The Fountain of Infinite Wishes (Dare River Book 5) (14 page)

Lenore had been smart to warn them not to wander around in her home. If she hadn’t…well, he would have gone on a little tour. He still planned to use the bathroom as a ruse to look around, especially if she chose not to be forthcoming.

He poured the rest of the tea and took the remaining glasses outside. Lenore was sitting on a rusted-out glider seat. J.P. had taken the patio chair next to her and was engaging her in small talk in that easygoing way of his. Vander liked him a lot already, and Jake Lassiter was the kind of guy he’d want for backup in an alley. Hopefully, Lenore wouldn’t recognize him as a country music star. He couldn’t be sure the woman wouldn’t ask for money.

As he handed out glasses to those who needed them, he realized there weren’t enough chairs. Jake was standing behind Susannah’s chair, so Vander took a tip from him and stood in the same position behind Shelby. Sadie looked over at him, and he gave her an encouraging smile. The poor woman looked like she wasn’t handling this well.

Lenore was watching everyone with keen, narrowed eyes while she chatted with J.P. about how long she’d been living in the trailer park. She continued to answer his questions for a while, sipping her tea, but when she wiggled on the glider to get more comfortable, Vander suspected she was ready to get down to business.

J.P. must have sensed it as well since he glanced at Vander with studied casualness.

He took the cue. “It won’t surprise you none, Lenore, that your grandchildren have had questions about their daddy and his whereabouts for most of their lives. We were hoping you might shed some light. If it isn’t too difficult for you, ma’am.”

“Why not ask your mama?” she asked, bitterness lacing her tone. “That woman was a know-it-all long before she captured my boy’s heart.”

“As someone who lost a parent at a young age,” Vander decided to share, “I can tell you that sometimes the parent who’s left behind doesn’t like to talk about the past.”

He heard Shelby’s sudden intake of breath, and without considering it, he reached down and squeezed her shoulder before returning his attention to Lenore.
 

“Your mama ran my boy off,” she told the McGuinesses, scratching her sagging belly. “He never would tell me why. Only said he regretted having to leave.”

It was only when Sadie reached for Shelby’s hand that Vander realized he was still cupping his fake girlfriend’s shoulder. He felt her trembling beneath his touch and couldn’t bring himself to pull away. Comforting her was grounding him too. He was more anxious than usual for an interview like this.

“Preston’s the youngest of my three, and he was a good boy. Sure, he raised some hell when he was young, but he was always kinder than his older brother. Virgil would kick a dog if he saw one in the street just for sport. And my girl… She shacks up with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes sniffing around. They take after the sorry man I ran off to marry at fifteen, who left me for a truck stop waitress outside Tulsa. He drove semis for a living until the drink done him in. May God rot his soul.”

Susannah reached back to touch Jake’s hand on her shoulder, and Sadie’s bottom lip was quivering with emotion.

“Pres was the only one who wanted a better life,” Lenore said. “That’s why he packed up the guitar he’d bought in the dime store off Beale Street and used all his savings to go to Nashville.”

J.P. gave her a smile. “I play the guitar, Me-Mother.”

For the first time since they’d arrived, Lenore gave them a smile of her own, and it transformed her face. “I’ll bet you play it good too. You remind me of Pres a good deal, boy. Your sister over there as well. It shakes me some.”

Clearly it shook Shelby too, judging by the way her whole body trembled under his hand. He found himself rubbing her shoulder to calm her.

“I was too young to remember much when Daddy left,” J.P. continued. “We’ve all lived with a lot of questions, so we’re grateful for anything you can tell us. Do you know where he is?”

She sighed. “I haven’t seen that boy since Virgil’s funeral, and that’s going on two years this September.”

“So, he’s alive then?” Sadie shot out, tears immediately filling her eyes.

“Well, of course he is, girl,” Lenore said harshly, shaking her head. “Didn’t I just say that?”

