Looking for Trouble

by Victoria Dahl

  She should’ve transformed this room long before, but she’d somehow never managed it. It was her childhood room, after all. She didn’t plan to stay here permanently. She’d leave it behind. She knew that was true because aside from the photos from high school and a gigantic map of the world, all the other decorations were posters of faraway sights. Sandy deserts and ocean glaciers and African savannas. She’d once collected postcards from friends traveling closer to home, too. Washington, D.C., and New York City and San Francisco. But all those postcards had been cut up and used in scrapbooks.

  That was okay. She’d get out there soon. She wouldn’t need scrapbooks or posters or postcards from friends, because she’d travel herself someday. For now, she was patient. Her dad needed her. Clearly, her brother did, too.

  Sophie sat up with a sigh, thinking she may as well put dinner in the oven while she was waiting, but she didn’t have the will to stand up. Instead, she just slumped and stared at her dresser and tried not to freak out about her brother. Her eye fell on a new stack of mail and she snagged that and started going through it. All junk. Except one letter.

  She froze at the sight of the return address. With everything else going on, she didn’t want to think about this right now. Or at any point.

  It had taken the medical examiner’s office quite a while to complete their final examination of the remains. There hadn’t been much to work with, but with the vague possibility of a crime, they’d waited months for clearance from the sheriff’s office.

  The clearance had come, her mother’s bones had been sent to a funeral home, and she’d been cremated. Sophie had taken care of all of that. But this part she couldn’t seem to manage. This part she couldn’t make herself do.

  When she heard the rumble of an approaching engine, Sophie tucked the letter from the funeral home into a drawer and raced to the living room. A peek out the window revealed her brother and dad getting out of the truck, both of them dusty and sweat-soaked from whatever work they’d been doing.

  Shit. She’d really wanted to speak to her brother alone, but she supposed her dad had to find out at some point.

  David’s head was down when he walked in, his mouth drawn into a scowl. He always looked like that after being forced to do real work. Sophie wanted to grab him by the hair and shake him just for that damn look.

  He glanced at her, then headed straight toward his room, as if he really thought she’d let him walk right past her.

  “What the hell did you do?” she asked.

  He shrugged one shoulder and tried to brush past. She pushed him. “What did you do?” she yelled.

  “Hey!” her dad said, startled by the sudden tension. “What’s going on here?”

  “Ask David!”

  “Get over it,” he mumbled.

  “Are you kidding me? Did you think Dad and I would have nothing to say about this?”

  “I didn’t care what you had to say about this. It’s my name on the lawsuit, not yours.”

  Her dad’s chin drew in. “Lawsuit? What are you talking about, David?”

  Her brother crossed his arms and frowned at her, seemingly unwilling to admit what he’d done.

  Fine. She’d do the hard work. She always had. “He filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Bishop estate,” she finally said, the words dry and bitter and sticking to her throat as she said them. Tears rushed to her eyes. This time she couldn’t stop them. “He’s suing the Bishops because this all wasn’t ugly enough without that!”

  “David!” their father gasped.

  Her brother shrugged again. “What? Whatever happened in that accident was his fault. He was driving. People file lawsuits when that happens. Their insurance will pay for it.”

  Greg Heyer had never so much as spanked either one of them, and he rarely lost his temper. Even now, he didn’t. But he did point at his son and shake his head in disgust. “No. People might file lawsuits, but we don’t. She’s been dead for twenty-five years. Let it lie.”

  David, face red and hands balling into fists, knocked their father’s hand away. “My mother has been dead for twenty-five years!” he screamed. Sophie’s heart nearly pounded out of her chest. She jumped in front of her dad and shoved her brother back before he could lash out further.

  He barely noticed. “My mom is dead because of something Wyatt Bishop did. Someone has to pay for that!”

  “His kids?” her dad yelled back. “That’s what you want? To make his kids pay?”

  “Why not? Everyone has been making us pay for decades! And now they’re the ones getting all the sympathy, holding that bastard up like a fucking community hero.”

  “Watch your language,” her dad snapped.

  “Watch my language?” he shouted. “Are you kidding? Watch my language, keep my head down, keep my mouth shut, calm down. That’s all you ever had to say about any of this. ‘Ignore them, David. You give them more power if you respond.’ Well, guess what? That’s not fucking true. I should’ve fought all of them a long time ago!”

  Her dad blew out a long breath behind her. “What are you talking about?” he asked wearily.

  “I’m saying I’m not going to be weak anymore. I’m going to take what belongs to me.”

  “And what belongs to you is someone else’s money?” he sighed.

  “Fuck you!” David snarled.

  Sophie pushed her finger into his chest. “Don’t you speak to him that way. Ever.”

  He knocked her hand away, too, startling her so much that she stepped back.

  “Fuck you, too, Sophie. You’re not my mom and you never have been.” He finally spun away and stalked to his room. The slam of his door shook the whole house.

  Sophie stood frozen in shock. Her brother had always seemed sullen and childish, but this was a new low.

