Courting Trouble (13 page)

Savannah sat in Grandma Margaret’s antique rocker with a needlepoint back and stared out the window.

“I didn’t know you kept that,” Tulsa said, referring to the antique that Savannah worked forward and back.

“It soothes me.” Savannah grasped the wooden arm rails. Her movement was hard and fast and the rocker squeaked in protest with each forward dip.

“Is it working yet?” Tulsa asked in a soft but plucky tone. A risk, to try humor on an angry McGrath, but sometimes comedy worked.

“She’s only fourteen,” Savannah burst out, her voice sharp—her anger more directed at the facts than at Tulsa. “She started high school three weeks ago and now she wants to go to a football game? Alone?” Savannah’s lips turned down and a sad expression cut across her face.

“Alone? Or with friends?”

“Either way, she doesn’t want
me
around anymore,” Savannah said, her voice heavy.

Tulsa ran her fingertips over the wedding-circle quilt in rose and light blue on Savannah’s bed. Savannah hadn’t been much older than Ash when she first met Bobby Hopkins at a football game on a fall night not much different than this very one.

“She’s not you,” Tulsa said softly.

Savannah slowly raised her head and met Tulsa’s gaze. A lifetime of understanding flashed between the sisters. No father—a grandmother that loved them and raised them but vacillated wildly between an overbearing nature and a cold, unyielding one. A mother… a mother who was rarely around and when Connie was in Powder Springs, she spent most nights boozing.

“I know she’s not me.”

Tulsa followed Savannah’s gaze to a photo of a seven-year-old Ash with braids and a gap-toothed grin. Her face was filled with childhood excitement, her lips stained red by the cherry Popsicle in her hand.

“It feels like that picture was taken yesterday,” Savannah whispered; her voice contained both surprise and melancholy.

Time elapsed and with it Ash’s childhood. Tulsa had mental snapshots of her time with Savannah and Ash, but really if she counted the days in her head, it was a drop in the bucket that was Ash’s life.

“I’m sorry,” Tulsa whispered. She closed her eyes and dropped her head. A surrender to her own mistakes. “I… I should have been around more… I should have come back more.”

“You were busy.” Savannah settled her head against the back of the rocking chair.

“I shouldn’t ever be too busy for family.”

“You’re here now,” Savannah said.

After so many years away from Powder Springs, this house, this place, Tulsa understood the comfort that came when you were surrounded by a lifetime of things. Multiple lifetimes. This house, this room, contained remnants from the lives of generations of McGrath women. A picture of Connie with long black hair was on Savannah’s bedside table. Tulsa didn’t keep any pictures of their mother in her house.

“Do you ever think about her?” Tulsa whispered.

“Mom?”

Tulsa’s heart clutched and her chest tightened with that one word—Mom. Her breath shortened and she heard the rush of blood in her ears. Tulsa nodded. Mom. A word that contained so many meanings, none of which seemed to fit Connie.

“Sometimes,” Savannah said. She reached for the picture of Connie. Her eyes remained hard and flat, but the corners of her mouth ticked upward. “I can remember her laugh. How if she was really happy it sounded like a bell.”

Savannah held the picture of their mother out toward Tulsa. Tulsa’s fingertips brushed the cold copper frame when she took the picture from Savannah and a chill rushed up her spine. She studied Connie’s face.

“What do you remember?” Savannah asked.

What did Tulsa remember? She remembered the warmth of Connie’s fingertips on her hair. She remembered green eyes so intense—so wild—so focused on her. She remembered her insides filling with sunshine when Connie held her and Tulsa pressed her nose into her mother’s hair and smelled the lavender of Connie’s shampoo. She remembered wanting her mother home with her, curled up next to her, so badly that her insides ached as though she’d crack in two from the want.

“Do you ever wonder what really happened?” Tulsa asked.

Savannah sat silent in her chair. She no longer rocked. She didn’t smile—emotions tugged at different parts of Savannah’s face—so many that Tulsa couldn’t tell what her sister felt. Savannah sighed. The air rushed across her lips like a release of all her emotion.

“I used to,” Savannah said. “But now…” She turned her face toward the window and stared at the darkening sky. “It’s like I made this big box in my head and I put all the things that hurt inside the box. The questions about Mom, the questions about Bobby.” Savannah turned her gaze back to Tulsa. “I packed all that away and tried to focus on life and on Ash. I tried to put the wondering what happened away with all my other sadness.”

