End Times (18 page)

After a while she slipped out a side door and into the cemetery, where the sun still shone relentlessly on the headstones. The rows were straight and the grass was freshly mowed, yet the headstones stuck out at odd angles and a few trees poked their way up around the perimeter, throwing welcome shade on the hot afternoon. She picked an aisle at random and wandered down it, reading the names: Peyton, Varley, LaClaire, Johnston.

She stopped at a small gravestone, calculating the age of the deceased.
Jonah Peyton, 1923–31. Now you shall sing among the angels
, it read. Her hands went clammy: Jonah Peyton must have been one of her relatives, and he’d been only eight years old when he died.

“Hey.” It was Owen, his voice apologetic. “Sorry to sneak up on you—I just saw you leave, and I wanted to . . .”

“It’s okay.” She felt herself blushing, remembering her harsh words before she hurried away from the truck. She could see why Owen might have thought she’d overreacted. To any other girl, a kiss was just a kiss. To her, it was an uncrossable divide.

“Can I walk with you?”

She nodded, biting her lip to keep the blaze from rising to her cheeks, and Owen fell in step beside her. As they made their slow way down the row, she became unbearably conscious of the few inches of space between their shoulders. It shimmered in the heat, galvanized like an electrical charge.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” he began. “I guess I just got carried away. I heard people respond that way to death sometimes.”

“What way?”

“You know.” Owen ducked his head, sending a wave of black hair falling over one eye. “Physically. It’s almost, like, a way to refute death.”

“Is that all you were doing? Trying to refute death?”

He paused at the end of the row, meeting her eyes. “Is that all you wanted me to be doing?”

She blinked hard. If that was the only reason Owen had kissed her, then it meant he didn’t have any feelings for her. He was just being a guy, doing what humans do. As long as he promised not to do it again, she was safe around him. She wouldn’t have to shut him out completely, the way she had with every man who tried to take advantage of her in her past.

“Yes,” she said firmly.

He shrugged. “Then that’s all it was.”

“Good.” The word came out sounding hollow.

They reached the end of the row, and she ducked into the shade of an oak tree, leaning against the trunk and letting the spread of branches provide a welcome respite from the blazing sun. “I’m glad we can be friends.”

“Me too.” He joined her under the tree, their bare arms brushing casually as the heat flattened them against the trunk. The tiny hairs on her skin stood at attention, straining toward his touch. She ignored them. “I could use all the friends I can get right about now,” he said with a small laugh.

She nodded. “I’m kind of surprised you want to stay here, after everything. You’re not exactly the most popular guy in town right now.”

“I don’t really care about that.” Owen tilted his head so their faces were only inches apart. “There are motocross guys all over America who hate my guts. I’m used to it. The weird thing is, I feel like I’m
supposed
to be here. Even after what happened to Trey, I don’t think I can leave.”

He wondered if he should tell her about the gnawing ache that had sent him prowling the great American West, the voice in his dreams that had whispered
find the vein
until the day his truck pulled into Elmer’s Gas ’n’ Grocery and he saw her face for the first time.

But Daphne was nodding slowly. “I know what you mean,” she said. “When I left Detroit, this was the only place I wanted to come. I didn’t really feel okay until I got here.”

“And then you struck oil,” he teased. He slipped his hands into his pockets, making his arm rub against hers.

“How many times do I have to say it?
I
didn’t strike oil,” she corrected him. “It was all Uncle Floyd. I just happened to be there.”

“You sure? I overheard some people in there talking about it.” Owen gestured toward the funeral parlor. “They think you’re pretty special—maybe even blessed.” His tone was gentle, joking.

“People around here take Pastor Ted a little too seriously,” she replied. “I think he’s been looking for something to call a sign from God since way before I came around.”

