by Lucy Connors
“Supply problems because you stepped on somebody else’s toes, burning down that trailer?”
He glanced over at the doors, and I could see the back of Jeb’s head. Standing guard, no doubt.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, little brother, but let’s just say that I’ve learned that these aren’t great toes to have stepped on.” Ethan looked a little bit worried, and Ethan never looked worried. He’d had a half smile on his face even when the jury had found him guilty, so this was practically hysteria.
There was a commotion outside the kitchen, and then Reverend Dohonish entered the room. Mom had almost taken my head off the one time I’d said it out loud, but our minister was shaped like a bowling pin or a turkey vulture. I sometimes entertained myself during the most boring of his sermons by imagining that his long, skinny neck, undersized head, and enormous belly were covered with feathers and he was going to take flight any minute.
“You boys planning on doing the washing up?” His words were pleasant enough, but there was a hint of steel underneath them.
“Just having a simple conversation between brothers,” Ethan drawled.
The minister’s sharp gaze took in Ethan’s carefully studied relaxed posture and my tenseness. “Maybe you can have it someplace else. The girls want to get in here and start doing the cleaning.”
“Throwing me out, Reverend? I thought you’d at least preach a little bit about wages of sin at me,” Ethan said, mocking the man and everything he stood for in two sentences.
I didn’t want to be around when he snapped.
“I already gave two sermons today. You tell Anna Mae that we’d surely love to see her back here. Any Sunday. That goes for you, too,” Reverend Dohonish said. He turned to me. “Mickey, you’re finally right with the law and with God. Don’t start this up.”
I felt my spine stiffen at his words. The worst part of small-town life was the blithe way everybody stepped right into your business and felt entitled to offer opinions or advice. But I tried not to let any of it show on my face, for my mother’s sake.
The reverend pointed at the doors to the hall. “Why don’t you go help your mother rescue your pa? The mayor’s talking to him, and that woman couldn’t get to a point slower if she walked there backwards. City-council meetings would test Job himself these days.”
“I will in a minute. I just need to finish up here,” I said.
The minister hesitated, looking at me and then Ethan, but then he shook his head and left.
“Yes, sir, Reverend Dohonish, sir. Of course we want to be right with God,” Ethan said, mocking again. He headed for the door to the parking lot. “I’ll be in touch, little brother.”
“Don’t waste your time,” I told him.
“Got nothing but time,” he called after me.
Jeb grabbed my arm to stop me when I started to walk past him. “Did he ask you? Are you going to do it?”
I yanked my arm out of his grip and gave him a look. “Since when have I ever had anything to do with Ethan’s business? Never have, never will.”
Jeb bit his lip, and he looked scared. “Mickey, we need help. There’s a problem, and it’s bad. If you—”
“I can’t, Jeb. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”
“But you’re blood. Our brother,” Jeb said fiercely. “You owe us.”
I’d been starting to feel sorry for him, but “you owe us” put paid to that. “I don’t owe you anything, but I’ll give you some advice for free. Because you’re my brother, I don’t want anything to happen to you. Get out of Ethan’s business before you end up in jail. Or worse.”
I knew it was a waste of breath, but it somehow eased my conscience to say the words.
Jeb shook his head, his eyes bleak. “You don’t understand. It’s too late. I’m screwed. Leave, stay—it doesn’t matter. It’s six one way, half-dozen the other. They know who I am now, and they know I’m the one who messed up.”
“Who’s they?” It didn’t sound like he was talking about Ethan.
He shook his head, misery plain on his face. “I can’t. I’m already in deep enough.”
“So you want to pull me in, too?” I’d known he was weak, but I’d never thought he was this selfish. A trace of guilt sliced through me at the expression in his eyes, though. Ethan played him like a fish on the line, and Jeb was clearly over his head in whatever this was. Whoever they were.
“Never mind. Ethan wants you, he’ll get you. He always does.” Jeb took off after delivering that parting shot, and I watched him all the way out the door as my flash of sympathy died.
Reverend Dohonish walked up next to me, and he was watching Jeb, too. “You in any trouble, son?”
“Not yet,” I answered grimly.
I wondered how long it would be the truth.
CHAPTER 7
Victoria
Gran and I sat alone, the weight of hundreds of staring eyes practically boring into the back of my head, and I pretended to concentrate on Father Troy’s sermon about redemption. Too bad my parents had refused to come. If anybody in the family needed any redemption, it was them.
The front pews of the Saint Francis Episcopal Church had wooden partitions in front of them, and when I was a little girl and Gran had taken me to Sunday services with her, I’d always wondered why. To keep the congregation herded back from the priest? To keep Father Troy from looking up our skirts as we sat there, all alone in the Whitfield pew?
Gran had shushed me when I’d asked, pretending to be scandalized, but I’d seen her lips quiver as she’d fought back a smile. She hadn’t always been Episcopalian; I knew that much. She’d grown up in the Methodist church, but then she’d married my grandfather and been inexorably sucked into a new life, a new social class, and even a new religion—Whitfields always went to this church.
