“How dare that man speak to her?” Annabelle looked frightened and worried as she stared across the long table at her husband. “How dare he say a single word to our Jody?”
“That’s the kind of man he is, Mom,” Belle reminded them all.
31
AFTER THE DISHES were put away, Chase joined his niece as she sat alone on the front porch swing listening to music on her iPod and looking up at constellations that couldn’t be seen in any city, but only in places as isolated and dark as the ranch was at night. When he sat down beside her, the swing jolted, rattling the chains that held it to the porch ceiling and breaking the rhythm until he got it going again with a push of one boot heel on the wooden floor.
“How long are you and Uncle Bobby going to be here?”
“Until we don’t have to be.”
“What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer, but lit a cigarette instead.
Jody removed the iPod buds from her ears.
“Why didn’t you bring the boys with you?”
He had three teenage sons whom she loved a lot.
“Because I don’t want them around any of this.”
“Can you ship me away, too?”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I wouldn’t go.”
“There’s a surprise.”
They swung silently for a while. He blew his smoke away from her when Jody waved a hand at it. Sometimes she liked her uncle Chase’s company more than anybody’s-when he was quiet and thoughtful and not bossing her around. She felt safe with him, although she didn’t quite remember why, and she trusted him to make things right. She wished he was a happier man, for his sake. Two wives hadn’t made it so; he seemed to come the closest to it when he was working cattle with his sons. She wished she had known him-or could remember him-when he was young and lighthearted and funny.
“What was my dad like?”
“I’ve told you a million times.”
“I like to hear it.”
He shifted in the swing, making it temporarily slide jarringly from side to side. Jody held onto the armrest on her side until the swing went in the right direction again.
“You like to hear it,” Chase said in his smoke-roughened voice. “And I like to tell it. Hugh-Jay was a big guy, bigger than any of us.” She heard a smile in his voice when he said, “But not nearly as good-looking.”
“You say that every time.”
“Can’t be said too often.” He chuckled, a low masculine rumble of amusement that she loved to hear. “But what he lacked in handsome, he more than made up for in decent.”
“Was he the nicest person you ever knew?”
“I think he was.”
“Nicer than you?”
He laughed. “Well, yeah, but how hard is that?”
Jody giggled. They swung in companionable silence while coyotes called to each other from hill to hill. A single bulb over the barn doors shed the only light at any distance from the house. Jody took solace in the beauty of the evening and pride in her father’s good character.
“What about my mother?”
“Hmm.”
“You always do that, you go ‘hmm’ when I ask about her.”
“Prettiest girl in the county.”
“Was she as nice as my dad?”
Usually Chase answered that by smiling and saying something like, “Nobody could be, but she made a damn nice blueberry pie.” This time he did something different. He stopped the swing with his boot so they were sitting still. Jody’s heart started to beat fast as she got a feeling she was going to hear something he’d never told her before.
“You mother was spoiled and stuck-up and a little mean.”
“What?” She felt shocked, even though she’d long heard allusions to her mother “wanting what she wanted when she wanted it.” But nobody had ever gone this far. “Are you kidding me?”
“I wish I were. But here’s the thing. She was young. If that bastard had given her a chance to live a normal life span, Laurie might have gotten humbled a few times and she might have grown up to be a nicer person. I always thought there must be more to her than what people saw in her because-after all-your father married her. That was the highest recommendation she could get, so I have to put some stock in that, since I put so much stock in him. Most people thought he married her for her looks and she married him for his money-”
“Uncle Chase!”
“But the older I get, the more inclined I am to think he saw something good in her heart.” He laughed, a rueful sound. “Or maybe it’s just that the older I get, the dumber I get.”
“Why are you telling me this?” She felt desperately unhappy to hear it.
“Because it seems as if all kinds of truths are coming out, and you may as well get them all laid out for you.”
She had to fight back tears. “You’re the mean one.”
She heard him sigh. “Don’t you want to know who she really was?”
Jody didn’t answer. Maybe later she would want to know; at this moment it made her sad. In a kind of revenge, she suddenly said, “What if he really didn’t do it?”
“What if who didn’t do what?”
“Billy Crosby. What if he didn’t kill my dad?”
“Where the hell are you getting this?”
It pleased her to have made him angry, too.
“Do you know that Byron George thinks he didn’t do it?”
“Well, then I guess he doesn’t want this family as his customers anymore.”
“Bailey doesn’t think so, either.”
Chase halted the swing again. She saw him turn to stare at her.
“He told me so today,” she said. “He says Billy was too drunk.”
Jody was about to tell Chase about Red Bosch’s opinion, but thought better of doing that; Red should get to tell the family himself, and not have her tattle on him.
“Is this where that question about the drunk test came from at supper tonight?” Chase asked, and then he snapped at her, “Try to remember you’re the victim here, all right?”
“You didn’t bring me up to feel like a victim.”
“No, we didn’t, but maybe you need to feel that now and then, so you can know the deep wrong this very bad man did and how he doesn’t deserve anybody’s sympathy, least of all yours.”
“I’m not sympathetic to him, Uncle Chase.”
“Good. Don’t ever be. And stop this ridiculous talk.”
They sat in a much less comfortable silence then, until Jody got up from the swing. Faking nonchalance, she stretched up her arms, spreading her fingers until their tips seemed to touch the stars.
“Are you coming in?” she asked, her tone chilly.
“No, I’ll stay out here awhile.”
“Uncle Chase?”
“Yeah?”