  “Hey, don’t cry, princess.”

  Her dad turned her into his arms and hugged her. She hadn’t realized she was still crying, but as his arms closed around her, she sobbed.

  “It’s okay,” he murmured. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to David once he’s settled down and find out what’s going on. Maybe he just needs to talk it out and then I can get him to drop this nonsense.”

  “But he’s already done it. Everybody already knows.”

  He patted her back in that way he’d done since she could remember. He’d probably been doing it since she was a toddler and her mom had married him. “It doesn’t matter what they think, Sophie. What matters is that we do the right thing. You know that.”

  Yes. She knew that. He’d always told her and David that. She hadn’t believed it, and neither had David apparently, but Sophie had always appreciated it at least. Her brother clearly hadn’t seen it the same way.

  “Why would he do it?” she whispered, as if her dad could have any sort of answer.

  He squeezed her hard again. “He was only one. He doesn’t remember your mother at all, sweetheart. All he’s ever known about her is anger and shame. You and I, we knew something more than that. We knew how funny she was. How quick to laugh. We knew the good things. He never got that. He’s mixed up about it.”

  Well, Jesus, Sophie was mixed up, too, but she had some damn common sense. She did sometimes wonder if David would’ve been a better man if Mom had been around, but maybe he would’ve been just as weak and whiny. Maybe he would’ve been worse.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away to wipe her tears. Her dad pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. “This must all be tough for you. The memorial service and the memories, and now this....”

  He shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m a grown man. I can handle a little gossip. Anyway, I’ve got this place, and a great daughter to take care of me. It’s not so bad.”

  When she’d been young, she’d wondered if he’d even heard the rumors that had flown. After all, he li
ved way out here on his own. She and David hadn’t had the choice to be isolated. They’d had to go to school. Had to face the taunting.

  In fact, her dad had been so good at facing things stoically, she’d wondered whether he missed her mom at all. But sometimes when she’d been a little girl plagued by bad dreams and afraid to sleep, she would sneak down the hall toward the faint light of her dad’s reading lamp. And every once in a while she’d find him sitting in his big easy chair, head in hands, and a bottle of Scotch open on the table next to him. The night when she’d finally realized he was quietly sobbing, she’d stopped sneaking out to the living room. It was too scary to know her big strong stepfather was just as hurt as she was.

  But just like he always did, he assured her he’d be fine about this new blow. She didn’t know how to figure out if he was really fine or not, so she mopped up her tears and did what she always did. She got to work.

  “What were you doing today?” she asked as she moved to the kitchen to wash the few dishes that had been left in the sink.

  “Looking for the last few strays. We’re selling a little early this year.”

  “Any luck with the strays?”

  “We found two. I suspect the last one made a good meal for something. He was that steer with the bad eye, remember? Anyway, I’ll try one more time tomorrow.”

  She set a pot of coffee on to brew and opened the fridge. “I’ll put a chicken in for you two, if that sounds good.”

  “I can make a chicken,” he said, just as he always did, and she answered just as he knew she would.

  “I know you can.” But she rinsed one off and stuffed it with lemon and garlic all the same. Once she had it in the oven, she started sweeping the kitchen, ashamed to see the dust bunnies chasing across the floor ahead of her broom.

  “You gonna stay for dinner?”

  She glanced down the hall where her brother had disappeared. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “It’s probably best. He’s not going to be pleasant.” As if on cue, the muted sound of loud music started up from the other side of the house. He was twenty-six years old and still handling stress like a teenager.

  “God,” she muttered and got back to sweeping. When that was done, she bundled the tablecloth up and took it outside to shake out the crumbs.

  “All right now,” her dad said when she got back in. “We’re fine. You don’t need to take care of everything.”

  She ignored him and poured a cup of coffee, fixing it up with sugar and no cream just the way he liked. “Sit down and relax, Dad.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to drive over to the feed store.”

  She reversed course and took the cup of coffee to the counter instead of the table and poured the contents into a travel mug. It was a thirty-five minute drive. She didn’t want him nodding off, and after that confrontation, he definitely looked tired.

  “Dad,” she started, but then she didn’t know what she should say. She wanted to apologize again, for all of this, but none of it was her fault. Except the letter in her dresser. That was her fault. Her mother’s ashes were ready to be picked up, they’d been ready for six weeks, and for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to go get them. It felt shameful and wrong, and she didn’t want to tell him.

  “I’m fine, Sophie,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’ll all be fine.”

  Yes. They would. He’d always promised her that, and he’d always been right. They’d gotten through those first few days and weeks and months. And they’d gotten through school-yard cruelty and every new person whose eyes went a little wide when they realized who you were. They’d get through this, too. This was nothing.

  But as soon as she was back in her car, Sophie was crying again. She had no idea why. This lawsuit was stupid and untimely and just plain wrong, but it wasn’t the end of the world. So why did she have to pull her car over as soon as she was out of sight of the house?

