Unforgettable (The Dalton Gang #3) (24 page)

Curtis Mitchell chuckled, took a minute to step forward and call some instructions to the assistant coaching the defensive line, then stepped back. Still chuckling. “Your mother’s right. You need to bring that one by more often.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Boone said, meaning it. And realizing that his father was right. Without Upton crossing a legal line, there wasn’t much to be done. Everly was a strong woman, able to do a lot toward taking care of herself. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be watching to take care of her, too.

TWENTY-FIVE

T
HE SMALL HOUSE
sat in the part of town that would’ve been considered the wrong side of the tracks if the railroad had run through Crow Hill. In the four years since Everly had moved here, she’d only ventured southwest of Main Street a handful of times, and it usually had to do with repairs to her SUV.

The neighborhood had seen better days. A lot of them. Many of the houses were rentals, some leased by the extended families of the hands who bunked on the area’s ranches, others no more than a source of extra income for the owners, and cared for little by those barely able to afford them.

Everly parked on the street, there being no curb and no sidewalk, only a grassy ditch to separate the city’s property from the private. It was the middle of the day, sunny and warm, and most of the blue-collar residents at work. At least she hoped they were at work, and not waiting for luxury SUVs to park on the street. That, of course, was the city girl side of her she tried hard to keep locked away.

She walked on the balls of her feet until she reached the broken sidewalk, not trusting her heels wouldn’t sink into the clay of the yard and snap off. Even then, she stepped gently, the sidewalk a mess of broken pieces seemingly glued together by the weeds growing up through the cracks.

The cement steps rocked a bit when she climbed to the porch, but she made it, knocking, then smoothing down the front of her blouse, smoothing back her hair, pulling off her sunglasses and searching for a smile to hide her strange case of nerves.

The woman who answered the door was both unexpected and not. She was the right age, though worn and ragged, the state of her skin easily blamed on cigarettes. One burned between two fingers of the hand she’d braced against the door. But she was also quite beautiful, her bone structure, her build, the care she’d taken with her chunky hair cut and highlights, reminding Everly that she was overdue for both.

“Penny Upton?”

“Yes? Well, it’s Penny Blaylock now.”

She knew that. Penny’s marriage to Dean Blaylock had come up in Everly’s fact-finding. She was just stuck on Upton being the name from Boone’s past. “My name is Everly Grant. I work for the
Crow Hill Reporter
.”

“Yeah? And?” the other woman asked, a phone ringing in the room behind her, then going silent.

“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a story I’m doing.”

“For the
Reporter
?” When Everly nodded, Penny frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know what I can tell you about anything in town. I do all my shopping in Luling. I homeschool my kids. My dad served his time. My mom moved on. Dean, that’s my husband, he works at Len Tunstall’s slaughterhouse. And that’s pretty much the history of my life right there. Now, if you think any of that can help you . . .”

“The story’s a human interest piece about the return of the Dalton Gang to Crow Hill.”

“The Dalton Gang . . . Wait a minute. Are you here to ask me about Boone Mitchell?” Her eyes widened, and a big smile took over her face, making her look ten years younger. “You are, aren’t you? Well, sugar, come on in. I’m happy to talk about Boone. And just look at me. I’ve been so busy today I haven’t even had a chance to put on my face.”

“You look fine,” Everly said, stepping into the doorway.

“I look like crap, but it’s been one of those days. Lord, I haven’t thought about Boone Mitchell in years—”

“Mom! Grammy B’s coming to take me and Joel to Dairy Barn for supper.”

“Then you’d best finish your geography assignment, kiddo,” Penny said, ruffling the sandy blond hair of the boy, no more than eight or nine, who came running into the room. “Jacob, this is Ms. Grant. She works at the newspaper in town. Ms. Grant, this is Jacob, my oldest.”

“Please to meet you, ma’am,” the boy said, offering his hand, then running off to presumably do the schoolwork standing in the way of him and his burger basket.

Penny smiled after him. “And thank God that lets me off the hook for cooking. Dean can throw a steak on the grill when he gets home. I can toss a salad. Add a bottle of wine, and my night is complete.”

