, gathering it into a swirl.

So disappointing.

Fawn was no longer the pious brat he had taught in high school. Now that she viewed herself as an inferior Christian, she had actually started becoming a better one. A humble one. A woman he considered worthy of admiration.

Yet every so often, the old Fawn showed up and stuck her little nose in the air, as though to keep herself from becoming too clean. And during those times, JohnScott regretted his parents' attachment to her. He regretted his promise to keep an eye on her. And he regretted the way her smile made him feel.