Justified

by Varina Denman

  “Oh, sorry.” She yanked a tangle, and when my eyes popped open, she asked, “So you’re living up on the Cap?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But I see you’re still driving Velma Pickett’s car.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Ansel and Velma were awful hospitable to board you while you worked things out with your folks.”

  What was she getting at? Not only had I not worked things out with my folks, but my moving in with the Picketts was old news. “I talked it over with Ansel and Velma, and we agreed I should have my own place before the baby comes. That’s why I rented.”

  Sophie’s response came so quickly, her words tripped over mine. “Someone sat in this very chair the other day saying they knew the reason that house has been vacant so long.”

  “Sophie …” Ruthie plopped into the hair-dryer seat. “This sounds like something you shouldn’t bring up.”

  “Why shouldn’t I bring it up?”

  Sophie’s movements grew rapid and jerky, and I began to fear for my hairstyle. “I’ve probably heard it already,” I said.

  “Oh, I doubt it. You never would have moved there.”

  The lingering scent of Big Sexy Hair stung the back of my throat, but I accepted it along with Sophie’s prattle. Another layer of my sentence.

  She paused in her work, clearly waiting for us to ask for details, and when we didn’t, she blurted, “The place is infested with rattlesnakes. I heard the last tenants moved to Oklahoma after they found their six-year-old daughter dead one morning … with a rattlesnake coiled on her pillow.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it.” Ruthie looked as if she might slap her.

  “Well …” Sophie’s bottom lip pooched. “I heard there were tons of—”

  “But nobody ever died.”

  The hairdresser lifted her chin. “So you admit there are snakes up there.”

  “Of course. We live smack in the middle of rattlesnake country, but don’t start telling Fawn wild stories.”

  “I’ve heard all the stories.” A small foot or hand or elbow poked my insides, reminding me to keep things in perspective. “But I’ve been there a week, and I haven’t seen anything but scorpions and tarantulas.

  “Did the owner mention snakes?” Sophie turned her head so quickly, her bobbed hair whipped against her cheeks.

  “I haven’t met him.”

  She dropped her hands to her sides. “Then how did you rent the house?”

  “Ansel knows him.” I adjusted the vinyl cape hanging from my shoulders. “I don’t know where the man lives. Dallas or Austin, I guess.”

  “Ruthie, do you know who he is?”

  “No, but if he’s a friend of Uncle Ansel, he’s probably supernice.”

  I ran my thumb across the stubble on my knee. I hadn’t told Sophie everything, but Ruthie knew the sole detail that redeemed my ratty little shack on the Caprock. The owner offered to let me stay there rent-free for two months if I cleaned the place up, and the financial break would make a difference.

  Sophie stood motionless with her eyebrows bunched together in concentration. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re willing to live alone in a snake-infested dump because you’re too proud to live in Tyler Cruz’s enormous mansion?”

  Ruthie slapped her palms against her thighs. “Sophie Snodgrass, Fawn’s house may not be as nice as what she grew up in, but she sure as heck doesn’t need any help from Tyler.”

  “Oh, he’s that bad, is he?” Sophie chuckled, then squirted gel into her palm and began working it through my curls. “Maybe that boy wants to do right by Fawn. Have you ever thought about that?”

  Ruthie snorted.

  “He doesn’t,” I moaned. “When I broke it off with him, he didn’t argue. He seemed relieved.”

  “Not that it’s any of your business.” Ruthie scowled at Sophie, and the hairdresser’s lips momentarily wadded into a tight pucker before she smiled down at me.

  “Well, I’d bet money you misjudged the boy. I’d wager he’s concerned for his little family.”

  “Why on earth would you say that?” Ruthie’s voice rose. “He hasn’t shown an ounce of interest in Fawn or the baby in months.”

  Sophie wrinkled her nose at Ruthie’s reflection in the mirror but then made eye contact with me. “I just think you’re wrong about that.” She looked pointedly out the front window to the street.

