The Lonesome Young (27 page)

“Thanks for the coffee. Been a while since you kissed my head,” I said, trying to smile at her.

“I usually can’t reach it, since you grew taller than me when you were twelve and got that big growth spurt,” she said. “It’s hard to be five-four in a house full of six-foot-tall men.”

“Where’s Ethan?” I finally asked the question that had been squatting in the middle of the room like an unwanted guest.

“Nobody can find him,” Pa said, staring at his phone. “He was never there.”

I put the coffee cup down so I didn’t throw it at him. “You can’t cover this one up, Pa. Victoria saw him, too.”

He glared at me through reddened eyes. “Victoria was tired and distraught over her brother and her employee. She did
not
see Ethan from clear across the ravine, on a dark, rainy night.”

“Maybe she didn’t. But I did. He’s not getting away with this one.”

“You don’t understand. If he goes away for this, he’ll be gone for years. A lot of hard time,” Pa said. “There won’t be anything left of your brother if and when he gets back from that.”

“What’s left of him now?”

I stomped up the stairs, figuring I’d at least get a little sleep, because sitting around waiting for news was driving me insane. After the EMTs at the barn checked me out—no concussion—I’d managed to retrieve the gun, unnoticed in the chaos of people milling about. Dad had driven me home and told me that they’d Life-Flighted Pete and Buddy to Louisville, and we had put calls in to find out any news, but nobody was saying anything except that Pete was in surgery.

When I reached my room, I tried to call Victoria, and the call went straight to voice mail again. Same with the next five times in five minutes.

On the sixth, she picked up.

“How are they?” I got the question out before she could start shouting or, worse, tell me to go to hell.

Silence.

“Victoria, please, I’m going crazy here. At least tell me they’re going to be okay—that
you’re
going to be okay.”

More silence as my consciousness telescoped down into a pinpoint of focus that centered on the sound of her breathing. Finally, she sighed.

“Buddy’s going to be fine. Simple fracture. He has a cast but didn’t have to have any pins or anything. They’re keeping him there for the weekend in an excess of caution and probably because my dad is being an ass,” she finally said.

“That’s terrific! I’m so glad—”

“Pete just got out of surgery.”

Shit.

“Do you know anything—progress, or?”

“They expect him to pull through,” she said, and I wanted to start cheering.

“Thank God,” I said fervently.

“If he’d died, your brother would be a murderer.” Her voice was precise, and so very icy. “I will testify against him, Mickey, no matter what you say, so if this is about—”

“So will I.”

Silence.

Finally, I heard her breathe in a deep, shuddery breath. “I thought—”

“You thought I was calling you to get you to protect Ethan?
Fuck
him,” I said viciously. “I’m calling because I’m so worried about you I think my scalp is going to fly off my skull. I’m calling you because I want to be with you, and hold you, and comfort you.”

“Oh, Mickey,” she whispered, and her voice held so much sadness that I knew she’d made up her mind against me. Against us.

“Victoria, if you still want me to stay away from you, I will. But I need you to know something first. I need to tell you that I’m falling in love with you.”

She inhaled sharply, and then the phone went dead.

I guess that gave me my answer.

I went to bed and stared at the ceiling for the next three hours, and then I went outside and cleaned the hell out of the garage. Luckily for Jeb, he was gone, because if I’d found him there, I might very well have let loose of the anger and loss churning around in my gut and tried to beat some sense into his sorry ass.

Chapter 41

Victoria

F
unny the difference a weekend made. I was actually glad to go back to school after two solid days of Melinda’s hysteria, Gran’s migraines, my own aching anxiety and guilt, and my parents’ long-distance interference and vague reports.

Only Heather’s Angel and Buddy hadn’t been angry with me. I’d spoken to my little brother on the phone, and he’d been chattering happily about the comic books one of the nurses had brought for him. Angel was recuperating from her adventure, immensely enjoying the extra attention she was getting from everyone.

And Mickey—
Mickey
.

I’d picked up my phone to call him a hundred times after he’d told me that he was falling in love with me.

Falling in love with me.

