by Maggie Wells
Until a few months ago, the majority of the firm’s business had come from the Masters family and their family-owned forestry and lumber business, Timber Masters. Marlee Masters had come home to roost after earning her law degree, and his grandfather got the notion to make a run at one of the elected posts on the circuit court. The timing of it all seemed... inevitable, if not exactly fortuitous.
The problem was, Simon wasn’t sure he could keep his promise to his grandfather. Other than writing a new will for Eleanor Young, a timid divorcée who’d lost her only son earlier in the year, he hadn’t done a single lawyerly thing since he’d moved to Pine Bluff. The call from Samuel Coulter needing someone local to represent his “various business and personal interests” had broken weeks of Dora reminding him his calendar was distressingly open.
“So, naturally, you scraped the bottom of the nearest barrel to find a client. Congratulations,” she added as she shouldered past him to get to the pickup window. “You’ve got yourself a real winner there, Wingate.”
Chapter Three
“Hi, Mama, I’m home,” she called out as she walked through the back door of her childhood home.
Her mother shot her a bland look over her shoulder. “Hello, Lourdes.”
Lori cringed at the formality of the greeting. Not long ago, she would have been mija. But everything had gone sideways when she moved out.
Sophia Castillo-Cabrera was not a woman who thawed quickly. Her mother added another unlabeled jar to the collection in the crook of her arm and straightened, letting the door swing shut without looking directly at Lori. “What brings you by?”
Lori quickly squashed the flash of hurt. Moving out of her girlhood home had started out as a bone of contention and had finally simmered down to a touchy subject. The family was still reeling from the death of her father and aunt in a car accident when they’d discovered Anita Cabrera had left her house to Lori in her will.
Her mother had expected Lori to sell the property and use the proceeds to help fund her younger siblings’ education. Instead, she’d packed up her clothes and what few worldly possessions she’d accumulated since leaving the army and moved into the cozy bungalow.
Why couldn’t her mother understand that Lori needed the freedom of living on her own for the first time in her life?
Her mother believed Lori was thumbing her nose at the family by moving out. Females were to stay in the family fold, living in the house of their father until they moved in with their spouse. Somehow, Sophia managed to skim over the years Lori had spent sleeping in military barracks. As far as she was concerned, her first-born child was besmirching the family name with her father and aunt barely gone a year.
Lori should have felt guilty, but she didn’t. Which caused her even greater remorse.
Forcing a smile, she held up a plastic grocery bag. “I came by to drop off a couple of T-shirts for Lena.” She made a face when her mother stared back at her, unreadable. “She said something about the military look being back in style.”
“That’s nice of you,” her mother answered distractedly.
The gulf between them was widening, and Lori had no idea how to stop it. “Mama, I love you.”
Her mother moved to the stove and stirred the sauce simmering there. “You love me so much you don’t want to live under my roof.”
“I was gone for four years and you never gave me a hard time,” she pressed.
“Totally different.”
“Not different. I am literally less than a mile away,” she argued.
“I am aware,” Sophia replied.
Lori sighed and repeated the same mantra she’d been using since the day Wendell Wingate almost apologetically informed them her aunt Anita had drawn up a will. “Mama, I’m a grown woman. I need space of my own.”
Her mother’s shoulders stiffened. “You don’t think I was a grown woman when I married your father and moved into his house?”
This was a worn, old circular argument. She understood why her mother wanted her to sell the property. Sophia was worried about paying for school for the younger kids and expected Lori to dump the proceeds from the sale into the family coffers. But there was life insurance money, and Lori would help however she could. Sure, sometimes she felt selfish for hanging on to the place, but she couldn’t help thinking Anita had known she needed her own space.
“I’ll go find Lena,” she said, gesturing to the narrow hallway.
