“When did you meet Av’ry?” he asked his uncle but glared sideways at me. I smoothed my hair with my palms.
“Officially, I haven’t. I watched her take the bait,” he drawled. “Little technique I use to keep track of my subjects.”
I turned in my seat and got to my knees.
“Did the lieutenant put you up to this?” Gabe asked.
His uncle pressed his back into his seat and rubbed his chin. Then he tapped his cowboy hat on the seat beside him and grinned. He was a clone of Mr. Halden except he needed a shave and his hair was pulled back into a ponytail. They all looked alike. How many more were there?
“You and Mr. Halden could be twins,” I said.
“That’s a kicker, darlin’.”
“They just look alike, is all,” Gabe told me. “I could never tell them apart until my dad started barking orders.”
“I make jokes. Joel makes money,” said his uncle.
“All of the Haldens look so much alike,” I shared. “Even Deliah.”
“Now let me get this straight,” he said, leaning forward. He squinted like he was concentrating. It took him ten seconds to speak again. “Y’all know about her? Man, the skeletons are marching out of that closet in handcuffs.”
Gabe sighed heavily. “We know now.”
“Are you heading to North Dakota?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m going out to meet the newest tater tot. I’m sorry for y’all’s loss. Maybe I’ll stick around for the memorial.”
“That’s not why you’re on this train,” Gabe said in an accusing tone.
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”
“You never liked my mom.” Gabe turned around and tugged on my elbow. “Sit, Av’ry.”
His uncle didn’t blink. It was as if he didn’t know how to respond to Gabe’s snappy tone.
I fell into my seat.
“I’m gonna try for some shut-eye. Control yourselves. This ain’t the canoodle caboose.”
Gabe rubbed his eyes and rested his elbows on his knees. “We’re never gonna be alone, you get that? We should get off this train next chance we get.”
I pressed my nose into his shoulder. “We’ll get to be alone as soon as we get to Williston.”
He swung his eyes around and coughed into his sleeve. “I’m out of the coop. My stuff’s already packed up. There are no rooms anywhere unless I go to one of the lieutenant’s man camps and live in a box with fifty other homeless HalRem recruits.”
“Can’t you stay with Lane?”
“He doesn’t want me there. Molly’s back. He found a trailer on one of the farms he bought up for HalRem, but he said it’s a pit. No heat yet. It’s buried in snow.”
“I don’t care. I’ll help you fix it up. I’ll sneak you into my room until we get a place together. Meggie will be occupied with the baby. We’ll do whatever it takes.”
Gabe slouched and set his hands behind his neck. He closed his eyes in thought. “Maybe we can bribe somebody to give up their sleeper car.”
His uncle kicked the back of my seat. “I already tried that. No luck, lover boy.”
Gabe groaned and dropped his head in defeat.
* * *
I sat in the backseat of the cab with Gabe on the ride from the train station. He kept silent as I propped my head on the window while he played with the fringe on my scarf. I had to remind myself that Gabe’s Uncle Judson was not Mr. Halden regardless of his uncanny looks.
Even in the dead of winter, the boomtown highways clogged with HalRem oilfield trucks. I observed fracking signs plastered to telephone poles, signs demanding fair rent, and signs advertising some pipeline that was being proposed. Gabe’s uncle asked me not to say anything to Meggie about his arrival when I called to tell her I reached town. He obviously knew my aunt. I was curious what she thought of him since he seemed to be the complete opposite of Gabe’s father.
Lane stood under the floodlights on Meggie’s front porch with a shovel in one hand while shielding his eyes from wind with the other. “Wait until you see her. She eats more than me now.” Lane blew steam in the frigid air when I asked about Molly. He shoveled a path to my car door and then carried my suitcase up the steps. The cold air stung my face and froze my nose hairs within seconds. “She’s as wide as she is tall. I dropped her off at her step-mom’s to pack the last of her things. What do you think of Uncle Dud? He’s crazy, eh?”
“He reminds me of all of you,” I said, looking through the blustery night at the coop and the HalRem trucks lining the road and driveway.
