The Scent of Rain and Lightning (24 page)

“Dad,” Belle said, sounding worried. “I think we just alienated our best protection.”

Meryl snorted. “The sheriff’s department is no protection for anybody, honey. Too few of them and they’re too far away to do us any good. We’re our own best protection. Always have been, always will be. That’s why we have guns.” He looked at his father-in-law. “I promise you this, sir. I’m an older, wiser lawyer now. Billy will screw up, we’ll get him again, and next time it will stick.”

His mother-in-law appeared in the doorway.

“Who’s setting the table for me?”

It made Jody feel anxious to think about what Billy’s “next time” might be, but none of the rest of them seemed to be worrying about that as she followed them in to supper.

A
S
J
ODY
T
RAILED
her aunt around the table, laying dinner plates down between the silverware that Belle distributed, she said cautiously, “That was kind of rough in there.”

Belle retorted, “This whole situation is rough, don’t you think?”

“I know, but—”

“What in the world have you got on your head?”

Jody reached up a hand and touched the “found” scarf, which she had forgotten she was wearing, having tied it on after she left her own home. “Just a scarf.”

“You must have found it in a trash bin.”

“It’s clean, Aunt Belle.”

Her aunt shook her head at her niece’s fashion sense.

This was how Jody played what she thought of as her obsessive little game without anybody knowing what she was up to. She was waiting for the time when somebody in her family might blurt out, “Your mother had a scarf just like that!”

“Did my mom wear scarves?” she asked.

Her grandmother entered the room just then, followed by Bobby carrying a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and Meryl balancing fried chicken on platters in both hands. Hugh Senior was pulling out his chair at one end of the table, and Chase was in the kitchen fetching the gravy, green beans, and biscuits. The butter, jam, and a bowl of Waldorf salad were already on the table. Belle and Jody were setting the table with the “good stuff,” as Hugh Senior liked to call it. Apart from Thanksgiving and Christmas and other events of note, Annabelle only went formal at her dining table when she thought it might increase the likelihood of keeping her family on their best behavior. “There’s nothing like white linen napkins to keep a man in check,” she liked to advise her granddaughter.

Belle asked her mother, “Did Laurie wear scarves, Mom?”

“Not that I recall, no.”

“What about earrings?” Jody asked them. “Her ears were pierced, right? Did she ever wear those clip-on things?”

“Oh, God no,” Belle said, and laughed. “She wouldn’t have been caught dead—”

She bit her lip.

“Nice,” Chase said sarcastically, hearing her as he came in.

“Oh, Aunt Belle, don’t listen to him. You didn’t say anything wrong.”

“Everybody’s hypersensitive right now,” Meryl said, with a glance at his wife.

“We’ll all feel better after we eat,” Annabelle remarked. She looked around her table, checking things. “Which I believe we’re finally ready to do. We’ll begin with a prayer tonight, Hugh.”

T
HE TABLE SEEMED
both fuller and emptier than usual to Jody that night—fuller with the additions of Chase and Bobby from out of town, but emptier because they’d arrived without any of their kids. Neither was married at the moment, so the table seemed short of wives, too. When Jody was young, she’d loved sitting at the “children’s table”—two card tables jammed together with a spill-proof plastic cover thrown over them—with her cousins.

At Annabelle’s command, any further talk about the day’s events was delayed until dessert and coffee. “I won’t have that man ruining my family’s digestion on top of everything else,” she announced, and so most of supper was a quiet affair, since there wasn’t anything else on their minds. There were long spaces where Jody heard nothing except the scrape of forks on plates and requests to pass the biscuits or some other favorite food. When anyone started to bring up Billy Crosby, Hugh Senior tapped his water glass with his knife to remind them of Annabelle’s decree.

Finally, the supper plates were cleared away and taken to the kitchen and Belle’s apple crisp à la mode was passed around on dessert plates. Jody, surprised she could be so hungry, ate it all right down to the melted vanilla ice cream that she scooped up with her spoon.

“There’s something I have to say,” Meryl announced. He looked over at his father-in-law. “Chase and Bobby and I spent some time in town today, sir, testing the temperature, if you know what I mean, and I would say that it’s hot, very hot. People are upset, they’re scared, and there’s some big talk going around about forcing Billy out of town. Some of it is just silly—egging his house, that kind of thing—but some of it is downright ugly. Setting fire to their house—”

“No!” Annabelle exclaimed, one hand flying to her mouth.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we heard one old boy say.”

“We can’t control what other people choose to do,” Hugh Senior observed.

“No, we can’t, sir, and I’m not suggesting that we try. We can control what we do, however.”

