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Chapter 12
Sharon sat across the dinner table from Christy and watched with a breaking heart as her lover tried desperately to come to terms with the ghosts of her past.
“Christy, dear. You know your father is due home soon. Maybe you should scat before he gets here. You know how difficult he can make things.” Her mother’s delicate, wrinkled hand patted absently at Christy’s cold one. “It’s best all around if he just never knows you’ve come to visit.” Anxious, Sharon thought the frail woman’s hard life had aged her far more harshly than any streetwalker’s on the strip. Years with an oppressive, abusive asshole will do that to you. Add in a healthy dose of dementia and it was the stuff of Lifetime movie legend.
“Dad died over a year ago, Mom.” The weariness in Christy’s voice scraped a wound across Sharon’s heart. “He’s not coming back, okay? You don’t have to be afraid anymore. You’re safe now.”
“Of course, dear. I know that. Of course, I know I’m safe.” But the old eyes still held shadows and darted toward the windows and doors with increasing frenzy. Sharon could see the exact moment years of conditioning and the disease overcame her rational thinking. “But really, dear, you should go. I don’t want to upset your father. You know how he can be. I don’t want you around when he gets like that. Maybe it’ll be better if you spend the night with the Coopers. They’ve always been so fond of you. Why don’t you give them a call? I’ll just fix you some supper before you go.”
“No, Mom. Wait—”
Sharon watched Christy give up and do a face-plant into the table with a groan as the old woman pushed up and shuffled away.
“She’s not even heading toward the kitchen. What’s she going to feed me? The plastic fruit from the bowl on the coffee table?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Or the worst thing,” Sharon added, remembering the cat box incident with a shudder.
“It kills me that being here stresses her out so much.” The tears in Christy’s eyes caused answering ones to swim in Sharon’s. It was Christy’s superpower. Nobody and nothing could make Sharon cry, except seeing Christy hurt. That took the knees out from under her every time. “She always stood between me and him. Always. I was pissed off at her for so long. For staying with him. For not choosing me and kicking him out. But she was so scared of him. So brainwashed and tangled up.” Christy wiped at her tears with shaking hands, and the quiver of her chin broke Sharon’s heart all over again. “Now the bastard’s dead and she’s still afraid of him. It’s not fair. Not right that her mind broke before she was free of him. Now, she’s stuck living with that fear for the rest of her life.”
“You don’t know that,” Sharon reasoned. “There’s no way to know that. We’re here with her now, and we’re gonna stick. That woman’s body is healthy as a horse and liable to outlive us both, so we got plenty of time to love on her. With that time, the fear is bound to lessen.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Christy’s eyes were desperate with despair, and Sharon couldn’t sit still any longer.
She pushed from her seat, rounded the table, and sat in her lover’s lap. Her dusky hands cupped Christy’s pale, soft jawline, and she locked gazes with the other woman until she was sure her words were going to get through. “Then we stick and love on her anyway.” She knew what she had to say next was blunt, but her girl sometimes needed straight talk, even when it hurt. “Your momma made her own choices. I got no doubts your dad was a scary son of a bitch, but she still stayed. She stayed in the beginning when she ignored the red flags, because she was infatuated. She stayed in the middle, when the infatuation was gone but she cared more about saving face and not looking like a fool than leaving. Then she stayed, because she thought it was her Christian duty and with enough prayer God would fix whatever the hell was wrong with her that made your dad so godforsaken mean.”
Sharon took a breath, to let herself calm down as well as to let her words sink in. “Then she stayed, even as she watched him torment her daughter, because she didn’t want to raise her child in a broken home.” Here, Sharon’s own anger rose, and it took effort to keep her hands gentle on Christy’s face. “That’s the part that kicks me in the ass, you know that? So many women stay, because they don’t want to be a statistic. And they tell themselves ‘at least it’s not a broken home.’ Shit, Christy, your childhood was so broken even Humpty Dumpty would be like ‘Damn!’An absent father is better than living with a rabid beast any day.” She kissed the soft pink lips that curved in the first smile she’d seen all afternoon. “Anyway, my point is, for better or worse, that woman made her own choices and lived the life she lived. Period. Only thing you and I can do for her now is make what’s left of it as comfortable and nurturing as possible. If she’s got her inner demons to battle along the way, there’s nothing you or I can do about that. Just like there’s nothing to be done about your own past choices.”
“Sharon. No. I—” Christy’s eyes closed, and her expression shuttered.
And here, Sharon thought,is her mother in her.
“Don’t close down and turn away just because it hurts. You left your son. A choice you made and have had to live with. Just like your own momma. You chose self-preservation—you ran, and you hate yourself for not bringing Logan with you. But there is nothing you can do to change what happened then. The only power we have is what we choose to do with what happens next.” She kissed softly at the tears spilling down Christy’s cheeks. “You’ve punished yourself for leaving your baby for nineteen years. You regretted leaving him from day one and have been keeping yourself in exile. You paid your dues, honey. I’ve watched you self-sabotage over the last five years again and again because of this. You’ve served enough time.” When Christy tried to break away from Sharon’s hold, she only tightened her grip and willed Christy to listen. “Baby, are you going to be like your momma forever? Accepting a life sentence of punishment just for making one bad decision? Or are you going to find a way to at last forgive yourself and finally meet your son?”
