Jilted (8 page)

Clyde dropped by Lynda's house after work, hoping he could get things straightened up in her yard before it got too dark. Her place had wind damage from the storm, but the house would fall down around her before she'd ask for help—from anyone other than Ansel. Clyde figured he was doing them both a favor.

Two clay flowerpots had blown off the porch and now lay broken on the ground, their long-dead plants spilling out like unearthed corpses. Clyde picked up the pieces and dumped them in the trash barrel under the carport, then took an ax to the fallen limbs of the mesquite tree. From the looks of it, the largest one had missed Lynda's front window by only a few inches.

He worked quickly, and when she pulled up, he was piling the last of the brush at the side of the house.

“I could have done that myself.” She slammed the door of her little hatchback so hard, Clyde thought it might have dented. He laughed to himself. Ansel had kept that car running for years. Wouldn't it be funny if she ruined it with a tantrum?

“No need to get riled up.” He reached for his ax. “I'll be on my way.”

“You'd best come in and get a drink of water first.”

Clyde smiled. She'd have to do more than slam the car door if she wanted him to believe she was angry. “You hear about that tornado?” he asked.

“A hundred times. Every single detail.” She rolled her eyes. “It touched down in Slaton. Minimal damage. Metal roof ripped off the feed store. Forty-five years since the F5 hit Lubbock.” She paused as she unlocked the front door. “Though it seems like yesterday to Old Man Guthrie, as told to Sophie Snodgrass and the ladies' quilting club that met at the diner for their after-piecin' piece of pie. Lemon meringue.”

“Long day?”

“Not too bad.” Her eyebrows quivered. “I shouldn't complain though, should I?”

He hadn't meant the comment as an accusation, so he didn't answer. He followed her into the kitchen, where he folded himself into a maple dining chair and watched her fetch him a glass of ice water.

“You hungry?” she asked.

“Sure. Pork chops and carrots?”

“Frozen pizza and ranch dressing.”

He chuckled. “I like you better at Dixie's.”

“Everyone does.” She opened the freezer and removed a Tombstone pizza, then flipped on the oven. “I hate cooking.”

Clyde fought to keep his laughter buried in his chest. Lynda had hated cooking ever since her ninth-grade homemaking class when she burned her German chocolate cake. “Why do you cook for Dixie?”

“It pays more than waitressing.” She ripped away the plastic shrink-wrap, tossed the pizza on the oven rack, and twisted the timer. “It's different at the diner, though. I don't have to think about it, or care. The customer orders a pork chop, and all I have to do is throw it on the grill, then slap it on a plate. There's no planning or shopping or recipe hunting. It's mindless.”

“It's a job.” He hated that for her, though he had suspected as much.

“It's a job,” she said softly.

Clyde's gaze fell to the table, where he noticed a few folded papers. He reached for them and opened the first. It was a letter, and he immediately felt sick to his stomach. “Why is Neil Blaylock sending you—”

She crossed the room and snatched the papers away from him. “It's nothing. Just something I found cleaning out a closet.” She tossed them in the plastic trash can near the sink and rested her hands on the counter. “How tall are you?”

So she didn't want to talk about her old mail. His eyes briefly skimmed the ceiling. “Why?”

“I was just thinking you're enormous, and I wondered how enormous you actually are.”

He rubbed the back of his thumb along the seam of his jeans. “Maybe six and a half.”

“Six feet, six inches?”

“Last time they measured.”

She opened the fridge and snatched the ranch dressing from the door, then thunked it on the table in front of him, glaring as though he had said a curse word. “I don't like the way you talk.
They
measured you.
They
weighed you.
They
cut your hair.” Her shoulders shivered. “It's like they owned you or something.”

He looked through the back-door window and noticed the neighbor's hound in the glow of their porch light, loping from one end of the chain-link barrier to the other. “That's because they did.” He lowered his head. For a fact, the State of Texas had owned him, but he was doing everything in his power to be different now. Lynda didn't get it.

She had her back to him as she washed her breakfast dishes at the sink, one knee bent. He studied her. She didn't have to do the dishes while the pizza cooked. She could've sat down and talked to him for ten minutes, but there seemed to be a shadow of doubt over her actions—slamming the car door, misunderstanding his comments, washing dishes when she normally would've let them pile up—as if the two of them had become strangers at Picnic Hollow. As if she was sorry it had happened.