“You may be right,” Owen said after a silence. She could smell the clean, minty scent of his shampoo and the hint of metal and motor oil that she guessed must live in the underlayers of his skin. “About Pastor Ted and all that. But I’ve got to say, when I heard people in there talking about you?” He squinted at her. “I kinda knew what they meant.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are different,” he said, nudging her. “Special, or whatever. Maybe it’s why I got carried away the other night.”

Daphne frowned, shaking her head. “You don’t even know me—”

“There you are!” a voice called from the direction of the funeral home.

Daphne’s head snapped up. A dark, diaphanous shape was floating down the funeral parlor stairs.

“I can’t get over the food here,” Luna laughed, coming closer. She carried a plate of the green Jell-O salad that elderly Eunice made for every church gathering; maraschino cherries and chunks of canned peaches clung to the inside as the mound jiggled violently. “It’s total art.”

Luna glided through the graveyard like a circus act, impervious to the shadowy presence of the dead. The wilting heat made her glitter even brighter, her body flowing and languid in the sultry afternoon.

“Ready to go?” She placed a slender hand on Owen’s shoulder. “If we split now, we can see if there’s an air conditioner for sale anywhere in this town.”

Owen looked at Daphne almost apologetically. “We’re going crazy in this heat,” he explained.

“Crazy,” Luna repeated emphatically, steering Owen toward the parking lot.

He locked eyes with Daphne as Luna carted him off. “See you at work tomorrow?”

Daphne shrugged. “Okay,” she murmured.

He looked back at her as Luna led him away.

“Wish us luck!” Luna called.

Daphne felt suddenly exhausted as she watched them leave, two dark panthers loping away through the afternoon. Loose ends of thoughts tangled in her brain, unwilling to tie themselves into neat little knots—Trey’s death, Owen’s kiss, Luna’s strut, the oil that turned to blood on Owen’s hand, Doug’s anger, Owen’s feeling that he was meant to be here and the eerie way it echoed her own. Everything kept coming back to Owen, no matter how hard she tried to push him out of her mind. And it seemed like instead of escaping the trouble she’d found in Detroit, she was finding even more in sleepy Carbon County.

She let her thoughts pull her down until she was sitting with her back against the oak tree’s solid trunk, sweat cooling on her forehead in the shade. Soon she’d get up and go back to the funeral parlor, ready to comfort Janie and make small talk with Karen’s friends, ready to face a town that had somehow made her into something she wasn’t. But for now, for just a few minutes longer, she was happy to stay quiet and unseen, a shadow among the dead.

AFTER the funeral, summer swept through Carbon County like a traveling carnival, turning the dry brown grass in front of the Peytons’ trailer a garish green. Cotton candy–colored blooms sprouted on the cherry trees in the town square, where birds cawed like midway barkers hawking plastic jewelry and overstuffed toys, and the townspeople hung out brightly striped awnings to shade their front doors.

A week into the heat wave, it was steamy even inside the Peytons’ trailer, and the strawberry ice pops that Janie craved constantly melted faster than she could eat them, leaving her fingers sticky and unnaturally red.

“You look like you stabbed a clown,” Daphne joked, coming across her cousin slurping the last viscous dregs off the bottom of the wrapper.

“Seriously, if a clown messed with me right now, I might.” Janie waddled to the sink, running cool water over her hands. “You try being seven months pregnant in a heat wave.”

A strong and insistent knock sounded at the front door, rattling the trailer on its cinderblock risers.

“Ugh, what now?” Janie groaned. “Can you grab it? It’s probably someone from the rig looking for Dad.”

Daphne opened the door, expecting to find Dale or one of her coworkers. Instead, she came face to face with the Varleys.

“Is Floyd around?” Vince asked. A man with thin-rimmed glasses and oatmeal-colored hair stood between him and Deirdre, wearing a camel-colored suit and carrying a briefcase.

“He’s down at the rig.” Something about the man in the suit made Daphne uneasy—he reminded her of the colorless, humorless drones carrying briefcases through the courthouse halls during her trial, his suit too clean and pressed for Carbon County’s casual, backcountry ways. “I can go get him if you want.”

