by Lucy Connors
Her face stiffened and closed off, as if I’d crossed an invisible line labeled “Priscilla’s Anorexia.”
“I’m fine. There will be no rehab. We deal with our problems ourselves.”
I threw my hands up in the air and headed down the hall toward Buddy’s room, where I could hear him talking to his Xbox. I could always tell when I wasn’t going to get any further with my mom. I’d try my dad later. I lobbed a parting shot, though.
“My sister needs to go to rehab, whether you think it’s trashy or not, or you might have a Whitfield who winds up dead.”
When I walked in his room, Buddy immediately grabbed my hand and pulled me down to sit next to him on the bed, handing me a controller for the game. Finally, the one relationship in my life that wasn’t complicated. I settled in to fly dragons and defend the palace from evil trolls, wishing that I could identify the bad guys so easily in real life.
CHAPTER 12
Mickey
I don’t get the ‘giggles’ part of Suds ’n Giggles,” I told my sister. “What’s funny about doing laundry?”
We sat in the tiny family room of her apartment. Caro was on the beat-up purple plaid couch, trying to hide her cigarettes between the worn cushions, probably so I didn’t get on her case again about smoking in front of the girls. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor while my nieces brushed my hair, jumped on my lap, and told me the kind of long, rambling, incomprehensible stories that only four- and six-year-old girls could tell.
The apartment, like the Laundromat itself, had seen better days. The walls were painted a particularly nasty color of institutional green, the mud-brown dining table and chairs had probably come with the place, and the only splashes of color came from the secondhand red, white, and blue toy box and giant pink dollhouse that Caro had picked up at a garage sale.
Autumn, Caro’s black-haired, blue-eyed eldest, had once spent an hour and a half at a barbecue telling me about the thirty-minute TV show she’d watched that morning. I’d walked around the rest of the day with my eyes glazed over and my brain stuffed full of pink sparkly unicorns. Summer, the brown-eyed, brown-haired youngest, was a little quieter until she got revved up. She was the budding hair stylist, who was clutching a fistful of my hair in a death grip while she whacked away at my head with the brush.
“I have no idea what’s funny about it,” Caroline said wearily. “It’s a Laundromat. The sign should just say Laundromat. The owner thinks she’s clever, I guess.”
The place didn’t close until nine, but Caro’s part-time help ran the place during the afternoon and early evening while my sister took care of her kids. Then she’d put the girls in bed and run down to handle the closing, she’d told me. She looked tired, but I couldn’t remember a time since she’d gotten pregnant with Autumn that she hadn’t looked tired.
Autumn’s loser of a father had hit the road as soon as he’d learned he was going to be a parent, and Caro had only been sixteen at the time. I remembered all the drama and shouting matches when she’d announced she was keeping the baby, and then two years later she’d turned around and done it all over again with a different loser. At least that had been my perspective as a smart-assed thirteen-year-old kid. Now I was old enough to understand how hard it was to be alone—and how far a person might go to be with someone he wanted, no matter the consequences.
Summer stood on the couch behind me and leaned over until she was staring at me upside down. “Would you like ponytails?”
I pretended to consider the question. “Only if you have purple ribbons,” I said, spying the purple ribbons on the floor by the toy box.
She shrieked so loudly that my skull reverberated. “I do! And more in my room!”
She ran to get them, and Autumn tore off after her to find her latest doll to show me. Caroline smiled at me.
“You’re always so good with them. I wish you could come around more often,” she said.
Guilt washed over me. I hadn’t even realized she’d moved in here, because it had been August since I’d seen her. The attack had lain between us, festering with guilt and shame, because I think Caro felt like it had been her fault I’d been sent to juvie. I’d been ashamed she’d seen me turn so violent—so Ethan-like. Instead of bringing us together, it had nearly driven us apart forever. But she was my sister—the only one I’d ever have—and she hadn’t wanted to leave things between us like that, so she’d tried to reach out.
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to respond at the time, but that she’d even tried had meant something, and here I was.
“I’m really sorry, Caro. School started, and—”
She waved a hand. “No, no. I wasn’t trying to give you a guilt trip. God knows I understand being busy. Speaking of which, I need to feed the girls. Lucky for them that Ma sent food. It was going to be macaroni and cheese again.”
“Hey, nothing beats a good mac and cheese,” I said. “Can I help you set the table?”
Caro grinned as the girls shrieked their way back into the room. “I think you’re going to be too busy getting beautiful, Uncle Mickey.”
Twenty minutes later, I was beautiful, all right. I was wearing five or six tiny, purple-ribboned ponytails and eating Anna Mae’s cooking for the first time, ever.
“She’s a good cook,” I had to admit.
“Her single maternal skill,” Caro said dryly. “Speaking of cooking, did you hear anything else from Pa about Ethan’s . . . kitchen fire?”
Autumn looked up, her eyes wide. “Uncle Ethan set fire to the kitchen?”
“We’re not really sure, sweetheart,” I told her. “We think it might actually have been an accident.”
I didn’t really think that at all, but that’s what Ethan had convinced my Dad to believe, and I didn’t want to worry Caro when I had no proof of my suspicions.
“I had an accident at daycare once,” Summer confided, her tiny face solemn. “But that was back when I was little, and I had extra pants in my cubby. Did Uncle Ethan have extra pants?”
Autumn cracked up. “Not that kind of accident, dummy. Grown-ups don’t wet their pants.”
“My friend Nina’s grandma does,” Summer shouted. “They had to put her in a home. And don’t you call me a dummy! I’m four!”
“Okay, bath time for overtired, overexcited little girls,” Caro said. “Mickey, do you want to bring Summer?”
“Sure. Come with Uncle Mickey?” I didn’t wait for her to answer before I scooped her up off her chair and into a hug.
