by Alison Kent
Squinting behind his shades, he looked toward the horizon where the sun was dropping in a big splash of Kool-Aid colors, watched the dog trot a few meters one direction, sniff the ground and the air, trot a few meters in another. Stupid mutt, thinking he was doing anything but blowing in the wind, losing interest in one scent, chasing down another.
If Neva'd been standing here, she would've crossed her arms, raised a brow, and wondered about the rudderless similarities between master and beast. And then he would've reached over and pulled that mass of red hair out of the band she always had it tied back in.
He wanted to ruffle her up, to see that hair fly. To get back to talking about her cause and her life. He didn't want to talk about his family, what he'd done in his thirty-three years, who he'd met along the way, who he'd killed. That shite he'd told her in the kitchen last night? That was nothing. A bit of where he'd been, what he'd seen.
He didn't want her knowing that he had no plan. That he went where Hank Smithson sent him, did what Hank assigned him to do. That when he looked five years down the road there was nothing there to see. His cause had been about taking lives, not saving them. About ruining futures, not salvaging them. And now he had no cause at all.
Which wouldn't have been a problem for the man he'd been last week. The one who pulled on his boxers when he got up in the morning, pulled them off at night, who lay there naked and sweating during the long hours between, wondering when the blood he'd shed would take its toll.
The bloody hell of it was that he'd changed since meeting Neva. He felt more. He wanted more. He wanted her, a woman hog-tied to a cause. Go after one and he'd get them both whether or not he was ready. Whether or not he was man enough. He had a feeling he was going to need Neva to help him figure that out.
Twelve
Jeanne wasn't sure if she should've called first. She hated impropriety. Showing up to talk to Neva about Candy and Spencer seemed like the worst sort of gossip. Going behind her son's back, her husband's back. She felt like she couldn't possibly sink any lower.
But when Spencer had come home early this afternoon, she'd known something was seriously wrong. He'd banged through the kitchen without stopping to eat, without saying a word. He'd just thundered up the stairs like his life depended on getting to his room and slamming the door behind him.
He had, and so she'd finished cleaning out from beneath the stovetop, peeled off her rubber gloves, and set about making him a late lunch. He hadn't wanted it. Not a bite. Not even the cookies she'd baked that morning. She'd left the tray on his desk, left him flopped on his bed.
On her way out his door she'd asked him if he was feeling ill. He'd said no. She'd asked if he'd heard bad news about his friend Jase. He'd said no. So she'd asked him if anything had happened to Candy. His reply was a simple two words.
Candy who?
So now here she was, coming to find out what, if anything, Neva might know because making things right for ; her family, cleaning up after them and for them, was the only way Jeanne knew to survive.
Pulling her ten-year-old Buick Century up to the front of Neva's house, she realized for the first time how late it was. She'd fixed supper at home earlier, then told Yancey she was going to take the pies she'd baked that afternoon to Jonnie Mayer's tonight in case they didn't feel up to visiting at her Sunday evening get-together tomorrow after church.
Yancey had already been settled in front of the television. She didn't think he'd even heard her leave.
The pies were still sitting on her floorboard. She grabbed one and left the car, walking slowly up to Neva's front door and knocking. It was silly, being this anxious, but she couldn't sleep or eat and she wouldn't be surprised if the lemon chess tasted like cardboard. Her mind hadn't been on measuring ingredients but on Spencer while she'd cooked.
The front door opened. Jeanne looked through the screen door into Neva's startled face, smiled, and held up the pie. "Surprise!"
Neva laughed, pushed the screen door out on its hinges and springs. "What's the occasion?"
Jeanne stepped into the small, tidy hallway that divided the front of the house. One side was Neva's office with the living room on the other. "It's Saturday? And I needed to get out of the house?"
Neva shut the door and Jeanne followed her friend to the kitchen. Their footsteps on the hardwood floor echoed against the high ceiling. "Well, I can't think of a better reason for a pie."
"It's not too late, is it? Am I interrupting your supper?" The kitchen was clean. Either Neva had already settled in for the night or she hadn't yet eaten.
"Actually"—Neva gestured toward the appliance—"I was staring into the refrigerator when you knocked. It hasn't happened yet, but I keep hoping an entire meal will jump out at me if I manage not to blink."