In fact, they’d built it. Back in 1890 or something, and it even had been known briefly as the Whitfield Episcopalian church, until the congregation had voted to change it in the mid-1950s. I wasn’t sure why the name change had happened, either, but I was glad that it had. It was creepy enough being a Whitfield in Whitfield County and having our last name plastered all over everything, like we were the Donald Trumps of Kentucky. I couldn’t imagine attending a church named after my family. A little too “pride goeth” and all.
“Don’t make faces, Victoria,” Gran whispered, and then it was time to stand up for the doxology and sit back down for the offering.
When I was little, I’d also wondered why, if we were praising “God from whom all blessings flow,” we had to give the church our money, especially since Gran had always made me give up an entire quarter out of my one-dollar allowance.
If the blessings all flow from God, why does He need my quarter?
Be quiet and sit down.
When the service was over, we filed out, and I dutifully smiled and shook hands with everyone who wanted to say hello to the Whitfield granddaughter. Father Troy, standing at the door to say good-bye to everyone, smiled sympathetically.
“Are you starting to settle in, young lady?” He had a booming baritone voice that worked beautifully for singing hymns and preaching sermons, but not so much for private conversations. Everyone in a fifty-yard radius turned to look at me as they headed to their American-made cars and trucks—none of that foreign crap in God’s country—most of which had bumper stickers proclaiming their owners’ personal beliefs and accomplishments:
JESUS IS IN MY DRIVER’S SEAT!
PROUD SUPPORTER: KENTUCKY HIGHWAY PATROL
MY CHILD IS AN HONOR STUDENT
Gran cleared her throat, and I realized that I was being rude. Right. Father Troy had asked me about settling in. It was “tell us about yourself ” all over again, but this time even the parents of all those honor students who supported the highway patrol were staring at me.
“Yes, thank
you,” I mumbled.
“It’s important to stand by your father through his career setbacks,” he boomed, and my glance at Gran told me it wasn’t just me suffering the humiliation of his loud comments.
“Of course she’s doing well. She’s my granddaughter,” Gran cut in, and there was a hint of bite in her voice. I guess when you wrote most of the checks that paid the church’s bills, you were brave enough to stand up to the nosy priest.
She waited until we were in the truck to say anything else.
“He means well, Victoria,” she sighed. “People in small towns can’t help sticking their noses into everybody’s business. It’s what they do for sport. Before there was TV or the Internet, gossip was the ultimate entertainment, and the people here are world champions.”
“If lightning strikes the truck, it’s your fault. God might not appreciate your lumping Father Troy’s priestly concern in with ordinary small-town gossip,” I told her, not altogether joking.
“Forget that,” she said, smiling. “Tell me about school.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I said, concentrating on the road and the American flag sticker pasted to the rear window of the Chevy Silverado in front of me—bumper sticker: MY KID CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT—all so I didn’t think about Mickey. “I’m ahead in most classes, a little behind in one, I met a nice girl named Denise, and I think it will be okay.”
There was a long silence, and then Gran started laughing. “Well, after that flood of information, I have to wonder if you’re always such a blabbermouth.”
“What about you?” I countered. “How are you adjusting?”
She didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about. “It’s going to take some getting used to,” she admitted. “Your father . . . he has a forceful personality, and he always thinks he should be in charge.”
“But you’ve been running this place on your own for a long time,” I said.
“Yes. Well, with Pete’s help. I don’t know what I’d do without him, and I’m afraid your father will drive him to drink. Or to leave.”
It was one of the things I loved about Gran; she’d always been straightforward with me. Except now it was making me worry.
“You won’t make us leave?”
I left the rest of it unspoken: We didn’t have anywhere else to go.
She reached out and laid one thin, blue-veined hand on mine. “Never. You’re my blood. My home is your home, for as long as you want it.”
I squeezed her hand with the thanks that was stuck in my throat, and she nodded and squeezed back.
By the time we’d almost reached home, I thought of another question I wanted to ask somebody who would give me a straight answer.
“Gran, what do you know about the Rhodale family? I met this boy, Mickey, and heard a pretty ugly rumor about him.” I didn’t know how to finish up the question, but when Gran didn’t immediately answer, I glanced over and saw that she was clenching her hands together so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.
“Gran?”
“Please don’t ever speak that name to me again.”
Surprised, I turned to look at her, but she wouldn’t meet my gaze. Her clasped hands were shaking, her lips were pressed tightly together, and—for the first time in my entire life—she looked old to me.
“I’m sorry, Gran. I won’t, I promise.”
She nodded, a small, jerky movement. The conversation made me even more determined to get to the truth about Mickey Rhodale, but I’d leave her out of it.
By the time I pulled up next to the house and parked, Gran was looking more back to normal, and as we headed into the house we talked a little about what we’d make for lunch, since Mrs. Kennedy had Sundays off. But my mother met us at the door as if she’d been waiting for us. She pointed at me.
“You! You couldn’t stay here and sleep in like a normal teenager, could you?”
“What? What did I do?” My stomach plummeted.
