Cody, upset but levelheaded, drove over the minute her mother called this Tuesday night. Jennifer, dragged from her room, curled up on the sofa, rested against her big sister, arm around her.
“What I’m trying to understand is why neither of you talked to your mother or me. I can’t change what happened. You can’t. We’re all going to have to live with this for the rest of our lives.”
“I’m getting out. Send me to school somewhere else,” Jennifer begged.
“No.” Betty stepped in. “The stories will catch up with you no matter where you go. You’ll face the music now and put it behind you.”
“I have no life.” Jennifer’s chin wobbled.
“Rada.” Cody squeezed her. Rada meant Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, a phrase the kids used when anyone was being overly dramatic.
“It’s true.” Jennifer flared. “My life is ruined! You at least have Doug.”
“I have to live with my past the same as you. Stop this damned whining, Jen.”
“Girls.” Betty’s voice was low, redolent with authority.
The two shut up.
Bobby spoke. “I’m here to apologize to you. I spent too much time running the business. I know that now. If I’d been paying more attention I might have noticed, I hope, anyway. But I’m here now and we’re going to get this straightened out. We can’t run to rehab every time something goes wrong, and I can’t afford it anyway.”
“Dad, I’m paying my bills.” Cody felt guilty that she’d wasted her father’s money in the past.
“For which we’re grateful,” Betty replied. “But let’s get to the bottom of this. Your father and I aren’t perfect parents. We thought by sharing riding with you that we were together, a family together, but we missed emotional clues. You’ve both told us that you drank because everyone else was drinking. I’m taking the words ‘everyone else’ with a grain of salt. However, we were young once. We remember the pressure to fit in, to be part of a group. I even understand the drugs. It can’t be that much different from drinking. Someone says, ‘Here, this will make you feel good,’ and you do it. What I can’t understand is Dean Offendahl’s allegations. Jennifer, you’ve locked your door and cried in your room for over forty-eight hours. I assume there’s no liquid left in your system.” A wry smile crossed her full lips. “So let’s get this out and over with. Why?”
“I won’t go to bed with him anymore.”
“She’s right.” Cody backed her.
“You shouldn’t have gone to bed with him in the first place.” Bobby smacked the arm of his chair.
Betty shot him a dirty look. “That won’t help.” She returned her gaze to Jennifer. “Let’s use the defense ‘diminished judgment.’ I believe that. I even understand sleeping with a boy in high school. It happens.”
“Did you?” Jennifer hoped her mother had, of course.
“No.”
“I did.” Cody smiled at Jennifer. “Not my best move.”
“I want to know what Fontaine Buruss had to do with this.” Bobby kept calm although if Fontaine were alive he’d kill him.
Cody spoke first, partly to spare Jennifer and partly to give her time to organize her thoughts. “I needed money so I offered to ride Keepsake, the new horse Fontaine was trying. He’d come around the barn when I was working the horse and hey, he was sexy.” Noting the raised eyebrows of her father, she murmured, “Dad, he was.”
“He was.” Betty corroborated her daughter’s judgment.
“We did drugs. He’d give me extra money if I’d braid, a lot extra, really. He bought me new breeches, a saddle. Big stuff. I liked him but I didn’t love him and after a while I realized I was just another bird. Flying in and out. I also realized I was pretty messed up and I missed Doug. Dad, I know you aren’t crazy about Doug—”
Bobby cut in. “He’s a fine young man. My concerns were social and I was wrong. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”
Her father’s repentance touched Cody. She wasn’t accustomed to Bobby admitting error. “It’s okay, Dad. We’ll put that behind us, too.”
“Didn’t you think about Sorrel?” Betty asked.
“No. Mom, when you’re doing drugs you don’t think about anybody but yourself. Besides, he’d cheated on her so many times I didn’t see that one more affair was going to break her heart. He made the marriage vow; I didn’t.” She held out her palms upturned. “But I was wrong. I’m telling you what I thought at the time. People can rationalize anything, can’t they?”
“World War Two proved that beyond a doubt.” Bobby put his fingertips together. “What happened when you left Fontaine? Or did you leave Fontaine?”
“Nothing.” Cody shrugged. “It wasn’t a blowup. It’s not like we were in love or even that emotional. We had fun. That’s the best way to describe it. I had Jennifer drop me at the bar—” She thought a moment. “Maybe that second Saturday in October, I think. Anyway, Doug was there and I wanted him back. If he’d have me. Maybe I needed Fontaine to really love Doug. God, it’s messy.” She sighed. “I needed help. I still need help. I think I’ll be going to AA and NA meetings and drug recovery meetings for the rest of my life. I don’t think I can do it alone and”—she wanted to make her parents feel better—“you can only do so much. It takes a drunk to understand a drunk.”
“Then how did Jennifer get into this mess with Fontaine?” Betty was more worried than she let on.
“I’d go over to the barn to help Cody.” Jennifer sat up. “He’d be around, laughing, joking. He’d let me work Gunpowder. What a neat horse. He’d let me snort a line or two.”
“But how did Dean Offendahl know this? I’m missing something.” Betty bore down.
“I’d collect money from Dean and some of the others and buy coke from Fontaine. He had good coke. I didn’t take Dean over there.”
“But you told him who was selling you the drugs?” Bobby rested his chin on his fingertips.
“Bragging, in passing—how did you tell him?” Betty pressed.
“Kind of, uh—threw it off.”
“Why is he saying you slept with Fontaine?”
“Mom, he’s making that up. He’s trying to get people’s attention off of him. He thinks this is going to hurt me.”
Clearly Dean’s stories about Jennifer sleeping with Fontaine are what truly upset the young woman. It’s one thing to sleep with a boy your own age but at seventeen to sleep with a man of Fontaine’s years, that grossed out her classmates.
“I guess it did. You’ve been in your room for two days,” her mother curtly replied.
“It’s pretty rad.” Cody defended Jennifer.
“Radical? I think it’s close to the mark. I’m still taking the ‘diminished judgment’ tack and if Jennifer was over there at Fontaine’s stable, the coke was pure or good or whatever it is, she gets high, he gets high, it’s not an impossible thought no matter how disgusting it is to me. And not so much that I’m disgusted with you, Jennifer, although I’m not proud. I’m disgusted with Fontaine. He took advantage of you, both of you.” Betty’s eyes blazed.
“I’m over twenty-one,” Cody flatly said. “I knew what I was doing.”
“I don’t think you did but I think he knew exactly what he was doing. Getting beautiful girls ripshit—isn’t that the word, ripshit—and then taking you to bed. Goddammit, I wish I’d shot him, the sorry son of a bitch!” Bobby jumped up from his chair, pacing in front of the fireplace. “But the fact remains that he is dead. And I expect Sheriff Sidell will cruise around to us soon enough.”