Jeanne set the pie on the kitchen's small square table. Not even a napkin holder or bud vase or salt and pepper shaker. "Spencer does the same thing. Stares until everything inside warms up to room temperature."
"He probably eats more groceries in a week than I buy in two." Neva filled her coffeemaker with tap water, added a filter and beans that looked to be freshly ground, and switched it on. "Pie and coffee sound like the perfect Saturday evening meal."
"Maybe for someone with your figure and your metabolism." Now that she was here, Jeanne wasn't sure what to do. "Neva, why don't I make you a salad at least? Save the pie for dessert?"
But Neva was already digging through her utensils for forks and a pie server. "No groceries, remember? Maybe a half head of lettuce. I've really got to get to town tomorrow. Ed and Candy were here for lunch today, and I made pancakes and bacon. That wiped out all of my meat. Eggs and milk, too, come to think of it."
Jeanne settled slowly into one of the kitchen chairs, laced her fingers on the Formica surface. "Do you and Candy always eat together?"
"Not always, no." Neva set dessert plates and forks on the table, went back to the cabinet for cups. "Breakfast is our only regular meal together. And then it's not even a meal. Just bagels and coffee."
"Now, what kind of way is that to start a day?" Jeanne asked, teasing as she pulled the Tupperware top from the pie carrier. And then she stopped. "Pretend I didn't say that. It sounded horribly like a mother hen."
Leaning back against the counter while the coffee brewed, Neva laughed. "That's okay. I need to be nagged. Or at least nagged by someone who is a mother rather than someone who thinks she is."
"Candy?" Jeanne asked, her fingers still curled around the carrier's top.
"Oh, yeah. She could give a fishwife a run for her money," Neva said, walking over and offering a pie server in exchange for the Tupperware. She had to tug twice before Jeanne let go. "Jeanne?"
"I'm sorry." This was so hard when it shouldn't be. Neva was her friend. Jeanne rubbed at a scar on the handle of the pie server. "I don't know what's wrong with me."
"Well, obviously something you want to talk about or you wouldn't have brought me"—Neva leaned closer to the table to smell the pie—"lemon chess?"
Jeanne smiled, nodded, relaxed. "Coffee smells good."
"You slice and tell me what's on your mind. I'll pour and listen with both ears," Neva said, returning to the counter for the glass carafe. "Black, right?"
"I shouldn't be drinking caffeine this late," Jeanne said, watching the level rise in her cup. "But since I'm not feeling much like church in the morning, I suppose it won't matter how late it keeps me up."
Neva took the seat opposite, cradled her own cup while Jeanne sliced the pie. "Must be something really big going on for you to skip church. And Jonnie's get-together."
"I made the pie to take to Jonnie's tomorrow," Jeanne admitted, feeling a bit of a smirk curl her mouth, feeling a bit of a laugh she wasn't going to be able to keep down. She let it out, chuckling, a huge sense of freedom sweeping through her as she did. "Oh, Neva. If I have to go to one more of Jonnie Mayer's Sunday suppers, I'm going to pull out the rest of my hair."
Neva sputtered her coffee, grabbed a roll of paper tow
els from the counter behind her. "Why, Jeanne Munroe. Here all this time I thought you were the cloned offspring of Martha Stewart and Emily Post."
"You're missing a chromosome in there, if I remember my biology correctly." Jeanne cut off the biggest bite of pie she could put into her mouth. But the laughter faded and she found she couldn't eat. She shook her head slowly, sorrowfully. "It's that chromosome giving me trouble, Neva."
"Yancey?"
A deep breath and a long exhalation didn't blow away any of the pain. "Spencer."
Neva's fork hovered unsteadily above her plate. "Is he all right? Is he hurt? I doubt if he was you'd be here bringing me pie . . ."
Jeanne found herself smiling, shaking her head, toying with the dessert she no longer wanted. "He's fine. Physically healthy, anyway. I'm beginning to wonder if he's mentally sound. He's threatening to give up his scholarship."
"What?" Neva's eyes widened before she frowned. "You're kidding. Why?"
