Redemption Road (Jackson Falls #5) (16 page)

But she wept all the way home.

Colleen

The house was vibrating, BTO’s
Taking Care of Business
shaking the walls, courtesy of the massive stereo system Rob had piped into
every room of the house. Colleen tossed her coat into the pile on the bed in
the guest room, then wound her way past the fire that crackled on the hearth,
through clusters of nieces, nephews, in-laws and outlaws, until she reached the
kitchen doorway. “Put the crackers on that plate,” she heard her sister saying.
“It should take the whole box.”

“What’s in the Crockpot?”  She recognized Trish Bradley’s voice.

“Meatballs,” Casey said. “Harley, can you stir the pasta?”

Harley?
What the hell was he doing here? 

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in that soft southern drawl. Against her
will, Colleen’s toes curled. She paused on the threshold as the music changed. Madonna
this time, singing about feeling shiny and new. Wooden spoon in hand, Harley
glanced up from his station as
sous-chef
. Their eyes met, and she saw
the deviltry in his. “Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Berkowitz,” he said, “come to join
us.”

Her sister’s face lit with pleasure. Her sister-in-law’s tightened.
Trish replaced the cover on the Crockpot and, ignoring Harley, Colleen said, just
to twist the knife a little, “Trish. You’re looking well.”

It was true. Trish was a naturally sweet person, and that
sweetness was generally reflected on her face. Trish Bradley loved everyone,
and everyone loved her. Colleen had no idea what she’d done to earn her
sister-in-law’s hostility, but it was evident on the woman’s face, in the
sudden stiffening of her body. Trish had no use for her, and for the first
time, regret filled every crevice of Colleen’s heart. The Lindstroms and the
Bradleys had been best friends, and their kids had grown up together. Trish and
Bill had been a couple since middle school, and Trish had been like a big
sister to her for as long as she could remember. All that had changed when she
married Jesse. She could understand how Trish might have been protective of her
younger brother, especially considering how the marriage had come about. But
even after Mikey was born, she’d continued to give Colleen the cold shoulder. Protectiveness
was one thing, but her animosity had gone on for nearly two decades. Wasn’t it
time to call a truce and end the madness?

Not that it mattered, Colleen reminded herself. She’d be gone
soon, and then Trish could smugly say “I told you so” as many times as she
needed to.

Deliberately overlooking the fact that Trish hadn’t responded,
Casey said, “I’m so glad you’re here. Can you help Harley drain the pasta?  The
colander’s in the bottom left-hand cupboard.”

Colleen glanced at Harley, who stood watching this exchange with a
choir-boy innocence on his face. Irritated, she circled the kitchen island,
opened the door, and took out the colander. “I’ll strain,” she told him. “You
drain.”

She held the colander steady in the sink while he emptied the
contents of the cooking pot into it. Stepping back to avoid the steam, she
bumped into him. Instead of moving politely away, he held his ground. She moved
to the side, attempted to step around him, and they performed an awkward
pas
de deux
before she managed to escape unscathed. Shooting him a pointed
look, she said to her sister, “What are we putting this in?”

“Big mixing bowl over the sink,” Casey said from behind the open
refrigerator door. “Run a little cool water over it first. That’ll prevent it
from turning into a sticky mess.”

While she rinsed the spaghetti, Harley retrieved the bowl, and
together, they managed to move the pasta from the colander to the bowl. This
time, she made sure no part of her body came into contact with any part of his.

Placing a massive dish of salad on the island, Casey announced
that dinner was ready, and all those Bradley-Lindstrom-MacKenzies streamed into
the kitchen like zombies from
Night of the Living Dead
. Colleen grabbed
a bottle of Coke from the fridge, found a corner away from the busy traffic
pattern and flattened herself against the wall, hoping to remain invisible. She
closed her eyes, clutched the soda, and pretended she was somewhere else.