Vander watched the rest of the McGuiness children carefully. J.P. seemed to lower his head as if to say a prayer of thanks. Susannah gave an audible sniff while Shelby’s frame started to shudder more violently. When she reached back and grabbed his hand, he clenched it hard.
You’re okay,
he wanted to tell her, but stroked her back with his other hand instead. She leaned back into his touch, and he found his chest constricting in response.
 

“Land sakes,” Lenore continued. “Pres is too sweet for the Good Lord to take him so early. Say whatever you want about how mean and ornery my boy Virgil was, but he was still my son. It’s hard for a woman to lose her child.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” J.P. was able to say after raising his head. He put a gentle hand on her arm. “Where was Daddy living when you saw him last?”

Lenore swatted a mosquito that landed on her face. “A small town outside Alamo. Not the one in Texas. But here in Tennessee. I can’t recall the name. My boy has shied away from big cities after he lost all his dreams in Nashville. They never appreciated his talent out there.”

“I wish I could have heard him sing,” Shelby said, entering the conversation, which Vander thought was brave.

“He had a voice like a fallen angel,” Lenore said a bit wistfully. “It wasn’t right, him not getting his break.”

“No, it wasn’t,” J.P. said. “Do you know if Daddy’s still near Alamo?”

Vander had to give J.P. points for circling back to the questions they needed answered. It was exactly what he would have done.

“No,” she said, scratching her belly again. “He doesn’t like to stay in a place too long. I told him to send me a Christmas card at least. I’m his mama, after all. It’s his Christian duty to be good to me.”

Vander expected Lenore only used the Bible when it suited her needs. “Do you have his last Christmas card by chance? It would have the postal stamp on it.”

“It’s in my bedside drawer,” Lenore said. “Didn’t say much, but then again, my boy was always short on words. Except for his music. That’s when he really spoke his mind.”

Susannah looked over her shoulder at Jake. Vander hoped they would remain silent about him being a singer. Lenore might be softening, but they had a ways to go before he’d trust her with the full truth about anything.

“I don’t want to rummage through your things, ma’am,” Vander told her, taking a step forward. Shelby tightened her grip on him before letting go. He found himself oddly bereft. “But I’d be happy to bring the drawer out to you if that would help you some.”

“So long as you can put the drawer back before you go,” the woman said. “What’s your mama doing now? How long did it take her to find another man to replace my boy?”

Vander stopped partway to the back door and turned around. He could sense the danger in the air. Hearing that Louisa McGuiness had divorced her husband on the grounds of desertion would only rile the older woman up.

“It took Mama a mighty long time, you’ll be happy to hear,” J.P. said quietly.
 

Lenore’s penciled-in brows rose. “I’d be happier hearing she found no one. There was no man better than my boy, and she cut him down to size, or he’d have never have left y’all.”

“Mama isn’t—”

“What Sadie was starting to say, Me-Mother, is that Mama wasn’t happy for a long spell after Daddy left us,” J.P. said diplomatically. “It broke all our hearts.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lenore said with a sigh, patting his hand. “It was terrible all around, for you children and my boy. I’m also sorry I never visited y’all. After my boy’s wedding, there were words, but that’s no excuse. It’s…difficult for me to travel.”

How long has she been morbidly obese?
Vander wondered. Once again, he found himself feeling sorry for her.

“Are you going to get that drawer or do you intend to keep gawking, Toby?” Lenore finally spat at him.

He gave her a flirtatious wink since he suspected no one treated her with much charm these days. “I’m going, ma’am.”

As he was opening the door, he heard Lenore say, “That man of yours could charm the pants off a snake, Shelby.”

They shared a long look, and Vander felt acutely aware of the steady beating of his heart.

“And he probably has,” Shelby answered easily, making Lenore laugh.

Her loud gusts of laughter followed Vander into the house, and he found himself smiling in spite of everything. The rest of the trailer wasn’t much to write home about, and it was as filthy as the den and the kitchen. Her mattress sunk down in the middle, and the smell of urine hung in the air. The lamp on the nightstand had a dusty, stained shade, and he expected all of the furniture was from a thrift shop.
 