"I'm not kidding, no. And because he wants to be a good person. Not just a good football player." Such a noble-sounding reason. Such a complicated truth. "He wants to stay and help out on the Bremmer ranch, what with Jase missing and calving season being right around the corner."
"Wow." Neva sipped her coffee thoughtfully. "That's some sacrifice. I'll bet his father's proud."
If only that were the case. "Not proud. Furious."
"Really." Neva cocked her head to the side. "Huh. Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I've heard rumor that Yancey is adamant about Spencer playing ball."
"It's not so much the football as it is the education. We could never afford to send him to a school like Texas Tech." Jeanne thought of the pennies she'd pinched, the magazine subscriptions she'd canceled, their vehicles, which often seemed held together with crossed fingers and baling wire. "Neither one of us wants him to give that up whether it's for a good cause or because of a girl."
For a long moment the room was silent, Neva drinking her coffee, Jeanne wondering if she'd said the wrong thing, if she'd gone too far. If she wouldn't have done better to come right out first thing and admit why she was here.
But she and Yancey had always kept their private life private, and talking about this now, even with a friend, seemed like a betrayal of the promises she'd made with her husband.
Finally, Neva exchanged her cup for her fork and sliced into her pie. "By girl, I'm assuming you mean Candy?"
Jeanne nodded, dropping her gaze to her own plate, her own wedge of perfectly browned pie, the tiny flecks of silver and gold in the Formica tabletop. "I hate to pry, but does she talk to you about Spencer at all? Her feelings for him? What goes on between them?"
"Not really, no," Neva replied once she'd swallowed. She cut off another bite. "I know she's very fond of him."
"Fond," Jeanne repeated. Such a superficial word. She was quite fond of the lotion she used on her dry elbows. Yancey was fond of pouring ketchup on his eggs. "I know she's older than he is ..."
"I don't think that has anything to do with it," Neva responded, pinching the corner of fluted crust from her pie and popping it into her mouth. "I think it's that she knows Yancey doesn't approve of her."
"Yancey doesn't approve of Spencer seeing any girl," Jeanne admitted rather harshly, aiming the sentiment at her husband's unyielding insistence that their son would have a better life were he not tied to Pit Stop. Implying that their own lives weren't all that they could be.
That she was at fault for choosing to leave Dallas and make their home at the end of the road. She looked back across the table at her friend. "He doesn't want Spencer to have any reason to come back once he leaves."
Neva shifted in her chair, tucked one leg up beneath her and huffed. "As long as you're living here, he'd damn well better have reason."
Jeanne smiled at her friend's indignation. "Besides coming back to see me."
"What if he wants to stay here?" Neva asked, waving an encompassing arm. "I know it's not Houston or Dallas, but you have to admit it's got its own quirky charm."
Oh, yes. Weren't they all here for the charm? "Is that why you moved here? The charming appeal of a single country grocery store that doesn't know a shitake mushroom from a cow patty?"
Neva laughed. "That, and your lemon chess pie. Oh, and ew. I'll never eat a shitake again."
"But at least you know what one is," Jeanne said, and sat back.
Neva did the same, ran an index finger along the table's ribbed aluminum flashing. "It's going to be hard to have him go, isn't it? When does he leave?"
"He has to be at football camp in just a few weeks," Jeanne answered, glancing toward the window over Neva's sink, the sun that was setting, another day stolen away. "I didn't think it would get here so soon."
A nod of agreement. "The summer's going by fast."
"I don't mean his leaving for school. I mean his being grown up and out on his own." Jeanne felt her chest and throat tighten, felt like she wouldn't be able to squeeze out another breath. "It seems like he was ten only yesterday. Five the day before that. But next summer he'll be twenty. How the hell did I get to be so old?"
Leaning forward, Neva reached out a hand. "The same way we all do, sweetie. One day at a time."
Jeanne wrapped her fingers around her friend's and squeezed. "Well, I don't like it one bit," she said with a halting laugh. "I'll tell you that right now." She also didn't like the way so many of her emotions were bubbling up.
"You know what we should do? Take a girls' day away. Maybe one day next week? Go to El Paso and play. I'm desperate for a break," Neva said, a twist to her mouth. "Not to mention a couple of bras that have all of their hooks."