Her ruse didn’t work, not even on her. When she opened her eyes, a
male hand was holding a plate of food in front of her face. She studied that
hand, followed it up a long, muscled arm to the man attached to the other end. “You
need to eat something,” Harley said. “Since you’re not a drinker, it’s the only
way you’ll survive this evening without losing your mind.”

Trying to ignore the pleasant buzz in the pit of her stomach, she
took the plate from him. “Thank you.”

“I don’t want to eat standing up. Let’s find a place to sit.”

Following him blindly, she tried to conjure up Irv’s face, but his
visage was watery at best. Harley led her past the living room, with its
standing-room-only crowd, and into the front hall, where they perched side by
side on the wide oak staircase that led to the second floor. “This okay?” he
said.

“This is fine.”

They ate for a time in silence before Colleen dabbed at her mouth
with the napkin she’d managed to snag as she left the kitchen. “How’s Annabel?”
she said.

“Annabel’s fine. She’s spending the night with a friend from
school. I didn’t get a chance to thank you for what you did, but I want you to
know I appreciate it. Sometimes I feel like a fool. Utterly lost, trying to
raise a girl on my own.”

She raised a forkful of spaghetti and studied it ruefully. “Parenting,”
she said. “It’s a laugh a minute.”

“Mikey giving you a hard time?”

“Right now, he’s mad at the world, and me in particular. I cooked
breakfast for him the other day. He took one bite, complained that the eggs
were cold, and tossed them in the trash.”

“Ouch. That’s cold.”

“Arctic. And I can’t blame anybody but myself. If I’d been a
better mother—if I’d been a mother at all—oh, hell.” She set down the fork, her
appetite gone. “It’s pointless to speculate about might-have-beens. The past is
the past. I can’t change it. I’ve made mistakes, and it’s too late to rectify
them. I can only move forward. There is no other direction.”

“We all make mistakes. At least you take responsibility for yours.
My ex-wife still blames me for everything that went wrong between us. I might
not be a saint, but I didn’t push her into anybody else’s bed.”

She shifted position, settled herself more comfortably on the hard
wooden stair tread. The music blasting through the house came to an abrupt halt.
Above the buzz of conversation, a couple of juvenile voices were raised in some
kind of good-natured squabble. Rob said something in the no-nonsense tone she’d
heard him use with Paige, and they stopped arguing. A moment later, the music
started up again, but this time it was different music. Background music, with
no vocal track. Then a young, off-tune voice began warbling into a microphone,
and she sighed.

The karaoke portion of the evening had begun.

“I should get in there,” she said. “There’s this thing I’m supposed
to do.” 

“By all means, don’t let me hold you back from doing your thing.”

“Funny, Atkins.”  His face, wearing an expression of rapt
interest, was just inches from hers. Colleen cleared her throat. “I’m supposed
to sing with my sister. Except that she doesn’t know about it.”

“Of course she doesn’t.”

“Stop making fun of me.”

She could see him trying, and failing, to rearrange his face into
a somber expression. “I would never make fun of you.”

“She doesn’t know about it because my lunatic brother-in-law came
up with this crazy notion that deep down in her soul, she needs to be heard. Don’t
ask me why I went along with it. And promised to make it look like it was my
idea.”

“Because you’re a good sister?”

“I’m a terrible sister. That’s probably why I agreed to do it. Guilt.”

They sat in a companionable silence, while some teenage
Bradley-Lindstrom-MacKenzie relative brutally butchered
Wind Beneath My
Wings
. “You’re still here,” Harley said amiably when the kid was done.

“Oh, shut up.”  But there was no venom to her words.

“No matter how awful you are, you couldn’t be any worse than that
young lady.”

“We’re not awful.”

“No?”

“Casey and I used to sing together when we were kids. Mama was a
bit of a stage mother. People said we sounded good. Of course, that was a
million years ago.”

“I see. So which one of you is Julie Andrews and which one’s Dolly
Parton?”

“Atkins?”

“What?”

