by Amy Vastine
“Absolutely.” Boone could not agree more. Alone. That was all he wanted to be.
* * *
AFTER THE DISASTER of day one on the farm, Boone hid out in his trailer most of the next two days. This seemed to bug Dean, who was determined to get Boone out and about. It had started with a simple dinner invitation that Boone had quickly refused. Next up, Dean had encouraged some time with the horses...and Jesse, the resident shrink. That wasn’t happening.
Boone knew what Dean was up to. He thought that if Boone talked to this Jesse guy, he’d step into the studio and record a platinum single. Music didn’t work like that. At least not good music.
By Tuesday afternoon, Boone was sick of the trailer and annoyed with himself for being curious if and when the spunky redhead might return with her daughter. It wasn’t like him to be preoccupied with anything other than when he was getting his next drink. Maybe it was his sobriety that had changed things, but it sure felt like the fire in that woman’s eyes had consumed him.
Maybe his problem was starvation. When Dean had said his fiancée had stocked the kitchen with some basics, he’d meant the bare minimum to keep a person alive: some bread, peanut butter and jelly, a half gallon of milk, a box of macaroni and cheese, gummy bears and a bag of barbecue potato chips. Dean had obviously shared a list of Boone’s tour hospitality requests with Faith. These might have been all his favorite comfort foods, but Boone needed something a bit more substantial.
“I want to go to town and buy some groceries,” he said when Dean stopped by to extend another dinner invitation.
“Great!” Dean’s eyes lit up. “Let’s go. I can show you around and we can check out Main Street.”
“I don’t need a tour guide. I need a car.”
“We can take Faith’s truck.”
“You’re not understanding me. If I go into town with you, I can’t get in and out unnoticed. I want to get groceries, not do a meet and greet with everyone on Main Street.”
Dean didn’t seem too keen on this plan, but Boone wasn’t going to do this any other way. Dean mulled it over for a minute and then offered to go get the keys.
Luckily there weren’t enough streets in this small town for Boone to get lost. He found the local grocery store and filled his cart with all the things that made his stomach growl. With the bill of his baseball cap pulled down, he managed to avoid eye contact with the other shoppers until a familiar voice caught his attention.
“Oh my gosh, you are so annoying.”
“You’re trying to chicken out. I knew you would.”
“I’m not chickening out of anything.”
Boone lifted his head and his gaze fell directly on the queen of teenage angst. He glanced around to make sure the girl’s mother wasn’t nearby. Ruby was the last person he wanted to bump into during this little excursion. He made a quick detour down the last aisle before Violet spotted him.
He hoped the kid was here with only her friend and not her mother. Just the thought of Ruby made his blood boil. It bugged him that this woman had so easily gotten under his skin. It shouldn’t matter that she was pretty and petite, just his type. Or that she had the face of an angel. She was the devil in disguise, threatening to send the press after him. He began to contemplate the idea of taking Dean’s truck and driving home to Nashville.
“Could you help me?” a dark-haired woman asked him. She immediately reminded Boone of his nana. She was well put-together and small in stature. Her bright red lipstick was meticulously applied. “For some reason they put my husband’s favorite bottle of wine on the highest shelf.”
Boone realized in that moment that he had landed himself in the aisle with nothing but beer and wine. His stomach growled louder than it had the entire shopping trip, and his mouth felt drier than a desert. There was only one thing that could quench this particular thirst.
He could smell it now—the hoppy beer and the fruity notes in the merlots. He could almost feel the bubbles of the champagne on his tongue. Given his physical reaction, it was amazing his body hadn’t led him to this aisle the second he set foot in the store. It was either fate testing his sobriety or the devil begging him to give it up.
“Are you all right?” the woman asked, giving him a peculiar look.
Boone snapped out of his daze. Embarrassed, he shook his head. “Which one?” His voice was rough, like he hadn’t spoken in years.
“That one right there.” She pointed.
With shaky hands, Boone reached up and grabbed the bottle that had eluded the poor woman. He knew how it felt to have what you wanted most just out of reach.
“Thank you,” the woman said, waiting patiently for him to hand it over.
Boone couldn’t turn it over just yet. He wanted to feel the glass in his hands, take in the weight of the liquid held inside. What he wouldn’t give to open it up and take one tiny sip. He could handle one sip. That wouldn’t really be cheating. One sip wouldn’t get him drunk.
“My husband swears he needs one drink a night to fall asleep. I think that’s just an excuse to have one drink a night.”
Boone would never stop at a sip. He wouldn’t stop at one drink. He’d finish the whole bottle and start on another before he knew what hit him. He handed the wine to the woman and, without a word, pushed his cart out of the aisle and as far away from temptation as possible.
He was still trying to control his thoughts while he waited in the checkout line. The young woman in front of him had a handful of coupons and was taking her sweet time sorting through them to find the ones she could apply to her purchase.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Violet and her friend hanging around the display of lighters near one of the empty checkout lanes. They seemed quite interested in what the employees were doing and where they were looking. Violet put a lighter in her pocket and started for the door. Boone noticed that the guy by customer service who was almost certainly the store manager saw the same thing. He could only imagine how much trouble the kid would get into with a mother like Ruby. He deserted his cart and got to Violet right before the manager confronted her.
