She’d never been so ready to have a season over at the shop. She was glad that she’d be closing for the year just about the time Noah would be opening the station to the public. He could pick up the slack until the following spring.
It had entered Caroline’s mind more than once to shut the shop down for good, especially in light of recent events. After all, keeping it open for her mother seemed unsatisfying now after what Maureen O’Conner had done. Caroline always told people, just like she told herself, that she kept the place open for her mother. It was her way of honoring her. In time, maybe after her mother died, she’d close it down. Maybe she’d return to school and finish her teaching degree. Maybe she’d do something else with her life.
But the truth was that Caroline loved the bait shop, flawed history and all. She didn’t know if she could ever give it up. It was yet another thing that she needed to discuss with her father. Eventually, she knew she was going to have to go home. As she was contemplating what that meant, her phone began vibrating in the pocket of her jean shorts. It was Court. “Hello?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour.”
Caroline pulled her phone away from her ear and stared at it. “It never rang until just now.”
“I got a call from one of the deputies out and about last night. Said they picked up a guy joyriding out on AB Highway. The guy ran his car clean through Farmer Tilson’s fence. Nearly killed a cow,” Court said. “I guess he wandered out into the pasture somewhere with a jug of Gary’s granny’s shine and passed out near the pond.”
“Hilarious,” Caroline said, dryly. “Why are you telling me this?”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “Because it was Noah Cranwell passed out in Farmer Tilson’s pasture, that’s why.”
Caroline sucked in the air. It had seemingly gone dry all around her. “What?”
“He’s been in county lockup,” Court replied. “The only reason I know is because when they asked him who to call, he gave them your name.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You think Jep Cranwell’s gonna bail him out?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Caroline muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing,” Caroline said hastily. Her head was swimming. What in the hell was he thinking? What was Gary thinking, selling Noah a pint of moonshine like he was a goddamn local? He should have known better.
“They’ll release him to you,” Court continued. “But only you.”
“What if I don’t go get him?”
“I guess he stays in lockup.”
“I’ll call you back,” Caroline said, hanging up. No wonder Noah’s car hadn’t been parked in front of the station. It was crashed somewhere out in the middle of a field full of traumatized cows. She shoved her phone back into her pocket and grabbed the keys to her truck.
CAROLINE HAD BEEN to the county jail only one other time, and that was with Court. She’d waited in his truck while he ran in some paperwork. She’d never actually been inside. Caroline couldn’t help but wonder if anyone had seen her go inside the building—word traveled fast, and surely someone would call her father.
She did her best to smile at the woman sitting behind the Plexiglas at the entrance. “I’m here for Noah Cranwell,” she said.
The woman looked her up and down. “Gimme a sec.”
Caroline sat down in one of the orange plastic chairs lined up against the wall and waited. After what felt like forever, two uniformed deputies came through the door with a disheveled Noah in between them.
“Court told us you’d take custody of him and see he stays out of trouble,” one of the deputies said. He smiled at her. “Think you’re up to the task?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m not a child,” Noah muttered. He looked awful. There were cuts and bruises on his face and arms. He was walking with a limp.
“If you wasn’t a friend of Court’s, you’d be in lockup waitin’ on bail,” the first deputy said. “Take what you can get, buddy.”
Noah shook himself out from between them and followed Caroline out the door and into the parking lot. He groaned into the sunlight. “Is it always this fucking hot in Missouri?”
Caroline pointed to the truck and said, “Get in.”
“Fine.”
The two rode in silence for a while, Caroline’s anger building and building inside of her until she said, “What in the hell were you thinking, Noah? You could have killed yourself.”
“What do you care?” he shot back. “I laid it all out on the line last night, and you shook me off like I was some kind of rock in your shoes.”
“Oh, so it’s my fault now?” Caroline demanded. “It’s my fault you downed a jug of moonshine and crashed through a fence?”
“So they told you about that, huh?”
“Of course they told me.”
“Then if I’m so stupid, why are you here?” Noah asked. “Why did you come to pick me up?”
Caroline sighed, tightening her grip on the steering wheel. “Because there’s somewhere I have to go, and I need you to go with me.”
“And where is that?”
“We’re going to Cranwell Corner,” she replied. “I have some business there I need to finish.”
CHAPTER 37
DESPITE NOAH’S PLEAS FOR HER TO CHANGE her mind and threats to jump out of the truck at every stop, Caroline managed to get both of them there in one piece. She knew Noah didn’t want to explain to his grandfather why he looked a mess, but she didn’t care. She needed to talk to Jep Cranwell.
As they drove past the station and the bait shop, Yara began to chase after them, barking and biting at the tires. Caroline slowed the truck down to a stop. “You better get out and talk to your dog,” she said.
Noah got out of the truck, and when he did, Yara jumped up, putting her paws against his chest. After a few seconds, he led her around to the back of the truck, pulled down the tailgate, and patted the metal bed. Yara jumped right in.
Caroline was still shaking her head when Noah slid back in beside her. “I don’t know how you do that,” she said.
“We have an understanding, me and her,” he replied.
