The Lonesome Young (17 page)

I looked at Pa. “Is that even legal?”

He sighed, and he suddenly looked about ten years older. “It’s legal. You can fire your employees for any reason you want in Kentucky, unless they’re part of a protected class. So, you can’t fire somebody on account of their race or gender or for being pregnant, that kind of thing.”

“Being a Rhodale is in no way a
protected class
, is it? Never has been. We’ve always been the ones who have to protect ourselves,” Ethan said bitterly. “So now we’ve got to explain to eleven people who just lost their jobs why it is that my little brother had to ruin their lives chasing Whitfield tail.”

I was stunned by the news of such vicious retaliation, but there was still no way I was taking the blame for Victoria’s dad’s actions. “This isn’t all on me. Let me refresh your memory. You know, about how you took off with Melinda Whitfield in your damn truck?”

Ethan and Pa both started yelling at the same time, with me in the middle, until a tremendous crash shut us all up. Mom stood in front of the kitchen, the shards of the glass fruit bowl she’d just smashed all over the floor around her.

“That’s enough,” she said quietly. “Ethan, please leave my house. You are not welcome here until you can behave in a civilized fashion.”

Pa started to speak, but she held up a hand for silence. “I’ve had enough from you, too. We are going to talk, about your sons, and your ex-wife, and your drinking, but that’s between the two of us. For now, you will please escort Ethan out of the house while I have a conversation with Mickey.”

Ethan sneered at her, then turned his contempt on Pa. “That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it? You let the women wear the pants in your marriages.”

“And you let your mommy tell you what to do,” Pa shot back, and we all looked at him with shock. He rarely stood up to Ethan, or Jeb for that matter, but this thing with Ethan taking off with Melinda must have sparked something in him.

Pa followed Ethan outside, and I turned to look at my mom. Now that the crisis was past, she leaned against the table and started shaking. I rushed over to pull out a chair for her and made her sit down while I cleaned up the mess.

“I always liked that bowl, too,” she said quietly, and then she put her head down on her folded arms and started crying.

I didn’t know what to do, so I finished cleaning up the glass and then sat down beside her and patted her back until Pa came back in. He gave me a helpless look. The one thing that always brought a Rhodale man to his knees was a woman’s tears.

Mom probably realized that, too, because she sat up and wiped her face with the backs of her hands. I jumped up to get her a box of tissues, and she nodded her thanks. She pointed to a chair and my father joined us at the table.

“Ethan is right, you know,” she said, surprising us. “If this is true and not just rumors getting out of hand, as happens so often around here, then Richard Whitfield’s vindictive action is going to cause a lot of trouble.”

Pa nodded wearily. “And you know where some of those unemployed Rhodales will go? Into the drug business with Ethan. Some will be willing to uproot to move to wherever they have to go to stay in the horse business, but others won’t want to move their families. Not much work around here now, and there’s big money in drugs.
Huge
money. That’s why it’s so damn hard to fight.”

“It’s so hard to fight because you don’t want to stand up to Ethan,” I said, figuring what the hell, we might as well get it all out on the table. “He’s your son, but he’s also a criminal. You’re the sheriff. You need to shut him down.”

Pa shook his head. “You don’t understand. We can’t root it out. Meth labs are all over the state, and the big drug cartels are taking over the sales and distribution. If Ethan magically gets out of the business or—more likely—goes back to jail, then somebody worse takes over, and the whole damn county becomes a hellhole. At least Ethan keeps it away from the schools and the kids.”

“You’re both fools if you don’t realize that Anna Mae is behind most of this,” my mother said.

“Of course I realize that,” Pa said wearily. “Do you think I’m an idiot? But we can’t prove anything, because we’d need a warrant to search the compound, and she’s very careful to cover her tracks.”

Mom reached over and took his hand. “I didn’t know, because every time I tried to bring up Anna Mae, you shied away from the issue.”

“Ethan had better not go after the Whitfields,” I inserted. “I will put everything I have into stopping him if he tries to hurt Victoria’s family.”