“Where’s Gabe?” Meggie asked as she squeezed me a hello in the warm kitchen. “Deliah told me he was meeting you in Chicago. Your mom didn’t mention that.”
“He’s outside. Mr. Halden’s not here, is he?” I studied the kitchen, letting the exhilaration of my new environment settle inside me. I’d only been in Meggie’s remodeled farmhouse for all of ten minutes before Gabe and I headed to Texas at Thanksgiving. The house smelled of campfire. Baby bottles lined the marble countertop. The new TV was on. An anchorwoman was discussing the anti-oil movement in front of the campus where I planned to take classes. Lane set my suitcase at the base of the stairs.
“Joel was here for Deliah’s arrival. He’s back in Texas tying loose ends, wrapping up the demolition of the mansion. He’s up to something else. I don’t have the energy to figure it out. I’m taking this new mom business one day at a time. Don’t worry, kid. I don’t tell him everything that goes on while he’s away.” She jerked her head at the screen and scowled at the highly made-up face going on about protests against the Halden-Remington Corporation.
I thought I heard mention of the defunct Longbranch Oil Company. Gabe hadn’t talked about the name or its owners, the Barrett family, in months. It was a sore subject for the Haldens.
“Gabe said Lane found him a trailer to live in until we can get an apartment together. It doesn’t have heat yet and he’s still got a cough.”
“He can sleep in my basement. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a place together unless you plan on building it with Lincoln Logs. I had no choice but to give away the boys’ rooms in the coop. I’ve got a waiting list a mile long. You and Deliah will bunk together in the attic.”
“Where’s Emmeline?” I expected to hear the baby when I walked in. I was distracted by the new décor.
“Emmie’s asleep in the living room. I keep a bassinet down here. She’s still so tiny. She can sleep anywhere,” she said. “We’re pretty mellow tonight. Deliah’s downstairs. Josh is molting in his room.”
“Avery!” Deliah shouted from the basement step. “You’re finally here! I’ve been waiting.”
“We just pulled in,” I told her as we hugged. “How are you?”
“Girls,” Meggie hissed. “Keep your voices down.”
Deliah beamed. Her smile made her look so much like Gabe when he was in a good mood. “I have to show you our room. I hope you don’t mind all of my books and my mom’s stuff. I saved you some space on the shelf. Wait until ya see it,” she said with a twangy pitch that sounded similar to the Haldens’ but had its own flair.
Gabe entered through the kitchen door with his guitar case on his shoulder. He knocked the snow off his hat. “Howdy, Meggie.”
“Hiya kiddo,” she greeted. “How’ve you been feeling? Let me feel that head of yours.”
“I’m fine,” he answered. “He’s not here, is he?”
Meggie laughed and shook her head. “I’m not expecting your dad if that’s what you’re asking.”
Gabe relaxed and set his hat on a chair. Then he tossed a snowball at his sister. “Mona Deliah—catch.”
“Not in the house,” Meggie scolded.
Deliah scooped the snow off the floor and tried to smash it into his face, but he stopped her.
“You don’t have to call me Mona anymore. I’ve outgrown it.” Then she took my hand and pulled me toward the stairs. “I really want to show you our room, Avery. It’s all finished.”
I swung my gaze up and studied Gabe. A look of disappointment pulled at his features. So much for having my own space at Meggie’s.
“Hold off a goddang minute.”
Deliah stopped dragging me. Meggie slapped a hand on her heart and scurried backward until the sink stopped her. “I know that voice,” she said.
“Damn straight you do, darlin’,” replied Gabe’s uncle as he moseyed out of the shadow. “I hear he put a ring on it, Miss Margareta Meghan.”
Meggie looked stunned. “My word—Judson Halden. I wasn’t expecting to see you standing in my kitchen.” She blushed a few shades of red. “Where did the beard go?”
He closed the space between them. Meggie chuckled as he kissed her cheek and picked her up into a very friendly hug.
“This ain’t the figure of a lass who just dropped a child,” he teased. “Sorry to disappoint. I can pretend to be Joel if you’d like.”
I think I blushed too. But I couldn’t see my own face to tell.