She followed the thump-thump-snare roll of a pop song to the door decorated with a satin-and-ribbon memory board with Marialena spelled out in paste rhinestones and pearls. Casting her memory back, Lori tried to recall whether she’d ever had anything half as sparkly. She didn’t think so. The most elaborate article of clothing she’d ever owned or worn was the sherbet-peach ball gown each of the Cabrera girls had worn for their quinceañera celebrations. Lori had complained to her mother about the flounces and lace. The previous year, Lena had moaned about not having a gown of her own. Lori had offered to pay for a new one, but neither her mother nor her sulking younger sister would hear of it, so she’d backed off.
A week after the party, her father and his sister had been driving home from a restaurant supply store in Albany when they were killed by a farmer from Prescott County who’d fallen asleep at the wheel and crossed the centerline.
The memory board jumped when she rapped twice, then called through the hollow-core door. “Hey, Lena-da-queena. I brought you some cool soldier-girl clothes.”
The volume decreased and Lena called out a desultory “Come in.”
Lori opened the door to find her sister stretched sideways across the twin beds Lena’d shoved together. She tried to stifle the pang of grief when she saw her sister had removed Lori’s pictures and mementos from the walls and the frame of the old-fashioned vanity mirror. Although Lori had hardly given them a second thought in years, she couldn’t help feeling stung when she saw the bare spots.
“Wow. You’ve rearranged.”
Lena pressed the button on the side of her phone to lock the screen. She barely spared Lori a glance. “I figured you wouldn’t care.”
Lori couldn’t help but be impressed by her sister’s nonchalance. Everyone else in the family—her brothers included—had been insulted by her defection and been vocal in their opinions. But her sister held her cards close to her chest. Lena had always been quiet, far more reserved than the rest of them, which sometimes made Lori uncomfortable.
Her gaze traveled to the phone her sister had oh-so-casually locked and placed facedown on the bedspread, and Lori decided reserved wasn’t exactly the right word for her baby sister. Lena was secretive. An island unto herself amid the noise and chaos of their family.
Without waiting for the invitation she was fairly sure wouldn’t come, Lori strode into the room and dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed. “Did you have a bonfire or something?”
Lena shook her head, pointing to the closet. “Nah, I put it all in a box. It’s there if you want it.”
It hurt to have been erased from the room, but Lori was pleased her sister hadn’t simply tossed her mementos in the trash. Pressing her hand to her throat, she massaged away the unexpected tightness she felt there. “Thanks. I’ll take it with me,” she said, striving to keep her voice light. “I brought you some shirts. One has the crossed-flintlock-pistols logo. Pretty cool,” she said, dropping the grocery bag containing the army T-shirts onto the bed.
Lena frowned in puzzlement, and Lori wondered if she’d imagined their previous conversation. The one where her sister was waxing poetic about how cool it was that Lori’d been in the army, and how Lena could rock her new pair of khaki cargo pants if she just had the right shirt to go with them. The pucker between the younger girl’s untweezed eyebrows deepened, and Lori felt the urge to rush to the kitchen and thank her mother for making her baby sister adhere to the same strict edicts she’d had to
endure.
“You brought me some old shirts?” Lena said, enunciating with such a deep drawl the words almost sounded foreign and exotic.
Lori pursed her lips, willing herself not to snap. Lena might be quiet, but she was still capable of serving up heaping helpings of teenage snark. Only their father, who thought the sun rose and set on his precious baby girl, had been exempt from her contempt. If Sophia hadn’t been giving her elder daughter such a hard time for wanting to live her life on her own terms, Lori was sorely tempted to actually jump up and run to the kitchen to give her mother a hug. Coming home to her family after years in the military helped her realize parenting was very much like engaging in hand-to-hand combat on a daily basis.
“You said you needed something to go with your cargo pants.”
“So you brought me some hand-me-downs you probably sweated through, like, a hundred times?”
