Farraday Country

by Chris Keniston

  “Kelly Morgan,” DJ answered, his stance much more casual and friendly compared to the man behind the desk.

  “Morgan,” the officer muttered, tapping at a keyboard. “The DUI?” His expression shifted from territorial arrogance to total bewilderment.

  “She’s a friend,” Dale repeated with a casual shrug. “Who’s the arresting?”

  “Cavanaugh.”

  From the quick bob of Dale’s head that matched DJ’s, Ian figured that was buddy speak for We can work with this.

  “Can we see her?” DJ asked.

  The officer’s scanned each of the men then, looking at Dale, shrugged. “You know the routine.”

  This time Dale’s grin was more like that of a man among friends. “Thanks, Jack.”

  From the front of the building to the lock up where Kelly and a few other misguided souls and at least a couple of working girls were kept waiting was a short walk. Even if he hadn’t seen Kelly a brief while ago at the reception, she would have been easy to spot. If she pressed herself any closer to the back wall, she’d become one with it. The elation in her eyes at first sight of DJ made Ian wish someone had stopped her from driving home alone.

  “You made it,” she said on approach to the cold metal bars. “Can I get out of here now?” This time her faltering voice failed to hide the fear.

  DJ shoved a thumb over his shoulder at Ian. “It pays to have friends in high places.”

  Relieved and grateful eyes turned to Ian. “If that means yes, I owe you my first born child. When I have one.”

  At least she still had a sense of humor. “That one won’t be necessary.” Especially since her freedom came at a price. For at least the next twenty-four hours, one Kelly Morgan was in his custody.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “This really is not necessary.” Kelly couldn’t be more mortified if she’d been caught running naked down Main Street in broad daylight. Even though she had indeed been completely sober, just the idea of having been taken to jail for driving under the influence, never mind being temporarily accommodated behind bars with several less than stellar members of Dallas society, made her feel like she’d totally and possibly permanently blemished the family name.

  Ian Farraday hit the blinker and glanced in his side mirror. “I gave my word. It’s no big deal.”

  If it had been no big deal, he would have allowed her to drive herself back to Tuckers Bluff. Last night, when Dale, DJ, and Ian had dropped her at the hotel, for a few short moments she thought he might actually camp out on the floor at the foot of the bed in the room she shared with his sister Hannah. He hadn’t said much in objection to leaving her under her own recognizance for the night, but she could see the reservation in his eyes as clearly as she could see the Texas Ranger badge shining on his belt. When he knocked on her door bright and early this morning, letting his sister drive his precious car back home and insisting on driving Kelly’s car, she knew beyond the shadow of any doubt that to him, having been released in his custody was indeed a very big deal.

  Ian kept his eyes on the road. “By tomorrow morning all of this unfortunate misunderstanding will have been legally wiped away and no longer an issue.”

  “But until then…”

  Glancing away from the road, and with that familiar Farraday twinkle in his eye, Ian flashed a smile at her. “Think of me as the big brother watching out for your virtue on prom night.”

  Though she’d always thought it would have been nice to have a brother, that was definitely not the reason why. Barely out of Dallas County limits, the ringing of her cell phone brought the conversation to an abrupt end. Rummaging through her purse, Kelly pulled out her phone and cringed. Her mother. She so did not want to explain what had happened to her last night. On the other hand, if she didn’t answer her mom would simply keep calling. She sucked in a deep breath. Only DJ, Dale, Ian and Hannah knew anything about her unfortunate stint at Lew Sterret, and all four had sworn an oath of secrecy.

  Kelly didn’t doubt that she could trust her friends, not that she knew Dale or Ian that well, but she did know Dale adored Hannah and would do anything for her, and Ian after all was a Farraday. A Farraday’s word was as solid as a bar of gold in Fort Knox. But none of that meant that her mother couldn’t somehow have found out about her daughter’s late-night predicament. “Morning, Mom.” That sounded normal. In no way did her voice reflect the panicked woman who had spent hours in jail fretting over the possibility of some movie-like clerical error keeping her behind bars for the rest of her life. Just to make sure, she glanced at Ian.