The inside of Penny and Dean Blaylock’s home was surprisingly neat. Everly didn’t know why she’d been expecting anything different. Except she had. She was being a snob, thinking the interior of a house in Southwest Crow Hill would look as sad and rundown as it did out.

She followed Penny to the kitchen, taking one of the four chairs at the smart pine table while the other woman turned on her Keurig machine.

“I’ve got Emeril’s decaf, or Dunkin’ Donuts original.”

Considering the state of her nerves . . . “The decaf would be great, thanks.”

“So you’re writing about Boone and the boys,” Penny said, reaching into the cabinet for matching ceramic mugs. “Cream and sugar? Black?”

“Cream and sweetener, if you have it.”

“I’ve got the pink stuff, sure,” she said, bringing a holder of packets to the table along with Everly’s cup, going back for a small carton of half-and-half and her own. “So what do you want to know? What kind of story are you doing?”

Everly stirred her coffee, thinking about what Les Upton had told her, having a hard time picturing this woman being raised by that man. “Lots of folks are interested in where they’ve been, and what it’s been like to come back after so many years. You went to school with them, am I right?”

“I did,” she said, lifting her cup and blowing across the top, her cigarette smoldering in the ashtray at her elbow. “But I didn’t know Dax or Casper well at all. Only Boone. That boy . . .” She shook her head, sipped. “He was such a sweetheart. And to have gone through what he did with my family. I guess you know about all of that.”

“He told me about the night your father . . .”

“Came home and beat my mother half to death?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper, her perfectly arched brows rising.

Everly nodded. She’d wanted information on Boone. Less for her story than herself. But she hadn’t thought what she’d be putting Penny through by coming here. She didn’t know the woman, but that didn’t let her off the hook for invading her privacy.

Listen to her. Since when had she cared about invading someone’s privacy? And yet, having her own privacy invaded at the end of her years with Toby had given her the perspective she’d lacked as a journalist. The fact that she was letting that lesson fall by the wayside for personal gain . . . God, what was she doing here?

“Yeah, that was not one of my finer moments. I had a lot of not-so-fine ones in high school, but wow did I ever let things get out of hand that night. I’ve always wondered if I hadn’t been such a slut,” she said, holding up a hand at Everly’s gasp, “if that night wouldn’t have been totally different. And before you argue that I wasn’t, you only have Boone’s version of what happened.”

“That’s not quite true.”

“How so?”

“I was talking to some other friends of the Dalton Gang recently. At the Blackbird Diner. Your father stopped by my table.”

“Lucky you,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Did he tell you it was my fault the way things happened?”

“No, and please don’t blame yourself. Abuse is never the victim’s fault,” she said, and the words hung there so long she actually looked up, seeing her history, her face in Penny’s. She hadn’t thought she blamed herself for inciting Toby’s wrath, but maybe she had, yet in that moment, she knew she never would again.

And then she thought about Boone, not the boy he’d been who’d known this woman as a girl, but the man he was now. The man who carried just as much baggage as she did, but seemed to never let it weigh him down. Like Penny, he’d moved beyond what had happened. Everly was the one stuck in the past.

“I heard that a lot growing up. From my mother, of all people. She knew it wasn’t her fault that my dad beat her. He didn’t always, just later, when their lives got so pathetic. I think she was looking for an easy way to check out. Rather than suicide by cop, suicide by husband.”

Her hand shook as she brought her cigarette to her mouth. “What gets to me when I think back is how happy she is now. She met a new guy in Corpus Christi. He was a widower, had two kids. I think she’s more mom to them than she ever was to me, but I can’t hate her for that. My dad really fucked her over. She got through it the only way she thought she could. As bad as it was, it worked out in the end.”

“Can I ask you something personal? Totally off-the-record. It has nothing to do with the story, but after meeting your father, I’m curious.”

“Shoot.”

“With everything that happened, why did you come back here to live?”

Penny’s smile, as she reached for another cigarette and lit it, left Everly somewhat unbalanced. She’d expected to find a bitter, broken woman. Penny was anything but. She was a bit frazzled maybe, but she was responsible for the care and feeding and schooling of two young boys. Frazzled was hardly a character flaw with all she had on her plate.

