MacKinnon 02 Dead Copy

by Kit Frazier

  Calmly and with great purpose, she retrieved the dishtowel from the floor and folded it into four sections, like it had come fresh from the laundry, all disinfected and April fresh.

  Placing it on the counter next to the old farmhouse sink, she turned to face Faith. “Well, hello!” she said, as bright and cheerful as if she was addressing a fellow member of the Charity League.

  Faith frowned a little and put out her hand, but Mama had other plans.

  She pulled Faith close and hugged her tight.

  The breath I’d been holding seeped slowly out of my lungs.

  “It’s so nice when Cauley’s friends come to dinner. Are you all right, darlin’ girl?”

  Mama petted the girl’s back in slow, rhythmic strokes, her perfectly manicured fingers brushing over the bristly patches of hair and down along the girl’s back. Faith blinked and her throat moved hard, like she was swallowing tears she hadn’t quite found yet.

  I knew the feeling. There was magic in Mama’s hands.

  Growing up, I couldn’t count the times I thought the world as I knew it was over, but Mama would get out her big silver brush and stroke my hair down my back in deep, rhythmic strokes until the earth tilted back into place and all was right with the world.

  When Faith didn’t answer, Mama said, “All right then, baby. You talk when you feel like it. And until then, let’s get some dinner in you.”

  And then Mama set about filling glasses with iced tea. I watched her, blinking in amazement. She moved about the kitchen like nothing could be more normal, looking like the aging beauty queen that she was with a platinum pageboy of perfect hair. She’d always had a kindness to her, just below the surface, and it shined now like new spring sunshine as she retrieved the dishtowel and mopped up the counter.

  All my life I’ve been told I look like my mother. This was one time I hoped that was true.

  The sound of jangling bracelets rang around the corner, and I cringed as Mama’s best friend, Clairee, came sailing in from the living room in a mist of gardenias and martinis. Her eyes went wide when she saw me.

  “Good gawd, Cauley, we saw you on the news, what on earth?” She pulled up short when she got a good look at Faith.

  “Look, Clairee, Cauley’s brought a guest home for dinner,” Mama hissed, throwing the dishtowel at her friend.

  Clairee blustered, catching the dishtowel and shimmying out of her shock. “Well,” she sputtered, screwing her hospitality firmly back in place. “Come pull up a chair. We’re just going to have dinner.” Her voice sounded tight and her faded blue eyes were strained, but I knew she was trying, and I loved her for it.

  Mama and Clairee are old-school East Texas, more a time than a place. They’re as true to their roots as hoop skirts, porch fans, and pearl-handled pistols.

  The screen door banged open again and in poked the Colonel’s handsome, silvering head. “Did I hear our Cauley Kat?”

  A breeze caught the tail of his “Kiss the Cook” apron just as his gaze found Faith. A small shadow fleeted over his pale blue eyes, and then it was gone so that I had to look twice to make sure I’d seen it. He smiled and waved the long, stainless-steel spatula he’d been using to subdue a wayward rib roast. “Well, hello there. You must be Cauley’s friend.”

  The Colonel slammed in through the mudroom, wiping his big hand on the apron, grinning like he’d just seen a long-lost friend. He was tall and strong, with a face that grew more handsome with each decade. “Well, then, welcome! Glad you could make it.”

  Uncertainly, Faith held out her hand and let him shake it. My throat went tight.

  I hadn’t told Mama who I was bringing home for dinner, but Faith’s blood-spattered, peculiar appearance didn’t seem to startle them at all. But then I had a habit of dragging home strays.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew they’d seen the news. When I called Mama after her bazillion frantic voicemails, I’d told her I was fine, that Logan had been treated and was well onto the road to recovery, and that he had to leave to go brace some bad guys or grill some grifters or do whatever FBI agents did when they were called away, so God only knew what she was expecting me to bring home for dinner.

  Faith’s dark eyes were wide, dark and sunken, and she looked like she’d been shell shocked all over again.

  I shook my head. Watching Mama and the Colonel and Clairee, something very tight inside me softened and began to unwind.