  For only the second time since they’d left the hotel, Ian turned his attention in her direction at the exact moment she looked up to him for reassurance. She seriously doubted he had any idea why she was staring at him, nor did she have any idea why he was nodding at her, but something deep in her gut believed he could read her mind and was telling her to carry on that she sounded fine.

  “We’re all dying to hear the whole story.”

  Kelly’s heart sank to her stomach. The woman knew.

  “How did it go?” her mom asked with a hint of enthusiasm.

  “Go?”

  “The wedding. Remember? The reason you drove all the way to Dallas. Was it everything y’all expected it to be?”

  “And even more.” Kelly held in a huge sigh of relief. But brother was last night way more than anyone had expected. “The bride looked beautiful and Finn looked prouder than a peacock. They’ll probably live to be a hundred and die holding hands.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.” Her mother’s voice dropped a few octaves, much the way it would when Kelly had been a little girl and was being reprimanded.

  “Mom, we all have to die sometime. I think passing on at the age of one hundred holding hands with the love of your life is a pretty nice way to go.” Heaven knew her father’s last couple of years in the semi-paralytic state after a stroke had been hard on everyone.

  “Well,” her mother sighed, “I suppose you have a point.”

  Without another word necessary, Kelly knew exactly where her mother’s mind had gone to. “What have they done now?”

  “Who said anyone did anything?” her mom responded a little too innocently.

  Holding her breath, she waited for the other shoe to fall.

  “It’s just a small fire, dear.”

  “Fire?”

  The single shaky word had Ian looking in her direction again. Her grip on the phone tightened.

  “Just a little itty-bitty teeny one in the bathroom.”

  “The bathroom?” Kelly blinked, turning slightly away to swipe at an escaped tear.

  “It was raining yesterday,” her mom continued.

  “The barbecue,” she muttered, sucking in a long breath and blinking back any more tears. “I swear to God, you can’t leave those two alone anywhere.”

  “Well your grandpa just wanted to show me how safe it was to start a charcoal fire in the bathroom sink. To be honest, I figured out what caused the problem at the Shady Rest.”

  “What’s there to figure out?” Her breath caught for a fraction of a moment. “The problem was they were cooking in the bathroom.”

  “You know, I think the barbecue in the bathroom would have worked out just fine if they hadn’t opened up the pipe under the sink to let more air in. It seems that’s why the flames shot up, reaching the roof and setting the sheet rock on fire. At least this time that’s when I had to get the fire extinguisher to put it out.”

  This time. Kelly’s forehead fell into the palm of her hand. “Mom, don’t tell me you stood there watching?”

  Total silence was as good an admission of guilt as pleading the fifth.

  “Aw, Mother.”

  “It’s all right, dear. Frank from the café came over late last night and cut out the scorched spots and replaced the sheet rock. Later today he’ll be back to texture and paint. By the time you come home you’ll never know what happened.”

  The only way she would not k
now what happened was if her mother hadn’t told her. Which almost made her wonder what other shenanigans her grandfather and his brother might have gotten into when she wasn’t looking. Of course, she didn’t dare ask. Maybe another day, but not today. She wasn’t up to it. At this point she was starting to wonder about her mother’s stability. It was one thing to have her grandfather, well into his eighties, a little on the daffy side. But having her mom still only in her fifties as a partner in crime terrified her. If her mom started down the slippery slope to crazy-old-coot this young, Kelly might not survive to her own crazy-old-coot stage. “Anything else, Mom?”

  “No, dear, I just want to hear about the wedding.”

  Kelly ran her fingertips against her temple. Especially now, she wasn’t up to reliving last night just yet. Not even the fun wedding part. “I’ll tell you all about it over supper when I get home. Okay?”

  “I suppose so. At least I know it went off without a hitch.”