There was a faded photo on Lenore’s dresser of her with three young children. While she looked completely different—large, sure, but in the way some people called curvaceous—she didn’t look happy. Heck, no one in the picture looked happy. And the worthless man she’d married wasn’t in the photo, he noted. He wondered when he’d abandoned the family. In so many of his cases, children made the exact same mistakes their parents had made before them. Seemed the McGuiness family was no different, but from what he had seen of the new generation, that pattern had been forever broken. None of these adults would abandon their families. It gave him hope.

He pulled out the drawer, noting it was stuffed with cream-filled cakes and rock candy. Lenore had already lost a few teeth, and it occurred to him that diabetes might have given her those bruises on her ankles. Well, it wasn’t his concern. He was affected enough as it was. Taking the drawer, he headed back to join the others.

When he came through the door, Lenore was smiling as J.P. described his recent wedding and the two children he felt blessed to raise as his own.

“What about you, girl?” Lenore asked, turning to Susannah. “How long have y’all been married?”

Jake smiled. “Just a couple of months. Best months of my life.”

“You’re lucky,” Lenore told Susannah. “And Shelby? When is that devil over there going to put a ring on your finger? Boy, don’t just stand there with my treasures in your hand. Bring them over to me.”

Shelby glanced at him as he made his way to Lenore. Clearly she didn’t know how to answer, and who could blame her? He made himself smile at Shelby and punctuated it with a saucy wink.

“I’m still working on convincing her I’m good enough,” he told Lenore in his most honeyed Southern drawl.

He gave another wink, this time directed at Lenore. When he set the drawer on her lap, she slapped his hand. “You’re a devil, through and through.”

“You’re going to have to work a lot harder to convince me to be with you forever, Toby,” Shelby said in one of those sugary drawls she’d perfected, the kind that drove him wild. “I have pretty high standards.”

Vander’s brows rose, and he couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll keep that in mind, honey.”

He knew they were flirting a little too easily, and from the intent way Sadie was watching them, it hadn’t gone unnoticed.
This is just a job
, he reminded himself. But it was getting harder and harder to believe that.

Resuming his position behind Shelby’s chair, he returned his attention to the group. J.P. was looking at him, and he had to wonder whether he’d noticed the same thing as Sadie. When Shelby didn’t reach for one of the hands he put on her shoulder like she had before, he suspected her siblings had noticed. Even so, he kept his hands where they were.

“This is from Pres,” Lenore said, pulling out an envelope wrinkled from many openings. “I always keep his cards together so I won’t lose them. It’s…my only connection to him. I don’t have a phone, and I have a feeling Pres don’t live in a place that has one either. He’s been down on his luck most of his life. I wish….I could do more for him.”

Vander watched tears fill Sadie’s eyes. “We’ll do what we can for him, Me-Mother,” Sadie said. “If and when we find him.”

“The postal stamp says Haines,” Lenore said. “I wish my boy would come visit, but the bus doesn’t get out this far. I have trouble driving, so it’s near impossible for us to see each other.”

Vander filed away those details. So Preston didn’t have a car. Vander expected he was using a fake name now, but perhaps he also stuck to small towns because they were cheaper and walkable. Sure, big cities had public transportation, but they could be expensive. Plus, Lenore had said Preston didn’t like city life.

“I don’t know that town offhand,” J.P. said, “but we’ll look it up.”

Lenore pressed the letter to her ample chest. “When you find my boy, will you tell him I miss him? That we’re due a visit?”

“Of course, we will,” J.P. said, folding his hand over hers. “We’ll also write you here and let you know what happens.”

Vander knew he meant that and wondered if there would be any more communication between this group after today.

“I’d like that,” Lenore said. “Would you…tell me a little more about yourselves? I feel so ashamed this is the first time I’ve laid eyes on you. And…and I was so ugly to y’all earlier. You were strangers, and there’s still a lot of bad blood in me from my time with your mama.”