Tulsa nodded. She had the same mental box filled with her own pain. She avoided thinking about her questions surrounding her mother’s death, but they’d never been completely buried.

“I thought I put it away too,” Tulsa whispered. “But being here in Powder Springs, in the house, and seeing everyone… opens all of it back up for me.”

“Well, you left.” There wasn’t anger in Savannah’s voice. She stated a fact. “Since I lived here, I had to come to some sort of peace with Mom’s death or I’d lose my mind.”

“One of my partners at the firm,” Tulsa said slowly, her voice soft. “She thinks…” Tulsa stared at the picture of her mother and then looked up at Savannah. “She thinks Mom’s case was mishandled. She thinks that the case should be reopened.”

Savannah’s face flattened with the words. Her eyes went blank. She shook her head back and forth and then closed her eyes. Her bottom lip trembled and finally with a deep breath, she opened her eyes and looked at Tulsa.

“Why?” Her hands gripped tight the arms of the rocking chair, her fingertips turning white. She jerked her gaze away and searched into the night through the cold, hard window glass. Two sharp little breaths and Savannah turned her head back toward Tulsa. “What good would that do? What would it fix? Who would it help? Mom’s dead.”

Tulsa’s heart slammed back in her ribcage with the force of those words. Her throat thickened around the emotions she’d spent a lifetime choking down. Savannah’s questions mirrored her own—what justice would be served after all this time? And right now, while her sister and her niece struggled with Bobby reentering their lives, how could reopening her mother’s case do anything but create more chaos?

“You’re right,” Tulsa said and gently set the picture on the nightstand, but even with her words, a need to know thumped through her veins. A need that Tulsa feared would not be satisfied.

“So what about the game?” Tulsa asked, turning the conversation away from their mother and hoping the upset of her adolescent niece would be easier to solve than the confusion about her past.

Savannah tilted her head to the side. “She wants a boy to bring her home after the game. An older boy.”

“A boy?” Fear fluttered along her insides. “She didn’t mention a boy to me.”

“Welcome to the world of teenagers,” Savannah said. She rested her elbow on the rocker’s arm and placed her head on her hand.

“But I’m the cool aunt from LA. She tells me everything.”

“She
told
you everything. Now she’s fourteen. She tells her friends everything and we have to rifle through the scraps to figure out what’s going on in her life. Started last summer. Don’t be alarmed.”

“Who’s the boy?” Boys? And cars? Ash alone with a boy in a car? Suddenly Tulsa understood her sister’s panic.

“Dylan Conroy, good kid,” Savannah said. “If he didn’t want to date my daughter. He’s a junior. With a driver’s license. And a member of the football team. They went to grade school together, but he’s definitely not ten anymore.”

Tulsa again glanced at the picture of Ash. “And she’s definitely not seven.”

“Now you understand my concerns.”

Silence settled around them. Much like they couldn’t keep the past contained, they couldn’t keep the future from unfurling. Ash would grow up. She would date. She would leave. They couldn’t protect her from inevitable change. But they could watch and guide and hopefully, if they were really lucky, be there when sadness surrounded her.

“I’ll go,” Tulsa offered up.

“I think Dylan is a little young for you, and Ash might get jealous.”

“Funny.” Tulsa wiggled her eyebrows and a grin pulled on her face. “I’ll go to the game.” “Act as a spy. It won’t seem nearly as intrusive if I go instead of you.”

Savannah’s lips pulled up and her eyes came alive with this idea. “You know, that plan just might work.”

Chapter Fourteen

Friday night lights glowed from the Powder Springs High School Football Stadium. The stadium contained seats for nearly a thousand people. The announcers’ booth, painted fire-engine red in recognition of the home team, jutted up in the center of the home side. The air smelled of damp leaves. Snow wouldn’t fall on Powder Springs tonight, but soon.

“You haven’t been here in how long?” Ash asked as they handed the attendant their tickets and walked through the entrance gate and toward the field.

“Fifteen years,” Tulsa said. She carried a red-and-black plaid blanket she’d pilfered from the back of Savannah’s couch.

“Wow. I can’t imagine being able to say I did something fifteen years ago.” Ash looked at Tulsa. “You are
so
old.”