Tired from the bad start to the day and a shift filled with particularly annoying calls, Lori decided to disengage. She didn’t want to snap at her sister and become more of an outlaw within her own family. Lori pushed off the bed, irked by the sneaking suspicion the teen was baiting her, and went to the closet to retrieve the shoebox of old photos, certificates and ribbons Lena had removed from the walls. “You know what...? Never mind.”
With the box wedged under her arm, she was about to leave when she caught her sister peeking at her phone. Lena frowned at the screen, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. Suddenly, Lori saw a flash of the girl who used to crawl into her bed on Christmas Eves, worried Santa never got her letter.
“What’s wrong, Le-Le?”
Her sister’s face hardened for a millisecond, but she quickly crumbled. “It’s Jasmine,” she whispered.
The quaver in Lena’s voice nearly broke Lori. She moved back to the bed and reclaimed her spot, setting the box at her feet. Reaching out, she placed a comforting hand on the younger girl’s back. Lena and Jasmine had been inseparable since their preschool days. If her sister’s bestie was in trouble, Lena would feel it too. “What’s Jas up to these days?”
“She’s, um...” Lena’s gaze shifted to her phone as she weighed how much to divulge. “She’s been, uh, blowing me off.”
“No way.”
“She is.”
Crossing her legs at her ankles, Lori tried for disinterested nonchalance as she gently pressed. “Any idea why?”
Lena’s lips tightened then trembled as she said, “She met some boy.”
“I see. And she doesn’t have time for you?” Lori asked, sympathetic. She recalled all too well how much it hurt when her own childhood friends started to drift away.
“She’s all into this Rick guy. He’s so smarmy. All muscly and tattooed.” She wrinkled her nose in disapproval.
“Tattooed?”
Lori reared back. Pine Bluff may be the biggest town in Masters County, but it was hardly a booming metropolis. He must have lived outside of town. People around here tended to be conservative. Clean-cut. At least on the surface.
Lori didn’t have anything against tattoos. She herself had one of the crossed flintlock pistols of the military police emblem done the evening after their graduation. Her classmates had teased her for making the artist do hers about one-fifth the size of the sample. And on her hip. Sophia had walked into the bathroom as Lori was climbing from the shower one day and nearly fainted. Or so she claimed. She’d been an adult, but her mother had been horrified to discover her daughter had “ruined” her “beautiful” body.
But who would let their kid get all inked up at fifteen?
“Isn’t he young to be getting tattoos?”
Lena shot her a scornful side-eye. “He’s not our age.”
“No?” Lori squawked.
“God, no. Boys our age are so...disgusting.”
Lori couldn’t argue with Lena’s logic. Having grown up with younger brothers, Lori was all too aware of how unattractive fifteen-year-old boys could be. “I’m assuming he’s older?”
Lena shrugged. “Eighteen or nineteen, maybe? Out of high school.”
“Ah...wow,” Lori murmured, her mind racing as she scrambled for a way to get back to the place where Lena felt comfortable confiding in her. “I guess I had no idea Jas was into older guys.”
Lena stared hard at the phone but her face crumpled. “Me either. But she turned sixteen and she has her provisional license and can drive now, and I’m not good enough...” Her sister trailed off into a hiccuping sob.
“Oh, Le-Le.” Twisting around, Lori pulled her sister into an awkward hug when the girl started to cry in earnest. She wanted to ask if Jasmine’s parents knew she was flirting with some strange guy, but instinct told her she’d lose cool points for the question, and right now she wanted to keep Lena talking to her. “I’m sorry. I know it hurts.”
Sixteen. Lori knew from experience it was a dangerous age. It marked the tipping point where parental approval started coming second to what your friends thought. When a girl’s body started telling her she was a woman, and she was all too willing to believe the hype. Sixteen. It was the age of consent in Georgia, though Lori was fairly certain her sister and her friends couldn’t even tell her what consent really meant. Her blood boiled and her heart raced as she squeezed Lena tighter, holding out hope that her sister would choose to remain on the “girl” side of that dividing line a little longer.