He threw an arm over her shoulders and turned her back toward the checkout. “There you are, kiddo. I thought I lost you.”
Violet turned white as a ghost. “What are you doing?”
“Saving your butt,” he whispered. “Wanna hand over that lighter you were trying to lift so that Mr. Manager over there doesn’t call the police or, worse, your mom?”
Violet glanced over her shoulder at the man who was glaring in their direction.
“He didn’t see anything,” she argued weakly.
“You want to risk it?” Boone lifted his arm and motioned for her to head back toward the exit.
Violet thought about it for less than a second and dug the lighter out of her pocket. She set it in Boone’s waiting palm. “Whatever,” she mumbled.
“What was that?” He cupped his ear with his hand. “Thank you? Is that what I heard? Thank you for saving me?”
“Thank you for embarrassing me in front of my friend. How about that?”
The other girl was long gone. She must have figured Violet was caught and didn’t want to go down with a sinking ship. “You need better friends, kid.”
“Maybe you can come to school with me and offer to sign things for everybody. I bet that will make me super popular.”
“Why am I helping you again?”
“Beats me,” Violet said with a shrug.
Coupon Lady finally finished checking out, and the clerk welcomed Boone to Valu-Save. Her wide-rimmed glasses looked like they were straight out of the 1980s.
“We decided we don’t need this,” he said, handing the clerk the lighter.
“Oh, wow. Thanks for nothing,” Violet grumbled.
“I can’t think of one thing you’d need t
hat for that doesn’t end with you getting in even more trouble. You’ll definitely thank me for that later.”
“Oh my gosh, you sound exactly like my mother.”
There was little chance that was a good thing. Not to mention he had absolutely nothing in common with that woman other than their mutual desire to have nothing to do with one another. “Speaking of your mother, let’s keep this little rescue mission to ourselves, okay?”
Violet covered her heart with her hand and gasped like a world-class actress. “You want me to lie to my mother?”
The clerk glanced up at them, causing her to ring one item up twice. She looked away and corrected her error.
“I would never ask you to lie to your mother,” Boone said through gritted teeth. “All I’m saying is that not telling her every detail of your day is probably pretty normal for you. This should perhaps be one of those things you keep to yourself.”
“Boy, you really better start talking to Jesse. You are in worse shape than I am.”
She had no idea.
CHAPTER FOUR
“I THOUGHT YOU were hanging out with Stacy,” Ruby said from her spot at the dining room table as Violet charged through the front door and took the stairs two at a time. There was no reply except the slamming of her bedroom door.
“One of these days I am going to take that door off its hinges!” She meant it this time. Ruby didn’t care what Jesse had said about Violet needing privacy. If she couldn’t treat their house with respect, then she would have to suffer the consequences.
Ruby stood and stretched her arms above her head. She’d spent the past hour organizing her schedule for the coming weeks. There were two women in Wilcox County due to give birth in the next month with Ruby’s assistance. She had to make sure she was ready when those calls came in.
The sound of angry girl music filtered downstairs. Jesse’s voice in Ruby’s head told her to go check on Violet, to offer an ear and not a lecture. She took a deep breath and headed upstairs. She knocked on the door but got no answer.
“Vi, can I come in?” She tried turning the knob before getting the okay, but the door was locked. “What did I say about locking the door? Open it. Now.”
An increase in the music’s volume was Violet’s only response. Ruby inhaled deeply, trying to rein in her emotions. Jesse had once reminded her that when she lost her cool, it gave Violet an excuse to lose hers.
“I will leave you alone, but I need you to unlock the door and respect my rules.”
Ruby waited until she heard the soft click of the lock releasing. She resisted the temptation to push the door open, pressing her ear to the door instead. She hoped for an invitation to come in, imagined sitting on Violet’s bed and hearing all about what had happened to make her so upset.
“You can go away now,” Violet said from the other side.
Ruby straightened and bit her lip. It didn’t matter if there was a door or not. Violet wasn’t going to let her in.
“I’m going to start dinner. And you will be eating,” she said before Violet could protest that she wasn’t hungry.
Their dinner options were limited. Ruby had neglected certain chores this week, like grocery shopping. Cooking had never been one of her strengths, and living in Nashville had given her plenty of good reasons to eat out. There were several restaurants in the city Ruby missed like dear friends.
She scavenged some ham that still smelled edible and some cheese from the deli drawer. With any luck there would be four slices left of the bread she bought a week ago. If Violet gave her any grief, Ruby would serve her the heel.
While the frying pan heated up, Ruby found one apple in the refrigerator and half a can of Pringles in the pantry. Ruby’s mother had always been a stickler about serving a proper dinner, which consisted of a meat/protein, a starch, a vegetable and a fruit. Everyone was expected to eat everything, no exceptions. It didn’t matter that Ruby hated brussels sprouts or that her sister gagged whenever a banana was near.