“I’d been born here. I grew up here. Crow Hill, for being a nothing spot on any map, is my home. I left for a while with my mom. I spent a few months in Corpus with her at her sister’s while she got over the physical damage. But all that time I was away, I missed my life here. I missed my friends.”

“Your father was still in prison when you came back, yes?”

“He was. I stayed with my bestie, Missy Fowler. I got a job at the Dairy Barn. And that’s where I met Dean. Or rather, met him again. He’d been two years ahead of me in school, and he’d played football so I knew who he was. But I had no idea he knew who I was,” she said, a blush creeping up her extraordinarily long neck to stain her cheeks.

None of this was what Everly had expected to learn when she came here today. She’d thought, for no reason other than prejudice, that she’d find a chip off the Les Upton block. But Penny was delightful, leaving her lost as to what to think about where this woman fit into Boone’s past.

“Obviously he did know,” Everly said, a smile spreading easily over her face as she lifted her coffee to drink.

“I can’t even tell you what it was like, being courted by a man like Dean. He was already working for Len Tunstall. He’s been there all this time, actually. He’s
such
a good provider for me and the boys. He was so quiet and so strong. I’d always thought strength meant brute force. And a lot of yelling.”

“Because that’s what you’d seen with your father.”

She nodded, tapped the ashes off the end of her cigarette. “Dean won’t let my father in the house. He won’t let him know the boys. I mean, they know he’s their grandfather. And Dean will take them to the garage on Daddy’s birthday and at Christmas to give him cards, but that’s all. He stays with them every minute. I never go, but Jacob and Joel tell me about it. I don’t think they particularly like the visits, but they don’t hate them either. They’re more curious than anything. Daddy is nothing like their PopPop, Dean’s dad.”

“Sounds like coming back to Crow Hill turned out for the best.”

Penny looked down, her eyes going damp, then red as she struggled not to cry. “When I was a little girl, I thought my daddy hung the moon. He was so sweet to my momma. We did things together as a family, some of the same things Dean and I do with our boys now. I couldn’t imagine my life being any better than it was.”

“What happened? How did he . . .”

“Become an abusive pig?”

“Yeah.

“I don’t know.” She turned in her chair to cross her legs, and lean her head against the wall. “He drank more than he should have, for one thing, and he screwed up on a couple of rebuild jobs because of it. He couldn’t keep good help. Folks moved to Skeet Bandy’s garage.”

“So his business declined.”

She nodded. “Momma had been a beauty when they got married. Just gorgeous,” Penny said, and Everly didn’t doubt for a minute that the daughter took after the mother. “I guess she’d put on a few pounds, I mean, hello. They’d been married twenty years. It wasn’t like he hadn’t lost most of his hair and gained a gut. Maybe she didn’t get the attention she wanted from him, so she looked elsewhere. Not saying I know for a fact that she cheated, but I heard talk. Most of it from him. And since she ignored me and he doted, well, it was easy to believe him. Funny, because he turned out to be such a goddamn liar.”

“He told me Boone sold drugs to the kids at school.”

“Oh my god, he did not,” she said, then pressed her fingers to her mouth as if doing so would help her lower her voice. “He’s a liar. That’s such a lie. Boone Mitchell wouldn’t have come within a hundred feet of drugs. Beer, yeah. That boy liked his beer. But he was too smart to mess with things that would mess with him. No, Daddy hated Boone because he stood up to him. Momma quit because he broke her down. She couldn’t deal with the ugliness anymore. She just gave in,” she said. “But not Boone. Never Boone.” Then she picked up her mug, frowning when she realized it was empty, going silent instead of brewing another cup, or reaching for a third cigarette.

Everly went quiet, too. She understood the ugliness. She understood the giving in. She’d managed to get out from under Toby’s rule before she’d reached the point Lucinda Upton had, but she understood. She’d been lucky she had the money, and the contacts, and the friends who’d helped her escape.

“I’m sorry to drag you through all of this,” Everly said, realizing how deeply she meant it. “I really only intended to ask you about Boone.”