The Me I Used to Be

by Jennifer Ryan

  “That’s not true. I’m not like that.” Her voice cracked, but that didn’t draw an ounce of sympathy from him.

  “You’re selfish and reckless.”

  She shook her head, tears he ignored gathering in her eyes.

  Joey leaned in, not holding back anymore. “He left you a chunk of money. Not Charlie. Not me. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You made money with your little scheme. Where is it?”

  “I didn’t make anything.”

  “We need that money. You owe us.”

  “I only have the life insurance money.”

  He stayed right in her face. “Bullshit. You stole the wine and sold it and didn’t help this family one bit. You kept it all for yourself. You’re still doing it.”

  “I didn’t do it. Dad did!” She planted her hands on his chest and shoved him away, fury and fire in her eyes.

  Those words hit him harder than his sister did.

  Evangeline’s white face and wide eyes made it clear she hadn’t meant for anyone to hear those angry words that escaped her mouth before she stopped them. But anger had gotten the best of her and she revealed that long-held secret. She couldn’t take it back now, even if she wanted to.

  He didn’t want to believe it, but he couldn’t ignore it, either.

  Mom gasped. “What?”

  Mom and Charlie had walked into the stables during their argument. Joey hadn’t cared if they heard. But Evangeline sure did.

  Evangeline’s eyes overflowed with tears. She spun around and faced Charlie and Mom. She wiped her eyes and tried to compose herself. “I have to get to work.”

  Charlie stepped in front of Evangeline and held her by the shoulders. “What did you mean about Dad?”

  Evangeline struggled against Charlie’s hold and tried to flee. “Nothing. Let me go.”

  Joey stepped up to Charlie’s side and stared at his sister, awestruck that she managed to pull herself together and glare at them defiantly when she’d been caught. “If you didn’t do it, and Dad did, what does that mean?”

  She jerked herself out of Charlie’s grasp and pinned Joey in her sharp gaze. “You made me angry. I said something stupid. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did.” Mom stepped in front of Joey and Charlie. “I have thought about the night you got caught so many times. You came home from school that weekend. At dinner you told your father and me that you were going to refocus on school. You promised you’d get your grades up and spend more weekends at home. I remember thinking that you’d finally gotten through your wild phase and figured out what’s important.”

  “I did. That’s why I used my time in prison to earn my degree.”

  Mom found a proud smile for Evangeline, but it faded quickly. “After dinner, your father loaded the trailer. He was supposed to make that delivery.”

  “I added the cases of wine after he loaded the hay.” Evangeline spoke too fast and never looked Mom in the eye, and lied through her teeth.

  None of them believed her.

  “Your dad wasn’t feeling well that day. He’d been up several nights with me after my surgery.” Mom tilted her head as she remembered. “You offered to go in his place. You wanted to pull your weight on the ranch.” Mom covered her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. “You had no idea what you were hauling on the trailer.”

  Evangeline’s face turned translucent. “I did it.” She tried to sound convincing, but the words came out barely above a whisper.

  Mom put her hand on her chest over her heart. “Oh, my God.” She sucked in a ragged breath and let it out. “Evangeline.” Sis’s name came out as weary as Mom looked.

  “I did it!” None of them believed that anymore.

  Mom shook her head. “No. You didn’t. Like you said, he did. You took responsibility and selflessly suffered the consequences. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Evangeline deflated, her shoulders sagging, and she let out a heavy sigh. “I wanted to help. I never thought they’d lock me up so long. You needed Dad here. I couldn’t let them take him away. He must have been desperate, to do what he did.”

  Charlie raked his hand through his hair. “He was worried about the restrictions and rising cost of water and sinking cattle prices.”

  “My medical bills,” Mom added.

  Charlie gave Mom a sad half frown. “We talked about other ways to supplement the income and cover costs. I thought he wanted to plant more crops, run fewer cattle.”

  “Dad went outlaw.” Joey rubbed his hand over the back of his tense neck. He never thought his father would go to such extremes to save the ranch. It didn’t make sense. “I can’t see Dad stealing the wine and finding a buyer. I mean, he knows a lot of the winery folks, but this just seems so out of character. How did he even come up with the plan and find the buyers?”

  They all looked to Evangeline, who stood there shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s over. He’s gone.”

  Mom stepped forward, but Evangeline stepped back and stayed out of reach. “You spent four years in jail for something you didn’t do.”

  In the back of his mind, Joey got that, but hearing Mom say the words hit like a fist to the gut.

  They’d all blamed Evangeline for the extra money Dad put out for a lawyer she refused to allow to defend her against the charges. Mom’s sorrow made her recovery from the surgery take longer. They watched Dad fall into a deep depression and withdraw from all of them and the ranch. Every drink he wallowed in they blamed on Evangeline.

  “He wasn’t brokenhearted from what you did, he felt guilty for sending you to prison. That’s why you wouldn’t see him.” Joey could only imagine how pissed she had to be when she took the fall for Dad.

  Evangeline spoke to Mom directly. “You were never supposed to know. You needed him at home with you. I gave you four more years with him. That’s all that matters.”