  Without a hitch. Yeah, the wedding had. Her—not so much.

  ****

  Ian wasn’t sure which set his heart racing faster, the sudden pallor that washed over Kelly when she saw the name on her cell phone, or the look on her face as she uttered the word fire.

  He didn’t really know a whole lot about grown up Kelly. His brother Jamison—named after the Irish whiskey, even if his mother denied the connection because of the different spelling—was the same age as his cousin Adam. Sandwiched between them in pecking order, Ian played alongside Connor and DJ. All of them were several years older than his cousin Grace, his baby sister Hannah, and their friends Becky and Kelly. Even though he remembered seeing the girls cavorting around the ranch in the summers when the Austin Farradays would visit the Tuckers Bluff Farradays, he really didn’t know this adult version of Kelly well at all. As a matter of fact, he’d probably seen her more this past year at Adam’s clinic or in passing last night at the wedding than he’d seen her in the last ten or so years put together.

  Truth be told, it was only the fact that she and his sister and cousin were still close friends that had him whole heartedly believing last night’s arrest had to be a mistake. After some back room negotiation between his cousin, Dale, and the arresting officer, Ian as the higher statewide authority had given his word to the officer that he would make sure Kelly returned home without getting into any more trouble or behind the wheel of the car. Dale was going to see to it that by Monday morning there would be no record of the detainment. Even though technically Kelly’s release to Ian’s custody had been more of a gentleman’s agreement than an official action, right now he still felt very responsible for whatever happened to her, including a distressing phone call from her mother.

  With more force than he would’ve expected from somebody as tired as Kelly seemed, she tossed her phone into her purse on the floor.

  “Trouble on the home front?”

  “I suppose you could say that.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and shifted onto her hip to face him. “I’m living in an insane asylum.”

  Ignoring the blinking light on the dashboard and the urge to tell her to buckle up, Ian recognized she needed to talk and that they had several hours for him to listen. “It can’t be all that bad.”

  “Oh really?” She twisted and yanked the seatbelt forward snapping the buckle in, continuing to stare in his direction. “My father, the sanest man I ever knew, after having been miserable with the restrictions from his stroke, died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Those words always seemed too little too late every time he had to use them. Now was no different.

  “Thank you. Then just over a year ago we found out my mom’s dad had been having trouble with the senior facility he and his brother lived in. Apparently the home frowns upon old men climbing into the hot tub stark naked.”

  Biting back a chuckle, Ian supposed the two old men hadn’t been the only ones in the hot tub. He hoped he still had it in him when he was old enough to be a grandfather.

  “And the place has a perfectly good kitchen. It’s why my mom and dad chose that facility for Pops and Uncle Ralph. Pops couldn’t cook when he was young, there was no way anyone was trusting him with an open fire after Grams died. Shady Rest serves wonderful meals on demand in a lovely downstairs restaurant. They’ll bring them to your room if a resident prefers. But no. Pops and Uncle Ralph decided they wanted grilled cheese.”

  “Something tells me that may not have gone well?”

  Like she’d done on the phone with her mother, Kelly pinched the bridge of her nose and sucked in a deep breath. “Because small cooking appliances are not allowed in the apartments, Pops decided to follow that rule and ignore the no cooking rule. He used the iron.”

  If his memory served him correctly, Ian remembered more than one person in college making grilled cheese sandwiches in a pinch with an iron.

  “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.” Kelly sighed. “Except they put the bread between two paper towels and then set the iron on top of the paper towel and decided to go take a shower and get dressed. If it weren’t for the smoke alarms they could’ve burned the whole place down.”

  The way he saw it, the old guys were adventurous and lucky.

  “The last straw came not long after they’d sworn off meat and became vegetarians. Unhappy with barbecued brisket on the menu, they decided to grill zucchini.”

  Without another word Ian already had a good idea what was coming next.