Pa switched his gaze to me, and a muscle jumped in his jaw. “Victoria, huh? So it’s true? You have feelings for this girl? In spite of everything we’ve told you?”

I looked Pa dead in the eyes and lied to his face. “No. There’s nothing between me and Victoria Whitfield, but I’m not going to let Ethan start up any crap and turn this county into a war zone, either.”

“Mick, I want you to stay out of this,” Pa said. “It’s too dangerous to get in Ethan’s way. Let me handle it.”

He’d never handled Ethan before, I thought. But I shrugged anyway and pretended to give in. “Sure. Fine. Whatever you say. I need a shower, and then I have homework to do.”

“Dinner’s keeping warm in the oven for you, honey,” Mom said.

She still looked kind of shaky, so I patted her shoulder and then headed upstairs. If my father handled this problem as poorly as he’d handled Ethan in the past, Rhodales and Whitfields would be shooting it out in the streets within a week.

I showered the day’s grime off and then took a minute to plug in my phone, which had died sometime during the afternoon. The display lit up with text messages I’d missed.

4:16 PM:
Mickey, big trouble. My dad has gone insane. He’s firing anybody related to you. It’s the feud all over again. I stole my phone back from his office. Call me after 8.

6:12 PM:
It’s worse. He’s blaming this all on Melinda for going off with Ethan. She got into a hidden stash of whiskey she found in the barn and is passed out. Fights are breaking out in the yard. The poor horses

The poor horses? She was worried about horses when so many people had just lost their jobs? Maybe she was more like her father than I’d thought.

6:15 PM:
Sorry, had to hide my phone so that last message got cut off. The poor horses are in a state from the turmoil they don’t understand and I am not much better. It is devastating that good, hardworking ppl lost their jobs because of this insanity.

Guilt nudged me that I’d thought, even for a minute, that Victoria was the type to care more about horses than people. I kept misjudging her, based on her last name. I was no better than Ethan.

6:58 PM:
Have screamed myself hoarse, but he refuses to change his mind. Gran argued with him all day, but she’d signed over control of so much to him that she can’t stop him. Mickey, I’m so sorry. I feel guilty by association.

7:18 PM:
Do you hate me now so much that you won’t text me back?

Damn it. I needed to call her, now. It was 8:30.

She picked up on the first ring.

“Mickey?” Her voice was so tentative and somehow broken that I damned myself for a fool for not charging my phone earlier.

“My phone was dead. I wasn’t ignoring you. Don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

On the other end of the line, she took a deep breath, and I sat on the edge of my bed, feeling sick that I was unable to comfort her.

“I had to tell him that I will never have anything to do with you, Mickey,” she said. “He was kind of nuts. I’ve never seen him like that—so cold. Completely emotionless about firing people. This hatred between our families . . . it’s not even normal how it takes over everything else.”

“I told my family the same thing, basically,” I admitted. “Ethan was here. The news about the firing is out, and it’s enough to start up the whole damn feud all over again. Pa thinks half the folks who got fired will end up working for Ethan and Anna Mae.”

“Anna Mae?”

“She’s the real mastermind behind the drug running,” I said, wondering what in the world Victoria would think about all this.

“What are we going to do? I don’t know how to fix this; it’s too big for us.” She took another shaky breath, and I slammed my fist against the wall in frustration.

“What was that noise?”

“Nothing. Hey, how’s your ankle?”

“It’s fine. A little ice and it was better the next morning.”

“Good to hear. Listen to me. Get some sleep, I’ll see you in school tomorrow, and then we’ll try to meet at the museum again. Nobody ever goes there, so we’ll be able to talk in peace. We’ll hash this all out then.”

Silence.

“Mickey, should we do what they all want? Just forget—just stay away from each other?”

No.

“I can’t make that decision for you, Victoria. I can’t tell you what to do, and I wouldn’t even try. But I can tell you that the only thing in the world that makes sense to me right now is you and me.”

Chapter 23

Victoria

I
can tell you that the only thing in the world that makes sense to me right now is you and me.

