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“The devil’s got quite a grip on you, doesn’t he?”
“I suppose so.”
“I guess I know what that’s like.”
Emma heard sadness in her voice, and something told her that a marriage to Dexter O’Conner wasn’t all that bothered Torie. Her breezy manner and spoiled, rich-girl demeanor camouflaged a great deal of pain.
“Are you getting along all right with Patrick?” she asked. “He’s pretty protective of Kenny, and he can be funny about people.”
“He was very helpful,” Emma replied.
Torie laughed. “It drives Daddy crazy having an openly gay man living at the ranch with his only son. But everybody knows Patrick’s the best housekeeper in the county, and, if you ask me, the day Kenny rescued him was lucky for both of them.”
“How did he rescue him?”
“Patrick was driving around taking photographs for this coffee table book he wants to do on out-of-the way roadhouses. Stopped at a place near the limestone quarry and ran into a bunch of rednecks who decided to prove their masculinity by beating the crap out of him. Four against one. Kenny came along just in time. He can’t stand stuff like that. It about drives him crazy.”
“What did he do?”
“Let’s just say that Kenny doesn’t lose his temper too often, but when he does, it’s a wondrous sight. He ended up taking Patrick back to his house to recover, and he got up the next morning just in time to see a pan of homemade cinnamon rolls coming out of the oven. Kenny took one whiff and hired Patrick on the spot. There’s been a ton of gossip about it, not to mention all the trouble Kenny got into with the PGA when the road-house fight made the papers.”
“He did the right thing.”
“I think so. Still, he got criticized. I swear, if you listen to the locals, the only thing Kenny can do right is win tournaments.”
“People don’t like him? That surprises me.”
“Oh, no. They love him. Everybody knows he’s done more good for this community than all the rest of us put together. He’s built a community center and provided the seed money for the new library—a whole bunch of things like that. And he lends his name to every good cause that comes along. But giving Kenny a hard time has been this town’s favorite leisure activity for so long that nobody thinks twice about it.”
“How so?”
“People have long memories, and they’re still holding a few grudges from his misbegotten childhood. Nobody yet has broken his record for the most suspensions from high school. And the retired police chief can tell you stories that’d make your hair stand on end. Seems everybody has a grudge. Judy Weber won’t let him forget that he copied off her arithmetic quiz in fourth grade, then convinced the substitute that she was the one cheating. He stole a Hank Aaron baseball card from Bob Frazier in sixth grade, then tore it up. He took kids’ lunch money, broke their toys, dumped girlfriends right and left, and pretty much cut a wide path of destruction wherever he went until Dallie Beaudine finally took him in hand after Mother died.”
So Dallie Beaudine was the mysterious person Kenny had referred to earlier that day. Obviously Kenny’s relationship with Francesca’s husband was far more complex than she’d guessed. “Still, he’s apparently been a model citizen since his late teens. It seems that people should let bygones be bygones.”
“Kenny doesn’t mind getting teased. And he might be a model citizen, but he sure has some big character flaws. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s lazy.”
“I did notice,” Emma said dryly. “Still, laziness isn’t a major crime.”
“Sometimes it is with him. He just—I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. He just doesn’t care about anything but golf. That’s how his bloodsucker business manager siphoned off so much of his money. Kenny never bothered to check up on him.”
Emma remembered the matter-of-fact way he’d described the child he’d been, without displaying a morsel of sympathy for the circumstances that had led to his misbehavior. While she didn’t believe that adults should use a dysfunctional childhood as an excuse for not getting on with their lives, she’d also seen a great deal of parental incompetence in her career and she didn’t think anyone should continue to do penance for it. Yet that seemed to be what Kenny was doing.
“He distances himself from everything but golf,” Torie went on. “Especially women. He’s treated every girl-frie
nd he’s had like a queen—buys her expensive presents, sends her flowers—but the minute she starts getting her hopes up that the relationship’s permanent, he vanishes.”
Emma realized Torie was issuing a subtle warning, but she said nothing.
Torie continued, “Everybody in the world wants to be Kenny’s best friend, but I’m the only one he lets get halfway close. I never knew a man so determined to hold himself apart from other people. I guess he’s afraid if he starts caring too much about anybody, they’ll manipulate him like our mother did. Manhood didn’t come easy to Kenny, and he’s sure not going to let anything threaten it.”
“It’s ironic that someone with so much natural charm is fundamentally a loner.”
“He’s the friendliest man in the world, until somebody either pisses him off or tries to get inside his head. Then he uses that charm to isolate himself. Or he acts dumb. About drives me crazy when he does that, since he’s the smartest man I know. My brother goes through books like most people go through potato chips.
Torie fell silent. Emma considered simply telling Kenny’s sister that she had no intention of getting personally involved with her brother, but she didn’t want to make herself look foolish.
“It’s strange,” Torie said. “Unlike Kenny, my second ex-husband had a picture-perfect childhood, but he turned into an immoral slimeball. You just never know with people.”