A surge of panic swelled through him, and he stood almost without thinking, driven by the overwhelming urge to make sure she knew him. To tell her he was different now, and that in the months and years ahead of them, he would be even more different. He walked up behind her, and when she turned, her brow wrinkled.

“What?”

“
They
don't tell me what to do anymore,” he said quietly, afraid that if he spoke louder, she would startle like a deer and run away. “I do what I want.”

Her eyes widened but then slowly narrowed. “And just what is it you want?”

“You.” He shrugged.

“Me?”

Her eyes begged for something—maybe reassurance—but he didn't know the words to explain the whirlwind of thoughts thrashing through his mind. He answered by bending down and gently pressing his mouth against hers, trapping her between his arms as he reached behind her to grip the edge of the sink. He didn't move, couldn't move. He felt frozen in fear of what he might lose and what he might never have.

Hesitantly she moved her mouth against his and laid her palms on his chest. Clyde focused on the sensation. Few people ever touched him, and the pressure of her lips and hands sent his thoughts racing. He pulled back, looking into her eyes before he took a step away.

Her lips were parted as though he had interrupted her mid­sentence, but then the oven timer buzzed. “Go back over there, you.” She busied herself with their dinner and with not looking at him. After a few minutes, she slipped into a chair and put pizza slices on two paper plates. He could tell she was thinking about that kiss, and Clyde got the feeling she hadn't been all that pleased.

He bowed his head to pray and laid his hand palm up on the table, hoping she would hold it, but after three empty seconds, he began without her. He intended to say a short prayer for the food, but somehow he drifted over to Ansel's health and then to Velma's grief. And he tacked on a bit about Dodd and Ruthie wanting a baby. He was almost to the
amen
when she slipped her tiny hand in his, and then he considered praying for an hour, just so he could feel her skin. Instead, he gave her fingers a squeeze and reached for a napkin.

She nibbled a slice of pizza but wouldn't look at him, and he realized that if he wanted to know what she was thinking, he was going to have to pull it out of her. “Lyn? Is it all right that I kissed you?”

“I … I think so.”

“But?”

She set her pizza on her plate, then watched it as though it might fly away. “Maybe not just yet,” she whispered. “I don't know about it all.”

She didn't know about it all. She didn't know about him. “I understand.” He grabbed the ranch dressing, removed the cap, and squirted a blob of dressing on his plate. “No need to rush things.”

“Can we try it again later?”

Her last six words erased the doom created by the others, and he released a shallow breath. “Sorry, but this is all sort of new to me.”

She took a bite, but then her chewing slowed, and after she swallowed, her eyes bored into his. “You … haven't kissed many women.”

His face warmed as though the sun hung from the ceiling directly above the table, and under his shirt, a drop of sweat trickled from his armpit down to his waist. “Just the one.”

“Susan.” She sounded as if she might pull every hair from Susan's big blonde hairdo, if given the chance.

Clyde didn't understand why they had to talk about it. He could see Lynda was gradually figuring things out in her head, picking up the bread crumbs he had left for her to follow, finding her way to the truth of his past. She had a question in her eyes,
the question
, but instead of asking it, she dropped her gaze to somewhere near his heart.

He answered her anyway. “It was only the one time with me and her.” He cleared his throat. “And it was … quick.”

Clyde ran the tip of his pizza through the dressing, then shoved it into his mouth, tearing off a portion large enough to occupy his tongue with something other than talk. There had already been enough conversation to last him for weeks, and it had done nothing but put them both on edge.

When he sneaked another glance at her, he knew she was just as scared as he was. Afraid of having old memories dredged up from the bottom of a deep well. Afraid of not being able to forget the past. Afraid of not being able to move forward.

He almost wished he hadn't kissed her.

But not quite.

“Lynda, hush. I can't hear.” Dixie leaned through the pass-through window, pretending to count open tables, but I knew the truth. She was eavesdropping on a group of boys—strangers to Trapp—who had shoved three tables together and pulled up extra chairs.

I raised my eyebrows questioningly.

“Boy Scout troop from Lubbock,” Dixie whispered. “They're helping the Rangers out at the lake.”

“Those bones?”

“Yep. I heard the kids talking about it. They form a line, walking four feet apart, and search every square inch of land.”