"How sad is it that we consider taking care of the basic necessities to be pampering?" Jeanne asked, uncertain whether to laugh or to cry. "If Spencer or Yancey need anything, I don't hesitate to pick it up."
"I guess it's our plight as the female caretakers of the species," Neva said, adding a small private laugh. "Though I have no excuse for the state of my underwear. I'm not taking care of anyone but myself."
Jeanne couldn't help a stab of uncharitable envy. But only a small stab. She did, after all, love her husband and son very much. Possibly more than she loved herself. "Well, you do have a business. And you have Candy."
"Candy takes care of herself. And takes care of half the business. Then there's that nagging thing." Neva smiled, reached for the carafe and refilled her own cup when Jeanne declined. "And for some reason she manages to have a Victoria's Secret wardrobe to die for."
"I suppose Spencer enjoys that," Jeanne said wryly.
"Yeah. Men are like that." Neva grew silent, toyed with the edge of her plate. "I guess it's hard to think of your son as a man. At least when it comes to the sex thing."
Jeanne shrugged. What was she going to say? Deny that Spencer was any different than Yancey had been at that age? Any different than any male was? "I don't dwell on it, but I'm hardly blind. I've been sitting in the bleachers watching him play ball for years. I've seen the way girls react. I've heard them talk. And Spencer being young and healthy, well..."
"He's sowed a wild oat or two?"
"Or two." Candy no doubt being the wildest, Jeanne mused. "It's to be expected, I suppose."
"Sure." Neva shrugged. "He's a good-looking kid. Takes after his father," she added with a wink.
A simple comment. One Jeanne had heard more than a few times in her life. One to which she'd responded with a smile, with a thank-you, with a nod of proud agreement. But this time she felt a rush of words she couldn't hold back.
And so she let them go, tears coming from nowhere to fill her eyes. "I wouldn't know."
"Jeanne?"
All she could do was stare at the blurry mess of crumbs and lemon zest on her plate and shake her head. "Yancey isn't Spencer's father. He is, of course. He's been the only father Spencer has known."
"But he's not his biological parent," Neva said softly, reaching across the table with both hands.
Jea
nne kept her trembling fingers laced tightly in her lap, catching all she could of her tears. And then she couldn't breathe. Her chest squeezed the air from her lungs as it tried to hold in the pieces of her breaking heart. She shook all over, shivered. Her entire body turned into a quivering mess of frightened nerves.
"Jeanne?" Neva prodded gently.
She blurted it out, her voice breaking. "I was raped. Oh, Neva. It's been twenty years and I've never told anyone."
Neva gasped. "No one? Not the police? What about Yancey?"
"Yancey knows. Yes. Of course, he knows. But, no. I didn't go to the police. I didn't tell my parents. I couldn't. It happened at a party the night we graduated." She tore a paper towel from the roll on the table, folded it, and dabbed it beneath her eyes. "We were going to get married later that summer. Yancey was a criminal justice major. I studied elementary education at North Texas State. When I found out I was pregnant..."
Talking about this now, talking about this here when for so many years she'd stayed silent.. . She shuddered, hugged herself tightly. Neva's chair legs scraped across the floor as she got up and came over, dropping to her knees, offering her arms and her shoulder.
Jeanne leaned against her friend and cried, talking through her tears. "I was drinking, everyone was. I don't even know what happened or who it was. We'd gone with one of Yancey's friends back to his frat house. And it was wild." She sniffed, dabbed at her nose with the towel. "I woke up in the middle of the night and realized my panties were gone. And that I was sore and the sticky mess between my legs wasn't all me."
"Oh, Jeanne," Neva crooned, stroking a hand over her friend's hair. "I'm so sorry. So, so sorry. That's such a horrible violation to live with. I'm so glad Yancey was there for you."
Jeanne nodded briskly. "He was. He always has been. When I realized I was pregnant, he told me the choice of what to do was mine, but that he'd be there no matter what. Whether I wanted to end the pregnancy, give the baby up for adoption, or raise Spencer as ours."
"Spencer doesn't know, does he?"
"Oh, no. No. And I shouldn't have told you." Jeanne sat up straight, shredded the towel with shaking fingers. "Yancey and I swore to never tell anyone for fear he'd find out."