  The vinyl cape around my shoulders acted as a barrier, trapping warm air against my torso, but when I looked past the front counter, chill bumps shimmied up my arms and legs as though I had stepped outside during a cold snap.

  Tyler stood on the curb leaning against Velma’s Chevy, waiting for me.

  Chapter Four

  “Hey, babe.” Tyler didn’t so much as glance at Ruthie when she stomped past him on her way to the diner. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on me, humming the words softly as though approaching a spooked colt. “Was hoping I’d run into you.”

  My breath caught in spite of my defensiveness. His unexpected appearance, the low timbre of his voice, and the term of endearment worked together to transport me from Trapp’s quiet Main Street to a dozen different places he and I had experienced together.

  His black hair had grown longer across his forehead, and he had muscled up, but the biggest difference lay in his eyes. They didn’t mock as much as they once had, though a glimmer of self-importance remained, and a protective shield hardened around my heart.

  “You found me.” I wanted to wound his confidence with a glare, but I couldn’t muster it, and I let my gaze wander to his truck parked nearby. A pair of binoculars lay on the dash, and I wondered if he’d been hunting recently.

  He rapped his knuckles against the hood of the Chevy. “Classy ride. Your dad still holding your Mustang hostage?”

  I didn’t want to discuss my car, or my parents, or any other controversial topic. I didn’t want to talk to him at all. Without a doubt, half the Dixie’s Diner patrons across the street were ogling us while they shoveled chicken-fried steak into their mouths, and I wouldn’t have put it past Sophie to video the event from her post at the salon. “What do you want, Tyler?”

  His eyes roamed a circle around my face, bounced to the Gucci bag hanging from my elbow, and then deliberately examined my body from neck to ankle.

  I instantly regretted my choice of clothing, knowing my baggy shorts and oversize Texas Tech T-shirt did nothing for my new body type. But I shouldn’t care.

  He nodded. “You look good.”

  The emphasis he placed on the last word indicated surprise, and my palm quivered with the urge to slap him. “Right.”

  “Fawn … babe … don’t stay mad. I miss you something fierce.”

  The scent of his Dolce and Gabbana cologne flashed a string of memories across my heart. A lingering hug after a fraternity social. A candlelight dinner on the balcony of his father’s house in Snyder. A midnight swim in my parents’ pool.

  But once he found out about the baby, it had taken him weeks to speak to me and two months to stand up and propose. I fingered a curl hanging near my shoulder. “I’m doing fine without you.”

  “You can’t be having an easy time of it.”

  Of course not. I lived in a shack without enough money for groceries or doctor bills, but I’d rather live alone than with someone I couldn’t depend on. “Like I said, I’m doing all right.”

  He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo shorts. “I shouldn’t have been drinking. I never meant to hurt you.”

  We had danced this number before, breaking up because of his lack of self-control and getting back together because of my need for security. Five times I forgave him. I could count on the fingers of my right hand the number of times I took him back, but once he endangered our baby, I vowed I wouldn’t continue the count on my l
eft.

  “It won’t happen again.” He ran his palm across his forehead, and his hair fell back into place exactly the way it had been. Shiny, straight, unchanging.

  “That’s what you said last time.”

  “But things are different now. You and the baby mean everything.” He peered at me through his eyelashes. “Please forgive me.”

  The muscles behind my knees weakened, and I shifted my weight. “I’ve never heard you apologize.” Not to me or anyone else.

  “It’s about time I did.”

  Something in the droop of his shoulders chipped at my resolve, but I hugged myself to mask the effect.

  With his middle finger, he poked my abdomen. “How’s our little bundle?”

  “It’s a boy.”

  “Seriously?” His eyes puzzled. “That’s cool. If we’re going to have a baby, I’d want it to be a son.” He seemed to realize too late the double edge of his statement and did his best to recover. “Are you happy about it?”

  I blinked into the wind. “I can’t wait to hold him and rock him and all that.”

  “Sure.” Tyler looked down the street, hesitated, then squinted back at me. “The kid got mentioned in Dad’s will … Nothing to speak of, but as soon as he’s born, there’ll be papers to sign.”