“What does that mean?” Bobby asked, sounding irritated.

“It means that, speaking as your attorney, I want all of you to keep track of everywhere you go and everything you do and who’s there with you, for at least the next few days, until this maybe begins to die down.”

“Alibis?” Belle asked her husband with disbelief.

“Yes, alibis. Chase and Bobby, it might be better for you to go on back to your places sooner rather than later. If somebody shoots Billy Crosby between the eyes or runs him off the road, I want every member of this family to have a cast-iron alibi for that period of time, and I’d particularly like the two of you to be a couple of hundred miles away. I don’t care if all that happens is that somebody eggs his car, I want every member of this family to be able to prove you weren’t holding the empty carton.”

In the moment of fraught stillness that followed, Jody blurted, “I talked to him today.”

They looked at her with puzzled expressions.

“Talked to who, sweetheart?” her grandmother inquired.

Her heart pounding, she said, “Billy Crosby. I met him.”

Amid the outcries of consternation, it was Chase who exclaimed, “What the
hell
have you done?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she defended herself. “I’d just been at Bailey’s and when I was leaving you called on my cell phone, Uncle Chase. I was just standing there talking to you—”

“You hung up on me.”

“No, I dropped my phone because I heard him. And then I saw him.”

When she finished telling them about it, she looked across the table at Meryl. “You said I could ask you anything,” she reminded him.

“Shoot,” he told her.

“Why didn’t they test Billy Crosby’s blood alcohol level?”

Tensely, she waited for his answer.

He smiled wryly. “Because we only had one breath alcohol tester in the entire county and it was broken. Remember that, Chase?” His smile widened. “Some drunk kicked it to death, as I recall.”

“I remember,” Chase said, nodding.

Jody’s grandfather caught her eye and interrupted, impatient to say something. “I don’t want you anywhere near him, ever again.” She wanted to protest that she hadn’t meant to be around him at all, but kept quiet rather than be argumentative, because it wasn’t even the point. The point was his concern for her. She felt like crying out of sheer gratitude at being surrounded by strength and love that made her feel so much safer than she had after meeting Billy Crosby. When she felt Belle’s hand come over hers, she had to blink back tears.

Hugh Senior looked around the table at his family.

“As for the rest of us, we’ll do what Meryl wants us to do.” He gave them a small, grim smile. “It’s clear to me from the looks on your faces that you’d all like to kill Billy Crosby, so we’d better all get alibis.” His gaze rested on his wife’s beautiful face. “Even you, my dear.”

“How dare that man speak to her?” Annabelle looked frightened and worried as she stared across the long table at her husband. “How dare he say a single word to our Jody?”

“That’s the kind of man he is, Mom,” Belle reminded them all.

A
FTER THE DISHES
were put away, Chase joined his niece as she sat alone on the front porch swing listening to music on her iPod and looking up at constellations that couldn’t be seen in any city, but only in places as isolated and dark as the ranch was at night. When he sat down beside her, the swing jolted, rattling the chains that held it to the porch ceiling and breaking the rhythm until he got it going again with a push of one boot heel on the wooden floor.

“How long are you and Uncle Bobby going to be here?”

“Until we don’t have to be.”

“What does that mean?”

He didn’t answer, but lit a cigarette instead.

Jody removed the iPod buds from her ears.

“Why didn’t you bring the boys with you?”

He had three teenage sons whom she loved a lot.

“Because I don’t want them around any of this.”

“Can you ship me away, too?”

“I’d be happy to.”

“I wouldn’t go.”

“There’s a surprise.”

They swung silently for a while. He blew his smoke away from her when Jody waved a hand at it. Sometimes she liked her uncle Chase’s company more than anybody’s—when he was quiet and thoughtful and not bossing her around. She felt safe with him, although she didn’t quite remember why, and she trusted him to make things right. She wished he was a happier man, for his sake. Two wives hadn’t made it so; he seemed to come the closest to it when he was working cattle with his sons. She wished she had known him—or could remember him—when he was young and lighthearted and funny.

“What was my dad like?”

“I’ve told you a million times.”

“I like to hear it.”

He shifted in the swing, making it temporarily slide jarringly from side to side. Jody held onto the armrest on her side until the swing went in the right direction again.

“You like to hear it,” Chase said in his smoke-roughened voice. “And I like to tell it. Hugh-Jay was a big guy, bigger than any of us.” She heard a smile in his voice when he said, “But not nearly as good-looking.”

“You say that every time.”

“Can’t be said too often.” He chuckled, a low masculine rumble of amusement that she loved to hear. “But what he lacked in handsome, he more than made up for in decent.”