“Goodness gracious, Judson. I can’t get over this. What the heck are you doing in Williston? We saw you in Texas at Eli’s funeral and then you walked off the face of the earth.”
“Y’all know hide-and-seek is the name of my game.”
“Wow, you look just like Joel,” Deliah said, eyes wide with wonderment. “Except for all that hair.”
“You call your old man by his first name?” he asked her as he set Meggie down and faced Deliah. When he got a good look at her, he appeared to be taken aback. “That ain’t right.”
“I call him a lot of things. Definitely not dad.”
“I believe my brother has that effect on the general public.” Judson looked to Gabe and laughed. “Hell, she’s a smarty pants just like you.”
“This is Deliah Remington,” Meggie told Judson. “Clearly, you see the resemblance.”
He shook his head slowly and extended a hand almost hesitantly. Deliah shook it. “Nice to meet you, missy. I’m Jud. You’re a perfect picture of your—”
“Uncle Dud, the insubordinate wanderer.” Lane stepped out of the stairwell and stood next to Gabe.
“Watch it, boy,” Judson told him without taking his attention off of Deliah. She seemed just as caught up in his presence as he was in hers. “She’s got the eyes. Man, this is fascinating.”
“Why do they call you Uncle Dud?” Deliah asked.
“My little brother here had a colossal lisp. He couldn’t say his name when we were kids,” Lane answered.
Gabe had a lisp and a drawl. It was the first I’d heard of it.
“Does Joel know you’re here?” Meggie continued to blush.
Judson tipped his head and stared at her with his familiar hazel eyes but didn’t answer directly.
“I came to pay my respects to the boys and girls. I’m mighty sorry about your mother, Deliah.” He turned and shook Lane’s hand. “My sincere condolences. Hoping for a better year for the Halden clan.”
“You can meet your newest niece in the morning,” Meggie told him.
“Lane’s having a baby,” Deliah announced. “That’s more good news for the Haldens.”
“Is that so? Where’s he hiding it?” Gabe’s uncle slapped Lane’s belly hard. Gabe started to laugh. It turned into a cough.
“You sound like Caleb,” Deliah told her uncle. “We don’t know where he is.”
“Yeah we do. He joined the circus,” Lane replied.
Gabe laughed. “Yeah, ’cause every circus needs a sex-maniac.”
* * *
“I got my appetite back. Good thing, too, because my jeans have been falling off.” Gabe licked powdered sugar off each of his fingers. He’d already finished off half of a pizza before starting on dessert.
“More room for books in your pants,” I said as I pulled a blanket around my shoulders in Meggie’s kitchen after it had emptied out. I couldn’t stop shivering. I couldn’t stop itching my side either.
“You like that image, don’t you?” He swallowed a bite of crumb cake, and his cheeks lifted. “Things in my pants. You can’t get the image out of your head.”
“You think you know me so well,” I replied straight-faced. “You don’t know what I’m imagining. You always try to project what you’re thinking onto me.”
“You got that right. Better yet, meet me under the table, and I’ll show you what I’m thinking. You go first,” he drawled.
He tugged on the Christmas tablecloth and removed his napkin from his lap. As I laughed, my head began to hurt.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I said. “What were you talking to your uncle about outside?”
Gabe stared blankly. “My dad and how we both hate him.”
I knew he was kidding. “Maybe you won’t even see your father if you aren’t staying here for long.”
His shoulders dropped, and he tipped his chair against the wall. “We got lawyer stuff to deal with. My mom’s memorial. There’s no avoiding him.”
“Is the lawyer stuff about your mother’s estate or prosecuting Leon LeRoulx for the blackmail attempt?”
He frowned at the snow as it blew sideways under the floodlight. “Both.”
“Will you have to go back to Texas and testify?”
“Don’t know. I signed a statement. I can’t figure out what she saw in that loser and why she’d date him.” He was still staring out the window. “We got a fifty below wind chill out there.”
“I packed everything including my earmuffs. So why didn’t you ever mention you had an uncle?” I heard Judson and Meggie laugh in the upstairs hallway. She was kicking Josh out of his room and making him sleep with Gabe in the basement.