“Right,” Tulsa said. “Thanks.” Her loose smile acknowledged what at fourteen seemed ancient.

“Ash!”

“We’re over here!”

Closer to the football field, three girls stood and waved. Ash hesitated for a moment, torn between her past with her family and her future with her friends. She turned to Tulsa. “You’ll be okay?” Ash asked.

The concerned look on Ash’s face, as though she needed to take care of Tulsa, was sweet.

“I’ll be fine,” Tulsa said.

Ash leaned toward Tulsa. “Mom said I could ride home with Dylan,” Ash whispered.

“Really?” Tulsa feigned surprise and Ash looked like she might burst from excitement. “That should be fun. What’s his number?”

“Twenty-four.”

“I’ll watch for him.”

“I’ll see you at home,” Ash called. She walked toward the student section but paused and turned back toward Tulsa. Ash’s black curls, so similar to Tulsa’s and Savannah’s, blew in the evening breeze. A twinge yanked at Tulsa’s heart. Melancholy for the little girl that used to run toward her and grasp her hand.

“If you need me,” Ash called, “you can always text me, or call if you want to go old-school.”

Ash disappeared into the crowd of teenagers and Tulsa walked toward the “old people” section of the bleachers. The away side was filled to capacity with a rowdy crowd from Hayden, and while the opposing fans seemed excited about the game, Hayden rarely won. A town of four thousand people, Hayden was considered Hicksville next to cosmopolitan Powder Springs.

Tulsa zipped her jacket and pulled out the mittens Savannah had tucked into her pocket before she left the house. Most everyone wore light jackets or down vests, nothing like the heavy coat Tulsa now wore and that Savannah reserved for the bitter cold of February. But most people in Powder Springs weren’t used to the temperature being a balmy eighty degrees in September.

She carefully climbed the bleacher steps and kept a tight grip on the rail. Near the top of the stands under the announcer’s booth was an empty spot and she scooted past an older couple. At fourteen, this would have been the worst seat at the game, but now, over thirty, this spot provided a great view.

Closer to the field, in the student section, a giggling Ash stood between her two girlfriends. Funny how each class knew exactly where they were supposed to sit. The freshman seats were the worst, close enough to the field that the kids needed to stand to see past the football players on the sidelines. The senior class got the upper student section with the best view.

“Looks like your blood’s gone thin.”

Heat flashed through Tulsa’s body with the sound of Cade’s voice. She willed her face to remain neutral. She took a deep but quiet breath and tried to still the heat that throbbed through her. She turned and tilted her head. Cade wore a pair of Levi’s that molded to his strong thighs, a button-down shirt and a black leather jacket. With the sight of him the heat simmering in her veins pulsed down her legs—he wasn’t what she needed—he was nothing but trouble for her and her family, but she couldn’t quell her physical reaction to him.

Cade scooted down the aisle and stopped next to Tulsa. He turned and said hello to the couple beside him. She surrendered to the urge to stare at Cade’s backside. Her eyes wandered up his thick, muscular thighs to the firm, rounded part of his behind. He was a big man. He belonged on a football field or on a horse, roping cattle. He turned toward her and she quickly tore her gaze away from his body. Cade squinted and a sly smile, slick and lean, crept across his face. She’d been caught. Cade was completely aware that she’d been staring at his magnificent ass.

Cade sat close beside her. “I’m surprised you’re here. I’d think this was a little too small town for your taste.”

“What’s that mean?” Tulsa sat up straighter and bounced her foot from side to side.

“Premieres, Hollywood parties, I’d think the last thing you’d want to do is sit on a bleacher and freeze your tail off watching Powder Springs beat Hayden.”

“You sound pretty sure that we’re going to win.”

“Powder Springs always beats Hayden.”

Tulsa slid her eyes to the left. “Really? I remember one year when Powder Springs didn’t win.”

“You had to bring
that
up?” He ran his hand over the back of his neck and his eyebrows peaked with embarrassment. “I was a junior, okay? It was my second game as quarterback. I was a little… rattled.”

“They rang your bell a couple times.”

“If I hadn’t been so distracted, that game would have been different.”

Tulsa turned her head toward Cade. “Distracted? How were you distracted?”

“Trying to get a good look at you in your varsity cheerleading uniform.”