“Was he the nicest person you ever knew?”

“I think he was.”

“Nicer than you?”

He laughed. “Well, yeah, but how hard is that?”

Jody giggled. They swung in companionable silence while coyotes called to each other from hill to hill. A single bulb over the barn doors shed the only light at any distance from the house. Jody took solace in the beauty of the evening and pride in her father’s good character.

“What about my mother?”

“Hmm.”

“You always do that, you go ‘hmm’ when I ask about her.”

“Prettiest girl in the county.”

“Was she as nice as my dad?”

Usually Chase answered that by smiling and saying something like, “Nobody could be, but she made a damn nice blueberry pie.” This time he did something different. He stopped the swing with his boot so they were sitting still. Jody’s heart started to beat fast as she got a feeling she was going to hear something he’d never told her before.

“You mother was spoiled and stuck-up and a little mean.”

“What?” She felt shocked, even though she’d long heard allusions to her mother “wanting what she wanted when she wanted it.” But nobody had ever gone this far. “Are you kidding me?”

“I wish I were. But here’s the thing. She was young. If that bastard had given her a chance to live a normal life span, Laurie might have gotten humbled a few times and she might have grown up to be a nicer person. I always thought there must be more to her than what people saw in her because—after all—your father married her. That was the highest recommendation she could get, so I have to put some stock in that, since I put so much stock in him. Most people thought he married her for her looks and she married him for his money—”

“Uncle Chase!”

“But the older I get, the more inclined I am to think he saw something good in her heart.” He laughed, a rueful sound. “Or maybe it’s just that the older I get, the dumber I get.”

“Why are you telling me this?” She felt desperately unhappy to hear it.

“Because it seems as if all kinds of truths are coming out, and you may as well get them all laid out for you.”

She had to fight back tears. “You’re the mean one.”

She heard him sigh. “Don’t you want to know who she really was?”

Jody didn’t answer. Maybe later she would want to know; at this moment it made her sad. In a kind of revenge, she suddenly said, “What if he really didn’t do it?”

“What if who didn’t do what?”

“Billy Crosby. What if he didn’t kill my dad?”

“Where the hell are you getting this?”

It pleased her to have made him angry, too.

“Do you know that Byron George thinks he didn’t do it?”

“Well, then I guess he doesn’t want this family as his customers anymore.”

“Bailey doesn’t think so, either.”

Chase halted the swing again. She saw him turn to stare at her.

“He told me so today,” she said. “He says Billy was too drunk.”

Jody was about to tell Chase about Red Bosch’s opinion, but thought better of doing that; Red should get to tell the family himself, and not have her tattle on him.

“Is this where that question about the drunk test came from at supper tonight?” Chase asked, and then he snapped at her, “Try to remember you’re the victim here, all right?”

“You didn’t bring me up to feel like a victim.”

“No, we didn’t, but maybe you need to feel that now and then, so you can know the deep wrong this very bad man did and how he doesn’t deserve anybody’s sympathy, least of all yours.”

“I’m not sympathetic to him, Uncle Chase.”

“Good. Don’t ever be. And stop this ridiculous talk.”

They sat in a much less comfortable silence then, until Jody got up from the swing. Faking nonchalance, she stretched up her arms, spreading her fingers until their tips seemed to touch the stars.

“Are you coming in?” she asked, her tone chilly.

“No, I’ll stay out here awhile.”

“Uncle Chase?”

“Yeah?”

“What if he doesn’t leave Rose?”

“He’s not going to stay here.”

“How do you know that?”

“Some things are inevitable.”

“But—”

“Go to bed.”

Something in his tone made Jody walk to the screen door and go inside without questioning him any more.

T
HE RANCH TELEPHONE
rang just as Jody was going into the shower. She delayed long enough to hear Bobby call out to his parents from his old bedroom, “Who called so late?” It was only a little after ten, but it had been an exhausting day and they were all worn down.

Her grandfather opened the door to the master bedroom. Standing in the doorway in his pajamas and a robe, he said, “There’s been trouble in town. Some teenagers outside of the Crosby house were throwing rocks and yelling things.”

“Was that the sheriff who just called?” Bobby asked, appearing in the hallway, still fully dressed in his boots, jeans, and shirt.

His father nodded. “You have to give the man credit for calling to let us know, even after the things we said to him.”

“Oh, come on, Dad. He’s just doing his job, which he should have done in the beginning. What did he do about the kids?”

“Warned them off. Put deputies at either end of the block.”

“That should calm things down.”

Bobby returned to his room and shut the door.

