Looking for Trouble

by Victoria Dahl

  But then a voice said something over a speaker far away and applause drifted to Sophie on the wind. “The Providence Historical Trust...” she heard. As she took a step forward, there was more applause. She ignored it and walked forward down the long street.

  There were the buildings that had loomed like ghosts that night, but beyond them were pure blue skies, not a cloud in sight. It seemed so wrong.

  A few stragglers lingered near the saloon, reading the placard that was planted in the dirt. Sophie ducked her head and hurried past them.

  The town of Providence lay on either side of a wide dirt lane. At the end of it, a line of backs greeted her. Hundreds of people. She didn’t know whether to feel relieved that she’d easily keep hidden or worried that she’d never spot her brother.

  She could hear the speaker now, an older woman speaking about the legacy of the Bishop family. She didn’t seem to know much about Wyatt Bishop, though she went on and on about the man’s father.

  As the woman’s voice rang out across the crowd, people began to shift restlessly. After all, none of them were here to see a member of the Historical Society speak. There was nothing juicy about that.

  Sophie stood on her tiptoes and scanned the crowd. Most people were seated on white fold-out chairs. The rest of them stood around the seating area in a semicircle. At the front, next to a microphone, stood a big picture of Wyatt Bishop. She’d seen that in the paper, but never in color, and never draped with white carnations. But her eyes didn’t stay on the photo, because stretching out in a row next to it were chairs for the Bishop family. Rose sat next to Shane and his girlfriend, Merry, and Alex sat on the end.

  The sun caught the side of his face and emphasized the hard angles of his cheek and jaw and nose. He’d shaved his head so there wasn’t one hint of softness about his profile now. Even his mouth looked hard.

  Sophie ducked back down and said a prayer that he hadn’t seen her. That no one had seen her.

  The speaker droned on, her voice rising on important words like Bishop and Jackson and “the mission of this trust.” Sophie sneaked to the left, keeping behind the backs of as many people as she could. There was no sign of her brother. Once she got toward the front row, she stood on tiptoe again and peeked past the shoulders of the people in front of her.

  She had a clear view of the seated audience from here, and her brother wasn’t among them. She spotted Lauren right in the middle, but didn’t manage to catch her eye. Maybe Lauren had been wrong. Or maybe her brother had found a lick of common sense on the ground and taken his stupid butt home.

  When the crowd began to applaud, Sophie shot a startled glance toward the front. The woman from the trust was stepping back and Shane Harcourt was taking her place at the microphone.

  This was almost over. Shane would speak, and then his mother, and then they’d unveil the plaque or whatever it was and her brother wouldn’t cause any trouble and they’d leave.

  Then she spotted him. David was standing almost exactly opposite from her, but he wasn’t looking over the crowd. His eyes were locked on Shane as he began to speak.

  “My father loved this place,” Shane said, his voice so much like Alex’s that it made Sophie’s stomach hurt. “He used to bring me here on horseback, up the very trail he was on the day he died.”

  Pressing a hand to her twisting stomach, she looked back and caught her brother scowling at the solemn words.

  Oh, God. Sophie moved as fast as she could toward the back of the crowd. She couldn’t run. That would draw attention, but she ducked her head and walked determinedly back the way she’d come, and then around to the far side.

  The crowd laughed at something Shane had said, but her ears were buzzing with panic now.

  Don’t let him ruin this. Don’t let him cause a scene.

  Sophie slowed as she got closer to the front. Alex was seated on this side. If she got too close to the edge of people, he might spot her.

  When she’d walked as far as she dared and still couldn’t see her brother, panic grabbed her heart in a fist and squeezed. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried again.

  There. She’d gone too far. He was a few feet to her left and two or three people deep in the crowd. Sophie edged closer and reached out to grab his sleeve. When she tugged, he glanced down at her hand, then back to Shane.

  “This land meant a lot to him. It means a lot to my whole family,” Shane’s microphoned voice continued.

  David snorted. She tugged harder.

  He glanced her way and did a double take. She glared at him, and he glared back for a moment before crossing his arms and setting his shoulders. So she pinched him. Hard.

  When he jerked away, the two people between them edged away with irritated glances. Sophie mouthed sorry and sidled closer to her brother.

  “We need to leave,” she whispered.

  He gave his head one shake and refused to look at her.

  “Right now.”

  His jaw ticked in response. His arms folded more tightly against his body. Great. He was pretending to be a three-year-old now.

  She leaned closer and hissed in his ear, “Let’s. Go.”

  “I’m not leaving,” he murmured just before the crowd broke into wide applause.

  Shane raised a hand. “Thank you so much. And thank you all for coming. My mother would like to say a few words....”

  He paused, and Sophie looked up, afraid they’d been spotted. But no. Shane wasn’t looking at her. He was looking at Alex as he stood up from his chair. “I’d like to say something,” Alex said quietly.

  Sophie blinked in shock and dug her nails into her brother’s arm. Alex hadn’t planned to speak. If he got up there and saw Sophie and David...

  She jerked so hard on her brother’s elbow that he stumbled a step toward her.

  “We have no right to be here,” she whispered furiously. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, but I’m not going to let you do it.”