“Your sister is . . . sick, and she threw up in the kitchen,” she said, looking even more pale and drawn than usual. “I had to clean it up. I don’t know how to cope with this. Two daughters and neither of them is ever going to amount to anything. Melinda was getting better at home, and then we had to come here, and now—”
“Mom! She wasn’t getting better. She was just hiding it from everyone better,” I pointed out, as gently as I could.
“I liked it better when things were hidden,” my mother said, her shoulders slumping. With that, she trudged up the stairs, shaking her head when I called after her.
“What was that about? Did she mean she’d have made you clean up, if you’d been here?” Gran asked, putting her hands on her hips and glaring after Mom. “That woman is as useless as tits on a boar hog.”
I shook my head, miserable. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not really hungry anymore, either.”
“We’ll figure this out, honey. I promise,” she said, patting my back.
I shook my head. I didn’t believe that even Gran would be able to keep that promise.
• • •
I wandered out to the barn after changing out of my church clothes, looking for a little peace in the one place I was almost always sure to find it. Pete was there, of course, one foot propped on the bottom of the doorway to Sylvan’s Daughter’s stall.
“How’s she doing?” I walked up beside him and looked in at the pregnant mare. She tossed her glossy head and then reached her nose out to sniff me for treats.
“Good as can be expected. She’s not due till Christmas, but we like to keep an eye on her after she miscarried last year,” he said.
A miscarried foal was not only tragic for the mare but devastating for the people who’d raised her and cared for her—both emotionally and financially. Thoroughbred racehorses were, pound for pound, the most valuable creatures on the planet, and I knew well enough that the stud fee for Lucky Planet, who’d been the father of the lost foal, had been in the low six figures. Lucky Planet was racing royalty; three of his foals had been Derby contenders and at least another six had been great racers, here and overseas. His own career had been notable, but once a racing stallion retired and was set to breeding, his value was all about how many champions he sired.
Sylvan’s Daughter had a pretty great pedigree herself. She was distantly related to Secretariat, one of the greatest race horses of all time. Of course, all thoroughbreds could trace their ancestry back to the same three horses, so in a way they were all cousins.
I winced as I remembered trying to explain some of this to my friends at school, and how they went straight for the Kentucky inbreeding jokes. We were more of a stereotype than a state to outsiders, I’d learned early on in my freshman year.
“How’d Keeneland go?”
The Keeneland Yearling Sale was one of racing’s premier events. Each September, farms brought their horses and their hopes to central Kentucky, and buyers brought their checkbooks and their dreams of owning a champion. Maybe a Derby winner. Few dared to hope that a horse they owned might win the sport’s highest honor—the Triple Crown—but it was the slight chance that they might that kept the buyers coming back and spending hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars on unproven foals.
“We sold two to Ireland, one to Dubai, and one right here to that guy who owns too many car dealerships.”
I glanced up at him, catching the hint of a grin. “The one whose wife wore the enormous hat with Hot Wheels cars on the brim to the Derby?”
He nodded. “Yeah, they’re idiots, but they hired the best trainer around. He’ll be sure that that foal out of Roseland’s Promise gets the best care in racing.”
I remembered watching the foal run, back in June. He’d raced around the paddock like he owned the place, and when he’d stretched out that long, elegant neck and really put his heart into it, he’d flown
over the fields as if his hooves had been winged.
“He was really something,” I said, sighing. “I wish we trained them, too.”
Pete laughed, and Sylvan’s Daughter briefly pinned her ears back, signaling her displeasure at the unexpected sound, and then went back to nosing around in her food.
“Training them to race is a specialized skill. I’m just the one who brings healthy babies into the world.”
“We like healthy babies,” I agreed, reaching out a hand to stroke the mare’s silky nose.
She tossed her head again before allowing it, and I smiled at her. Life was a lot simpler for horses.
“What do you know about the Rhodale family? Mickey Rhodale, to be precise.” Maybe a blunt question would finally get me some answers.
“Are you all right? Did he do something to you? Did he touch you?” Pete fired out the questions in a hard voice I’d never heard from him before, and I turned to look at him, raising my eyebrows.
“In the approximately seven seconds I’ve known him, did he touch me?”
Pete grimaced, and I saw something shift behind his eyes. “I’m sorry for jumping on you like that. The boy got into some trouble, and it was bad.”
“How bad?”
“He put a couple of guys in the hospital. One of them will be in physical therapy for several months if he’s going to regain full use of his hand ever again,” he said flatly. “Stay away from him, Victoria. He’s trouble.”
“I have no plans to go anywhere near him. I just wondered, since I started hearing rumors—”
“Nasty rumors and cheap gossip. This county is perfect for both.” The bleak expression on his face made me wonder if he was thinking of something specific, but it also warned me not to ask. On impulse, I hugged him, something I hadn’t done since I was twelve and Daddy had told me that Whitfields “don’t hug the hired help.”
“I’m fine, Pete. Don’t worry about me. I have too much sense to fall for the town bad boy.”
He hugged me back and then headed toward his office, clearing his throat in a manly “I wasn’t all emotional over this” kind of way that made me grin at the back of his plaid shirt.