  The house was filled with the sweet, tangy scents of barbecue; fresh, buttery cornbread biscuits; and the kind of calm that only comes with the chaos of family.

  My stomach growled.

  “Good heavens, girl,” Mama declared. “You sound like you swallowed a boar hog on a bad day.”

  “It’s been a while since either of us have eaten,” I said sheepishly. The day was closing in on me, and suddenly, I felt disoriented.

  It had only been eight hours since the world got knocked out from under us, but time had gone elastic, expanding and contracting until there was no time at all. I’d been sick twice since we’d been on those bloody courthouse steps; there was no telling what Faith had been through. I wouldn’t have believed either of us could touch solid food for the next week and a half.

  But there, with my family in the kitchen I’d grown up in, I felt the bloody abyss lessen a little.

  The Colonel had been at the pit, and the platter he’d brought in moments earlier smelled like a little slice of marinated heaven. I noticed he’d also set out some chicken soup and a loaf of fragrant Fredericksburg bread. I smiled at the thoughtfulness of this simple act.

  “All right, girls, go wash up,” Mama said, swatting me on the rear with the dishtowel.

  Faith stared at her.

  “Go!” she said, and then she swatted Faith, too. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

  *

  Freshly washed and seated at the dinner table, I was so tired I could have fallen asleep face-down in the bowl of black-eyed peas. But manners prevailed and I gazed about, wondering what in the world we would talk about. There was, of course, a big white buffalo in the middle of the room, but we would vigorously avoid topics that included anything about the shooting, the trial, and anything else that might traumatize Faith. Those things they would grill me about later.

  And I knew Mama had to be hurting. I watched her as she unfolded the cloth napkin on her lap, her face subdued but strained.

  She’d spent the day worrying about me and had probably done more than her fair share of reliving the night Daddy died. I remembered her sitting out on the front porch in her pale blue bathrobe as Cantu brought me home and broke the news. I don’t know what he said, but he stayed with us long after sunup, letting Mama wail and pound and cry until her tears ran out.

  Tonight, I watched Mama as she arranged her grandmother’s dinnerware. I should have known better than to worry about dinner conversation. Mama may have been tossed out of Miss Mona’s School for Fine Young Ladies, but she could have taught those old biddies a thing or two about the ways of human kindness.

  Despite her usual goading me about my work life, my unsocial life, and the dubious state of my hair, Mama always knew just how to make people feel comfortable. Faith, there at the dinner table, covered in her dead brother’s blood, was a perfect example.

  “We don’t usually have soup with barbecue, but I just had a craving for a little soup,” Mama said sweetly to Faith, lying through her perfectly lined lips. Mama never had soup for dinner. Like most other Texans, she usually adhered to the four basic food groups-grease, fat, lard, and sugar. “Help yourself to whatever you like, dear.”

  Mama seemed calm, but there was an energy pulsing through the dining room so thick you could smell it. It was the same energy she’d put off in the emergency room that year I decided to channel Wonder Woman and jump off the roof.

  Inside, I knew she was just waiting to get me alone and ask me what the hell I’d gotten myself into and how I planned to get myself out of it.

  But for now, she
’d put that aside.

  Mama set a glass of iced tea in front of Faith, and the Colonel placed an enormous plate of ribs and brisket between the corn and the potato salad. He took his place at the head of the table. Marlowe abandoned the dog food and took his place at the other end of the table, under Mama’s feet—the most assured place of getting a fork-full of food.

  Dazed, Faith watched like she’d fallen face-forward onto a foreign planet

  We all held hands and the Colonel said grace,

  And then we tucked into our dinner.

  “So, Cauley,” Mama drawled. I steeled myself.

  Daintily, she selected a short rib from the platter, tore off a piece, and gave it to Marlowe, who took it carefully from her manicured nails. Faith watched with raised brows as Mama fed the dog from the table.

