It hurt Jody’s heart-a lot more than seeing Red’s closed garage door-to note how slowly Hugh Senior moved this morning. He was a big man, but his skeleton was never designed for years of the hard physical abuse he’d given it on horseback and in cattle pens.
If he didn’t know about the shooting yet, it wouldn’t do any harm to let a few more minutes slide by before she told him and ruined his morning. Besides, that would give her own heart a little more time to stop pounding and her eyes to stop prickling with tears, so she could tell it all to him calmly, as he would want her to do.
“You feeling okay, Grandpa?”
He sank down into a chair, laid an arm on the table as if needing the support of a hard surface. “I’m fine. Just the usual aches and pains. They get better as the sun comes up. I’m like an old dog. I need the sun to warm me up and get me going. You’re smart to be a teacher instead of a rancher like the rest of us.”
“I’ll always be a cowgirl, Grandpa.”
“It’s in your blood. Just don’t let it break your bones.”
She held up the leg she’d fractured years ago when a horse bucked her. “Too late.”
He chuckled and then sighed and settled farther back into the chair, causing it to creak.
“Nobody else is up yet?” she asked, still stalling.
“Up and gone.”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder again. “Chase and Bobby?”
“They both took off early for home.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Not more than an hour ago. I came down for coffee with them.”
“I guess they couldn’t sleep, either,” she said, but he didn’t reply. “What about Grandma?”
“She got up to see them off, then went back to bed.”
“Did I wake everybody up? Was it because I left?”
“Did you leave?”
She glanced back at him and saw his blue eyes had a twinkle in them.
Jody washed wet grounds off her fingers and then turned to face him.
“Grandpa, you don’t know, do you?”
He frowned a little. “Know what?”
“Something happened in Rose less than an hour ago.” She swallowed hard, forced herself to tamp down her emotions. “Somebody got killed. Shot.”
Hugh Senior’s jaw dropped and he leaned forward. “Who?”
“Valentine.”
“Oh, no.” He looked grieved to hear it. “Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear it. Did they arrest him, Jody?”
“Arrest him?”
“That…” Her grandfather wanted to say bastard or son of a bitch, she could tell, but he wouldn’t in front of her. “… murderer.”
“They haven’t caught him yet. Billy took her car and escaped.”
“Well, I guess this ends any of that stupid talk about how he didn’t kill your father.”
“Does it?”
“Of course!” He slapped the kitchen table so hard that it shook, and then he quoted what his daughter had said the night before at the dinner table. “That’s the kind of man he is.”
Jody didn’t join him for coffee.
She poured a cup for him and then dragged herself upstairs and fell asleep on top of her covers, so tired that not even confessions of love could keep her awake any longer.
34
JODY WOKE UP at two-thirty in the afternoon, stared at the passage of time on her clock with dismay, and hurried down the hall to shower. Once dressed, she clomped downstairs, intending to apologize for sleeping so late. One look at her grandmother’s face told her that Annabelle was worried about more serious matters than a lazy granddaughter.
Jody hurried over to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Why’d you let me sleep so late?”
“I thought you needed it.”
“You know about Valentine?”
“Of course. That poor child.”
“Which one? Her or her son?”
“Both of them.”
“Have they caught him yet, Grandma?”
“Not yet. And people are scared to death. They’re locking their doors and loading their guns and just generally acting as if he’s going to break into houses and start shooting people. Personally, I think he’s a long way from here.” Annabelle looked her up and down. “You look nice and fresh. Now go back up and change into some old clothes, honey. Red hasn’t shown up yet today and we’re trying to catch up on his chores. I can’t imagine where that man has got to. Did you hear him say he was going anywhere today?”
It must be love, Jody thought, remembering his closed garage.
“Maybe Uncle Chase or Uncle Bobby sent him off on some errand and just forgot to tell you before they left.”
“That’s what I told Hugh. Go change clothes.”
“What are we doing?”
Her grandmother smiled at her. “Your favorite job.”
Jody groaned as she turned to go upstairs again.
“NOBODY EVER GOT close to her,” Annabelle remarked as she and Jody worked in the barn together in the mid-afternoon, after turning the horses out into their pasture.
Both of them had on long-sleeve shirts, rubber gloves, and jeans tucked down inside rubber boots so they could muck out the horse stalls, a daily chore that Red usually performed. As a teenager, Jody had learned a lesson about stubbornness when she insisted on wearing her leather boots to clean the stalls, and horse urine ate through the stitching on the soles.
Continuing her thoughts about Valentine Crosby’s quiet personality, Annabelle added, “I never heard of anybody being a close friend to her except maybe Byron at the grocery store.”
“Her son felt close to her,” Jody said, a little sharply.
“Oh, honey.” Annabelle was contrite. “I’m sure he did.”
They were removing twenty-four hours-and more, thanks to Red’s absence-of manure and laying in fresh straw bedding. They’d hauled the feed and water tubs out into the corridor, giving themselves room to work. Shooting Jody a curious look before returning her attention to her pitchfork, Annabelle plunged the five prongs into the horse’s bed and then lifted the manure and soiled straw into the metal wheelbarrow Red used for the job.
“Grandma, he told me he always hated his father.”
Annabelle put down her pitchfork again. “Collin said that?”
Jody nodded. “He said he used to watch his father all night when he was drunk, to make sure he didn’t hurt Valentine. He claims he was watching Billy all that night-the night everything happened-and so he knows his father didn’t do it. I said, maybe he fell asleep and just didn’t know it, but he swears he never did that, ever. Red says Billy was too drunk to go all that way in the storm and do all those things. Bailey says the same thing.”
“Good grief.” Annabelle sounded a little stunned. “When did you hear all this?”
“Yesterday,” Jody said, omitting the part about how some of these discussions had gone on around midnight and later.
“When did Collin tell you that? Was it when you ran into them at Bailey’s yesterday?”
“No. Later. Between then and when his mom was shot.”
She realized her grandmother was staring at her.
“I sneaked over there to get a look at their house, Grandma. Last night, after I left here. I never intended to talk to Collin, but he was sitting outside on the curb and he saw me and came over to talk to me.”
“He was just a little boy.”
“Red and Bailey weren’t.”
Nervously, she waited to hear what her grandmother would say to that, but when Annabelle spoke again, she changed the subject completely: “Your mother would never have done this job.”
Jody didn’t say anything at first, partly to adjust to the abrupt change of topic, but then she said, “That doesn’t make me better than her.”
“I think it does.”
Jody propped her shovel against a wall. “Uncle Chase thinks that if she’d had a chance to grow up more, she’d have been a better person.”
“He may be right.” Annabelle seemed about to add to that, but then closed her mouth.
“What?”