“Where are you, angel?”
“At Daddy’s, except he’s not home and Sara Lynn doesn’t like me being here when Daddy’s not here. I guess I cramp her style or something.” She sounded world-weary when she said it, as if she’d been hustled out of the way one too many times.
Kevin gritted his teeth. Part of his deal with Bobby Ray for that investment money had been that he’d pay more attention to his daughter. He should have known Bobby Ray’s promises weren’t worth a hill of beans.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” he told Abby. “Tell Sara Lynn not to budge. I want to have a little chat with her when I get there.”
“Not because of me, Uncle Kevin, please.”
“It’s okay, Abby. We won’t argue.” In fact, he didn’t intend to let the woman get a word in. He’d be doing all the talking and she’d damn well better listen. “Bye, angel. I’m on my way. I’ll see you soon.”
Spurred on by his anger, he made the drive in ten minutes, a sheriff’s deputy on his tail the whole way. When he turned off Route 3, the deputy followed and Kevin pulled to the side of the road. Prematurely gray-haired Otis Fowler ambled up to his car, thankfully without his citation book.
“Where’s the fire, Kevin? Problems at Bobby Ray’s again?”
“Not yet,” Kevin told him grimly. He was all too aware that the sheriff’s department had responded fairly regularly to domestic disputes at the house. According to the neighbors, Bobby Ray and Sara Lynn settled their disagreements at a volume a rock band would have envied.
“Then slow down,” Otis warned. “You’re setting a bad example for the other citizens.”
“Sorry. Abby called and I was anxious to get over here and pick her up.”
“She there by herself again?”
Kevin stared at him, startled by the direction of his guesswork. “Next best thing. She’s with Sara Lynn. But how do you know she’s been there by herself?”
“My girl’s in her class at school. Abby’s mentioned it a time or two when she’s been over to the house. I’ve warned Bobby Ray that the girl has no business being left alone. I try to keep a lookout when I’m in the area, but I’m not always on this shift.”
He shook his head, his expression sorrowful. “This ain’t like the old days, when a kid was safe to play outdoors without a parent watching over him,” he lamented. “Often as not in those days if one parent wasn’t home in the area, another one was and everyone looked out for everyone else’s kids. Now, just look at those kids killed up near Fredericksburg the last couple of years, all of ’em taken from their own front yards. We haven’t had problems like that, but Spotsylvania County’s not so far away that we can lose sight of the possibility. No sense tempting fate.”
“I’ll see to it that it doesn’t happen again,” Kevin assured him.
“Abby’s a cute kid. Smart, too. Why do you suppose Bobby Ray can’t appreciate that?”
“I wish I knew, Otis. I wish I knew.”
When he got to Bobby Ray’s, Abby was sitting on the porch, her nose stuck in a book. The child did love to read, probably because fictional worlds were a whole lot less complicated than the real-life world she lived in. He stopped by and ruffled her hair.
“Good book?”
“Uh-huh,” she said, barely sparing him a glance.
“Sara Lynn inside?”
“I guess.”
“Okay, let me talk to her and then we’ll get out of here and do something fun, okay?”
She nodded. Something about her response troubled him. She’d been pretty anxious for him to come and get her. Now it seemed his arrival didn’t matter one way or the other.
“Abby?”
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
She finally glanced up and he spotted the tears shimmering in her eyes. A lump formed in his throat. Hunkering down in front of her, he took her hands.
“Okay, baby, what’s wrong?”
“I told you Sara Lynn was going to get mad if I told her you wanted to talk to her,” she said, swiping angrily at a tear.
“What did she do?” Kevin asked, his tone deadly.
“Nothing. I swear it, Uncle Kevin.”
“I know better. What did she say to you?”
Abby heaved a sigh. “She told me if I was going to be such a tattletale, she was going to see to it that Daddy never spent another second with me.” She regarded Kevin anxiously. “She can’t do that, can she, Uncle Kevin?”
“No,” he said tersely. “She can’t do that. You sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
He found Sara Lynn upstairs sitting in front of her dressing-table mirror applying makeup. Dressed—barely—in a silk-and-lace dressing gown, she looked as if she were getting ready for a night on the town. He’d never much liked her, but at this moment he was angry enough to start smashing all the pretty little crystal bottles in front of her. Losing her expensive French perfumes—paid for with Abby’s child support money, no doubt—might get her attention.
“How dare you threaten Abby?” he said, barely containing his fury. “She’s a kid, Sara Lynn. If you have a problem with me, you yell at me. If you have a problem with your marriage, you deal with Bobby Ray. You don’t take it out on Abby.”
She didn’t turn, just glanced up at his reflection in the mirror. “Nice to see you, too, Kevin.”
“Don’t waste your sarcasm on me. I know your kind, Sara Lynn.”
Her gaze narrowed. “And what kind would that be?”
“You’re trash. You’re a user. You married Bobby Ray because you thought he had money. It’s galled you ever since that I control how much he has to throw around.”
She turned around then and gave him a tight smile. “Well, well, well, I guess the gloves are finally off.”
“You bet they’re off. If I ever hear that you’ve threatened Abby again or that you’ve been anything other than kind to her, the money around here will dry