  She dug blindly through her purse for Kleenex, but as soon as she wiped her eyes tears spilled out again. She finally gave up and laid her forehead on her steering wheel to cry.

  It couldn’t be that she was sexually involved with one of the Bishops. She wasn’t that shallow, or at least she didn’t think she was. This pain was deeper than that. It hurt. Her stomach ached with it. And she felt...terrified. Shaky.

  That had nothing to do with Alex. How could it?

  She just wanted this over. All of it. She wanted to have a normal family and a normal past.

  And that was it, wasn’t it? She’d thought it was finally over. The Bishops were having their dedication and then people would finally forget.

  The welcome truth was that the story wasn’t that interesting anymore. For so many years, the fates of Dorothy Heyer and Wyatt Bishop had been a mystery. Rumors had flown, every one of them pushed and plumped up by Rose. Where the pair had gone, what had happened, whether they were still together or ever had been, who had spotted someone fitting their descriptions.

  No one had known what had happened, so anything could have happened. Any delicious, scandalous, awful thing.

  But in the end...it had been almost boring. They’d been in Wyatt Bishop’s truck together, hauling a camper up an ancient road to a campsite on Bishop land, and the dirt had given way. All those years their bodies had been lost in a narrow canyon near an abandoned town, and that was the end of it.

  The story was finally done. Everyone could move on.

  But not anymore. Thanks to her immature, thoughtless, aimless little brother, the story was delicious again. Scandal tinged with bad behavior. This was a small town. Everyone knew the players. There were sides and they would be taken. Rose Bishop might not be sympathetic, but she was good at propaganda. People didn’t like Rose, but they sure loved her stories.

  Sophie took a deep breath and then let the sobs fall from her throat. She was so sick of dealing with what her mother had done when Sophie was only five years old. She was so damn sick of that being her life. Maybe she should dye her hair. Maybe she could change her name. Alex’s brother had done that. Shane had gotten so sick of being Shane Bishop that he’d changed his name to his mother’s maiden name. Of course, that itself had been a scandal. There was no way to get away from it. Except to leave.

  Sophie found another tissue and mopped up again. She had to stop crying; the tissue packet was empty.

  Anyway, there was no point crying. She couldn’t leave. Her dad needed her, and as tough as it was to be Dorothy Heyer’s child, it was a blessing to be Greg Heyer’s daughter. He hadn’t turned his back on her all those years ago. She wouldn’t turn her back on him now.

  And the truth was they’d all be fine. Just like her dad always promised.

  “It’ll be all right,” she whispered to herself. “It will go away.” It would. Eventually. She just had to keep her chin up and pretend it didn’t matter and keep her thoughts to herself.

  She nodded and wiped one last stray tear away. The long drive back to town was a good thing today. She needed time for her swollen eyes and stuffed nose to recover. If she pulled up and found Rose Bishop waiting on her doorstep, Sophie didn’t want to look like she was falling apart. If that woman sensed weakness, she’d go for Sophie’s soft spots.

  Unfortunately all of Sophie’s spots were soft today, but she couldn’t let people see that. She never could.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “WHAT THE HELL do I care?” Alex snapped, irritated that he even had to think about this.

  “Because a lawsuit might affect the inheritance,” Shane countered calmly.

  “You got the inheritance, brother.”

  Shane winced and ran a hand through his hair. Sawdust filtered out and drifted past the sunlight that shone behind him.

  Alex had driven out to see Shane’s new place. It wasn’t much, just a trailer set up on the land h
e’d inherited from their grandfather, but Shane was steadily making it into his. He was almost done with a small stable and had graded a spot for a house he planned to build next summer. He’d always been good with his hands. Alex wasn’t surprised that he’d become a carpenter.

  “I want to do something about that,” Shane finally said. “This land belongs to you as much as it does to me. Which is to say not much at all.” He winked. “But old man Bishop left it to me because Dad was his only kid. He should have split it between you and me.”

  “You’re the oldest and I wasn’t around.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You should have half.”

  Alex shook his head at his brother’s sentimentality. “And what would I do with land in a place I come visit once every twenty years? It’s yours, Shane.” He turned in a small circle, taking in the dried grass and sagebrush and the high slopes of the Tetons in the distance. “You belong here. You always have.”

  “Then I’ll sell some off and send you the money.”

  “You might need that money to fight this lawsuit.”

  Shane shook his head and set down the two-by-four he’d been sizing. “If there’s any settlement, it’ll likely come out of the trust or be paid by insurance.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. How much is he asking for?”

  “A million dollars.”

  Alex sucked in a breath. “Wow.”

  Shane shrugged. “It’s a lawsuit related to a car accident. My lawyer says if it goes any further, the insurance company will probably settle for a smaller amount. There’s not a lot of evidence to prove anything either way.”

  “Yeah.” Alex folded his arms and stared out at the mountains. The sight was beautiful, but it reminded him of too much. “Why’s he doing it?”

  “I don’t know. Money hungry, I guess. He hasn’t made much of himself.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not really.”