“We hardly ever see him. He’s all over the map. You never asked.”
I yawned and rested my head on the table. I suspected Judson was a private eye. “I never asked what your last name was or if you grew up in a mansion either.”
Gabe shook his head and smirked. “Glad you saw it when you did. Meggie sent me a picture of the property where it got pole-axed. They steamrolled the lot when people started showing up after the national news ran that feature. People love to hate my dad. Now it’s like it was never there. I got Eli’s guitar out. That’s all I cared about.” He stood and then circled the table. “You look tuckered out.”
“I can’t wait to sleep in a real bed in the dark,” I said.
“You haven’t been upstairs yet. You might not be able to keep your eyes closed.” Gabe took my elbow and lifted me out of the chair. “I helped pack Deliah’s things in Memphis. I don’t get girls at all.”
I set my hands on his chest. The blanket slid off my shoulders. I was dizzy. He took my chin in his hand and dropped his startled gaze on me.
“You’re burning up. No way I got you sick this fast.”
“Am not,” I replied.
He slid his hand behind my neck and pressed his lips to my forehead as Meggie stepped off the stairs to feed the baby.
“She’s running a fever,” he told her. Before I could stop him from making a big deal out of nothing, he scooped me into his arms and stormed the stairs.
“Aspirin’s in the medicine cabinet. Extra blankets in the hall,” Meggie whispered. “I’ll come up when I’m finished with Emmeline.”
“Gabe,” I said and slapped his arms. “I can walk just fine.”
“Yeah, I know,” he drawled.
He covered two flights of stairs in seconds. The light was off in the attic bedroom. Deliah was downstairs watching movies on Meggie’s sixty-inch TV.
“Ready?” he asked as he let me down on a bed and flipped the light switch.
“Holy wow,” I laughed. “I should’ve expected this. She works fast.” The walls were covered with posters of boy band members and My Little Pony.
“She can’t make up her mind if she likes boys or plastic horses.” He lifted two ponies off her bookshelf, made them butt heads, and then purposefully switched them to mess up her color coordination.
“I can see that,” I said, fall
ing back on the pillow and closing my eyes. My temples throbbed. “I’ll take this bed.”
“Good, because I wasn’t gonna let you sleep with them.”
I pushed up on my elbows and thinned my gaze on the other bed. The sheet set was covered with the boy band from the wall. Five heads decorated the pillowcase.
“What are you doing?” I asked Gabe as he opened my suitcase.
“Getting you new clothes, running a bath, and putting you to bed.”
“So I do smell that bad?” I drew the blanket over my torso as he reached over and pulled off one of my socks. “Or are you looking for a reason to get me out of these clothes.”
“Yep.”
I was grateful Meggie interrupted Gabe’s attempts to strip off my jeans. I was freezing. “You don’t look so good, kiddo.”
“I’ll get the Aspirin,” Gabe told her.
“Actually, could you find Deliah and tell her to go to bed. She’s still claiming she doesn’t have a bedtime. She starts public school soon. I really need to get her on a schedule. Okiedokie?”
Gabe tried to pull off my other sock.
“Av’ry? What the heck is wrong with your leg?”
Meggie stepped over to the bed and lifted the blanket to see what had Gabe’s attention. My jeans were bunched up at my knees. “Oh my stars. She has chickenpox!”
Gabe hauled back and sat on Deliah’s bed. “For real?” he muttered.
“I remember one summer when some of you boys had them one after another. Emmie can’t be around you because it’s airborne. She hasn’t had her immunization. I’ll have to double-check Deliah’s medical records out in my office, but I think she had them.” She paused and sighed. “I just remembered Tessa hasn’t sent proof of her vaccinations or her birth certificate.”
“I have chickenpox?” The room began to spin.
“I’m afraid so, kiddo. I got them when they spread through the dormitory in the Air Force. I was a little older than you. They weren’t so bad.”
Gabe returned to my side and lifted my shirt to reveal my stomach. I grabbed it before he had it to my neck. “You’re polka-dotted.” He poked a line across my belly and I trembled. How did I not see it coming?
Stubborn Truth (The Stubborn Series Book 3) Page 2