Now that the baby flurry had died down and her other sons were giving her fits, I figured it for high time to get the hell out of town again. But something kept me there, and I couldn’t quite figure out what.
“So, I called that school,” she said, sipping her lemonade and tugging her wide-brimmed gardening hat lower on her head.
“I’ll just bet you did,” I said, slouching down and staring at the book I’d been pretending to read for the past hour.
“Yes, and had quite the enlightening conversation with a woman named Miss Turner. She was a real priss, I can tell you. But.” She stopped and sipped again. “She made it perfectly clear that they had not had anyone named Angelique Brianna Love enrolled for the past three and a half years.”
I sighed and dropped the book, turning from her, my feet on the hot concrete, my mind spinning with the possible ways out of this mess.
“Three and a half years. My lands, that means the year before I got sick, you simply up and stopped going to your classes. Heavens. Your poor daddy. This just might kill him.”
“Stop trying to blackmail— ”
“Oh, honey, I’m not blackmailing you. I don’t have time for that. I’m telling you straight up that you will have to break it to him tonight. What we do with you after that, I can’t say.”
I jumped to my feet. “What you’ll do with me? What you will do? With me?”
She rolled her eyes and flapped her hand in front of her face. “Sit down. I’m on your side on this one.”
I already had my mouth open to let loose with a string of curses I couldn’t actually afford, given the dwindling state of the money I’d brought with me. When her words connected with my brain, I dropped into the chair, stunned. She patted my leg. “You know, you could work at the pub again.” She sipped her lemonade. “Or maybe you can work at the brewery. Heaven knows your Daddy and Dominic could use a foil … or something to keep them from coming near to killing each other every day over there.”
“I’m not gonna …”
She shot me a look that advised me without a word to shut my mouth if I knew what was good for me right then.
“I remember my first summer in this house,” she said, in a dizzying change of subject. She set her empty glass on the table between our chairs. “Antony was about a month old or so. It was the hottest summer on record. The AC worked about half the time, and when it did, it leaked into the foundation, making water seep up through the bottom basement floor. I recall sitting in my kitchen, surrounded by dirty dishes and laundry, with your brother latched onto my tit like if he let it go I might disappear on him.”
“Mama, TMI.”
“Nonsense. You’ll be a mother someday, and it’ll be all right to talk about babies sucking the energy right out of you twenty-four-seven. Anyway, your Daddy was trying his best to make enough money every month to pay on his loans to his uncle and keep groceries on our table. But really all I remember is hot. H-O-T and miserable, I tell you. But we made it.”
She glanced over at me. “We stuck it out. We sacrificed. Because we had to.” She turned so her legs were between our lounge chairs. “If you want to toss what you worked so dang hard for Angelique, all those years, all that practice, all those competitions, because it got ‘too hard’ for you?” She hooked her fingers around the words in that annoying way she had. “Well, who am I to try to offer you anything more in this life than to sling beer, barbeque, and pizza? If you’re satisfied with that, I guess I will be, too.” She stood up and stretched. I noted that she seemed to be putting much-needed weight on after her year of medical trauma. Her hair had grown back, thicker, a little darker red and wavy.
My mind spun. Bouncing from her claiming to be on my side, to the overt slam she’d made about my lack of aspirations, the bitch. God, I hated her. I ground my teeth, determined not to rise to the bait she dangled. I rose from my seat, picked up my book, and met her bemused expression with one of my own.
“Mama, don’t we have a wedding to go to?”
She blinked. I gave myself a mental high-five for disarming her, albeit sneakily.
“I’m … who … oh, Cara.”
“Yes, Mama. Sweet little Cara Cooper, the girl my brother is still so sick in love with he can’t see straight. She’s marrying herself a rich Prince Charming today. We told Kieran we’d be there for him, remember? Best get tidied up.” I flicked her hat as I passed, sending it sailing along in a sudden breeze until it landed on the calm blue surface of the pool.
Chapter Thirteen
The church was no better than an oven in the middle of a desert in a heat wave. I couldn’t imagine why Cara thought having her wedding on what was traditionally one of the hottest weekends in the middle of the summer was a good plan. But she did look pretty in her simple, sundress-style wedding dress that I knew probably cost thousands of dollars, given her fiancé’s family money.
I sat with Mama, although we had not spoken two words after that little altercation by the pool. I, for one, didn’t care if she never spoke to me again. My mind was full of escape plans and alternatives to those, even as I had to admit I was still, for some reason, reluctant to leave Lucasville. I’d grown comfortable here, too comfortable it would appear, if my mother’s goading earlier in the day wasn’t hint enough.
But at that particular moment, no one looked more miserable than Kieran. We were a few pews up from him, since he and the other three had shown up late, just in time to see the bridesmaids and Cara process down the aisle. I’d turned once to check on him, as had Mama. His jaw was clenched. Sweat poured down his face.
The strange thing was, Dominic looked even more distraught. I certainly hoped he didn’t also have a thing for Cara. Jesus, Lord, as if one pair of brothers tangling over a woman hadn’t been enough.
Cara and Kieran had been together from the beginning, at least as long as I had memory of him. She’d been kind of adopted by us early on, once my mother figured out her daddy was a drunken abuser, and before he up and left her and her mama high and dry in the trailer park.
Lindsay always did have a kind heart for strangers in dire straits. Another thing I never understood: how come she could hardly stand the sight of me, but would take in strange kids, dogs, cats; even once, memorably, a baby goat that had gotten loose from a farm a few miles down the road.
“What’s wrong with Dom?” I whispered, my sudden concern for him outweighing my need to ignore her.
She frowned and turned slightly, flapping the wedding program in front of her flushed face. I held the top of my dress out from my skin, seeking a smidgeon of relief from the stifling heat. When she turned to face the front again, her lips were pressed tight together and the program flapped faster.
“What’s wrong?” Daddy asked from her other side.
Mama shook her head and kept staring forward, where Cara now stood by her future husband, a drop-dead gorgeous man, and as we all knew, rich as God himself.
There was a long, very awkward pause, as if the couple was supposed to say or do something, but had forgotten it. The minister looked at them, an expectant expression on his face.
“Stop,” a voice said from behind me.
I did not have to turn to realize it wasn’t Kieran who spoke. While Antony bore a nearly perfect physical resemblance to our father, Dom’s low, raspy voice could have come directly from his throat.
I closed my eyes, realizing something else about the situation … when it wasn’t Cara who turned around to meet the eyes of the speaker, but her fiancé, Kent.
“Oh, Lord,” Mama said, flapping that program and starting to rock back and forth a little. “Oh, my dear, sweet Lord.”
I bumped her shoulder. She frowned at me. Sweat dripped onto the hands I had tightly clenched in my lap.
Daddy turned to see what all the fuss was about. “What in the hell?” he asked, looking across Mama’s wildly fluttering program at me. “I thought that was Kieran’s old girlfriend.”