My heart wrenched in my chest at his words; I actually felt a physical pain. I’d lived a life of reserved solitude—playing peacekeeper and sanity arbiter in my family had required a high level of calm to buffer me from all the crazy. Every year when they shipped me off to school, I’d added a layer of distance to the wall between me and the rest of the world, and I hadn’t even noticed when my hard-won serenity had turned into isolation.

Or when solitude had turned into loneliness.

But now, the first and only person I’d ever met who saw me for me was willing to defy everyone and everything to be with me. I could almost hear the cracking noise as the walls I’d spent years carefully building around my emotions began to crumble into dust.

“I feel the same way. It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t understand it, but maybe emotions aren’t supposed to make sense,” I finally said.

On the other end of the line, Mickey blew out a deep breath. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” I agreed.

Just when I thought he’d hung up, I heard his voice again. “Victoria? Take care of yourself, until I’m with you to do it.”

After that, I sat and stared at nothing, holding tightly to my phone, for a really long time. Mickey Rhodale wanted to take care of me.

Nobody else ever had.

• • •

By the time history class rolled around, my nerves were jangling underneath my skin. Everybody in my classes had been staring at me with varying degrees of hostility. The whispers had been bad, but the actual taunts hurled my way had been worse.

“Rich bitch, what kind of family does that to people?”

“Bet she thinks her shit don’t stink. Maybe we should teach her a lesson.”

And, worst of all:

“This will start up the feud again, for sure. Better watch out for Ethan Rhodale.”

Denise stomped down the hall next to me, practically daring anybody to get in our way, but she wasn’t all that happy with me, either.

“What the hell, Victoria? My friend Leila’s dad lost his job yesterday because your dad went nuts.”

“I know,” I said miserably, wishing I were anywhere else but in school today. “We tried to stop him, but he’d already hired new people. It was a nightmare last night.”

She shot me a look. “Well, probably more of a nightmare for the families who are wondering how they’re going to put food on the table, or pay their bills now, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t mean—”

But she was already dashing forward into class, leaving me behind to face the waves of anger and contempt from everybody in sight.

I breathed my first unconstricted breath all day when I walked into class and saw that Mickey was already there, but he was having a heated discussion with Derek just inside the door.

“Why would you defend that family? They’re going after yours,” Derek said hotly, but he broke off when he caught sight of me.

Mickey took a step toward me, but then he stopped when he realized everybody in the room was staring at us.

“Later,” he said fiercely, and his eyes gave me the message that the single word hadn’t. He was still on my side. We just needed to keep everyone else from knowing it, or this might explode into an inferno that could burn down the entire county.

Denise, eyes wide, reached out to touch my arm when I walked past her.

“Omigod, did Mickey just threaten you with retaliation? We have to figure out a way to keep him away from you,” she said. Amazing how a perceived threat from a Rhodale could win her back to my side. I appreciated the support even as I resented it, on Mickey’s behalf.

“Thanks,” I said automatically, even though I winced a little at the thought that everyone would naturally have taken Mickey’s terse “later” as a threat. The realization of what it must feel like to be a Rhodale, trapped under the expectation of bad intentions, suddenly added a crushing weight to the anxiety I’d been carrying around since the night before.

Would we ever be able to find a way out of this? I didn’t want to end up as a player in a Shakespearean tragedy I’d had no part in creating.

Mr. Gerard, either oblivious to, or ignoring, the tension in the room, droned on about Reconstruction and gave us a pop quiz. By the time I handed mine in, I realized I had no memory of what answers I’d written down. My stomach was churning so much I had no idea how I was going to face the cafeteria, either the smell of the food or the anger of everybody there.

Mickey brushed by me on the way out of class.

“Hang in there,” he said quietly. “Only a few more hours.”

His words gave me the strength to square my shoulders and follow Denise to lunch, but we’d only made it a few steps inside the cafeteria doors when the trouble started, in the shape of a large, scowling guy wearing a Wildcats letter jacket covered with football pins.

“Who the fuck do you people think you are?” He pushed Denise aside and got so close to me I could smell his morning breath. “My dad has worked for your family for twelve years, and now he’s out on his ass because my mom’s cousin is a Rhodale?”