  I hadn’t considered Byron Cruz’s will. The man had treated me as an inferior, and when he died, I figured my child hadn’t crossed his mind. “Sorry I didn’t call when he passed.”

  The glass door of the diner jangled open, and an elderly couple ambled out and to their car.

  “No big deal.” He brushed his fingertips across my arm. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

  “Better not. Ruthie’s waiting for me.”

  He cut his eyes toward the diner. “She’s probably got her eye on me.”

  “Ruthie and twenty other people.” We were standing on Main Street. The news that Tyler Cruz and Fawn Blaylock had spoken would be all over town by sundown.

  “I don’t see why you hang with her, Fawn. She’s not like us.”

  My spine bristled. Ruthie and I shared a rocky history, but over the past several months, she and her family had done more for me than anyone else. “Meaning?”

  “She’s hardly even a Christian. And her family’s a mess. You shouldn’t get tangled up in that.”

  “She comes to church now.”

  “Ah … right. With her preacher boyfriend.”

  “I’d better go.” I hurried across the street, but he jogged after me.

  “Can I call you sometime? To talk about the baby and see if you need anything?” His words spilled over one another as though he were frantic for me to hear him, to acknowledge his feelings, to love him again. To share our son. That’s what it sounded like, but did he mean it?

  I despised him for pressuring me to sleep with him—even though I did it willingly and would agree with anyone who called me trash—yet in the midst of my strong feelings, it broke my heart to think of my little man growing up without a daddy. The baby deserved better. I glanced at the diner’s tinted plate-glass windows, feeling like an actor on a reality-television show, wanting the studio audience to choose my fate.

  If someone had asked me that morning if I would ever speak to Tyler again, I would have said, Not in a million years. He had gone too far, left my heart battered and my cheeks bruised. Yet here I stood not only speaking to him but considering letting him call me.

  A good Christian would keep on forgiving, but when I looked back at him, a hint of nausea grazed my insides. He seemed to be inspecting my clothing, and then his eyes bounced to the diner windows, and he squared his shoulders.

  He would never change.

  Even though my life was falling apart, I hadn’t given up my dream of a happy ending. A future involving roses and candles and sweet, kind words, not vanity and drunkenness and abusive rage.

  “No.” I opened the door to Dixie’s. “Don’t call me.”

  Chapter Five

  When I walked through the entrance of Dixie’s Diner, most of the merry patrons returned their attention to the piles of food in front of them, but a few couldn’t keep their eyes from ping-ponging back and forth between Tyler and me as he pulled away.

  The only person openly glaring was Ruthie.

  “Sit.” The wooden legs of the chair across from her grated against the floor as she shoved it with her foot. “What did the un­dependable, shallow egomaniac want?”

  I glanced at the two women on each side of her—Ruthie’s aunt Velma and her mother, Lynda—and wished we were alone. Tyler’s appearance rattled me, and I would have liked to discuss it with my friend … but not her entire family.

  I eased into the seat, scooting back an inch to account for my swollen belly. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Don’t play stupid.” Ruthie smirked.

  Velma’s plump palm patted my arm. “Aw, Ruthie, give the girl a break. Plain as day the boy caught her off guard.”

  A grunt of disgust came from Ruthie’s mother, but she didn’t look up from the laminated menu. She merely raised one condescending eyebrow and tucked her hair behind her ear. I never knew what to make of Lynda Turner.

  My mother once described her as an unambitious small-town floozy, but Mother, understandably, was biased.

  Velma Pickett, on the other hand, she described as homemade soap—functional, old-fashioned, not much to look at. But ironically, Ruthie’s aunt Velma, more often than her mother, caused a stifling wave of guilt to press against me like a sauna. Even though she hadn’t set foot in a church building since her marriage to Ansel thirty years before, she still had more jewels in her crown than I ever would.

  All three women shared the same skeptical brown eyes, compelling me to open my own menu. “Tyler asked about the baby. He didn’t want anything.”