Sharon watched the thoughts chase each other through Christy’s unguarded expressions. She knew that here was all the pain and regret in the whole world crammed into Christy’s petite frame. It’s a wonder her shoulders didn’t snap under the burden of it.
“I love him. I know nobody is going to ever believe that but you.” Her chin wobbled, and the tears in her eyes got fatter and ran faster. Sharon felt her own eyes overflow in answer, that sharp sting in the back of her nose that warned this crying jag wasn’t going to be a silent one. “But I do. I love him so, s-so much, but I still left him anyway! I don’t deserve him, and he hates me. I know he does. How can he not? I left him! Jesus Christ, who does that to their own baby?” Christy was yelling by the end, her sobs full of such self-loathing that Sharon felt scalded by the heat of it. She did the only thing she could. She wrapped herself tight around the love of her life and cried with her.
Sharon didn’t shush her or whisper nonsensical platitudes. She just held tight while Christy bled out emotionally, wailing her perceived sins to the heavens as she begged for forgiveness from everywhere in the universe except the one place she needed it the most. Herself.
Chapter 13
Someone was lying to Derek, and it pissed him the hell off. He’d had only routine questions for Logan. Purely standard inquiry so he could eliminate the obvious and clear out the clutter. Brandi was eighteen, and it was too early to pull out the usual missing persons protocol, but he had a bad feeling about the fiery Miss Brandi. She resembled Tiffany in looks and club choices, and two open murder investigations were more than he ever wanted in his beloved county. He did not want Brandi to make it three. All this circled back to Logan lying to him about where he’d been last night and what he’d been up to. Bullshit it took a full hour for a red-blooded, fired-up nineteen-year-old in a truck to make that drive. Not in the middle of the night when he coulda made like Lightning McQueen the whole way and never cross a soul. So, what had he been doing for roughly thirty to forty minutes that he didn’t want the cops to know about? Derek swore and wished he could let it drop and get on with everything else on his plate. He needed to start tugging on the strings that would lead him to a killer.
But no. The little shit was lying to him for some godforsaken reason, and now he was left spinning his wheels until he could clear the boy out of his way. Derek had a strong suspicion that Logan had an affair going on; not a big deal unless he considered who Derek suspected the boy was seeing.
With Abram’s beliefs, it was no wonder Logan was closed up tight as a drum.
Derek cursed and rubbed a hand along the back of his aching neck. The fields flashed by his windows in rows that stood high and proud as soldiers on either side of the road. Stalks with their silky heads bobbed in the air as far as the eye could see as they stretched out before him. Cutting through the countryside, the pavement resembled a long gray cord pulling him along. In the distance, he saw the exhaust from Old Man Turner’s combine. The smell of diesel mingled with the rich aroma of fresh-cut stalks to perfume the air. Nothing said country to him more than that smell, and the familiarity of it helped to ease his aching head more than an aspirin would’ve.
He lowered his window down all the way and breathed beep as he let the road lead him into the distance; tension bled out, peace rolled in, and Derek thought absently that maybe he should cut the boys some slack. It was a small community, and Abe’s beliefs were stringent on top of that. As sheriff, Derek hated leaving any loose ends regardless of its significance, but if he started pushing at them boys, was he going to out them? It would mean exile for Abram. This particular branch of their religion left no wiggle room for homosexuality.
“Aw, shit.” Derek braced his elbow on his windowsill and tried to look beyond those two, wondering if his detail-obsessed ass could let this one slip by. As even the thought of it made him itchy, he just kept driving and let his mind plow over the facts of the case the way that tractor plowed the field.
Melvin Turner,better known as Old Man Turner, was in his element. He loved farming. Born and raised on this very land he was working now. The trusty old combine creaked and moaned as much as his bones did, but both were still plugging along just fine. Mel whistled tunelessly atop his throne—as he liked to think of the driver’s seat. This combine was the biggest machinery he owned, and riding high in it, he loved how he could look over all he tended and grown. Yup, harvesting had to be his favorite time of year.
The grain bowed before the behemoth tractor. Its churning blades cut the stalk, shucked the heads, and chewed up the excess for burning after. Mel always thought barley looked like an ocean during this time, the way the stalks folded as gracefully as a sandy wave before the greedy machine made them no more.
Something caught Mel’s eye, and his tone-deaf whistle faded off like a tea kettle taken from the fire. There was something in his grain. He squinted; his eyes weren’t what they used to be. Was that… blood? The blades were churning closer. Mel’s breath got choppy with an anxious kinda fear.That’s definitely blood, he thought,and lots of it. “Damn deer,” he grumbled, thinking, hoping, that’s what it was. Some damn deer had gotten into the field somehow, and a cougar must’ve caught him. There was so much blood though, too much. Red splashed in a grotesque spray over the golden stalks. A stark and foreboding contrast.
