Dark River Road (83 page)

After the wild weekend and Monday, everything got quiet for a while. Sheridan officially resigned as mayor and Dale Ledbetter took over until the next election. Tansy and Chris left town together, and gossip flew thick and fast like the leaves falling off the trees. Then Cane Creek got back to normal. Cooler days drifted into cold nights, the waiting room in the clinic got repaired and smelled like new paint and plaster, and October melted into November.

Cinda got a phone call from her mother on Thanksgiving. She was happy, she said, and Tinky really liked living in an Italian villa. After she hung up, Cinda looked at Chantry and shook her head.

“I give it six months. She’ll be back.”

“And then what?”

“Why—I guess it’ll just be like before all this happened.”

“With your dad living down in Jackson now?”

Cinda got quiet. Then she sighed. “You’re right. It won’t ever go back to what it was.”

“And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

She managed a smile. “No, I suppose not. They never were happy together. I just never noticed until I got older.”

“That’s usually the way it is. Maybe now they’ll be happy.”

Not that he really thought Cara Sheridan would ever be happy, it just seemed like the right thing to say when Cinda was feeling so bad.

“They said awful things to each other that night,” Cinda said suddenly, staring at a spot on the far wall as if she saw it all again, heard it all. “Mother so angry, embarrassed, and Daddy—well, Daddy just seemed relieved. He said he was glad it’d happened. That he’d always known about Paolo but didn’t care. He said it left him free to do what he wanted. And my grandfather standing there listening to all of it with this
 . . .
this
look
on his face, like utter contempt. Chris never said a word, and Uncle Colin—he actually seemed rather pleased. Like it was an amusing joke he’d played on everyone. Aunt Laura sat in a chair in the kitchen with a strange little smile the whole time. I don’t think she even knew what had happened.”

“She knew.” Cinda looked over at him. He shrugged. “I saw her a few days later, the day the bomb got put under my car. She knew.”

“Well. I never do know what she understands and what goes past her. She’s on so much medication all the time. Her spells come faster and stay longer these days. Doctors say she needs to be hospitalized, but Uncle Colin keeps bringing her home. It irritates my grandfather to no end.”

Which is probably why Colin kept bringing her home.
Passive aggressive
, he’d heard it called. Subtle, secret aggression. Defiance. Like Chris. Like Ted so long ago.

“The Tunica police have issued arrest warrants for Beau and Rafe,” he said when it seemed like she expected him to say something. “Guess if they ever find them, they’ll go to jail for life this time. Attempted murder.”

“Your own stepbrothers tried to kill you. Aren’t there any normal families that we know?”

“Define normal.”

She laughed. “God, I used to think my family was fairly normal. Now I know we’re just as screwed up as everybody else.”

“Welcome to the majority.”

“Do you ever think how it might have been if your father had lived, Chantry? I mean, if your mother hadn’t married Rainey?”

“I used to. Not so much anymore.” That was a lie. He did think about it, even when he didn’t mean to. Sometimes he still had that dream he’d had as a kid that his father was alive and had come back for them. Mama was with him, and they were both laughing and happy, and said they were so proud of him and Mikey and that they’d never stopped loving them. But the dreams were fragmented, irrational, looping off in crazy directions at times. Like life.

Mikey called him the first week in December, wanting to know when he’d be home for Christmas.

“I’m skipping it this year,” Chantry said, and knew from the sudden silence that it wasn’t the answer Mikey wanted to hear. He waited, and in a minute Mikey cleared his throat.

“You missed my birthday. You should come home for Christmas, Chantry.”

“What’s the difference between this Christmas and every other Christmas? I’ll feel like the odd man out as always, while everybody’s happy and talking about shopping and turkeys and hams and trees, and all I want to do is just get the hell out of there.”

“You’re family. We want you here. We need you here.”

He closed his eyes. There it was. Familial guilt. Emotional entanglement. Useless. Devastating. He wanted to stay far away from it.

“I promised Doc I’d do clinic duty for him so he could be with his family. He’s got kids. I don’t.”

“You’ve got me.”

“You’re not my kid.”

“Aren’t I? You’re all I remember. I don’t remember Mama, don’t want to recall Papa. You and Shadow are all I’ve got left of my childhood. The only good things except for Grandmama and Grandpa. But they weren’t always there for me. You were. I want you to come home, Chantry. I need you here.”

“I can’t, Mikey. Maybe after Christmas I can get a few days away. I’ve got my final exam in January, and there’re still things I have to study.”

He felt guilty for a while after they hung up, but it didn’t change his mind. He felt the need to stay close to Cane Creek and Cinda right now. And he knew that even though Quinton hadn’t tried anything else since the bomb under his car, he was just biding his time and waiting. Like the toad waiting on passing flies that Rainey had likened him to so long ago. Sit still and wait, and soon enough, flies might forget the toad was there. Then it would all be over.