  The audience clapped as Alex approached the microphone.

  David tried to jerk his arm from her grip. People were beginning to back away. “I have as much right to be here as anyone. More of a right.”

  Sophie looked frantically around at the crowd surrounding them. People were staring now, frowning, putting two and two together. So much adrenaline rushed through her that her limbs began to ache.

  “Please, David,” she said. “I’m begging you. Please.”

  He finally looked at her. Really looked. “You don’t understand,” he said.

  And then she heard Alex’s voice and tears of desperation sprang to her eyes as she prayed he didn’t look in her direction.

  “I don’t remember as much about my dad as Shane does. I tried to forget a lot. But I do remember a few things.” He paused as if he were taking a deep breath, and then a gasp rang out across the crowd.

  Sophie knew what it was. She knew, even as she turned to watch Rose Bishop stand and point right at Sophie, her whole hand trembling, her face turning red. “What is she doing here?”

  There was a strange shuffling sound, the noise of hundreds of people all turning in one direction. Every single face turned to look at Sophie. Every face, including Alex’s. Her vision narrowed to just him, just Alex, his brow furrowing with confusion, mouth parting in shock.

  “You trespassing whore!” his mother yelled. A rush of shocked gasps passed through the crowd like a wave. “You’re just as bad as she was!”

  “Oh, no,” Sophie whispered. “No.”

  “And you!” Rose pointed at David.

  The people around Sophie and David backed away as if their awfulness might spread. Sophie was left standing with her hand around her brother’s arm, frozen. She couldn’t move.

  “Haven’t you ruined enough?” Rose screamed.

&nb
sp; “Mom,” Shane said. “Calm down.”

  “I won’t calm down. Those people destroyed our family and now that this is all we have, they’re trying to destroy this, too.”

  Sophie shook her head, but her brother laughed. “You’ve always wanted to erase us. You don’t even want us here, but we lost someone on that trail, too.”

  Horror helped her break through the ice holding her still. Sophie jerked David’s arm hard and pulled him a few steps away. “Stop it,” she said, then, “I’m sorry,” to everyone else.

  Alex finally seemed to break through his own shock and took a few steps toward her, but his mother started forward, too. Sophie pulled harder on David’s arm.

  “No,” David growled. “We don’t have to hide in shame. God knows they never hid. What did we do that was so wrong?”

  “This is wrong,” Sophie snapped. “Stop it.”

  But Rose had her own answer. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. She’s exactly like her mother. Look at her.” She stabbed a finger at Sophie, still stalking forward, closing the space between them. The crowd parted, giving her room to do her worst. “Same hair. Same face. Spreading her legs for a man who doesn’t belong to her.”

  This time the crowd’s gasp was a roar that rumbled through Sophie’s head.

  “Mom!” Alex and Shane snapped the word at the same time, but Alex got to her first. He grabbed his mother’s arms in a steady grip and pulled her to a stop.

  “You cut this out right now,” he growled at his mother, but his eyes were locked with Sophie’s.

  “I’m sorry,” Sophie said again, but his mom was decidedly less conciliatory.

  “I know what you’re doing with her! How could you touch her? She’s no better than a dog. A red-headed slut pretending to be a decent woman!”

  “Mom.” Alex started pulling his mother back. “Go!” he yelled at Sophie. “Just get the hell out of here, for God’s sake.”

  Sophie tugged her brother in the other direction. This time, he actually moved with her.

  Rose snarled like a wild animal. “You’re monsters!” she yelled. “No one wants you here!”

  They were monsters. Her brother should never have come here, but she’d made it worse by following. Before Sophie turned away, she saw Rose Bishop collapse into her chair, sobbing. Shane and Merry both spoke frantically to her, but Alex stayed quiet, his hands still locked on her shoulders as if to hold her down, but his eyes were on Sophie. And they were blazing with blue fury.

  Sophie’s stomach turned. She felt like throwing up, especially when she tore her gaze from Alex and saw the pale, shocked faces of the audience. Some of them watched her, some watched the Bishops, but they all looked stunned. And excited. She’d created the exact thing she’d been desperate to avoid.

  Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She clawed at David’s arm and dragged him backward until he finally turned and followed. Then he was in front of her, leaving her behind, storming out as if she was the one who’d dragged him here.

  “Wait,” she gasped, jogging now, past the press of people, and then the stragglers, then the empty houses and shops of the dead town. “David! Wait!”

  “You wanted me to leave, I’m leaving.” He shook off her hand when she reached for him.

  The fury she’d seen in Alex’s eyes burrowed inside her and became fury in her gut. She hated David. She wanted to hit him. Wanted to make him hurt the way she was hurting. But she could never hurt him that badly, because he didn’t give a damn about anything.

  He never had. Not her, not their father, not the ranch.

  She chased after him as they reached the parking lot. “Why did you come here? Why?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t stop. She followed him through the lot and out to the road, wishing she could kick off her heels, and knowing there was no way she could run barefoot across gravel. “You have to talk to me. You owe me that.”

  “I don’t have to talk about shit,” he said over his shoulder.

