It didn’t mean that Ella loved her. But it was something. “Thanks,” Keely replied.
Ella cocked her head. “Are you getting involved with the Sinclair boy?” she asked worriedly. “Brent would find a way to use you to his advantage if he could, you know. He’s an addict. He can’t stop. He’s more dangerous now than he ever was when I lived with him, especially in his situation and with Jock egging him on.”
Keely was trying to come to grips with the idea that her own parents had a hand in the death of Sheriff Hayes’s young brother, and that her father was a drug dealer. She’d known about deals he’d made to acquire animals that weren’t quite what she thought of as legal. But he’d hidden his worst side from her during those two years they were together. From her vantage point now, she’d been naive and stupid. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn’t so much ignorance as denial. She hadn’t wanted a larcenous parent. Even an alcoholic, which is what she thought her father was, didn’t have the stigma of a thief. Then again, it was a matter of degree.
“You’re remembering things, aren’t you?” Ella asked. “Listen, Keely, I may not be a good parent. I may be the worst alcoholic in town. But I’ve never laid a hand on you in anger or put your life at risk, and you know it.”
That was the truth. Keely might feel used by her mother, but she’d never been afraid of her. She nodded.
“I’d like to tell you that I’m going to start over. That I’ll stop drinking and carping and seducing married men.” She shrugged and made a self-mocking smile. “But it would be a lie. I’ve been like this too long. I can’t change. I don’t want to change. I like getting drunk. I like men.”
“I know that,” Keely said in a resigned tone. “If you could just stop trying to make me feel inferior, that would be something. It hurts when you make fun of the way I am. Dad certainly isn’t perfect, but he made me go to church every Sunday. He even said once that he was going to make sure I didn’t end up like both of you.”
Ella thought about that. She was still holding her drink. She took another sip. “Well, he was right to do that. Yes. He was. The best way to give up being an alcoholic is never to start drinking in the first place.”
“I don’t like the smell of it,” Keely murmured.
Ella laughed. “Neither do I,” she confessed. And she smiled, really smiled, at her daughter.
“Did either of your parents drink?” she asked out of the blue.
Ella’s eyes darkened with pain. She took a big gulp of the drink. “My father did.”
She waited, but no other confessions were forthcoming. She wondered at the hatred in Ella’s eyes when she talked about her father. Keely remembered that she never had talked about him, or about her mother, either.
“More secrets,” Keely murmured absently.
Ella only nodded. “Some are best kept forever.” She got up. “Well, I’m going to bed. If the phone rings, do us both a favor and don’t answer it.”
“I wish I could,” Keely confided, “but I still have a job that requires me to go out at all hours.”
Ella frowned. “Do you have a cell phone?”
She flushed. “No.” She couldn’t afford even a cheap disposable one.
Ella went to her purse and dug out hers. “When you go out at night from now on, you take mine. I’ll be with Carly if I go out.” She waved away the instant objection. “We can use hers. You have to have a way to call for help. Your father and Jock might even try to kidnap you. Brent sounded desperate.”
“Why don’t they just rob a bank?” Keely asked, exasperated.
“Don’t even joke about that,” her mother said at once, and went pale.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
Ella turned toward the hall. “I’m going to bed. Be careful if you have to go out. Call the sheriff’s office and have the deputies watch out for you.”
“I will.” She was thinking, though, of Sheriff Hayes’s brother and how he’d grieved for him after he’d died of that so-called drug overdose. She couldn’t bear the thought of being in any way involved, even if she’d had nothing to do with it. Her parents were responsible. Inevitably, one day it was going to come out. You never really knew people, she told herself. Not even your parents.
But despite everything, it made her feel warm inside, the unexpected concern from the one parent she’d thought hated her. She didn’t go to bed at once. She savored the feeling of having a real mother for the first time in her life. Even if that mother was the next best thing to a killer.
* * *
CLARK PHONED HER two days later and asked her to the big charity dance at the local community center on Saturday. She wasn’t on call for that one night, so she couldn’t refuse.
“Is this desperate or what?” he asked miserably. “It’s the only thing going on in Jacobsville for the foreseeable future, unless you want me to sign us up for the summer square-dancing workshop,” he added grumpily. “I’ll never get to see Nellie.”
“I like dancing,” she replied. “It’s okay. You can sneak out and nobody will even miss you. Then you can say you had a stomach upset.”
“You’re a genius,” he exclaimed.
No, she was just getting good at lying, she thought. She still was concerned about Boone’s perception and Clark’s headlong fling into disaster. And in the back of her mind was the thought of her father and Jock and their schemes.
* * *
THINGS WERE ROUTINE at work. She and her mother were getting along for the first time. Even Carly was kinder to Keely. And it seemed that the work she did around the house was slowly appreciated, right down to