After a few weeks of intense scrutiny, and a half-hearted dragging of the river bottoms had produced no body, the furor over Ted Quinton had died down. It was helped along by a letter sent to the editor of the Commercial Appeal up in Memphis, signed by Theodore R. Quinton, saying the rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Just the kind of thing folks loved to read, chuckle, and say they’d known all along. While Chantry wasn’t convinced, and the police relegated their investigation to the background, Quinton hadn’t forgotten it, he was sure. He’d probably been busy covering his tracks. And waiting for the next mistake or lapse in judgment.

“Beware the fury of a patient man,” he’d always heard, and he knew it to be true.

Herky showed up at his door on Christmas Eve morning, a clumsily wrapped gift in one hand, and the end to Spot’s leash in his other. It was a cold day, the wind wet and coming in from the west over the river, blanketing Cane Creek in a fine mist.

“Got this for you, Chantry,” Herky said, grinning. “It’s a present.”

Chantry let him in, and Spot followed. He’d grown into a nice sized dog now, with gangly legs and a constantly wagging tail.

“Do you like my coat, Chantry?” Herky turned to model a sleek leather coat that fit him perfectly. It looked new. “Miss Cinda gived it to me for Christmas. Said a man with a fine dog like Spot needs a nice coat.”

That sounded like something Cinda would do. He nodded. “It’s a good coat. Bet it’s warm, too.”

“Yep. Fleece lined. Here. Bought you this. Wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have Spot. I know what you told me, but you was the one took me out there to get him back.”

“Thanks.” Chantry took the gift Herky held out. It was something bulky wrapped just in colored Christmas paper and with bright red string tied around it. He unwrapped it, and looked in surprise at the ceramic figurine of a shark with wide open jaws. It was painted gray and white, and the water that held it up was a bright blue. Sharp teeth filled the gaping mouth.

“Got it at the dollar store,” Herky said. “I thought it’d be something you’d like. I don’ know why.”

“I do like it. It’s just what I need.” Chantry went and set it carefully on the mantel over the fireplace. Herky watched with a pleased smile.

They talked for a little while, mostly about Spot, and then Herky left after Chantry gave the dog a gift he’d got for him, a rubber Kong to chew on. It was the only shopping he’d done, and he wouldn’t have done that if a salesman hadn’t come in to the clinic.

He spent the rest of the day messing around the house, cleaning up a little, getting stuff ready for Cinda to come over that night. She always went to a Christmas Eve party at her grandfather’s, but had promised to spend the night with Chantry. It’d be their first real Christmas together. He had steaks thawed, and a bottle of good wine on the counter.

Cinda was late getting there, and he could tell when she walked in the door that something had upset her. Her face had that closed-in look she always got when she tried to keep stuff from him. He took her coat and hung it up.

“So what happened?”

“Why do you think something happened?”

“You don’t have to talk about it. Here. I poured you some wine when I heard your car.”

He gave her a glass of red wine, watched as she walked over to the fireplace. A cedar log burned, scenting the air. He didn’t have a tree, but he’d put some pine boughs over the door just because he thought they looked nice and smelled good. A tiny sprig of mistletoe nestled in the greenery, tied with a red ribbon.

“Granddad and I had an argument.” Cinda said it more to the burning log than him, but he knew she wanted to talk about it. “He suggested that Herky be put into a home. Of course, that was after he’d already said Chris had been written out of his will and was dead to him, so you can imagine the festive mood we were all in. And I think Aunt Laura is crazy. Certifiable. She kept rambling on about things that made no sense at all. Uncle Colin tried to hush her, but Granddad still lost patience. It was a nightmare.”

“Merry fucking Christmas.” Chantry held up his wine in a salute when she turned to look at him in surprise, then she laughed. He grinned. “Welcome to my world. I used to hate Christmas. Rainey always got drunk and broke something, the law got called, and Mikey and I waited for a no-show Santa under our bed. A regular Hallmark holiday.”

“So for you, this is all peace and happiness.”

“Something like that. So what put a bee in the old man’s bonnet about Herky?”

“I have no idea. He just told me I needed to be careful around him, that he wasn’t right in the head. Like Laura.”

Chantry thought about that. Quinton would do anything to get at him, and he must know it’d infuriate Chantry if he institutionalized Herky. But he didn’t say anything, just let it go for the moment. Cinda was already upset, and there wasn’t anything he could do right now about Herky.

“He’s just talking,” was all he said, and asked if she’d already eaten.

“Not a bite. Who could eat with all that going on? I imagine the caterers will have a ton of food to take home with them after Christmas. I’ll be damned if I go back over there any time soon.”

“Suits the hell out of me. Kick off your shoes, get comfortable, and put on a movie. Steaks will be done soon.”

“Heavenly.” She curled up on the couch, pulled the combs from her hair and did that female thing of pulling her bra out of her sleeve without taking off her blouse. He never had figured out how women did that so easy when it took him ages to even find the snaps.

After they ate and had watched
Miracle on 34
^th
Street
, the old one that was in black and white and so much better than any other version, he lured Cinda under the mistletoe and kissed her. She melted into him, and just as he was thinking this was really the best way to spend a holiday, she whispered, “Merry fucking Christmas.”

Oh yeah. An apt description for what happened next.