“Bite me.” She handed him her plate, stood, and took a final long
swig of soda. “The last time I did anything this stupid, I was drunk off my
ass.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t drink.”

“I don’t,” she said, “anymore.”  And she left him to puzzle that
one out on his own.

She made her way to the karaoke machine, dodging and ducking,
enduring the occasional unavoidable hug from some niece or nephew she hadn’t
seen in a decade. A couple of teenage boys she didn’t know were on their knees
on the hardwood floor, looking over the songbook. “Let me see that,” she said. One
of the boys looked up, exchanged glances with his companion, then solemnly
handed the book to her. Colleen skimmed the list of songs, debated momentarily,
then made her choice. She glanced up at Rob, who surreptitiously tilted his
head in the direction of the kitchen.

“All right, then,” she said, “let’s get this done.”

Casey was at the sink, rinsing dishes and stacking them in the
dishwasher. When the hell was Casey not washing dishes? Colleen grabbed her
sister by the elbow and said, “Come on. You and I are singing together.”

Her sister gaped at her. “What are you talking about?”

“We’re singing together. Karaoke. I have the song picked out
already.”

“We haven’t sung together since you were eight and I was ten. The
Bradley Sisters died a long time ago.”

“We’re resurrecting them tonight.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” She tugged at Casey’s arm. “Come on.”

“But…why?”

“Because I said so, that’s why. Take that stupid apron off, fix
your hair, and let’s do this.” She strode into the living room, half-dragging
her sister behind her, marched up to the karaoke machine, and practically
ripped the mic away from the kid who was holding it. “Thanks,” she said. She
looked out over the assembled multitude, tapped the mic, and said, “Hello?” 

Nobody paid her the slightest attention. She tried again. “Hello,
people?” One or two heads turned in her direction, then went back to their
conversations.
Screw this.
Colleen put two fingers to her mouth and let
out a long, ear-shattering whistle, loud enough to be heard in the next county.

That worked. Silence reigned as everybody in the room turned to
look at her. “Thank you,” she said. “For your entertainment pleasure tonight,
my sister and I are going to sing for you. We haven’t sung together in three
decades, and we’re a little rusty. So cut us some slack, and keep the negative
comments to yourself.”

She glanced over at Casey. “You ready?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“That’s the spirit. Okay, then. Hit it, Maestro.”

Her brother-in-law tossed his wife a second microphone, clicked a
button, and the music started, steamy and sultry and bluesy, a story about a
southern boy who made good. Tapping her foot and clutching the microphone,
Colleen growled out the first lines of
Black Velvet
. Half a beat behind
her, Casey joined in, both of them moving in time with the insistent rhythm of
the music. It might have been thirty years, but they still knew instinctively
how to blend their voices, Colleen singing in a throaty alto, Casey in a sweet
soprano. Her brother Bill let out a wolf whistle. Across the room, Harley
Atkins leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, a silly grin on his face. The
younger members of the family stood with mouths hanging open, undoubtedly
seeing these two old broads in a whole different light. Colleen closed her
eyes, found her groove, and let the music take her away. When they hit the chorus
and their voices blended in sweet harmony, applause thundered throughout the
room. Colleen clasped her sister’s hand and they swayed together to that magic,
seductive rhythm. She glanced at Rob; her brother-in-law was watching his wife
intently, pride shining from his eyes. By the time they reached the final
chorus, there wasn’t a foot in the room that wasn’t tapping.

Still holding hands, they took their bows to thunderous applause,
punctuated by hoots and cheers and cries of “Encore, encore!” She glanced over
at Casey. Their eyes met, and they shared a wide grin.

“What do you think?” she said.

“Maybe one more?”

“
Roberto
,” Colleen said into the mic. “Let’s take another
look at that songbook.”

Dark heads close together, she and Casey went over the list,
conferred, argued, and compromised before coming up with the ideal song to end
their impromptu little duet. Rob leaned over their shoulders, an arm around
each of them, and nodded his approval of their choice.