I hadn’t been able to admit I felt the same way—that I’d maybe passed “falling” and gone straight to “already fallen”—because it was wrong. I’d told him I never wanted to see him again, and I meant it.

We were cursed. Every time we were together, terrible things happened. How could that ever be worth it? And the violence simmering inside him, just under the surface—I didn’t know how to deal with it, and he certainly didn’t know how to control it. What if he could
never
learn how to control it? What if something set him off around Buddy? Was I willing to risk everything for what might only be a crush?

I dismissed
that
thought immediately. No. Whatever my feelings for Mickey, they went way,
way
beyond a crush. I’d never felt like this before—might never feel this way again. So I could refuse to see him, but I couldn’t lie to myself about what it would cost me to do it.

Mom had talked Dad out of pressing charges against anybody for the fiasco at Anna Mae’s—not that we could really figure out who to blame for what—but she’d told me he’d been on the phone to an old college frat buddy who’d joined the FBI. So I couldn’t stop worrying.

I wandered school in a daze all Monday morning, ignoring the speculative stares and whispers, until Denise finally caught up to me in the hallway just before lunch.

“I hear you had a busy weekend,” she said, giving me a look that was somewhere between curious and pissed off.

“Trust me, you don’t even want to know.”

“Actually, I do. The next time you use me for a cover story, at least do me the courtesy of telling me,” she fired off. “I had the unique experience of hearing that the matriarch of the Whitfield family was at my front door, demanding I tell her where to find her granddaughter.”

I stopped fumbling with my locker and turned to her. “Oh, no. Denise, I’m so sorry. You said you were going out of town, or I would have told you—would have
asked
you—and I never gave them your last name, and—”

“Do you really think anybody in this town would have had a hard time figuring out who the Denise in your classes was?” She gave me a look. “Just because you’re blond doesn’t mean you’re stupid.”

I banged my head against the locker. “Yeah. I kind of am. And I need a friend. A real friend. Can you forgive me, and we can go somewhere to talk?”

She stared at me for a long, silent beat before the look in her eyes softened. “Oh, come on, then. It’s not like I’ve never screwed up.”

We bailed on school—I was turning into a truant officer’s nightmare—and went to Dairy Queen. The twenty-something behind the counter gave us our Blizzards and burger combos, nodded to a table around the edge of the counter, out of sight of the front door, and waved off our thanks.

“Emergency carbs have no calories, right?” Denise stared down at her red plastic tray.

“You think I’m going to eat salad after a weekend like I’ve had?” I poured extra salt on my fries.

“I hope Pete and your brother are okay,” she said, reinforcing my belief that everybody knew everything in small towns.

“Buddy is doing great. And the doctors tell us Pete is doing well in recovery. Thanks,” I said.

I sat there at the Formica-topped table, surrounded by mint-green walls and posters of ice-cream sundaes, and told Denise everything. Well, almost everything. I left big chunks of it out, actually—anything too private between Mickey and me, and anything that sounded like an accusation of criminal conduct. Oh, and the part about Anna Mae and my dad.

Okay, actually, I didn’t tell her a whole lot.

Enough to blow her mind, though.

“How is it you even want to be my friend?” I took a sip of my soda and stared down at the sandwich and fries I felt too nauseous to eat. “Why aren’t you hanging around with the other cheerleaders in a flock or something?”

“It’s a pom pom,” she said, grinning. “A flock of geese, a murder of crows, a pom pom of cheerleaders.”

“A touchdown of football players?”

She considered that. “No, more like a jockstrap, I think. A jockstrap of football players.”

I laughed out loud for the first time in days. “I like that. Denise, I’m really sorry. You’re really the only person who has tried to get to know me and, like a jerk, I used your friendship. Please forgive me. I just . . . I’m just caught up in something that’s way over my head.”

Instead of instantly accepting my apology, Denise stared at me over her Blizzard for a long minute. Finally, she nodded. “Accepted. But don’t ever do that again.”

“I promise,” I said miserably, feeling about two inches tall. Then she smiled—a warm smile—and I felt better.