“When I found her, she was in awful shape,” Caroline said. She stared straight ahead, pretending to concentrate on the road, as if she hadn’t been driving the gravel for her whole life. For some reason, she was afraid she might cry. “The vet thought she might die. I nursed her back to health. I even stayed with her overnight at the bait shop after the surgery to remove her leg. She was scared at my house. Out here was . . . is the only place she’s ever been comfortable.”
“I’m sure if she could talk she would tell you thank you,” Noah replied.
“I don’t know,” Caroline continued. “I was just the person who fed her, but honestly, she never belonged to me. Not in the way most dogs belong to people.”
“I don’t know why she trusts me,” Noah admitted. “I think she just sees something in me that’s like her.” He looked away from Caroline and out the window. “Something broken, probably.”
Caroline wanted to tell him that Yara probably saw in Noah what she saw—someone who was good and kind and worthy of her trust. Well, she thought, until he wasn’t anymore. Everything would be so much easier if they could all just go back to the day Yara ripped his shirt by the door of the station. Maybe Caroline could figure out a way to stay ignorant of everything awhile longer, just long enough so that she could look at Noah, love Noah, the way Yara did.
But they couldn’t go back, Caroline knew that. So instead of saying anything, she drove until they got to Cranwell Corner. As if by magic, Silas was standing behind the cattle gate when they pulled up.
Caroline opened the door to the truck and got out, walking up to the gate that separated her from Silas. “Open it up, please.”
“You ain’t got no business here,” Silas said, placing a pinch of snuff between his lip and his gums.
“I’ve got plenty of business here,” Caroline replied. She looked to Noah in the truck, but he just shrugged. He wasn’t going to be any help.
“No.” Silas crossed his arms over his chest.
“I’ll hop over this gate if I have to,” Caroline threatened. She noticed Silas wasn’t carrying a gun, and she figured she could probably beat him in a footrace if she had to. “It’ll be a whole lot easier if you just let us in.”
“You stupid or deaf, girl?” Silas wanted to know.
Caroline put one foot up on the metal grate of the gate and hoisted herself up. In no time flat, Silas was in front of her, daring her to make good on her threat. “Let me inside, Silas Cranwell,” she said, leaning as close to his face as she could without tumbling over the gate. “I need to talk to Jep about the affair he had with my mother.”
Silas’s eyes widened.
“I know you know about it,” she finished. “Now let me in.”
“Just calm down now.” Silas licked his lips. “I reckon you better come on in.”
“I appreciate it.” Caroline hopped off the gate and got back into the truck as Silas opened it up for her to drive through.
“What did you say to him?” Noah wanted to know. “I figured I was going to have to get out and wrestle you back into the truck.”
“You’d have lost that battle,” Caroline said with a slight smirk on her face. “I’m small, but I’m scrappy.”
“What are we doing here?” Noah asked. “Now that we’re here, you might as well tell me.”
“I’m going to talk to your grandfather,” Caroline said simply, as if it was as easy as that. “I need to know about him and my mom, and it’s not like I can ask her.”
“You’ve lost your mind if you think he’s going to tell you anything,” Noah replied. “I could hardly get him to admit it.” He shifted in the seat as they bumped down the gravel path. “I’m so fucking sore. Every time you hit a bump, it feels like every bone in my body is going to crack.”
“You’re lucky you’re not dead.”
Noah gave her a wry smile. “Yeah, you mentioned that once already.”
Caroline parked the truck in front of Hazel’s. She and Jep were sitting on the front porch, and Jep stood up when he saw them. Silas lagged behind, half running, half walking, hollering that he couldn’t stop them. “Afternoon,” Jep said, sticking his thumbs into the straps of his overalls. He was trying to be polite, but there was a fire flashing behind his eyes. It was the same fire Caroline had seen behind Noah’s eyes a time or two. She wasn’t going to let it intimidate her.
“Mr. Cranwell, I was wondering if maybe we could have a talk, just you and me,” Caroline said. “I’ve got some questions, and as far as I know, you’re the only one who can give me answers.”
Jep and Hazel shared a look. Hazel stood up and brushed off her dingy apron, curls of potato skins falling onto the wooden porch floor. “Lord, child, what happened to you?” she asked.
Noah tried to shrug, but could only wince. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Well, come on inside, and you can tell me all about it.” Hazel pointed to Silas and said, “You, too, and grab them potatoes.”
“Good luck,” Noah said under his breath to Caroline.
Caroline followed Noah up the porch steps. “Can I sit down?”
Jep shrugged. “I don’t reckon it matters to me.”
“You probably know why I’m here,” Caroline said, sitting down in Hazel’s rocking chair.
“I do.”
“I can’t ask my mother.”
Jep looked over at her from where he was standing on the porch. “She that bad-off?”
“She has good days and bad days,” Caroline replied. “But even the good days aren’t what they used to be.”
“I ain’t spoke to her in years,” Jep said. “Not since I closed the station down for good.”
“She thinks Noah is you.”
“We look a lot alike, him and me.”
Caroline studied Jep’s face. He was right, of course. They were practically carbon copies of each other, except Jep had more wrinkles. It was easy for Caroline to see how her mother could have been attracted to Jep. He’d once been, and still was, a good-looking man despite the fact that the years had worn him down and he often needed an oxygen tank just to walk. “I need to know what happened,” she said, finally. “I need to know why you two . . . Why it happened.”
