“If he gets really sick, we’ll take care of him. He’s our cousin, and we’ll bury him beside Nanny Lucy. That reminds me”—Nessa put a bag of potatoes in the cart—“we should go to the cemetery and clean up her grave sometime this week, maybe even put some flowers out there.”
“I don’t want Flynn to die,” April said.
“Me either, and he’s probably not really going to die, but he’s got something wrong with him that he doesn’t want to talk about,” Nessa said. “Maybe he’s got something that Viagra won’t cure, and his days of chasing women are over.”
“Good God!” April gasped. “He’s not old enough to need the little blue pills.”
“Honey, he’s that age by the calendar, but he’s used up sixty years’ worth of his stuff with probably dozens upon dozens of women. Nanny Lucy always said that he was just like his father, and my dad used to pray out loud that I wouldn’t turn out to be a fornicator—his words, not mine—like my cousin,” Nessa whispered.
“How many sex years do you figure you have used up?” April asked.
“Not nearly enough,” Nessa answered. “I was so protected and sheltered as a teenager that I’m probably only twenty-one right now in sex years. It’s like dog years. How about you?”
“I’m pretty close to my real age.” April shrugged. “I’m not an angel, and I made bad choices, but FYI, I never turned tricks or worked the streets. We need to go down the next aisle. That’s where the detergent and cleansers are.”
“Are we going to make Flynn clean house?” Nessa asked.
“Hell, yes, we are.” April nodded. “Unless he’s working in the flower beds, or maybe painting the house. He can pull his share of all the work. Did you notice that the paint is peeling and the porch is down to bare wood?”
“No, but as small as the place is, we could probably take care of the whole job in a couple of days if all three of us worked together,” Nessa said as she put a huge jug of detergent in the cart and then checked the list. “Cinnamon and ginger. We need to go down the spice aisle, and we need flour and sugar, too. I brought partial bags from home, but they won’t last a whole week.”
Thirty minutes later, they rolled their cart, now loaded with full bags, out to the parking lot to find Flynn sitting in the same parking spot as before. April pushed the cart over to the SUV, and Flynn got out to help unload.
“Right on time.” He looked up at the sky. “A miracle may float down from heaven.”
“The only thing that’s coming out of those clouds is rain, and lightning to strike you if you don’t watch your mouth,” Nessa told him.
“I always knew you were a witch, but I didn’t know you could control the lightning,” he said.
“Never underestimate the powers of a redhead,” Nessa shot back at him.
“Did you get everything you needed?” April asked.
“Except for the air conditioners,” Flynn answered. “But they’ve ordered three small window units that I can pick up on Thursday. We’ll have a cool house by this weekend.”
Together they situated the bags in the back of the vehicle, and then April got into the back seat again. She wasn’t sure how they’d all three live together as adults, but there was a bed and a shower, and judging from all the groceries Nessa had paid for, she wasn’t going to go hungry. For all those comforts, she could put up with Nessa’s smart-ass attitude and Flynn’s secretive smugness. If they were still around at the end of the summer, she would use what money she had made at whatever job she could find to locate her own place. She didn’t intend to live with them forever.
Chapter Four
Jackson Devereaux had always loved the sunsets in North Texas. Maybe it was because he took the time to enjoy them more than he had when he lived in Austin, but in those days, he’d seldom seen the sunrise or the sunset. He’d worked eighteen-hour days at the law firm back then. Most of the time he had been in his office before daylight and hadn’t left until after dark. Nowadays he knocked off work by five thirty. His muscles might be tired, but his mind had not been tied up in stress knots since he left the city.
He sat down on the porch steps, and his big yellow dog flopped down beside him. “How did your day go, Tex?” He scratched the dog’s ears. “Did you chase any rabbits or tree a squirrel or two?”
The dog gave a short yip.
“Miz Lucy’s grandkids have come back.” He stretched his long legs out from the top step to the bottom one and leaned back on his elbows. “Rayford Jones came by this evening to pick up the hope chest he’d ordered for his granddaughter’s sixteenth-birthday present. He said all three of them had met with the lawyer in Weezy’s this afternoon, so we have neighbors again.”
The dog lay down and rolled over on his back.
“You don’t care if anyone lives in Miz Lucy’s house or not. You’re just interested in getting your tummy scratched, aren’t you?” Jackson used both hands to give the dog a good working over. “We’ll pay them a visit tomorrow and take Waylon home. You should be happy about that much, at least.”
The dog jumped up, made a lap around the yard, and then came back to flop down at the bottom of the steps.
“That idea makes you happy, does it? I guess getting rid of Waylon will clear the way for you to get to come back inside the house.” Jackson swatted a mosquito away from his arm. “It would have been nice if you and Waylon could have been friends, but maybe it was for the best. If you’d been friends, you would have missed him, like I do Uncle D. J. and Miz Lucy. But you’ll be glad to see your archenemy leave.” He stood up, crossed the wide porch, and went into the house.
The Devereaux place was only a quarter mile from Miz Lucy’s place as the crow flew or on the old, rutted pathway where Jackson and Lucy had often walked back and forth from one place to the other. If he had to go by vehicle, it was a mile trip. The drive down to the fork in the road was half a mile, and then a sharp turn to the left and another half mile before Hope Creek Road ended at Lucy’s place.
Waylon, the big black-and-white cat, was a blur as he ran down the hallway and went straight for his food dish. He reared up with his paws on the cabinet and meowed loudly while Jackson opened a can of food.
“Starving, are you?” Jackson asked.
Waylon changed positions, and with all four feet on the floor, he began to purr and weave around Jackson’s legs.
Jackson set the cat food on the floor and then went about opening a can of gumbo for himself. “Tomorrow morning bright and early, you are going home. I’ll miss you, but Miz Lucy would want you catching mice at her place and getting to know your new owners. This was just a temporary home until they could get here. You’ll have three people to spoil you, and no dogs to pester through the screen door. If you don’t like it over there, you can always run away and come back, but sneak up to the back door so you don’t have to fight with Tex.”
While his soup heated, Jackson cut a couple of thick slices of Italian bread from a loaf and laid them on a plate. Uncle D. J. had liked gumbo, both from a can and homemade, and they’d had it at least once a week. They would work all day in the shop, sometimes only exchanging a few words about whatever project they were working on, but supper had been their time to visit. That was when he’d learned that Uncle D. J. had fallen in love when he was a young man, and that only a few months before the wedding was to take place, his fiancée had been diagnosed with cancer and had died six weeks later.