  The stricken look on Mom’s face turned her pale skin translucent. “You matter. Your life matters. You lost everything. The way I treated you . . . the things I said . . . Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I was just so angry . . . And you didn’t do anything.” Mom shook with the sobs that wracked her body.

  Charlie hugged Mom to his side and held her up. “Now we know the truth.” Charlie stared at Evangeline. “I’m sorry you had to go through that alone. I’m sorry about the way I treated you when you came home. If you’d just told us . . .”

  Evangeline’s arms went rigid at her sides. “What good would it do to tell you that I didn’t do it? I accepted responsibility to protect Dad from even worse charges. He’d have gone to prison for decades. The ranch needed him. You all needed him here!”

  Joey didn’t understand Evangeline’s anger, except that she really never meant to tell them and hated that she’d let the cat out of the bag. Why?

  Mom’s face contorted with rage. “I don’t understand what he was thinking! Why would he do this? We didn’t need the money that badly. He couldn’t have done it on his own. Who helped him?”

  Evangeline shrugged that off without an answer.

  Charlie didn’t let her get away with it. “That’s what Chris wants from you. He wants you to take down the others.”

  “He’s trying to help me clear my record. If I help him, I’ll be able to pass a background check. As it is right now, most companies won’t hire me, most places won’t rent an apartment to me.”

  Joey understood the anger behind those words. She didn’t deserve to have the conviction follow her around the rest of her life.

  Dad got away scot-free.

  And that’s what pissed Evangeline off. She didn’t want them to think less of Dad. Even if they treated her like shit, she wanted them to continue to think their father had never in his life done something so wrong and hurtful to someone he loved. He betrayed Evangeline.

  And she’d pay for that the rest of her life if that conviction stayed on her record.

  Joey might not lead a totally honorable life, but he respected o
thers and tried to be kind like his parents taught him.

  Charlie kept after her about Chris. “Does he know about Dad?”

  Evangeline sighed and scrunched her mouth into a half frown of defeat. “He received a letter from Dad upon his death confessing that he was the one who stole the wine and was supposed to deliver it. He told Chris that I had no idea what was hidden inside the bales of hay.”

  A little late, but better than keeping them all in the dark and the cops thinking Evangeline was guilty. “And Chris believed the letter without question?” Joey didn’t believe that.

  “The night Chris arrested me, he suspected something was off. Someone called in a tip to the police about the delivery.”

  “If you took over driving at the last minute, that means someone wanted to get Dad arrested.” Joey tried to think back to that time and remember anyone hanging around who could have been working with Dad, but came up with nothing. Dad had kept his illegal side business on the way-down low. He’d wanted to protect them. And then he’d gotten Evangeline arrested and sent to prison for four long years.

  Joey thanked God it wasn’t him, because he’d been asked to do a lot of last-minute chores that sucked. But he’d never been put in the position to be arrested for something he didn’t do. How his sister handled it so well, he didn’t know.

  But his gaze fell on the scars on her face and neck and it hit him hard that she hadn’t gotten out unscathed. She’d taken Dad’s punishment and been punished even more for something she didn’t do. And when she got home, she’d been hit with even more reprisals from all of them.

  “Chris wants you to help him take down the others involved. Who are they?” Charlie held Evangeline’s gaze.

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  Mom wiped at her eyes. “It’s too dangerous for you to get involved again. If these guys were willing to get you arrested, who’s to say what they’ll do if they think you’re working with the cops to take them down?” Mom made a good point.

  “I already signed the deal.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I couldn’t spend another minute in that place!” Evangeline raked her fingers through her long hair, drawing it away from the scar on her neck. “I needed to get out of there,” she whispered like they wouldn’t understand.

  Maybe none of them did. Not from Evangeline’s perspective and experience. She’d lived it the last few years and had the scars inside and out to prove how desperately in need she’d been to get out of that hell.

  Joey had been so caught up in his own need to get the respect and appreciation he deserved, he hadn’t looked close enough at his sister to see the pain and anguish she was in. He exchanged a look with Charlie and read the same sentiment in his eyes.

  “You need to get out of this agreement with Chris. I’ll talk to him,” Mom offered, desperately looking for a way to make things up to Evangeline and keep her safe this time.

  Joey didn’t think that was possible. Evangeline had been drawn into their father’s bad business and nothing would get her out now except taking the other players out of the game.

  “All of you need to stay out of it. You can’t tell anyone you know Dad was involved. You say something to the wrong person, you could make things worse. Keep acting like you’ve been acting, or you’ll make things worse for me.” Evangeline ran out of the stables.

  Charlie tried to go after her, but Mom held him back. “Let her go. There’s no talking to her when she’s this upset and has her mind set.”

  “We can’t let the whole damn world think she did something she didn’t.”

  “Why not? Your father set things up this way. All he had to do was come forward. Instead, he sent his daughter to prison. One word from him could have kept her out. And he said n-nothing.” The tears came in a torrent again. “She must hate me for the things I’ve said to her.” Mom hiccuped, trying to catch her breath. “I blamed her for your father’s death. I said that she killed him.”

