Page 14 of Jonny’s Redemption

“It’s been in my mom’s family for a long time. My great-great-granddad bought property here in the 1920s. Back then Dewey Beach was nothing, land was cheap. The story goes, my great-great-great-granddad was furious at his son for making what he called a bad investment. Sean Crawford, that’s my great-great-granddad, saw something not a lot of others did, and before the stock market crashed, he cashed out and walked away with a lot of money. Again, his father and brothers thought he was a fool. Sean had even gone as far as selling his apartment in New York where his family lived. He bought more property in Kent County and built a modest home there, then took his wife and five kids and moved them to the farmhouse in Cliff City. The whole clan was outraged, furious at what they called his defection. Back then, the oldest of the Crawford sons leaving New York was a scandal, one my great-great-great-granddad didn’t take lightly. He disinherited Sean completely and Sean’s younger brother Theo was now next in line to the family fortune. Then three years later, the stock market crashed and over the next few years, the Crawfords lost everything. Crawford Industries was bankrupted.”

“What about Sean and his family?” I found myself asking. “How’d they make out?”

“I’d say he made out better than most. He was a smart man; got his family through the Great Depression and helped a lot of families in the county do the same. Sean and his wife ran a co-op and his five boys all worked the land. Most of what they grew was used to barter as Sean preferred to save the piles of cash he had hidden in the cellar. Sean’s eldest son, Seth—that’s my great-grandfather—was a carpenter. He could make anything from wood—from furniture to building timber cabins. He was good at it, made a decent living doing it. Seth came back to Dewey in the forties and built a house. A family retreat. It was small, had two bedrooms. With four siblings who all had families, four children of his own, it was hardly a retreat, but that’s what Seth called it. In 1963, there was a huge storm, demolished most of Dewey Beach. The original cottage was destroyed. My granddad, Stephan, rebuilt.”

The pride in Jonny’s tone couldn’t be missed. He came from a rich history—not rich in the sense of wealthy, though it sounded like the Crawfords were well-off—but rich in that there was a lot of it, it was interesting, and it was veiled in respect.

I loved that Jonny had that. Yet it was a reminder of how different we were. There was nothing reverent about my history. I held no esteem for my kin. They were criminals, bootleggers, thieves, and shysters. From my pappy, to my papaw, to my daddy—all tricksters, cheaters, and moonshiners. My brother had carried on the family tradition, though the last I saw EJ he was thieving not shining. But that was only because my daddy was still alive.

“You went somewhere again,” Jonny murmured.

“Sorry.” I shook my head in an effort to dislodge all thoughts of my people. The family I’d run from. “So is this the house your grandfather built?”

“It is. Though it's been added on to and updated since then. The house is in a trust. Sean made his wishes clear and the trust ironclad. This piece of land cannot be sold. If someone tries, all of the land and houses are to be donated to the American Legion.”

The house is in a trust.

I didn’t even know what a “trust” was until I started to work for Evie. Growing up, I didn’t know a single person who had anything worth anything. Certainly not something to put into a trust.

I ignored the ball of humiliation. The shame I’d grown up with. The utter embarrassment I’d always felt when someone found out I was Elmer Layne’s daughter. Jonny didn’t know who the Laynes were, he didn’t know I’d come from a shanty shack. To him, I was Bobby, assistant to the country music superstar Vivi Rush. He didn’t know I’d gone to bed hungry and scared. He had no clue that in the winter I’d lay in my bed shivering because Daddy was out and EJ was too lazy to go out to the shed and get more wood. He had no idea even though I’d grown up in a modern era, I’d lived like we’d been thrown back into the eighteen hundreds with barely a pot to piss in. And when the pipes froze that’s what I had—a pot to piss in.

“Baby,” Jonny whispered, his voice infinitely kind. “You’re worrying me.”

That wouldn’t do. I didn’t want Jonny worried and I didn’t want him asking questions. It was time to start playing the game I swore I’d never play. There wouldn’t ever be another night for uncomfortable conversations because we wouldn’t be having them. My past was the past and nothing good ever came from looking back. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I worked my ass off to shed every vestige of the Kentucky girl I once was. I’d moved to Tennessee and done whatever I could do to fit in there. I wasn’t ever going back to the holler. Jonny didn’t need to know anything about it because there was nothing worth knowing.

Nothing good.

Nothing decent.

Criminals, cheats, and shiners.

That was no longer my life and I wouldn’t dredge it up. It was over. I’d escaped and survived—the end.

I pushed everything out of my mind and gave Jonny my best smile.

“There’s nothing for you to worry about,” I told him.

“Can’t help but to worry when you’re a million miles away and you look like I punched you in the gut.”

He hadn’t punched me in the gut, but his words had.

“Don’t be silly—”

“And you don’t finish that statement.”

Jonny shifted in his seat and leaned forward but his elbows stayed where they were. If someone was looking at us, which no one was because even though we were on his deck, darkness surrounded us, and not even the seagulls were out. But if someone had been watching, it would look like he was leaning forward to whisper a secret or maybe to kiss me. But I was no fool, I’d seen his ‘Lieutenant Spencer’ stare enough times to know he saw through my lie.

Then he went on as if he weren’t giving me a frosty glare. “We’ve wasted a lot of time. I’ve wasted a lot of time. I’m not asking you to confess your deepest secrets tonight but I am asking you not to lie. You forget, I know you. I know when you’re giving me a bullshit smile to shut me up—”

“You don’t know a thing about me,” I snapped.

“I damn well do. I might not know where you grew up, or if you have brothers and sisters but I know you. I know all the important stuff, the rest of it I’ll learn as we go along. And I know you, I know when you’re lying. I also know when you’re giving me one of your fake-ass smiles. The kind you give to one of those artists when they come to The Farm to record. I don’t want fake, I don’t want lies, I don’t want either of us to hide.”

In a perfect world, I wanted that, too.

“You said you weren’t asking me to confess my deepest secrets tonight.” Jonny's studious study of me was unnerving. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”