  “Pops is rather resourceful. Which is why he used the bathroom sink, a bag of charcoal, and a little lighter fluid. The real trouble, however, came when he removed the pipe for venting—”

  “And the whole thing blew up in flames.”

  Kelly nodded. “That was the last straw for Shady Rest. Pops and Uncle Ralph have been living with us ever since. Most days I think corralling a litter of kittens is easier.”

  “So if I heard correctly, they re-created the final incident for your mother.”

  “Yep.” She twisted around in place, leaning her head back. “The thing is, the last few months they’ve been behaving themselves and haven’t gotten into any trouble. Playing cards with some of the other old guys in town. Talking about taking up golf again. Uncle Ralph has even gone out on a couple of dates, and then this.”

  The bone-weary look on her face wasn’t something that a person developed from one or two events. She was tired and upset and he didn’t know what to say. They’d had some challenges with his grandfather George. Most of his grandfather’s life, he would take a bottle of Jameson out of the liquor cabinet in the evenings and visit different friends. It was what made him loved by so many. Unfortunately in his later years he still did that, sometimes at two or three or four in the morning. It was never easy watching the people you love grow old and confused to the point of becoming a danger to themselves. He remembered the pained feeling of loss when his grandfather had to be moved to a memory care facility for his own good. All Ian could think to do was pull her into a bear hug, much like he might a little girl who had skinned her knee, and pretend everything was going to stop hurting. Except she wasn’t a little girl. Her grandfather wasn’t a skinned knee. And he had no business holding her in his arms for any reason.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Time for a pit stop.” Riding in a caravan of cars from Dallas to Tuckers Bluff, Ian followed the car in front of them into the gas station.

  Kelly glanced at the clock on the dashboard. For the last few hours she and Ian had exchanged stories of crazy grandfathers and other mishaps. More than once he’d had her laughing so hard she almost peed her pants. She truly hoped that one day she could look back at her own grandfather’s antics and laugh it off, but right now she was frustrated and a little scared. Not just for what trouble her grandfather and his brother might get into, but fearful she and her mother might by sheer heredity be doomed to follow in those exasperating footsteps.

  The line of cars led by Adam and Brooks with their wives, followed by the rest of
the clan with her and Ian at the rear, turned one by one into the station. Kelly fished her credit card out of her wallet and hurried out of her seat to feed the pump.

  Ian already had the nozzle unhooked and the gas cap uncovered. “You go on inside with the others. I’ll fill her up.”

  “That’s okay, I can do it.”

  “I know you can. So can I.” The man flashed a full wattage Farraday smile.

  What was that old expression, the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree? Was there not a single man in the Farraday clan who had not inherited that ice melting smile? Through the years having been treated more like another kid sister than a friend, she’d grown pretty much immune to the inherent Farraday charms. After all, Grace’s brothers felt like her own. Not so with Ian. For the first time, she truly understood the impact of the Farraday charm that all the women in town referred to. “Thank you. I thought I’d get a diet cola. Would you like something from the store?”

  “No thanks. I’ll be coming inside myself in a minute.”

  Kelly nodded, and before she did something stupid like drool or trip over her own feet, she spun around and hurried inside after her friends. The line to the bathroom was already backing up so she opted for something to nibble on first.

  Standing next to Becky in the snack aisle, Hannah looked up. “What is it about long-distance driving that turns us into human garbage disposals? Everything looks delicious.”

  Becky chuckled. “That’s because everything is delicious.”

  “And you can afford to eat every morsel.” Kelly had always envied Becky’s thin build. Having developed curves early on, Kelly knew the boys wanted her mostly for one thing. She’d learned how to handle that and her figure. Always managing to remain on the curvy side of the line separating full figured from overweight, or at least until recently, she thought she had.

  “Unfortunately,” Becky said, “no matter what I eat, I’ll never have your curves. But fortunately for me, my husband likes me just the way I am.” This time, like every other time her friend mentioned DJ Farraday, Becky’s face twisted into a sappy grin.