Count on Me (Petal, Georgia)

by Lauren Dane

  Chapter Twenty

  Shep came in with the pizza and a smile. Caroline led him through the house to the kitchen where Royal was feeding Spike.

  “Hey, Royal.”

  “Shep. How’s it going?”

  “Well, I would have liked to know you got a death threat today.” Shep gave her a face and she sighed.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have found a way to tell you. I wanted it to be in person, and I didn’t want to go to the high school or the house. Silly when Petal is lightning fast with gossip. I’ll tell you everything once we get settled.”

  Royal washed his hands and pointed at the paper plates. “You two should eat.”

  “You’re not staying?” Shep asked Royal.

  “I know this is your time with your sister. I just wanted to be out of the way.”

  Shep snorted. “She’s my annoying sister, but since you’re her boyfriend and she’s living with you and all, I suppose getting to know you better is a good thing.”

  Caroline grinned. “See? I told you.” She opened the pizza box and hummed happily. “Yay, pizza. I need to drown my troubles in melted cheese and carbs.”

  They loaded up and moved to the couch. She told Shep about all the threats and what the authorities were doing to help. He shook his head, clearly worried, but she assured him she was fine and everyone was keeping her safe.

  “How can anyone deny our mom wasn’t killed by our dad at this point? Clearly this is related to the murder and your reaching out for tips in the media. The person who did it is going to do all he can to shut you up. I don’t want you to end up like her.”

  Caroline swallowed hard. “I don’t want that either. I’m being as safe as I can without totally up and leaving town or traveling with armed guards. So, you believe me then? About Dad?”

  He was clearly upset, but he was also a seventeen-year-old boy so he wolfed down five pieces of pizza before elaborating.

  “I read everything you gave me. I did a lot of soul searching. I talked to Mr. Chase. He told me I could if I ever wanted to so I did and he’s pretty cool. He thinks you’re pretty awesome, you know?”

  “Which Mr. Chase?”

  “Oh yeah, whoops. Edward. I see them at church pretty often. When you first moved back, he told me if I ever wanted to talk about it he’d be happy to. I think he told Mindy that too. But.”

  It hurt a great deal to imagine this distance between herself and her sister would last any length of time. She’d come to Petal to get closer and she’d finally managed to totally estrange her grandparents. She still spoke to Mindy but with Garrett crowing all over the place about how horrible Caroline was, it was uncomfortable.

  “Well, do you have questions or anything?”

  “Just how can I help? I feel…guilty maybe? Bad. Sad. Angry. Resentful. I’m sorry you have done this on your own all this time. I’m sorry Grandma and Grandpa are so blind to this that they’ve pushed you out of the family. Maybe a little jealous that you had them as parents all those years and I never really did.”

  Caroline hugged him, kissing his cheek. “You get to feel how you feel. But I’m not mad and they wouldn’t have been mad at you either. You know what you’re told. And they never told you anything but this one thing. How could you have done anything else?”

  “You did.”

  “I’m fourteen years older than you. You were two when this happened. I was nearly sixteen. There’s a world of difference there. And you know, it sucks that Grandma and Grandpa are being closed off right now, but you have so much more family than you really know. They’ve wanted to see you since the murder.”

  His chin jutted out just like their mother used to do, and it made her smile even as it made her sad. “Yeah? Well where have they been then?”

  “They tried to see you guys, but Grandma and Grandpa fought them so hard they were worried it would hurt you worse.”

  “Grandma told me they didn’t care to see us if we didn’t believe in his innocence.”

  “I’m walking a really fine line, Shep. For all intents and purpose here, you’re their son.” She wanted him to know, but this was complicated and she needed to step carefully.

  “I’m nearly an adult! You’re my sister. They were my parents. I deserve to know the whole truth. Why would they lie? Why would they push you and our other family away? I don’t get it.”

  “Our grandparents loved our mother very much. This is a fact and I will never say otherwise. She was their golden light. A homecoming queen. She was prom queen and you know all that. Popular. Beautiful. Super smart. And here comes this guy. Our dad wasn’t any of that stuff. Well scratch that, he was really smart. He went to UCLA and graduated near the top of his class. And he came here the summer after he got his degree and ended up working at the railroad depot. He was quiet. He worked really hard and he kept his head down, but when he met Mom, nothing could keep them apart. She brought home not the captain of the football team. Not the nice boy from church. But Enrique Mendoza.”

  “A common laborer.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard our grandmother use that description, though after the last time she said it in front of me, she never has again. Look, I gotta tell you straight, here’s this gorgeous blonde girl from small-town Georgia and our dad, half-Mexican and half-Cuban, all dark skin comes to town. The Lassiters believe people like that belong mowing lawns and nannying kids. Certainly not getting their daughter pregnant and marrying her.”

  Caroline, of the three Mendoza kids, favored her father the most. Where Shep and Mindy had their mother’s fairer complexion and lighter brown hair, Caroline’s eyes were deep brown and her hair so brunette it was black. After the funeral, her grandmother had said it was a shame that their mother was gone because everyone would simply assume she was like her dad and by that she’d meant the color of Caroline’s skin. Abigail had covered it, or had tried to anyway, especially when her grandfather heard it and had reacted to his wife angrily.