Jep walked over to his rocking chair and sat down, placing his elbows on his knees, staring down at the potato peelings, rubbing one of them into the floor with his boot. “I ain’t never told no one about it,” he said. “Not in that way.”
“I need to know,” Caroline pleaded.
“It ain’t nobody’s business but hers and mine.”
“I’m her daughter.”
“If Maureen wanted you to know, she’d a told ya.”
“That’s hardly fair,” Caroline argued. “Especially now that you know damn well I can’t ask her.”
“You look so much like her,” Jep said. “So much like her.”
“Was it because it was convenient?” Caroline asked. “Because you were across the street from each other?”
“She used ta come over for coffee,” Jep said. “The year the cancer took my Dottie, I lost near thirty pounds. Yer mama, she would bring me cookies. Tell me ta fatten up. We were just friends then. Nothin’ more.”
“When did it change?” Caroline was on the edge of the rocking chair. She didn’t want to push him too hard, afraid he’d clam up.
“Musta been three years on,” Jep said. He scratched at his whiskers.
“Did you start it?”
Jep looked over at her. It was as if he’d never stopped to ask himself that question. “She came over one afternoon for coffee. She was wearing these dangly earrings.” He made a motion with his fingers below one of his ears. “It got caught in her hair, and I helped her untangle it. Then she kissed me. God help us both, she kissed me.”
Caroline drew in her breath. She’d hoped it had been the other way around. She’d wanted so badly for Jep to tell her that he’d seduced her mother, that he was in some way more to blame than she was. “And then you started secretly seeing each other?”
“Not at first.”
“Why not?”
Jep eased himself back into the rocking chair, and took a corncob pipe out of the front pocket of his overalls. He chewed on it a minute before answering. “Yer mama loved yer daddy, and yer daddy was my doctor. Neither one of us wanted to break ties with him over a little kiss. And of course, our sons went to school together.”
Oh, Jeremy. In all of this, Caroline hadn’t thought of him. She wondered if he’d known. Caroline felt an unfamiliar pain in her chest. Was it longing? Was it sorrow? She didn’t know, but she wished her older brother were here to help her through this, to give her someone to talk to.
“But it couldn’t be helped, in the end,” Jep continued, unphased by Caroline’s silence. “We was like magnets, her and me.”
“Did you . . .” Caroline cleared her throat. “Did you love each other?”
“I ain’t loved but two women in my life,” Jep replied. “I married Dottie when we was fifteen. I loved her ’till the day she died, and I love her still.”
“And my mother?”
“I loved her, too.” Jep nodded, pausing for a moment to light his pipe. “It was different with Maureen. It was . . . it was passion. I loved her so much I thought my heart would break when I had to leave her each day.”
That wasn’t what Caroline had expected. Jep Cranwell didn’t seem like the kind of man who used words like passion and love. But as she looked at him, as she watched the way his face lit up every time he said her mother’s name, she believed him, and, she realized, she didn’t hate him.
She didn’t hate him at all.
“Why did it end?” Caroline wanted to know. “If you loved her so much?”
Jep took the pipe out of his mouth
and perched it precariously on the arm of the rocking chair. “Your brother died.”
The pain in Caroline’s chest was back. “My dad told me once that Jeremy’s death almost killed my mother, too.”
“It did,” Jep replied. “I had to watch her suffer, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could do to help. I shook her hand at the goddamn funeral. Like a stranger would.”
“You weren’t her husband.”
“Yer daddy found out a couple months later,” Jep said. “He confronted me at the station. I woulda let him take a punch or two, but he said all he wanted was ta look me in the eye.”
Caroline smiled, despite herself. “That sounds like my dad.”
“Maureen ended things the next day, but I already knew.” Jep picked up his pipe once again. “I ain’t no match for a doctor, no match for a good man like yer daddy.”
Caroline wanted to agree with him. She knew he was right. Her father never would have cheated on her mother, and he never would have cheated with another man’s wife. Despite knowing that, though, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for Jep. He looked so broken about what happened all those years ago. “So you let her go, just like that?”
“I did,” Jep said. “I tried ta keep the station open after that, but it was too damn hard. I couldn’t stand to look at her every day, and I knew it hurt her plenty to look at me.”
“That’s why you closed the store?” Caroline marveled at the revelation. “Because of my mom?”
“I closed it for her,” Jep replied.
“I heard Cranwell Station closed because you were broke.”
Jep snorted into his pipe. “We made more money that last year than we’d ever made,” he said. “I reckon we’d a kept on makin’ money, too.”
Caroline looked around Cranwell Corner as if she was seeing it for the first time, at its dingy appearance and dingy tenants. Everything could have been different for them. Caroline always assumed the rumors were true and that the Cranwells were just lazy rumrunners living in the past, living in the good old days, and refusing to be seen within society at every turn. No wonder he seemed so agitated with Noah every time he came to see him. No wonder he hated going into Cold River—he had to drive by his old life every single time he went into town.
Just Fine with Caroline Page 26