Hugh Senior spotted his granddaughter, who had her head stuck out of the bathroom, listening. “Thank you for coming out here, Jody. Your grandmother and I feel better knowing you’re here with us.”

She decided to say it, rather than let it fester.

“I wish you had let me go with you to the hearing.”

“It wouldn’t have changed anything, honey.”

“But at least I would have known I tried.”

“It doesn’t feel better to have tried,” he said surprising her. “It may even feel worse. I can’t stop thinking of other things we should have said …” He shook his head slowly, with a look of heavy regret on his face. “Be glad you weren’t there. Be glad you don’t have to feel you failed.”

“Oh, Grandpa. You didn’t fail. You never had a chance.”

Feeling sorry she’d said anything at all, she murmured good night and slipped into the bathroom. As she stood under the hot water, her mind took an unexpected turn away from her own family’s woes. Against her will, because she didn’t want to feel any sympathy for the Crosbys, she wondered what it would feel like to have people hurling rocks at you, and cops who didn’t do any more than shoo away your attackers and tell them to be good boys? She wondered if she’d be teaching any of those hooligans in the fall. If they were in her classes, they’d probably assume she approved of their actions, maybe even considered them heroes, and they’d be wrong.

B
EFORE
J
ODY
could crawl into her bed in her own old bedroom, her grandmother came in to see her. Annabelle’s hair, looking spiky from her own bath, made her appear younger than her years. She had on a pretty mauve bathrobe with a matching nightgown underneath, and brought a familiar creamy scent of soap and lotion into the room with her, which took Jody back to the days when her grandmother got into bed with her and they read together until one or the other of them fell asleep. Annabelle was always gone in the morning, but there had definitely been times when she had been the one to kiss the cheek of a sleeping grandmother instead of the other way around. It must have been hard, she often thought, to have to raise a young child when you had believed those days were over for you.

“May I come in?”

“Of course!” Jody patted the bed beside her. “Come sit with me.”

After Annabelle did that, she said, “Dearest, I want to ask something of you that may be hard for you.” She paused and then said a most unexpected thing: “Please try not to hate Billy Crosby’s son.”

“What?”

“Everyone seems to be so angry at Collin, but really, none of these years have been easy for him, either. All I can think of is that little boy, so diligently doing his homework in the grocery store while his mother worked. He probably loves his father and missed him as much as you love and miss your father.”

Jody remembered what she’d seen and heard outside of Bailey’s.

“I don’t know, Grandma,” she said with some skepticism.

Annabelle, not catching the doubt in her voice, continued, “It’s only natural he’d want to get his father out of prison. I think we can only admire the grit it took for Collin to put himself through college and then law school in order to help his father.”

Her grandmother was a great admirer of grit.

“You’re too good, Grandma.”

“No, I just know that children want to believe in their parents.”

“In that case, I need to ask you something.”

“All right.”

“Just a little while ago, Uncle Chase called my mother spoiled, stuck-up, and mean. Is that true? Was she?”

“Oh, honey.” Annabelle took one of her hands to hold. “I’m sorry Chase said that to you. She was young, that’s all.”

“It’s true then, isn’t it? You haven’t said it wasn’t true.”

Her grandmother sighed. “Laurie may have been a tiny bit selfish, but she took good care of you, and your father loved her very much.”

“Did I?”

“Did you love her? Of course, you did! You adored both of your parents.”

This time it was Jody who let out a big sigh. “Okay. I’m glad.”

Annabelle put an arm around her, hugged her, and kissed her hair. “Do you think you can sleep tonight?”

“I think so, can you?”

“I won’t get a good night’s sleep until that man is out of Rose again.” Annabelle got up from the bed, but then turned around to look down at Jody. “You know, I hardly ever listen to the radio when I’m driving, but today for some reason I turned it on. There was a song I’d never heard before, and I believe the idea of it was that a young mother was singing to her child. I’ve forgotten the words, but they had something to do with keeping her baby safe. When I heard that, I had to pull over to the shoulder because I couldn’t see for crying. I must have cried for half an hour before I could drive again.”

“Oh, Grandma …”

“I didn’t keep your father safe.” Her voice caught, but she kept going. “So far, you have been safe with us. I want to keep it that way forever.”

Annabelle slipped out of the bedroom before Jody could get to her feet and catch her for a hug. She watched her walk down the hallway toward the master bedroom and close the door, then she shut her own door and leaned her back against it. Tears started to roll down her cheeks until she had to run to get her pillow and put it over her face to cover the sound of her sobs. She wasn’t even sure who she was crying for this time—her grandmother, her lost parents, herself, or for everybody whose lives had changed so much on that violent night twenty-three years ago.