by Ava Miles
“You know what I’m talking about.” She grabbed her purse and headed inside. “I’m at the Dairy Queen. Why don’t you call J.P. and Susannah? I’ll see you in a few.”
“You sure it’s not too late?” her sister asked.
“No, there’s a ton of people at Dairy Queen. They’ll be awake.” She took her place in line. “Do you want something?”
“I was too upset to eat earlier, but my stomach is growling at the thought of Dairy Queen,” Shelby told her. “How about a burger and fries? A blizzard would melt.”
“Done.”
Pocketing her phone, Sadie waited until it was her turn to order. She decided to add in some chicken strips and more fries. Maybe J.P. and Susannah would like some if they were able to meet tonight. Who was she kidding? She was doing what every Southern woman did in a crisis. She was bringing food.
Her phone buzzed while she was paying. It was Shelby.
We’re meeting at J.P.’s. Come immediately. They grumbled, but agree it’s important.
When Sadie arrived at her brother’s house, the porch light was on. As she made her way to the front door, Susannah pulled into the drive behind her and exited her vehicle.
She stopped and turned around. “Hey.”
“Hey,” her sister said, filling that one word with truculence.
“Did Shelby tell you the complete news?” she asked.
“Yes,” Susannah replied. “I’m fixing to come undone.”
Her hands were full with the food, but she leaned in and pressed her cheek to her sister’s. “Me too.”
“Dairy Queen,” her sister said, pointing to the bags. “That’s a sure sign of stress.”
“I already had a large Butterfinger Blizzard.” In fact, she was fighting a downright unladylike belch. “We’re scared too, Susannah.”
“Let’s go inside,” her sister said, pressing a hand to her back and ushering her forward. They were on the porch when the headlights from another car illuminated them.
“Shelby’s here,” she said.
Sure enough, their other sister slammed her car door and rushed forward like there were hounds nipping at her heels.
“Are y’all going to come inside or dawdle out here all night?” J.P. asked from the doorway.
Goodness, J.P. was never grouchy. That didn’t sit well with Sadie. No, not one bit.
“We were just coming in, honey,” Susannah said, walking up the rest of the steps and wrapping her arms around him.
Sadie waited her turn, and when his strong hands drew her against his chest, she pretty much melted against him.
“All right, now,” he said, patting her back. “It’s going to be okay.”
Stepping aside, he gave Shelby a hug too, and they went into the house together. Tammy was waiting to give them more hugs, and Sadie drew comfort from the flow of love.
“I’m going to let y’all talk by yourselves,” she said, “but I’ll be praying.”
“We sure could use the prayers,” Sadie said.
Her sisters nodded in agreement.
“Let’s head into the kitchen,” J.P. said as his wife left the room. “I see you brought Dairy Queen, Sadie.”
After her blizzard, Sadie wasn’t sure she could eat anything else. And Shelby might be hungry, but she looked a little green. Glasses of sweet tea garnished with fresh mint—likely from the garden—were already awaiting them on the kitchen table, probably Tammy’s contribution to their siblings’ meeting. Sadie found a green serving plate in the cabinet and arranged the food on it while Shelby handed around napkins.
Once that was done, they all sat down and exchanged looks. The silence in the room was so intense Sadie could hear the moths hitting the screen door out back, seeking the light inside.
“All right,” J.P. said. “We’re all here now. Let’s start from the beginning.”
Sadie nodded to Shelby, and her sister laid out the current situation, including all the information Vander had given her about the kin he and Charlie had found. When she was finished, J.P. reached for his sweet tea and drained half the contents.
“It’s a mighty big step,” J.P. said, taking the mint off his glass and fiddling with it between his thumb and forefinger. “Seeing kin we’ve never met without knowing why we’ve never met them.”
“What if Mama told them—our grandma and Daddy’s siblings—that they couldn’t see us?” Susannah asked. “Mama would have had her reasons. We should honor them.”
“But this might be the only way we can find Daddy,” Sadie said, reaching for a chicken finger.
