“I need to speak with you for a moment, Lovey.”
Lovey paused with her hand on the knob of the screen door. She let the door close again and turned toward her father. “Yes?”
“Deacon Wood said something rather disturbing to me after the luncheon today.”
She didn’t prod him to explain; she just stood stoically watching his face, trying to brace herself for whatever it was he was about to reveal.
“He said that the night of the revival he passed by here and saw a strange car in the driveway. He said the car belonged to Royal Duval.” He paused, as if he was waiting for her to say something. When she didn’t, he continued. “I told him that he must have been mistaken. I told him that while you had once accepted a ride from Miss Duval that you would not socialize with a woman who was a known moonshine runner and a person of general ill repute.”
During her walk back to the house, all Lovey wanted to do was cry; now she found that heavy sadness shifting to anger. She was enraged that some busybody deacon had taken it upon himself to spy on her. In her own house! Despite the fact that this very revelation proved her recent rationale to be true, it still made her angry.
“I invited Royal over for dinner.”
“You didn’t mention that to me.” Her father seemed angry too.
“I’m a grown woman, Father. I didn’t think it was necessary to ask your permission to have a friend over for dinner.”
“Lovey, I do not want you spending time with Miss Duval. I know you probably feel that your friendship might have a positive influence on her, but I must advise against it.”
“Don’t worry, Father. I’ve made it very clear to her that I cannot be her friend.” If anything, she’d been a horrible influence on Royal. She’d shown Royal what it meant to be duplicitous and hypocritical.
“Well, I’m relieved to hear it.”
“If you don’t mind, Father, I’m going to go lie down for a while.” She pulled the door open and was inside before he had a chance to respond. She didn’t really care what else he had to say. She was emotionally raw and exhausted. She just wanted to hide in her room and wait for the world to go away, or change.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Royal sat in front of the window, trying to write. Nothing was coming to her. She’d started out at the desk, then moved to the bed, and finally had ended up at the window. As it turned out, her position in the room wasn’t the problem. She was the problem.
She gave up and headed downstairs and out of the house. She found her grandfather in the barn moving empty glass jars to crates padded with hay for transport later up the trail to the still. Royal joined his effort and then carried some of the crates to the back of the horse drawn wagon.
“You seem really out of sorts lately, Royal. Somethin’ you want to talk about?” Her grandfather paused his labor and leaned on the side of the buckboard.
Royal debated whether she wanted to talk about Lovey or not. Before she could decide, her grandfather spoke again.
“Is this about the gal that stopped by the other day? The reverend’s daughter?”
Royal stopped shuffling crates and looked at him. “Yeah, I suppose it is.” She tried to sound nonchalant when she was actually anything but.
“What happened?”
“I guess I thought we had something going, but she didn’t see it that way.” She sniffed, determined not to cry in front of her grandfather.
“It’s a terrible thing when your happiness depends on another. Sometimes they let you down.”
“What do you do about it?” Royal was struggling to feel like herself again. Losing Lovey had rocked her center and completely thrown her. Normally confident and focused, she felt out of balance and unsure of herself. She was miserable. It was as if Lovey had taken the part of her that knew what she wanted and now she was flailing in deep water, as if she forgot how to swim.
“The thing I usually do is remind myself of what makes me happy, and I focus on doing that.” Her grandfather pulled a handkerchief free from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The interior of the barn was shaded from the late morning sun, but the temperature was climbing, even in the shade. “In your case, that’s driving or writing.”
“I haven’t been able to write.”
“Then driving is where I’d focus.” He took a seat on an upturned crate. “Remember the first time I put you behind the wheel of a car?”
Royal’s mind traveled back to childhood. She’d pulled herself up as tall as she could on the bench seat beside her grandfather. She had a tiny bit of visibility through the narrow space between the top of the giant steering wheel and the dashboard of the old truck. Golden hay almost as high as the doorknob swished against the steel door of the Model A Ford as Royal and her grandfather had bounced through the back pasture.
Only a month earlier, Royal’s father had died in a car accident after tumbling into a ravine. Royal’s mother had been upset that this was the time her grandfather had chosen to teach Royal to drive. But Royal had been surly with everyone and listlessly hiding in her room. The suggestion of a driving lesson had been the first time she’d smiled since the funeral. Royal was ten years old.
“Yeah, I remember. It’s one of my favorite memories.”
“Remember how I told you to listen to the engine? When it got to a certain pitch, if it started to sound like it was straining, you should shift.” Her grandfather had leaned