  But Shep had a lot of other stuff to plow through at that moment, so he didn’t need to know it all right then. And she needed to talk to Royal to get his opinion on how much to let her brother know.

  The bottom line was having a relationship with her siblings. That he now saw the truth about their father was wonderful, but she didn’t want him to feel like he had to turn his back on anyone either. He had a different relationship than she did with her grandparents for a whole host of reasons. He had enough to deal with right then so she’d be judicious as always.

  “Anyway, the Mendozas had not only lost our mother, who they loved a great deal, but their son to death row. And I came out and they took me in and raised me and tried to deal with my anger and my grief and my utter certainty that our father did not kill our mother. They tried to see you. They hired an attorney. But, Shep, you and Mindy were so small and the Lassiters had been a regular part of your life. The Lassiters wanted the Mendozas to make no mention of our father or their belief in his innocence. They didn’t want you and Mindy to leave Petal so they did come to visit you here several times. But our abuela was getting more and more frail, and it became really hard for her to travel. Danny, that’s one of Dad’s brothers, he came out here a few times but he and Grandma butted heads a lot. Anyway in the end, they backed off because they were worried about you and Mindy getting caught in the middle.”

  “You don’t think Grandma would stop them from seeing us. She told us they never made an attempt.”

  “Grandma is a super strong personality, but she’s also a fraidy cat. Know what I mean?”

  He shook his head.

  “She’s so afraid of anyone around her believing in things she doesn’t. It’s turned her into a person who will stop at nothing to keep her life free of things she doesn’t like. Which is why she and I have such a complicated relationship. She truly sees any contact with Dad’s family as a threat to her. I’ll let them tell you if you decide you want to meet them. Our abuela is getting older though. I don’t want to pressure you, but I
don’t know if she’ll be around in a year or two.”

  “Abuela?”

  “Spanish for grandmother. Just another kind of nana or gran. There’s so much stuff for you to see and learn and experience with people who love you and Mindy. It’s an open wound that they haven’t been able to see you. I’m sorry, this is making you feel guilty, and they wouldn’t want that and neither do I.”

  “I’ve always been curious about them. We don’t have all our history. It makes me mad.”

  Caroline nodded. “I get that, and I can’t blame you for that at all. It’s been kept from you to protect you. I want to underline that. I don’t agree with what Grandma and Grandpa have done, but they did it because they love you and Mindy.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I have plenty of love in my life. I can’t beg them for it. I don’t even want to. But they loved Mom and they love you guys and somewhere in their hearts they love me too. They’re old school. Interracial marriage was hard for them to accept then and I expect it is now too.”

  “Fuck that.” He continued despite the look she gave him at his language. “They don’t get to love the fairer kids and pretend the darker one doesn’t exist and use your opinion about our father’s innocence as a reason to keep you back.”

  She laughed. “Sure they can. They do. It doesn’t mean I have to validate them for it. It’s racism, yes. But let’s move around this and back to the situation with the case. Yes, it’s connected. There’s no reason to think otherwise. Which means we need to keep pushing. We have a little momentum after so many years of nothing. My investigator is on it. He monitors the tip lines and all that. He’ll follow up on stuff we feel is worth it.”

  “Can I make calls or anything? Make copies? Go with you when you talk to people?”

  “I want you to keep out of this. I’m happy to update you, answer your questions, whatever. But someone is out there trying to hurt me because I’m making noise and drawing attention. He’s not going to be the only one out to hurt me.”

  Royal growled but kept his tongue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Shep, I’m taking something people truly believed and I’m ripping it from under them and announcing how wrong they’ve been. Most people will accept that and be glad the real killer gets caught and put in jail. They’ll be sad they thought wrong but in the big picture they’ll understand Enrique Mendoza was innocent and move on. It won’t cost them anything really. But some people like Grandma and Garrett? They’ve invested a lot of negative emotion into this and how they believe. It’ll seem like an attack to them. Those people are going to feel really defensive and angry at me.”

  “Nah. I don’t think so. People will be fine.”

  “You have no idea. You’re totally outside all the hostility because Grandma’s opinion protects you. You’re not seen as an outsider so I want you to think carefully about what you say and how you say it. I’ve had sixteen years to get used to it, but this will be new.”

  Royal broke in. “I stopped a full-grown man from punching your sister in the temple. In the Pumphouse at prime time. And before that, this same person nearly started a fight at the Tonk. I’ve seen people treat her badly once they know who she is.”

  Her brother looked so miserable. She got up to fetch him an ice cream bar and returned with one for herself and Royal too.

  Handing it to him, she remained quiet as they got the ice cream unwrapped and got a bite or two.

  “People will judge you. Not all of them, which is nice. But if you want to keep it quiet until after this is over, you’ll have to deal with a lot less of it. There’s no reason to do it now. You might lose friends. If you wait, people don’t have to have that moment with you. You can find out with them which will make them feel better about you.”