“Great,” Vince Varley said coolly. “In the meantime, how about letting us in? It’s hot as a bull’s nuts out here.”

Daphne called for Janie and Karen as they filed past her, Deirdre sniffing with distaste at the trailer’s decor.

“Oh!” Karen came running from the bedroom, where she’d been folding laundry. “Vince and Deirdre, what a pleasant surprise! I wish you’d called, the place is a mess, but come on in. Can I make you some lemonade?”

As they settled into the living room, Daphne ran down to the rig to fetch Uncle Floyd. By the time they returned, the Varleys had arranged themselves around the coffee table and were sipping Crystal Light from gas station glasses, the man in the suit still clutching his briefcase and Deirdre fanning herself with Karen’s copy of
Good Housekeeping
magazine.

“Vince, Deirdre, a pleasure to see you!” Floyd Peyton’s T-shirt was streaked with dust and sweat, his hair standing out in all directions. He turned to the man in the camel-colored suit. “And you are—?”

“Elbert Benton, attorney at law.” He rose and offered his hand.

“Hope you don’t mind if I wash up before I shake—I’ve been going over the drill procedures all morning.” Floyd poured dish soap over his hands and splashed them under the faucet, drying them on a dish towel before pumping the lawyer’s hand.

“I have some papers for you to sign regarding the oil.” Elbert Benton snapped open his briefcase. “All boilerplate, of course—just to make your agreement with my client official.”

“Vince always did stick by his paperwork,” Floyd said with a laugh. He thumbed through the thick pile of papers. “There sure is a lot in here.”

Elbert Benton cleared his throat. “Let me paraphrase,” he said.

Vince and Deirdre leaned forward hungrily. From the kitchen, where she’d fixed herself a glass of Crystal Light, Daphne could sense how eager they were for Floyd to sign.

“It basically just says that you relinquish half the profits of the rig to the Varleys here—everything else is just a bunch of legalese.”

“Just like you said after church the other week,” Vince interjected quickly. “Just like we shook on.”

“Right.” Floyd reached for the pen Elbert Benton proffered. “Vince, I know you care about Carbon County as much as I do, so I’m sure you’ll be putting a pretty penny back into our community. It wouldn’t be right to keep all that for yourself while the town flounders.”

“Sure.” Vince nodded. “Of course. So you’ll sign?”

“Well.” Floyd grinned. “I am a man of my word.” He poised the pen over the paper, ready to sign.

The sickly-sweet lemonade seared Daphne’s throat as she flashed back to the tense days before her trial. If there was one thing her court-appointed lawyer had taught her, it was to be careful what you signed.
If you want to win this thing,
he’d said, zipping into her cell with a cup of lukewarm tomato soup in one hand and an overflowing case file in the other,
you won’t sign, say, or even
think
anything without asking me first. Someone puts a paper in front of you, don’t even pick up a pen until I give you the okay.

“I need you to sign a few places,” Elbert Benton said. “First, here . . .”

He pointed at a large black
X
. Floyd’s pen hovered over it.

Daphne knew it wasn’t her place to tell Uncle Floyd what to do, but he’d never been through the legal system the way she had. She couldn’t just let him sign something he hadn’t even read himself, let alone shared with an attorney of his own—especially something from people as slimy as the Varleys. The Peytons had done so much for her, even as she was covering up the seamy details of her past. The least she could do was make sure they weren’t taken advantage of.

She scanned the room. Vince and Deirdre were on the edges of their seats, excitement and greed dancing in their eyes. Janie simply looked hot and bored, disappointed that the Varleys had shown up without Doug. Only Aunt Karen was frowning, her mouth puckered with concern.

Daphne looked around for a distraction—anything she could say or do to prolong the moment, to keep Floyd from signing the papers. Her eyes landed on the pitcher of Crystal Light sweating on the counter. “Would anyone like some more lemonade?” she practically yelped.