Violet had never known such horror. Too bad she didn’t appreciate how cool her mom was.
Ruby grilled up two sandwiches and cut up the apple. Before she could call Violet down to eat, there was a knock on the front door.
“Hey, Ruby.” Mary Ellen Kingston lived next door and had twin daughters who were almost two. Ruby envied how put-together she always was. Her blond hair never failed to look like she’d just left the salon. She always wore some cute little sundress and strappy leather sandals that required buckling.
When Violet was two, Ruby had been lucky to get out of the house wearing clothes that weren’t covered in something Violet had wiped on or thrown at her. And if her shoes didn’t slip on, she went barefoot.
“How are you tonight, Mary Ellen?”
“Good. We’re on our way home from gymnastics. The girls and I have had a busy day. In fact, we were shopping at Valu-Save earlier and—” her voice dropped lower “—I don’t want to come off like I’m minding your business, but I feel like I need to tell you what I saw there.”
The uneasy feeling in Ruby’s stomach told her Mary Ellen wasn’t here to share information about a sale on orange juice. “What did you see?
“Well, Violet was there with her friend, but I noticed her later in the checkout lane with a man I didn’t recognize. I think he might have bought her something. She walked out of the store with him. I think he was trying to get her to go in his truck, but she kept on walking. Not that I would have let her go with him, of course,” she added.
Mary Ellen glanced back at her minivan parked in Ruby’s driveway. Her angelic twins were probably strapped inside, waiting patiently for their mother to return. They would never talk to strangers when they were older, or break any rules. Or shut their mom out of their lives.
“I swear I would have stopped her if she had made a different decision. I just thought you should know. We gotta look out for one another, being neighbors and all, right?”
“Right.” Ruby didn’t know what else to say as her heart beat out of control. She thanked Mary Ellen for her concern and shut the door.
For about a year after deciding to leave Levi, every communication Ruby had with her mother contained some reminder of the damage divorce did to children. Children raised by their mothers were ten times more likely to be physically hurt or murdered. Seventy percent of long-term prison inmates were from broken homes. Children from two-parent homes were happier, healthier and better-adjusted.
Ruby hadn’t needed scientific studies to tell her what divorce did to children. Her father had walked out of her life when she was seven years old. He hadn’t even tried to pretend he cared like Levi did with Violet. Ruby knew better than anyone the cost of a failed marriage and how the children paid the price.
Given Violet’s tendency to make trouble, Ruby always figured she needed to be more worried about her daughter ending up in jail than becoming someone’s victim. But the thought of Violet almost getting into some strange man’s truck caused tears to prick at the corners of her eyes.
This time she raced upstairs and didn’t bother knocking. Violet was on her bed and sat up when Ruby burst in.
“Mom! Seriously, leave.”
“Who was the man you were talking to at Valu-Save?”
“What?”
“Don’t play games with me, Violet.” Ruby clenched her fists to keep her hands from shaking. “Mrs. Kingston saw you and someone who isn’t from around here standing in line together. She said he bought you something and tried to get you to come into his truck. What happened?”
Violet rolled her eyes, and she flopped back on her bed, phone in hand. “Oh my gosh,” she said with an exasperated sigh. “People need to mind their own business.”
Ruby sat on the bed and blinked back her tears. “Honey, there are dangerous people in the world, even in small towns like
this one.”
“I know, Mom. I don’t need you to lecture me about stranger danger. I got it. You can leave now,” she said, going back to her phone.
“Vi.” Ruby snatched the smartphone from Violet’s hands. She would not be dismissed. “Do you have any idea what I would do if something happened to you? You are all I have in this world.”
For a moment, Ruby thought she saw a flicker of remorse in her daughter’s eyes. It was quickly replaced with familiar annoyance.
“Nothing is going to happen to me. Stacy dared me to steal a lighter so she could smoke these cigarettes she snagged from her mom’s purse, but that guy from Helping Hooves who thinks he’s famous caught me and made me stand in line with him because he said the manager saw me, too. He wouldn’t even buy me the lighter. He’s so lame.”
“Boone Williams was the man in the store?”
“I don’t remember his name because he’s old. And not cool. Can I have my phone back now?”
Ruby felt relieved and enraged at the same time. Thankfully some creepy pedophile hadn’t attempted to lure Violet into his car. However, Boone had interjected himself into Violet’s life without any thought to how his actions might affect Ruby’s ability to parent her troubled teen.
“I will be holding on to this until I can think of a more appropriate consequence for attempted shoplifting,” she replied, standing up and slipping the phone into the back pocket of her jeans. “And tonight at dinner, we will be discussing all the reasons someone your age shouldn’t take up smoking.”
“Oh my gosh! Are you serious? I didn’t say I was going to smoke.”
Ruby paid her no mind as she headed for the door. “Dinner’s ready, by the way.”
“I shouldn’t have told you anything. Boone was right. I should have kept the whole thing between him and me.”
That, on the other hand, got Ruby’s attention. She spun back around. “He told you not to tell me?”
Violet rolled over and curled into a ball. “I’m never telling you anything ever again.”