We studied the teenagers as we worked the grill, both of us trying to pick out tidbits of information, but their talk had shifted from work to dirty jokes.

I moved away from the window and dropped an order of fried zucchini into hot oil. “Lake Alan Henry is eleven miles long. Finding more bones out there would be like finding a needle in the Grand Canyon.”

Dixie's eyes twinkled. “Girl, go take your break and find out what they're saying.”

“That sounds like work to me, and you don't pay me for breaks.”

“I'll pay you for this one.”

“Deal.”

She nodded toward the dining room, but as I walked away, she seemed to have second thoughts. “Just ten minutes, Lynda!”

Three male Rangers sat at a table near the Scouts, and one of them made eye contact and motioned me over. “Lynda, is it?”

“That's right. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you happened to know the closest liquor store.”

I pointed north. “You passed CJ's on your way into town, back about half a mile.”

“Seems I remember that, now that you mention it.” His skin was tanned except around his eyes, where he had two pale circles from wearing sunglasses.

He leered at me, but I ignored him. “You boys working out at the lake?”

“All day long with nothing to show for it,” a red-haired man, who looked younger than JohnScott, whined from across the table. “I'd rather be working with a real crew than these little kids.”

“Will they likely run tests on those bones,” I asked, “to figure out who it is?”

“Can't.” The young man shrugged. “Not enough DNA left. They're too old.”

“So what are you doing out there now?”

The first man sat up straighter. “At this point, searching for a shallow grave, a few displaced bones, or anything out of the ordinary like—”

Red-Haired Boy interrupted him. “I don't see why they extended the search site and called in all these Boy Scouts, though.” He squinted at the third, silent man before lifting his chin. “In spite of the teeth marks on them bones, no animal would drag a carcass more than twenty yards or so. I've got experience with this sort of thing.”

“It's not that simple.” Sunglass Tan shook his head. “If a mother coyote is hunting for her pups, she might haul their dinner as far as a mile away.”

My stomach turned. “So you'll be around here for a while, I guess.” My last question had less to do with the bones and more to do with when the diner would be back to normal.

“Could be weeks.” Sunglass Tan leaned back in his chair, letting his eyelids close partway. “And we'll be back in here often between now and then.”

Good grief.
“Can I get you boys anything else? Maybe some apple pie?”

“Pie isn't what I had in mind.” He let his gaze slide to my hips. “What time do you get off?”

“Not anytime soon.” I didn't smile. “I'll have the waitress bring your check.”

“Come on, babe, I can wait around.”

“Jim.” The quiet man must have been a foreman. “She said she doesn't get off anytime soon.”

“I might get off, though.”

Jim's comment received a snicker from the redhead. “Bring a friend for me, why don't you.”

“Lynda.” A firm hand gripped my elbow, and I turned to see Hector Chavez with his bushy, black mustache. “Tea?” He waved his glass in front of my face. “Today?”

“Coming right up, Sheriff.” Not only was Hector the sheriff, but he was also a friend of mine from way back in grade school. I knew he hadn't interrupted the conversation simply because he wanted a drink refill. Apparently the Rangers realized that, too.

“You her bodyguard?” The redhead scowled.

“Now, Cory,” Hector said patiently, “I've been working just as much as you, and I need me a refill of sweet tea before we head back out in the heat.”

The two obnoxious Rangers grumbled, but the quiet one gave Hector an apologetic shrug as the sheriff followed me to the counter.

I grabbed the pitcher and sloshed tea into his glass. “I had things under control.”

The Rangers noisily made their way to the cash register, where they paid the waitress, but I forced my gaze to stay on Hector.

“I reckon you did,” he said.

“I'm not a helpless damsel in distress.”

“Nope. For sure, you're not that.” He chuckled.

I squirted the counter with vinegar water from a spray bottle, then wiped it with a cup towel. “Neil used to do and say that sort of thing,” I said. “I guess I got used to it.”

Hector gingerly set his glass down and looked away from me. “Neil Blaylock's a friend of mine, Lynda.”

My spine stiffened.

The sheriff glanced toward the street, where the Boy Scouts congregated on the sidewalk, throwing Skittles into the air and catching them in their mouths. “Yet still …”—Hector pulled a twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and dropped it on the counter next to the register—“sometimes I think that man needs a thrashing.”