  Before she could get to him, he was in his truck. She banged on the window, but when he started the engine, she changed course and raced back toward her car. Sophie reached it just as the first early deserters were walking out of Providence.

  She lowered her eyes to avoid their stares and slipped into her car. She tried to control herself, tried not to throw any gravel up as she left, but she had to catch him. And she had to get away.

  It took a few minutes. She was almost to the highway by the time she saw him. His truck was better equipped for the washboard road and she was blinded by the dust his tires threw into the air, but once they were on the highway, she caught up.

  He was driving south, which could mean he was going into Jackson, or could mean he was heading home. It didn’t matter to her. She was following him wherever he was going. He wasn’t just going to walk away and sulk like some sullen teenager this time. He could damn well answer for himself like an adult.

  This was really bad. It wasn’t some decades-old scandal dusted off. It wasn’t even something as dry as the black-and-white text of a new lawsuit. This had happened in living color in front of at least two hundred locals, most of whom had only been there in the hopes that something just like that would happen. This would be talked about for years, passed on in whispers anytime a Bishop or Heyer left a room.

  She glared at the back of her brother’s head, hoping if she put enough anger into it, his hair would start to smoke. But it didn’t work. In fact, her head was the one aching within a few minutes. She caught her brother’s gaze in the rearview mirror and made a phone sign next to her head. He ignored her and sped up.

  But his efforts were in vain. They reached the town limits and he had to slow down. The highway patrol were spread a lot thinner than the town police, and the town made a bundle off of tourists speeding their way home from Yellowstone.

  Her head ached worse as they inched their way through town. Sophie unclenched her hands from the steering wheel and rolled her shoulders. Her brother headed south. He wasn’t stopping here. He glanced into the mirror to see if she was still following.

  “You’re not getting away,” she muttered. “And you’re not going to hide behind Dad this time.”

  Shit. Dad. She had to call him before someone else did. Her phone rang just as she was reaching for it, and Sophie gasped and jerked her hand away. It could be Alex or her dad, or it could even be someone from the newspaper. It hit her then that this was going to take over her life, for days or even weeks. Hell, this might be the rest of her life. The old spinster whore librarian.

  Or maybe just the old spinster whore. Jean-Marie was going to be really, really pissed, after all.

  Fear stabbed her through the heart, but Sophie shook it off. It would be okay. If she got fired, she’d move back home and do what she’d always done: take care of the house and her dad and— No. Not her brother. That little shit could starve to death in dirty clothes, for all she cared.

  When her phone stopped buzzing, she reached gingerly for it and turned it over. Lauren, it read, Missed call.

  Thank God. It had only been someone checking on her. One of the few someones who would. She ignored it and called her father.

  When it went to voice mail she felt a deep, cowardly relief. “Dad, it’s me,” she said, her voice cracking over those simple words. She took a few deep breaths and tried again. “David went to the Bishop dedication. I don’t know why. I tried to stop him, and...Rose Bishop saw me and went crazy. I’m so sorry. It was really bad. I’ll...I’ll see you when you get home.”

  Saying it out loud made it real, and Sophie began to sob. She tried to shake it off so she could drive, but the tears wouldn’t stop. She reached into her back seat to grab a spare sweater and mopped her face, then kept it in her lap to use again.

  She deserved this. She’d slept with Alex, k
nowing it was wrong. Knowing it was some sick, sad repeat of what had happened twenty-five years before. Maybe that had been the entirety of the attraction. To try to understand her mother and what had driven her to do something so wrong. Or maybe she’d just wanted something that reckless and bad.

  Well, she’d gotten it. And she was paying the price. She should probably just be thankful she hadn’t ended up paying as high a price as her mother had.

  But she didn’t feel thankful as she turned onto the long ranch road and watched her brother pull away as his truck flew over the rough road. He could go as quickly as he wanted to. If he tried to hide in his room, she’d kick the damn door down. She took the turn onto her dad’s drive so quickly that gravel flew into the fence.

  Finally, she broke through the dust cloud her brother had laid and saw him disappearing inside the house. Sophie slammed on the brakes, wrenched the keys from the ignition and sprinted up the steps.

  “You idiot!” she yelled when she spotted him. Still taking off his jacket, he looked surprised that she’d made it in so quickly. “I thought you were going to come to your senses. I thought you’d drop the lawsuit after you got a little attention. But now you do this?”

  “I had a point to make,” he muttered.

  “What point, huh? That our mom is dead, too? Everyone knows that, David. They’re pretty fucking clear on the details.”

  “No. The point is that we don’t need to hide our faces. We deserve as much respect as those Bishops do.”

  “Well, great job, David. You really drove that home by crashing a dead man’s memorial.”

  “You don’t know what it’s been like for me.”

  “What?” She screamed it so loudly that she startled even herself and had to swallow hard and try again. “You are a stupid, selfish ass. I’ve lived through everything you have, and I’m old enough to remember every single moment. You have no idea how scary those first few days were. How terrifying.”

  “I know enough.”

  “You don’t know anything!” she yelled, the words nearly lost on a sob. “If you knew anything, you wouldn’t be bringing it all back like this. How could you do this to me?”