“I never said he’s innocent!” Byron shouted. “I’m saying he’s not guilty!”
“Oh good grief,” Phyllis Boren said in disgust. “Are we talking about the same Billy Crosby? The one who used to get drunk and hit his wife? That’s the Billy I knew, and I’m betting he’s exactly the same person he always was, and now you’re glad he’s coming back here. If you loved Valentine like you supposedly do, you ought to be horrified that he’s coming back to live with her!”
“I didn’t say I’ll be happy to see him! I said he’s not guilty!”
“And who told you that?” Phyllis challenged him. “His wife and his son? Of course they think he didn’t do it. But where’s your evidence, Byron?”
“It’ll all come out someday, Phyllis.”
She made a disgusted noise.
“Not guilty?” Samuel launched in again. “On which planet? That man murdered that wonderful young man and his wife and it couldn’t be any plainer unless he confessed-”
“Which he’s never going to do,” Phyllis interjected.
“Because,” the third man said, “that would mean taking mercy on their family and especially on their daughter, who’s never going to know for sure-”
He stopped when Phyllis, who had just spotted Jody, tugged on his shirtsleeve. “What?” he asked her, sounding annoyed at being cut off in mid-tirade. “Who’s that?”
Phyllis’s whisper could have been heard in the back of the store.
“That’s Jody Linder!”
Far from stopping out of consideration for Jody, he now pointed at her: “That young woman. What do you think all this is going to do to her, Byron George? You want to look her in the eye and tell her how you believe Billy Crosby didn’t do it? Go on, I dare you. Walk up to her and tell her how-”
Jody didn’t wait for more. She hurried toward the back.
She was used to being recognized or pointed out by people she didn’t know, because of her family’s infamous history, but she’d never gotten over finding it an appalling experience. She might not have minded being recognized for some worthy accomplishment of her own, but she minded very much being “famous” because her father had been murdered and her mother might have been. When she was thirteen, a couple of tourists asked for her autograph, which shocked her so badly she had thrown their pen back at them before running away. Behind her, she’d heard one of them call her a rude little brat.
When she was out of sight, she clutched the side of a table holding apples and bananas and waited to see if the four people would keep yelling at each other. Her heart was pounding even harder than when her uncles broke the news to her and she felt like crying again.
All she wanted at that moment was to be invisible.
The yelling stopped, but then she felt an arm come around her shoulders. She looked up into the lined face of Phyllis Boren, who laid the side of her head against Jody’s and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
Jody nodded, and didn’t know what to say to her.
Phyllis took hold of her left hand and squeezed it. “Please give your grandparents my best wishes.”
“I will.” Then she made herself ask what she didn’t want to ask. “Phyllis? Are there many people who think Billy didn’t kill my dad?”
Her grandmother’s friend-who could be counted on to tell the truth as reliably as she could be counted on to be tactless-said, “There are a few. Always have been. They’re the ones who think he was railroaded and that he wouldn’t be in prison if your family hadn’t forced it.”
“People blame my family?”
“Not many, just a stubborn few. Probably jealous of you. And then there are people like Bailey who don’t think Billy did it, but they don’t mind if he got sent to jail anyway.”
Jody frowned at the idea of the tavern owner’s betrayal. “Bailey thinks he didn’t do it?”
Phyllis sniffed. “Nobody ever accused Bailey of being a genius.”
She finally moved away, leaving Jody alone. Blindly, Jody picked up an apple as if she was considering buying it. Then, feeling hideously self-conscious, she made her way to the dairy section and got the two half gallons of milk for her grandmother. Their handles felt cool and damp in her hands as she walked back to the front again with every intention of purchasing them. But when she saw Byron George at one of the checkout counters, she felt swept by outrage at his defense of Crosby. It was different for Red Bosch to feel as he did-he’d been there that night, he’d actually seen Billy, and even if Red’s perceptions were wrong, at least they were drawn from firsthand experience. Not so Byron. All he was doing was taking the word of people who could be expected to defend their husband and father. In all the years that her family had bought groceries here, they’d never suspected the worm in all the apples they’d bought from Byron.
Jody took the milk to the checkout counter.
“Hi, Byron,” she said to the red-faced man who stood behind one of them. She put the sloshy containers down on the conveyer belt. It was hard to keep antagonism out of her voice, so she grabbed the first superficial topic she could think of, even if it must have sounded like a non sequitur to Byron. “My grandma’s making gravy tonight.”
He looked apologetic as he said, “I hear your grandmother makes the best gravy in five counties.”
“And my mom made the best piecrust.”
She looked him in the eyes.
Byron’s face flushed even redder. “I can’t claim I ever had any of it. But that’s certainly what I always heard.”
Jody didn’t say out loud her contemptuous thought as she took her change from him. You believe things you don’t know anything about, don’t you, Byron? You believe what anybody tells you?
“Where’s Valentine today?” she asked him.
He looked both sad and embarrassed as he said, “She stayed home.” He busied himself with packing the milk into plastic bags. “To get ready.”
Jody swallowed. “Is he in town yet?”
“I don’t know, Jody. I’m keeping my distance.”
“Probably a good idea for all of us,” she replied, and realized she sounded like a self-righteous version of her grandmother.
“I hope you weren’t offended by-”
“Not at all,” she lied, with a bright smile.
But then she heard her grandmother’s voice in her head.
If you don’t get down off that high horse, you’re going to have a very long way to fall, young lady.
Jody’s false smile wavered. A smaller, truer one took its place. Byron couldn’t help it, she realized. He was in love, and sometimes love wasn’t only blind, it was also stupid. Maybe that wasn’t a kind thought, but it was the best she could do at the moment.
“’Bye, Byron,” she said quietly.
“’Bye, Jody. Thanks for coming in.”
When she got back into her truck, she pointed it in the opposite direction of the ranch.
28
WHEN SHE WALKED into Bailey’s Bar & Grill, the scent of beer and fried food was overwhelming, as it always was. Sometimes she thought she’d go to her grave with the scent of Bailey’s cheeseburgers still clinging to her hair and clothes. After every meal she’d ever eaten there, she went home and scrubbed, even if she had loved every fatty bite. Before Bailey outlawed smoking-because he wanted to quit-it had been even harder to wash out the stink.
The place was even dimmer than the grocery had been.
A few early diners had their suppers in front of them, and a couple of them raised their hands to her in greeting. Bailey had installed a pool table years ago, and now it was bracketed by men with pool cues in one hand and bottles of beer in the other.