“What if our grandma ends up contacting Mama after we visit her?” Susannah asked, her cheeks pink. “Worse, what if she wants to come around and visit us? What would Mama say?”
J.P. held up his hands and said, “I for one would be happy to have a grandma around if she wants a place in our lives. I say we all go meet her together and see what she knows.”
Sadie shared a look with Shelby, and they smiled at each other. If J.P. was already on their side, they had a better chance of swaying their sister.
“You always believe in the best in people,” Susannah said, elbows locked tight.
“You do too, darlin’,” J.P. told her. “You’re only scared like the rest of us are.”
“I say we face this head on,” Shelby said. “We go to Memphis together and tell her who we are and that we’re looking for our daddy after all these years. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering. And I won’t stop now out of fear.”
“Life shouldn’t be lived from a place of regret,” J.P. said in that deep voice of his. “Susannah, you don’t have to go. No one will think less of you.”
Their sister leaned forward. “Like I could live with myself if all three of you went, and I stayed behind. I’m just worried this won’t turn out well.”
“But it might,” Sadie said softly. “We won’t know until we try.”
“Then we go,” Shelby said, reaching for her hand and J.P.’s. “We stick together like McGuinesses and get this done.”
Susannah slowly joined their circle. “All right. The sooner the better. And I want Jake to come too, if that’s okay with y’all.”
They all nodded in agreement. It would help settle Susannah to have him there.
“We need to agree on a day to go,” Shelby said.
“It’s a three and a half hour drive,” J.P. said. “We could do the whole trip in one day, or we could stay the night in Memphis to shake things off. I don’t like bringing stuff like this home.”
Sadie couldn’t blame him. He was newly married, and there was Rory and Annabelle to consider. They were both sensitive to the moods of the adults in their lives.
“Might be good to have some time together…however this turns out,” Shelby said. “We haven’t done anything like that in a while.”
It made Sadie a little sad to realize her sister was right. Now that Susannah and J.P. had families of their own, they didn’t get to see them much except for Sunday dinner. “That’s a good idea. I’ll likely be…a mess, and I’d love to be with y’all.”
“Me too,” Shelby said, catching her eye. “Although I hate to admit it.”
“I’ll bring plenty of tissues,” J.P. said. “I expect meeting our grandma will be like pulling out a stinger. Any way we do it, it’s gonna hurt.”
“Let’s agree on a few days,” Shelby said. “Then I’ll see what Vander’s schedule looks like.”
“Do you think he still needs to go with us?” J.P. asked, rubbing his jaw after some consideration.
“He feels pretty strongly about going,” Sadie felt compelled to say. “Plus, he’s more used to this kind of thing than we are. Vander has been good to us.” His presence would make her feel better, she expected.
“He might also think of questions we either wouldn’t or would be too…well, emotional to remember to ask.” Shelby frowned after saying this, and Sadie knew she feared being a complete wreck.
“All right, we’ll nail
down a time that works for everyone,” J.P. said, squeezing her hand before releasing it. “I’m glad you two reached out to us tonight.”
“We promised we would,” Shelby said.
“We don’t break our promises,” Sadie said.
But their daddy had. Was his mama any different?
Chapter 11
When Vander pulled into their grandma’s trailer park, Shelby reached for Sadie’s hand. She had never seen anything so run down or…frightening—well, except on television.
“Oh, my good Lord,” Susannah said. “I know we used to live in a trailer park after Daddy left because Mama couldn’t afford the house, but this is—”
“Squalor,” Jake said, shaking his head. “I hate poverty like this. There’s plenty of it in parts of Arkansas around where I grew up.”
“But this is Memphis!” Sadie said, shrinking back from the window as three men with dirty wife beater shirts and neo-Nazi tattoos stepped out of a mobile home.
“Those men are armed,” Vander told the group of them. “Aren’t you glad you let me come along?”
Shelby nodded. Like he would have sat this one out. He’d been insistent from day one. He’d only expressed concern about Susannah’s husband coming with them. Jake Lassiter was a celebrity, which meant he might get recognized. Susannah had been adamant, so Vander had said they would take every precaution.
