up, examining the garment critic under the light of the room’s single ceiling fix Finding a crease over one pocket, she put the dr back on the board.
Lucy was quiet for some time, seemingly concentrating on eradicating the stubborn crease in Juanita’s dress. She and her husband, Reuben, had long since decided that their no-good nephew, Jorge, was a lost cause. He drank too much—at least he always used to. For years he had bounced from job to job, frittering away whatever money he made. Not only that; anyone his age who would mess around with a girl as young as Serena Duffy had been wasn’t worth the trouble.
Finally, Lucy set the steaming iron back down on the cloth-covered board. “I don’t know why you bother about him,” she said. “It’s not going to do any good.”
“I bother because I have to,” Juanita replied reproachfully, staring with unblinking and unseeing eyes in the direction of her sister-in-law’s voice. “Because Jorge’s my son. If I don’t stick up for him, who will?”
Nobody, Lucy thought, but she didn’t say it. She had already said far too much.
“Besides,” Juanita added a moment later, if Jorge to goes to prison, I’ll never see Ceci and Pablo again.”
Lucy nodded. “I suppose that’s true,” she said.
Lucy Gomez understood about grandchildren. She loved her own to distraction and spoiled them as much as she was able. Living next door, she saw had how it grieved Juanita when her daughter-in-law took Ceci and Pablo and moved to Phoenix. But then there had still been the possibility of seeing hem occasionally. With Jorge accused of Serena’s murder, things were much worse than that now.
Lucy plucked the carefully ironed but threadbare dress off the ironing board and handed it to Juanita. “You’re right,” Lucy said, shaking her head. “I feel sorry for the kids. They’re the only reason I’m here.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Eva Lou Brady shooed her daughter-in-law out of the kitchen at High Lonesome Ranch. “Get out of here, Joanna,” she ordered. “Either go load your things into the car or sit down and take it easy, but get out from under hand and foot. I’ve certainly spent enough time in’ this kitchen to know how to put a Sunday dinner, together.”
No doubt Eva Lou Brady knew Joanna’s kitchen, backward and forward. Joanna and Andy had lived’ in the house on High Lonesome Ranch for years now, but there were still times when Joanna felt: like an outsider—as though the kitchen continued to belong to her mother-in-law rather than to the new generation of owners. It was the house where she and Jim Bob had raised their son, Andrew.
A country girl born and bred, Eva Lou had loved the cozy Sears Craftsman bungalow, but the whole time she had lived there, she had harbored the secret dream of one day living in town. When Andy and Joanna were ready to start looking for a place of their own, Eva Lou was the one who had broached the radical idea of selling the ranch to the younger couple so she and Jim Bob could move into Bisbee proper.
Right that minute, though, with her face red and with a steaming pot on every burner of the stove, Eva Lou Brady was clearly in her element and back on her home turf.
Joanna lingered in the doorway for a moment, watching her mother-in-law’s efficient movements. Eva Lou cooked without ever wasting a single motion. She never seemed hurried or rushed. Her skillful gestures and businesslike approach to meal preparation always left Joanna feeling like an inept home ec washout.
“At least I could set the table,” Joanna offered lamely.
“Jenny will help with that, won’t you?” Eva Lou asked, pausing with the rolling pin poised over the biscuit dough and raising a flour-dusted eyebrow in Jenny’s direction.
“How many places?” Jenny asked.
“Seven,” Eva Lou answered. “Grandma Lathrop phoned after church to say that she’s coming, too.”