  “No way.” Shep pounded his chest over his heart. “My whole fucking life, Caroline! My whole life I hated our father for killing our mother. He was near enough I could have visited him. I could have written him. He wouldn’t have died knowing I hated him. I can’t take that back or make it better. There’s no way I’m going to just pretend the truth away because it’ll be uncomfortable for a short while. You’ve handled it alone all these years.”

  She nodded. “Okay well here’s another thing, I’m a target because of what I’m doing. I don’t want you unsafe.”

  Royal masterfully managed not to snort, guffaw or roll his eyes as she made the same argument he’d made to her about keeping her head down.

  “I don’t need to go on television with you to be open about wanting to prove our dad’s innocence. I won’t write a press release, okay? But I won’t pretend anymore or let Grandma try to shut me up.”

  “All right. But be sure the doors stay locked. Try not to be out alone, okay? If you see anything weird, tell Shane Chase.” She went to her bag, found one of Shane’s cards and brought it back to her brother. “This is his info. He’s working on the case. He’s a really good guy and you can trust him. Or you can call me. Whatever. Just don’t ignore something you feel weird about.”

  Shep finished up his ice cream bar, had two more slices of pizza and quizzed her for a long time after that.

  It was ten when she called a halt to the evening. “You need to get home. You have school tomorrow and your grandmother is already unhappy. Call me tomorrow or text me, whatever. You know where I am.” She stood. “I have something for you. I’ve been arguing with myself about when and if to give them to you. But now, well, hang on.”

  Caroline went to the closet in the spare room she’d sort of taken over and grabbed the wooden chest.

  “So,” she said as she came back out, “every two weeks for every year Dad was in prison he wrote me a letter. I wrote him back all the time too, of course. It’s very difficult to see people on death row, you know. It’s not really geared at keeping connections with their lives outside. But later I got in to see him because we were working on his case. Anyway, I’m rambling. When he died, the prison sent his stuff to me.” She handed the box over. “He wrote you every two weeks too. But he wasn’t allowed to contact you guys. So he wrote them and put them in envelopes and addressed them and he never got to send them. I don’t think Mindy is ready for hers. He was your dad, Shep, and he loved you. If you don’t take anything else with you the whole of your life, know that. He would not want your guilt.”

  Shep’s eyes brimmed with tears. “He wrote me?” He opened the box and pulled out a packet of mail.

  “He did. I didn’t open anything, but I bundled them by year just to give you somewhere to start. If you want.”

  Shep turned the bundle in his hands over. He pulled out a few larger envelopes. “Cards?”

  “Every year for Christmas, your birthday and Easter. He loved Easter.”

  “Jesus. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then don’t say anything. You don’t have to read any of them if you don’t want to. You can leave them here until you’re ready. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to.”

  “No, I want to read them. Thank you for this.”

  She hugged him tight.

  “And Shep? Grandma probably doesn’t need to know about those letters. Just saying. She might not respond so well.” She would burn them or throw them away or something equally horrible.

  “Yeah. Got it. I’ll talk to you later. You be safe.”

  “You too. Text me when you get home and then when you’re safely inside.”

  He sighed. “Fine. God. Worrywart.”

  “That’s what big sisters are for. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Caroline. Thank you. For understanding and for being patient and for these letters.”

  They didn’t see the movie, but she and her brother were in an entirely new relationship and it was something she wanted to last.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Tuesday of the following week she’d been standing at her desk, preparing to head out to lunch. A new email came in, and she reminded herself to
turn that sound off because she was unable not to bend to look at her screen to see who it was from.

  Then there was a crack and a slam and shattering glass and the thunk as the bullet hit the far wall.

  She screamed and hit the ground. Adrenaline made her hands shake as she got her shit together with a mental slap. Now was not the time to lose it. She double-timed her crawl to the door, nearly arriving when it jerked open with Edward standing there.

  “Get back!” she yelled at him. The last thing she needed was to get her boss shot on the job. She’d be lucky to keep her job after this as it was.

  “I called the police,” Holly called out.

  Edward reached down, grabbed her under her arms, pulled her up and out of the room. Behind him, Peter yanked the door to her office closed.

  “Are you all right?” Edward set her on the couch.

  “Uh?” Caroline looked down at herself, still shaking. Her clothes had been ripped in a few places from the glass. There was a lot of blood though. “I think so. Someone shot into my office.”

  He knelt in front of her as Holly brought over the first aid kit. “Caroline, I need you to focus. Can you do that? Just give all your attention to what I’m saying.” Edward’s voice was emotionless but also sharp enough to keep her on track. Vaguely she realized he was talking to her like she was in shock.

  “The bullet hit the far wall.”

  “Caroline, you have a lot of blood all over you.” He and Holly brushed over her hair and her upper body and glass went everywhere. “I just want to be sure you haven’t been really hurt.”

  “You’re going to get glass all over the place.”

  He smiled. “I think we can let it go this one time.”

  The door burst open as police officers came in. Caroline recognized Matt Chase in his handsome blue uniform. He had one of those tackle-box things with a red cross on it, and she figured he probably did some sort of double duty as a paramedic when needed.

  Holly took over as Edward got up and went to speak to the police.

  “Will you call Royal please?” Caroline asked Holly. “If this gets to him before I can tell him, he’ll be worried sick and also mad.”