He’d done some checking with local police on the trailer park where their grandma lived, and it had a dangerous reputation. To keep a low profile, he’d rented an old six-passenger Dodge in Memphis so they could all travel together. Vander was also armed, which Shelby had considered over-the-top until this very moment.
“I don’t want y’all getting out of the car,” Jake said. “You let J.P., Vander, and me handle this.”
Shelby looked over her shoulder at him in the backseat with her sister. His tension was palpable, and his eyes were scanning the area like he was a soldier back in Iraq.
“I’m personally okay with that,” Sadie said, her voice shaky. “I’m a little scared to get out of the SUV.”
“I told y’all coming here wasn’t a good idea,” Susannah said, worry lacing her voice. “Jake, I don’t like getting you upset.”
Shelby heard what Susannah didn’t say. She didn’t want him to have another PTSD episode.
“I’ll be all right, sugar,” Jake said, but no one was convinced.
“Why don’t you let me talk to your grandmother first?” Vander said from the driver’s seat, looking at them in the rear view mirror. His eyes found Shelby’s and pinned on them for an instant before he returned his gaze to the dirt road. “If I have a warm welcome, I’ll usher you in. We just need to find her trailer.”
There weren’t any numbers on the mobile homes, and Shelby wondered if that was intentional. Vander continued to drive slowly as more men and women came out of their mobile homes to watch them.
“I don’t expect they get a lot of visitors,” Vander said, pulling to a stop. “Give me a minute to see what I can find out.”
He put the car in park and hopped out before anyone could protest.
“I should go with him,” Jake said, his fist resting on the seat.
“He’ll be all right, Jake,” J.P. said from his perch as co-pilot. “I have a feeling it’ll only fire these folks up if more than one man gets out of our car. From the looks of it, there are a lot of scared people living in this park. I wonder how our grandma ended up here.”
“Poverty, likely,” Sadie said. “It breaks my heart to think of it.”
Shelby was listening to their quiet conversation, but she only had eyes for Vander. He’d worn a wrinkled white T-shirt, a worn jean jacket to cover his gun, an even more worn pair of jeans, and scuffed-up work boots. He looked like the polar opposite of the elegant gentleman she’d believed him to be.
With his dark shades on, he seemed downright intimidating. Seeing these other facets of him made her wonder even more about him. Sure, it was all part of the P.I. cover he’d created, but it fit him like second skin. Who was Vander Montgomery anyway? She felt a growing compulsion to find out.
He’d told them upfront he was going in as Toby Parsons, Shelby’s boyfriend. She’d almost choked on her own spit, hearing that, but she hadn’t asked why he’d chosen her and not Sadie, and thankfully neither had anyone else.
The whole undercover thing was still a little scary. She didn’t much like watching him talk to those men with the hateful tattoos on their arms, and she found herself offering up silent prayers for his safety.
When Vander came back to the car, he got in and tipped his hand at the men he’d talked to and started to drive.
“Your grandmother is home,” Vander said, his voice crisp and all business. “Those men were helpful. I told them we were her kin from Nashville who hadn’t seen her in ages. From the sound of it, she keeps to herself. She’s just down the road here.”
Vander stopped the car in front of a brown mobile home with torn window screens, a rusted-out septic tank in front, and a Confederate flag hanging from the front window. A car with rust stains to rival the septic tank sat in the dirt driveway.
“Do you think Grandma’s a racist if she’s flying that flag?” Sadie asked, cuddling closer to Shelby.
“In my experience, that’s not true of everyone who has a Confederate flag,” Jake said. “But many are. Vander, are you sure you don’t want me to go in with you? I might not be armed, but the Army trained me well.”
Vander turned in his seat and gave Jake a smile. “Thanks for having my back. I’d rather have someone with your training stay in the car with the women. No offense, ladies, but this is a rough neighborhood, and while my friends back there didn’t express any hostility, who’s to say that won’t change? J.P., since you favor your father, I was hoping you might join me if I need some backup. That is, if she’s not willing to talk to me about your father straight off.”