  Charlie stared up at the rafters and sighed. “Guilt killed him. He couldn’t live with what he’d done.”

  “I can’t forgive him for what he’s done. He made me think my own child was a criminal.” Mom wiped more tears away.

  Joey tried to breathe through the band around his chest. He hated to see his sister hurting and his mother in tears. “Who’s going to tell Nona?”

  Mom pinned him in her gaze. “I’ll talk to her. Not a word to anyone else. If we were to do or say something that hurt Evangeline more . . .”

  “Why are you looking at me?” Joey flung his hand out toward Charlie. “He’s going to go home and tell his wife everything.”

  “I don’t keep secrets from my wife.”

  “Yeah, it’s no secret you want to sell out to Warley so you can build a big ol’ house on the property for her.”

  “For us. Me and my family. I’m trying to build a life for them. The kind of life we had growing up here. What the hell are you doing with your life?”

  “Working my ass off, only to see you sell out the future I know we can have if we just hold on a little longer and put some real capital into the business. Evangeline has the money we need.”

  Mom put her foot down. “You’re not using the money your sister needs for her business and setting up a new life. She earned it. She deserves it after what your father did to her.”

  Joey thought so, too, but they needed to do something. “Working harder for less money isn’t the answer.”

  “You barely work,” Charlie snapped, getting on his high horse. “I work twenty hours more a week minimum than you do on this place. Where are you after dinner when the paperwork needs to be done? Why aren’t you here at the crack of dawn to feed the horses and get the crews ready for the day?”

  Joey countered that one-sided argument, because he had one of his own. “You won’t let me touch the precious paperwork or lead the crews. You won’t let me do anything without your explicit permission and detailed instructions. I’ve worked here my whole damn life. I know how to do the job!”

  “Then show up and do it,” Charlie barked back.

  “Enough!” Mom put two fingers to her temples and massaged. “It’s no wonder Evangeline is leaning toward signing that contract and getting someone in here to oversee the management of this place. The two of you can’t have a civil conversation about what needs to be done and how to go about it. You can’t both be in charge of everything all the time. You need to compromise.”

  “Yeah, well, Charlie won’t let me be in charge of anything around here. You complain about wanting to spend more time at home with Lindsey and the kids, yet you won’t hand over some of the load. You don’t have to do everything all the time. Maybe I don’t do things exactly the way you do them, but they get done.”

  “When they aren’t done right, it’s more work for me to clean up after you,” Charlie shot back.

  “That’s a cop-out and you know it. You just don’t want to admit that sometimes my way works better than yours. You’re stubborn and set in your ways, just like Dad.”

  “Yeah, well, if he were here, he’d agree that going with Warley is our best bet to hold on to the business and modernize the operation.”

  “He’s not here and he left that decision to Evangeline. I’m going to make sure she knows that Warley may be a viable option, but it’s not the only one.”

  “From the sound of it, she was ready to side with me.”

  “That’s only because I pissed her off. She’ll come around to my way of thinking. She always did.”

  “We’re not kids playing cards and board games with you two teaming up to cheat and beat me. This is serious.”

  Mom stepped between them. “There’s no sense hashing this out without your sister here to make the decision. We need to talk her out of helping the police take down the other people involved with your father.” She pressed her lips together in a tight line. “I’m so angry at him for doing this to her and not telling me.”

  �
�He couldn’t protect Evangeline without exposing himself. He wanted to protect you from the truth.” Joey didn’t think either option would have eased Mom’s mind or heart.

  If Dad confessed what he’d done, she’d have to live with knowing her husband was a liar, a thief, and a shitty father to his daughter. She’d have to live every day knowing her daughter was in jail for something she didn’t do. It killed Dad. What would it have done to Mom? The same? He didn’t want to think about it.

  He missed Dad so much his chest hurt all the time.

  Things were good between all of them before Evangeline’s arrest. He wanted to go back to that simpler time, when the ranch really did feel like home and not some swamp sucking them all down into the muck, choking them.

  Their father ruined her life, and everyone else’s in the aftermath.

  Anger and resentment clogged his throat.

  The pain and sadness in Mom’s face and eyes deepened and he felt it in his heart. “Now she’s protecting us from the truth again and it could get her killed.”

  Charlie put his hand on Mom’s shoulder. “We don’t know that. Maybe Chris just needs her to identify the other people involved. He’ll arrest them and that will be the end.”

  “Then why hasn’t she done that and ended this?”

  Evangeline coming home had stirred up everything from the past. Joey feared the kind of trouble she’d land herself in next.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Evangeline walked into the bowling alley still not over what happened at the stables. She never meant for them to find out, but Joey always got on her nerves and under her skin. And now so did the assault of crashing pins and the overwhelming smell of chili cheese dogs. Overhead, the screen showed a cartoon gun barrel shooting three pins down. When the last hole blasted through the third pin, the screen lit up with the word STRIKE. The sheriff’s department bowling team let out a whoop and holler at the fire and rescue team.