  “Tyler Cruz?” Lynda finally spoke. “Wanting nothing?”

  Ruthie glanced at her mother out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t rebuke her the way she often did.

  “The man doesn’t exactly have a good track record for love and devotion,” Lynda said.

  She had worked at the diner over a year, so she had no reason to read that menu. She merely used it as a prop to hide behind, like a hot-wire fence separating her from the rest of the world.

  I pressed my lips together to keep from snapping at her. The woman had every right to hate my family. Especially my father. “I know Tyler’s a mess, but so am I.”

  “No, you’re not,” Ruthie said. “You’re making something of your life and taking responsibility for your actions.” Her head jerked to the window. “He’s only flumping along doing whatever feels right in the moment.”

  “You don’t even know what he said.”

  “I bet I can guess.” Lynda slapped her menu against the table. “He loves you, he wants to do right by you, he misses you. And the best line … he’ll never let it happen again.”

  I squirmed in the wooden chair. “What makes you think he said any of that?”

  “She’s heard it before,” Ruthie said with an implied duh in her tone.

  They were ganging up on me. “He apologized for what happened in April.”

  Lynda’s eyes rolled so dramatically, they seemed to pull an exasperated sigh from the depths of her lungs. “Good grief, those two men are just alike.” She glared desperately at Velma. “How can she not see it?” Lynda didn’t wait for an answer from her sister but stood and stalked out of the diner.

  As the cow bell on the doorframe clanked against the thick glass, indignation swarmed through my lungs like a cloud of angry bees. No matter how well Lynda Turner knew my father, she didn’t have the right to criticize him.

  Velma tsked as the waitress approached, and I quickly skimmed the menu for the lowest priced item. “I’ll have the fried zucchini.”

  “She’ll al
so have an order of chicken and dumplings,” declared Velma to the waitress, “with okra and corn on the side. Same for me.”

  “Me, too,” Ruthie said.

  The baby chose that moment to kick me in the ribs, and I sat up straight and rubbed my side. “Thanks, Velma.”

  She watched me as she sipped her sweet tea and then set her glass down with a thump, obviously forging the conversation in a new direction. “How’s your new home?”

  The woman could read my moods like a gypsy fortune-teller. “I get lonely out there.”

  “I can come over more often.” Ruthie’s statement seemed to double as an unspoken regret for her mother’s outburst.

  “You come over plenty.” I fiddled with the silverware bundle on the table. “I just miss campus life.”

  Ruthie raised an eyebrow. “Partying and spending money?”

  “Don’t be ugly.” The older woman’s chin jutted, and I got the impression she expected Ruthie to apologize then and there.

  “She’s a Blaylock, Aunt Velma. She can’t help it.”

  “For crying out loud, Ruth Ann.”

  But Ruthie hit the target. I missed my right-side-up world, and my stubborn will was bucking the changes. “I’m not like my parents … I mean I’m not like my father.”

  “Oh, Fawn.” Ruthie rubbed her palms over her face. “It’s not your dad that has Momma upset. It’s you.”

  Velma chuckled. “My sister might not show it, but she cares.”

  I almost laughed out loud. Lynda Turner cared for me about as much as a hawk cares for a field mouse. “Yeah, right. It’s obvious from the kindness she’s shown over the years.”

  “That’s Lynda, darlin’,” Velma soothed. “Her love’s prickly, but it doesn’t make it any less real.”

  A tractor rumbled down Main Street, and I gazed at it blindly, lost in thought. A person like me, with only one friend—two if I counted Velma—had no room to be picky when it came to affection.

  “Well, at least your mother speaks to me,” I said. “That’s more than I can say for mine.” I took a sip of ice water, and as its cool wetness washed the soot of bitterness from my lungs, I said a silent prayer, thanking God for these women He placed in my life. It was true Ruthie looked down on my sorority sisters, her aunt Velma naturally upstaged me and my sinful ways, and her mother resented my father so much she could never forgive, but the three of them cared about me.