J.P. nodded. “Happy to.”
“I’ll signal you in by waving,” Vander said. “Casual. Like I’m one of you.”
Suddenly this all felt too serious to Shelby. Someone could get seriously hurt, and that wasn’t something she’d imagined when she’d suggested this trip.
“Maybe I was wrong to push this,” she said. “Maybe we should just go and find another way.”
“We’re already here,” J.P. said, meeting her eyes. “Let’s see it through. We’re in good hands.”
Vander nodded and stepped out of the car. When he reached the front door, Shelby realized it was barely hanging on by the hinges. He rapped on the paint-faded brown wood and then stepped back when a dog started barking.
“Oh, my goodness,” Sadie said, clutching her hand. “That dog sounds scary.”
“It’s a bulldog, from the sound of it,” Jake told them, sitting on the edge of his seat.
Vander put a few yards between himself and the door and stood there. A full minute passed before the door opened. An older woman in a loose, baby blue polyester dress filled the doorway—one hand on a cane, the other wrapped around the collar of a black-and-white spotted bulldog.
Shelby wasn’t the only one in the SUV who gasped.
“My God, she’s morbidly obese,” Sadie whispered, putting her free hand to her mouth. “She wasn’t that way at Mama and Daddy’s wedding!”
The woman at the door had to be over three hundred pounds, and her harshly dyed brown hair was gray at the temples and rolled up in curlers.
“Who the hell are you?” the woman shouted at Vander.
Shelby couldn’t hear Vander’s reply with the windows up and his back facing them, but her grandmother’s response was all too audible.
“What do you mean you’re a friend of my son’s kin? Who? Virgil?”
Vander shook his head and said something. Once again, Shelby couldn’t hear how he responded, but she saw the way it affected the woman. Her face crumpled and her hands balled into fists around their respective burdens.
“You
mean that bitch Louisa’s kids?” she asked, turning her gaze toward the car. “Are they in there?”
Vander nodded again, and since their grandma seemed to be paying attention to him, Shelby expected he was saying his piece.
“That good-for-nothing woman ruined my boy!” their grandma shouted. “I hope she rots in hell.”
Sadie sucked in a breath, and Shelby felt her stomach quiver. She’d never heard anyone curse Mama.
“We should leave,” Susannah said, her voice quavering. “She’s a mean and hateful woman to be talking about Mama like that.”
“I agree,” J.P. said, “but we don’t know the reasons for her venom or how she’s come by it. Let’s give Vander some more time.”
They all fell silent.
Pretty soon, Vander was taking a few steps closer, and their grandma wasn’t shouting anymore. By the time he made it to her front door again, she was wiping tears from her eyes. Then Vander gave J.P. the signal, and Shelby tensed up.
“Be careful,” Sadie said, reaching a hand out to clutch at his arm.
“I’ll be fine,” J.P. said, giving them a tight smile. “Be right back.”
Their brother stepped out of the vehicle and walked to the door with his long-legged stride. The bulldog started barking again, but this time, their grandmother immediately shushed it. Then she awkwardly turned around and disappeared inside the trailer.
Vander and J.P. huddled together. After a few moments, they both turned and walked back to the SUV.
When they got back in the vehicle, J.P. looked at Vander, who nodded.
“She’s invited us inside for sweet tea,” J.P. said, turning in his seat to address them. “You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. She doesn’t know how many of us are here, so it won’t offend her none.”
Shelby gazed back at the house, her mind spinning horrifying images of what it might look like inside. Sadie clutched her hand so tight it hurt.
“I’m scared to go in there,” her younger sister said in a soft voice. “That dog…”
“I told her it would make us feel more comfortable if she shut him in somewhere,” Vander interjected, “and she agreed to put him in the back bedroom. Heck, it would even make me more comfortable. I thought it was going to take a bite out of me when she opened the door.”