“I couldn’t help myself.”
“Jedd.” Her hand flattens on the table as if searching for something to grip. “She isn’t a horse. You can’t ride her and walk away. You don’t pet her and then leave her in the cold night. She’s a person, a person who has been through a lot over the years.” Janice pauses to take a breath, looking across the restaurant. Her eyes narrow a moment and then return to me. “She isn’t a deal, Jedd.”
Janice hates the idea of dealing, dickering as Hasting called it. Dicking around, Janice joked until she’d learned that Hasting wanted her to marry Howard Townsen in hopes to join the two farmsteads. She wanted nothing to do with him. Who arranges a marriage in the 1990s? Yet somehow, Janice met Howard and fell for his charm. She believed his promises, dating him in secret, as they hoped to show up both families when they ran off together. Janice wanted her degree first, and when she went off to college, she never thought Howard would step out on her. I knew better and tried to warn her. She didn’t want to believe me, and it put a rift between us before I left home.
It was going to be my pleasure to confront him one final time in her honor, but I’d been too late. She’d been stripped of self-respect, and he’d gotten someone else pregnant.
My sister’s compassion for Beverly baffles me, but I also appreciate that she doesn’t blame an innocent girl who knew nothing of their secret engagement or their future plans. Beverly was as much a victim of Howard and his false pledges as my sister.
“I’m not making any deals with Beverly. She wasn’t part of the bargain. It just sort of happened…” I say, trailing off as I can’t really explain myself. Instantly attracted to Beverly, I’d found myself falling more and more for her as she’d transformed into who she is, who she’d always been. She’d been there, inside, but had lain dormant. She tells me I’ve awakened her from a long sleep, which sounds rather fairy tale-ish. I’m no prince, but I’m not the villain, either. I just want what I think is my right...and her.
“This is going to blow up in your face,” my sister states, her eyes falling to my arm as if I’m not aware I’ve lost the appendage.
“She’s a live wire,” I tease, recalling the spark of Beverly when she’s over me, under me, in front of me. There’s nothing she hasn’t let me do to her, and once again, I wonder how Howard could have let her go. I’m equally appreciative he did. Now, I just need him to never return.
“This isn’t a joke,” Janice warns, the commanding tone returning to her stern expression.
“I’m not joking,” I state, still smiling with thoughts of Beverly in my head. “And I’m not discussing this anymore with you. We need to talk about Boone.”
Janice exhales and turns to glance across the restaurant again. It’s a nice place, and I should consider bringing Beverly here. Maybe for a special occasion.
“Boone is listed as a missing person, but the investigation doesn’t seem very active. There just aren’t any leads,” Janice states. The responsibility of conversing with the sheriff has fallen to her as she’s the one who has some relationship with him as a local attorney.
Sheriff James has already informed us he believes Boone simply left of his own volition. Knowing what he knows of Boone’s history with gambling, the sheriff believes Boone packed up what he could and disappeared. Being as the sheriff knows our concerns with Boone’s mental ability, he’s keeping the case open but handed it over to his son, a deputy. Deputy James hasn’t made Boone a priority, though. Lots of small-time crime and unnecessary speeding tickets to write, I guess.
“What are your thoughts? Any more mystery butter tubs? Boone in the dining room with a spoon of margarine?” Janice's voice mocks me, and I scowl. I still believe Beverly fed Boone, at least at one point. As winter began and slowly progressed, I noticed the containers of food no longer appeared on the back step. Whatever she served, to whomever she fed, was no longer being distributed by the back stairs, and while I’d occasionally see a spare butter tub in the sink, I didn’t question the mysterious dinners as they appear to have stopped.
“It’s like he’s disappeared into thin air,” I say, which I don’t believe any more than I suspect foul play. It’s strange, but I feel like I’d know if something happened to Boone. I also think others would have heard something. Gossip at the Pink Pony or rumors at Daisy’s Nut House would lend a hint as to what happened. People who do bad deeds like to brag about them eventually. Even Grady’s Seed and Soil might have caught a whiff of conversation about Boone, but nothing has been said other than some National Park ranger reporting a mystery man wandering in the woods. They couldn’t identify if he was a hiker or homeless but leaned toward homeless and harmless. I’d already taken Jetson into the woods a few times, but only the edge as the deep parts and steeper inclines seem to spook him.
“We might have to accept that he’s just gone,” Janice admits, lowering her voice, and the tone reminds me of losing our mother. Hasting moved her off to a smaller place in the mountains where they went a bit native until they both passed away. “There’s just nothing left.”
“What about the house?” I ask. It’s fallen into disrepair and needs more than tender loving care, but it still might be an asset.
“I say we burn the motherfucker to the ground.”
“Janice.” I snort, laughter filling my throat at her aggressive statement.
“I don’t have any decent memories of that place, Jedd. It means nothing to me.” I’m taken aback by her adamant disgust and apparent secrets as I remember things being bad but not so bad that I’d want to torch a structure and bury its memory.
“What rights do we have to it anyway?” I wonder. It’s just a house. Four walls with a roof and nothing more. The land belongs to someone else.
“We have no rights. It was loaned to Boone out of kindness and regret.” Janice pauses. “It’s worth nothing except whatever the owner wishes to do with it.”
My mind races with plans I shouldn’t be making and decisions that aren’t mine to decide. I nod like a bobblehead as if I understand, as if I hold regrets about the loss of the old place, but my brain waves are galloping with ways to save it.
Chapter Thirty-Two
[Beverly]
“Momma,” Hannah hesitates, standing in the kitchen midmorning. “I saw Jedd at dinner last night…with a woman.”
I… “What?”... don’t believe her.
I don’t believe her.
I don’t believe her, my brain screams on repeat while my heart thumps once and drops to my belly.
Jedd went to Knoxville to pick up a friend from the military. He needs help tilling that back field he promised Hannah and me. I got a text around ten o’clock that he was staying the night in the city and would be back sometime today.
“Is that so?” I say through clenched teeth, keeping my focus on the soap I’m making. My bath bars are made through a cold process, and I’ve already mixed the lye and water concoction in the garage since it needs proper ventilation from the fumes. Jedd and I spoke about converting the space into a soap lab of sorts.