“I don’t get why we can’t be fr-friends anymore,” Lena sobbed. “I’m cool,” she added with a small hiccup.
“You are,” Lori cooed, stroking the younger girl’s silky hair. “You’re the coolest.”
Lena gave a watery laugh and tried to pull away, but Lori wouldn’t let her go. Thankfully, Lena relaxed into the embrace, resting her cheek on her big sister’s shoulder. “And the stupid thing is, she told him she’s seventeen. Like that makes a big difference. She doesn’t even look seventeen.”
Lori swallowed the lump in her throat. “No, she doesn’t.”
And it made no difference in the eyes of the law. But in the life of a young woman, those tender years mattered. Lori remembered them all too well. The confusion. The heady power that came from being noticed by boys for the first time. The constant roller-coaster ride of emotion. The tug-of-war between what her friends were doing and what her parents expected of her. Oh, the drama. And most of all, the aching desire to get adolescence over with so she could get on with what she once thought of as “real life.”
“She’s too young to be fooling around with guys of any age.”
“It’s gross,” Lena retorted.
Lori couldn’t help but smile a little as she smoothed her sister’s hair. “That too.”
“And I don’t think they’re even really going out. I mean, they text and she sends him messages on PicturSpam and stuff, but she’s—” Lena drew a shuddering breath “—she’s blowing me off, and I miss her. We’ve been friends forever, and now she doesn’t have time to text me back.”
“I get it,” Lori assured her. “Stinks.”
“And he’s so...gross.”
Lori chuckled softly at her sister’s choice of adjective. “It sucks when you see your friend hanging out with a guy who’s...gross.”
Her baby sister’s giggle was a balm. “It’s the perfect word,” Lena insisted. “Get this. He has this job where he takes snakes around to these weird churches and stuff. Can you think of a nastier job? Jasmine went to a tent revival with her mee-maw and now she’s all into him.” Lena shuddered and Lori froze. “I guess they must pay okay and all, but ew. He works for the millionaire guy who owns the snake place they advertise on the highway. The Reptile Rendezvous?”
Lori held her sister tighter. “Oh, yeah?” she replied, her voice weak.
She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. All the kids are talking about that place. That’s why they’re all dressing in camo and safari stuff. Like they
think it’s so cool.”
“They do?”
“Yeah. I think it’s mostly because the guy is so rich and all,” she said with a shrug. “I really don’t get it, but Jasmine’s all worked up about him.”
This time, Lori pulled back, needing to read her sister’s face. “The snake guy? Coulter?”
Lena scowled. “No. Yeah. I mean, his name is Rick. Weren’t you listening?”
“Right, yeah, Rick. The tatted-up snake guy,” Lori confirmed, relief washing through her at the realization her sister’s friend was at least one step removed from Coulter’s clutches.
“If you do get Jas to text you back, tell her Lori said to ditch the snake guy—he’s too old for her. And to stay away from Reptile Rendezvous.”
Lena snorted. “Yeah, right. I’m her best friend. If she won’t listen to me, she’s sure not gonna listen to you.”
“Yeah, well, I’m her BFF’s big sister, which makes me kind of hers too.” She gave Lena another squeeze, then grabbed the shoebox as she rose. “Just keep trying with her, Le-Le. That’s all you can do.”
“I will.”
Lori backed out of the room with a smile and a wave, determined to give Jasmine’s parents a heads-up. Jas was playing a dangerous game, and even if she was considered old enough in the eyes of the law, she wasn’t in reality. Someone needed to try to help Jasmine make better, smarter choices.
If Lori couldn’t help with that, she could always go in another direction. She would bet this Rick guy didn’t know or care about the legalities. She might be able to scare him off, if Jasmine’s parents didn’t beat her to it.
Passing through the kitchen, she asked, “Mama? Do you have Keely Jones’s phone number? I think Jasmine might want some of my shirts too,” she fibbed.