  Mama turned her sweet gaze on me. “Clairee mentioned they have an opening for a receptionist over at her real estate office…”

  I gaped for a moment. I figured if there was such a thing as a Get Out Of Jail Free card, it definitely would have come with nearly being shot to death on the courthouse steps.

  I felt a headache tweak my left eye. “Yes,” I said. “Clairee called to tell me that. Twice.”

  Mama pursed her lips. “Real estate is a perfectly respectable profession, and it wouldn’t hurt to go down to her office and have a look around.”

  Faith listened with an expression that bordered on incredulous. “And Faith, dear, what do you do?” Mama said, her voice lilting with moonlight and magnolias.

  Holy hell. I scanned the table, looking for some way to start a diversion. Spill milk, dump salt in the peas, gouge out my own eye with a fork…

  Seeing that Faith hadn’t helped herself to the bounty of beef before us, Mama dished her up some soup and tore off a chunk of bread for her.

  Faith shook her head like she was trying to break through a trance. “I’m, uh, a singer, but I wait tables and stuff to pay the bills,” she said in a very small voice.

  “Well, waiting tables is the training ground for Austin musicians,” Mama beamed. “Where do you work, dear? We’ll come by and see you.”

  Faith stared down at her soup like a suitable answer was floating among the noodles. She shrugged. “You probably won’t know the place.”

  “Nonsense, dear, we love to try new places,” Mama said.

  Faith looked up, leveling her gaze to Mama’s. “I work at Boners.”

  A hush fell over the table, and the Colonel choked on a big bite of barbecue.

  “Isn’t that the strip club out by the county line?” Clairee said, pointing a sauce-covered fork at Faith.

  Mama’s face didn’t move, but I felt the swift breeze as she kicked Clairee under the table.

  “Ouch!” Clairee yelped, rubbing her shin. “What? I’m just saying. I bet the money’d beat the hell outta sellin’ real estate.” She glanced down at her own abundant cleavage and grinned. “Talk about awesome tips.”

  Mama and I cleared the table while the Colonel and Clairee tended the grill.

  With the food stowed away in half a ton of Tupperware marked with tape half for me and half for Faith, Marlowe moved his attention to the back door, where he did a little tap dance on the hardwood.

  Mama said, “Faith, honey, would you mind taking the dog out?”

  Faith stared down at the dog uncertainly.

  Mama set her fist on her hip, “Well, go on, dear, daylight’s burning.”

  The girl rose and opened the screen door. Marlowe pranced ahead of her through the mudroom, and the door banged behind them as they went on their very first adventure out into the MacKinnon back forty.

  I settled beside Mama at the kitchen sink, grabbing a fresh dishtowel, and to my surprise, I toppled back in time as she washed and I dried.

  We were both quiet. There was nothing but the sound of running water and the smell of lemon-fresh soap. Mama’s hands darted in and out of the suds as they’d done so many times. I wondered why the floral pattern on the china hadn’t rubbed off years ago.

  She stared out the kitchen window, overlooking a kitchen garden in late summer bloom.

  “You okay, Cauley Kat?” she finally said.

  I shrugged. “Just some bumps and bruises.”

  “And your Agent Logan?

  “He’s fine,” I said, thinking of the cold look in his eyes when he’d left. “I think he’s fine. He had to leave. Something about a fire. Mama, I’m worried.”

  “You love him?” she said, and I nearly burst into tears.

  “I don’t know. How can you really know what makes you love someone? I mean, we barely even know each other.”

  Mama shook her pretty platinum head and sighed. “Sometimes the heart just knows.”

  I nodded. “I don’t know if I can take this kind of worrying not knowing when or if he’s coming home.” I turned to her then. “Why, Mama? What made you put up with Daddy’s job all those years?”

  “Your father was a policeman.” She rinsed the large, brown crock that’d held the potato salad, passed it to me, and dried her hands on her apron. “I was married to your father for ten years,” she said. “You marry someone, you marry their family and their career, for better or worse.”

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I shook my head. “Does it ever get any better?”

  She was staring out the kitchen window, looking beyond the rise, into the woods beyond the front pasture.

