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He sputtered, laughing. “It sounds terrible,” he said. “I agree.”
The more they talked about it, the more determined Annie was not to give in unless she was one hundred percent on board.
“We need to just take it day by day. I’m not giving up my house. Not yet. Steve owes me a place to live anyway. And you can move into your house and see if you feel like you need to offer a place to your boys.”
“I bought that house just for you,” he said, and she could tell he was annoyed by the tick in his jaw. “We made our list of wants and that house fit us.”
“But then Cindy got sick, her husband left, and who knows what made your boys suddenly want to move to a backwater?”
“They just mentioned it, honey. They didn’t say, ‘We are moving in with you.’”
“I don’t know about that. It sounded pretty definitive to me.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, I got a text from Joel that Kirk apologized and is moving home. She’s not going to be alone now.”
“There is a God!” Annie cried, clapping her hands. “I’m so happy. One less thing for us to worry about, Cindy’s well-being. Someone else will be there.”
Chris didn’t reply and Annie left it alone.
The road dead-ended into the old truck trail that led to Bayou Cottage. He made a right and they were at the locked gate. They could see couples up at the cottage, and when Justin saw Chris’s car, he aimed a remote at the gate and it slowly swung open.
Standing outside of the barn clinic saying goodbye to Bubba and Gloria, their doggie sleeping off the anesthesia in the truck, Justin watched his brother and Annie drive through the gate. Dave and Katrina were there, too, chasing Davie around the yard.
“They’ve got Stevie,” Maggie said. “Tina will be so happy. I wonder what happened? Steve is supposed to have him this weekend.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t going to say anything,” Dave said. “It looks like Beverly must be hitting the sauce again because she whacked Stevie so hard it left welts up and down his back that are turning to bruises.”
“Oh my God,” Maggie cried, her hand covering her mouth. “What’s going to happen?”
“Well, they called me and I called CPS. An agent already got in touch from Saint John’s Parish, and they opened a case file. I feel sorry for the Cassons because this type of case is usually public record unless you know someone.”
Bubba and Gloria’s truck passed Chris and Annie coming to the cottage and he waved. Chris pulled next to Dave’s truck.
“I guess you heard,” Annie said when Maggie and Katrina came over to her, each with a toddler on their hips.
“I can’t believe it,” Maggie said.
“Me, either,” Katrina said. “You need to throw the book at that piece of shit.”
“The thing is, he’s her grandson! When we’re at the rescue together, he loves on her. What would make her go berserk like that?”
“Maybe she’s drinking again, although that’s no excuse.”
They gushed over little Stevie, who was so happy to see his little soon-to-be cousins. The women handed the three children over to the teenaged babysitters Maggie hired, and they were happy to go with the familiar faces, to Annie’s relief. She watched him interact with the sitters and was confident he’d be happy playing with them.
Katrina continued the conversation as the friends headed to the dock to sit. It was their usual MO for Sundays at Bayou Cottage, leaving the men doing a project on the cottage or going for a trail ride.
“Beverly Casson is such a lady otherwise, and her boyfriend is the principal of the elementary school in town,” Katrina said. “It’s right across the street from my house. I can’t even imagine how humiliated he’s going to be.”
“Well, I hope he’s so humiliated that he threatens to dump her if she doesn’t get her act together. Can I tell you that when I saw those marks, and then he said, ‘Grannie did it,’ I wanted to hit her!”
They sat on the dock, Katrina slipping her flip-flops off and dangling her feet in the water.
“Jeez, it’s freezing!”
“It’s January, knucklehead,” Maggie said, laughing. “The water is always cold in the winter.”
“It’s always a great temperature here at the cottage,” Annie said.