“And to answer your question, I never quite fit in here, either,” she admitted. “I’m too smart for the jocks, too dumb for the brains, not nerdy enough for the geeks, etc. etc. They all kind of tolerate me, but I’m not swimming in BFFs, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, yeah. I understand completely.” I’d blown just enough curves on exams with my grades; I’d dressed up okay but never been ruled by clothes and makeup. Simone, who’d been the indie-rock goddess of Ashford-Hutchinson, had always told me I’d figure out who I wanted to be one day.

Somehow,
this
didn’t feel like what she’d had in mind.

“Speaking of jockstraps, Sam didn’t mean it,” Denise said, her face troubled. “He’s really a good guy, but he was worried sick. His mom lost her job last year, and they’ve been having hard times as it is, so now with his dad . . .”

My soda turned to acid in my stomach.

“I know,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I did hear one piece of good news about that, at least. A friend of my grandmother said she’s in a big hiring push on her ranch because a bunch of her staff retired and a couple quit to have babies—a lot of things like that all happened at once. And it’s just the next county over. If I give you the information, can you find a way to get it to Sam and anybody else you know who needs it?”

“That’s pretty nice of you, considering what he did,” she said, and her gaze lingered on the side of my face, where there was still a little bruising and swelling.

I shrugged, uncomfortable with the attention. “He didn’t mean to hit me, and the rest was just talk. Gran and her staff are calling everybody with the information, but some people aren’t picking up their phones when they see the call is coming from us.”

“Are you okay?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I evaded the question. “Well, Buddy is doing well, charming all the nurses, and—”

She put a hand on my arm. “I don’t mean Buddy. He’ll be fine. Little boys are resilient. Are
you
okay?”

I very carefully put my cup down on the table and looked up at her. I couldn’t hide the misery that was threatening to crack me open any longer.

“Mickey Rhodale told me he’s falling in love with me, and I think I’m falling in love with him, too.”

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

“But we don’t have a chance at a relationship, because there’s something so dark inside him that I don’t know if he can
ever control.”

“Holy shit,” she whispered again.

I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

We devoured our Blizzards and fries, ignored the burgers, and talked. She told me about cheerleading, and I told her about boarding school. She told me about the miniature golf course her family owned, and I told her about racehorses.

“I never got the appeal,” she said, almost apologetically, as she reached over to snag my last fry. “I mean, all that money and all that training for the Kentucky Derby, and it lasts, what, two minutes? Why don’t they at least run a long race, like the Indy 500 or something, so you guys can get your money’s worth?”

I blinked at the idea of a horse running five hundred miles and tried to frame a reply, but then I realized she was joking.

“Ha! Got you!”

I laughed and realized I’d been doing that a lot with her while we ate and chatted. The entire interlude had been like a shiny bubble of escape from the misery and drama of my life.

“You could come out and ride with me sometime,” I ventured.

Her entire face glowed with excitement. “I’d love that! Can I ride a racehorse?”

“Not a chance,” I said cheerfully. “Pete won’t even let me ride them, but we do have other horses you can ride.”

“Probably better, anyway. Knowing my luck, I’d break a million-dollar horse and have to spend my life mucking out stalls to pay for it.” She chuckled, and I joined in.

“That’s a lot of horse poop,” I advised her, and she started to howl.

“Mount Horse Poop, the h-h-highest hill in K-K-Kentucky,” she said, barely able to breathe for laughing.

The mother who’d sat at the table behind Denise with her two little boys glared at me, and for some reason I found that hysterically funny. I put my head down on my arms and laughed until I couldn’t catch my breath, while Denise made more and more outrageous poop jokes.

Finally the clerk walked over.

“Shut up or I’m kicking you out,” she said, grinning at us both. “And have a nice day.”

By the time we pulled into the school parking lot, the bell was about to ring so I decided not to bother going back in. Denise did the same, and we sat in the truck for a minute, comfortable with our budding friendship but not quite sure where to go next.

“You realize you need to come over for a
real
study date now, right? To balance the karmic scales?” Denise shot me a sideways glance.