  “No,” she finally said. “It gets worse. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. I love the Colonel. As surely as there’s a God in heaven, I do. But I wouldn’t trade the time I had with your father for a living thing on earth. Cauley, darlin’, the better was so much more than the worse.”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “What a question. Of course I still love your father.”

  I swallowed. “Does the Colonel know that?”

  “Cauley, honey, the Colonel is a good man with a big heart, and his heart is big enough for me and your daddy and your sister and her family and you and all the strays you drag home.”

  I stared out the window, wondering if I could stand the kind of life Mama had with my father. I leaned over the sink and studied the whitewashed windowpane, chipped and worn from generations of MacKinnon women leaning forward as they watched through the frame of the kitchen window and out onto the lives of the children they helped create.

  On the horizon, Faith was sitting on the rise, the August-sun scorched grass beneath her, her arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked herself, trying to find some comfort in her aloneness. I wondered how many MacKinnon women had taken refuge, alone, on that rise.

  And then I realized Faith wasn’t alone. A large, silver figure crept along the hillock, ears flat, tail down.

  “Marlowe,” I whispered, and Mama smiled.

  When the dog reached the girl he sat, hesitant, and stretched so that he could snuffle her neck.

  Faith cringed at the contact, and then slowly, her shoulders rose and fell. She began heaving as the wave of grief finally washed over her. The tears came then and she collapsed, her tiny, birdlike frame leaning hard on Marlowe, and as she leaned into the dog, the dog leaned back, accepting the girl’s weight.

  Tears burned the backs of my eyes as I watched.

  I swallowed hard and shook my head in amazement.

  I watched as Marlowe accepted the girl’s weight.

  “Good dog,” I whispered, and to my surprise, a tear slipped down my cheek. “I’m so proud of him.”

  Mama slid her arm around my shoulders and pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. She smiled. “I know the feeling, baby,” she said. “I know the feeling.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mama harangued Faith and me into spending the night.

  I would’ve gladly conked out in my twin bed in my old bedroom, but Faith wasn’t having any of it.

  Faith wanted to go home, she said. Get clean clothes, find a way to start her life over.

  Reluctantly, I agreed
to drive her.

  Mama bestowed upon us with enough plastic-covered barbecue to get us through the next millennium. I promised Mama I’d call her when I got home and call her again in the morning to assure her that I had a fiveyear plan that did not include getting shot at. Never mind that the shooters weren’t actually shooting at me.

  The moon was high and Marlowe lay quietly, his chin on the console, the warm, late-summer wind whipping around us in the open Jeep. We were quiet as I drove the dark, flat county road, where the blacktop stretched toward the horizon and cars were fewer as we sped through the Dawes County night. I wondered where Selena Obregon was and if she would muster her troops and wage an all-out war over territory. I shivered.

  “I thought your dad was dead,” Faith finally said. She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were locked on Marlowe, his white, whiskery brows moving as she spoke.

  “The Colonel’s my stepfather,” I said. “But we don’t think of him that way. He’s more like the glue that holds our family together.”

  Faith stared out the windshield into the night. “You have a good family.” There was a catch in her voice, and I knew she was thinking about the tattered shreds of her own family.

  “Faith, are you sure I can’t take you to your mother’s house?”

  “I don’t have a mother,” she said evenly, but her eyes were hard, and her voice was even harder. “She sent me away when I was thirteen. And those fuckers shot my brother. My family is gone.”

  Her mother sent her away? I tried not to gape. In my dealings with Selena Obregon, I’d learned that there are some mothers who eat their young.

  “Most of my family’s gone, too,” I said. “My sister lives in Houston, my father’s dead, Aunt Kat lives wherever her next romance novel is set, and Nana MacKinnon is crazier than bat shit.

  “The Colonel is family by marriage and Clairee is family by proxy what Mama calls front-porch family: you wander onto the front porch, you’re family.”

  “That’s not real family,” she said.

  “Maybe not. But when you hurt one MacKinnon, they’re all there, locked and loaded and ready to roll.”