Autumn promptly burst into tears. “I wanted to go with Uncle Mickey,” she wailed, and then she ran off down the hall.
“I’m sorry, Caro. I’m not much help,” I said, patting Summer’s back when her little face crumpled and hoping she wouldn’t melt down, too.
“It’s not your fault, Mickey. They’re kids, and sometimes kids get overstimulated this time of day.”
“I’d better go,” I said, feeling uncomfortably like my visit had made my sister’s life more difficult. “Homework, and stuff. But could I maybe come back on a weekend and take them out for ice cream or a movie or something? Give you a break?”
For the first time that evening, Caro flashed a real smile as she took her sleepy daughter out of my arms. “That would be great. There’s a new Pixar film coming up they’re dying to see. I’ll let you know when it releases, and maybe we can figure something out.”
Impulsively, I leaned over and gave both of them a hug, and then I walked down to the bathroom and hugged Autumn, too. She’d been busy dumping all of the bath toys in the tub, apparently having forgotten her earlier tears.
“Have a nice bath, punkin.”
“Bye, Uncle Mickey.”
When I stood up, I caught sight of myself in the mirror and started laughing. “Maybe Uncle Mickey will leave these purple ribbons here at your house, for next time.”
• • �
��
It was just getting dark when I made it home, but I noticed that Pa’s car was nowhere in sight. The house was all lit up, though, which meant that Mom was home. I gave myself a mental smack for forgetting to call her and tell her I’d be late, but when I walked in she looked up from her papers and smiled.
“Is it dinner time already? I had a long chat after school with the neighbor about whether or not we should cut down that elm tree, and since then I’ve been sitting here daydreaming, I must confess,” she said.
She did that a lot. Daydreamed. I wondered sometimes whether she was imagining a life lived in a different direction, one in which she hadn’t moved to Clark, Kentucky, to take a job and wound up marrying my dad and taking on all of his problems when she’d said “I do.” Ironically enough, they’d met when he, then Deputy Rhodale, had visited the elementary school to talk about Stranger Danger.
Should have paid attention, Mom.
“I already ate.” I sat down at the table across from her and looked around, trying to see our house with new eyes.
Victoria’s eyes.
Our whole house would probably fit inside the Whitfield guest bathroom. My folks had called this their “starter house,” but I’d been the only baby that ever came along, and we’d wound up staying right here. It was a comfortable place, filled with warm colors and the Kentucky folk art Mom liked to collect. I wouldn’t trade it for all the mansions in Kentucky.
“Victoria Whitfield is in my history class,” I said abruptly, not sure why I was telling her.
“Her brother, Buddy, is in my class,” she said, and we both sat and stared at each other for a while.
“I never understood why your father hates the family so much,” she finally said. “It was a Rhodale who burned down the barn, after all.”
She was right. Meredith Rhodale’s husband had set the fire that had killed his wife and Larry Whitfield sixty years ago. Nobody had ever known whether he’d set it on purpose or not, just that he’d been carrying a lantern when he’d gone to the barn to check on his horse, and he’d found his wife in the act with a Whitfield.
Meredith and Larry had never made it out of the barn that night, but Rhodale’s horse did, which fueled the speculation that he’d either killed them first and then set the fire to try to cover it up, or else he’d gotten his horse out of the barn and then blocked them in somehow so they’d burn to death together.
“The feud started a long time before that,” I said. “It’s strange, but Victoria doesn’t know anything about it. How is that even possible? There have been Whitfields and Rhodales going at it for a couple of centuries.”
She shook her head. “She grew up in a different life. This nonsense had nothing to do with her. The rest of the world is getting on with their lives.”
“Mom, we looked this stuff up. Whitfields and Rhodales have been fighting each other since that first property dispute, way back when. It got worse, and then it got better. We’re supposed to be more civilized these days, but I think we’re only better at spackling a layer of polite over the surface of angry.”
She sighed. “I know, but maybe it’s only still alive on the Rhodale side—”
“No. You should have seen Richard Whitfield at the fire. He hated me on sight, just for being a Rhodale.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed as she went mama wolf on me. “What did he say to you? I’ll have a talk with that man. Just because he’s a Whitfield, he can’t talk to my son like that. I’ll—”
I grinned at her. “Mom. Mom. Stop. I’m seventeen, not seven. You can’t fight my battles anymore.”
She sighed. “I know. You’re right. It’s a hard habit to break. At least we don’t have a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing going on—”
I met her gaze, and she faltered. “Oh, honey. No. Your father would hit the roof if he heard—”
I shrugged. “Ethan already has. He just called me to an ‘or else’ meeting at the compound, and Anna Mae suggested there’d been something between her and Victoria’s dad.”
“Did you ask what?”
I made a gagging face, trying to distract my mom from the subject of Victoria. “No. I was too busy trying not to puke. But I went to see Caroline and the girls afterward.”
My mom’s face softened at the mention of my nieces. “How are they doing? I need to get over there for a visit. I have Autumn’s birthday present ready, and I bought a little something for Summer so she doesn’t feel left out.”
Mom and Caroline had struck up a surprising friendship over the years, and she’d been one of the few people to stand firmly on Caro’s side and never try to talk her out of keeping the babies. It had been one of the only times she and Anna Mae had been on the same side of an issue.
“They’re good. She looks tired, and the girls are a handful, but the apartment is way nicer than that dump she lived in over by the tracks this summer.”
Mom froze, and I realized what I’d said. It was the first time I’d mentioned, even indirectly, the attack since it had happened.
Caro moved a lot, whether from a feeling of restlessness or in an attempt to improve her situation each time, but she hadn’t realized that the bar down the block from her last apartment building had been so dangerous. After the . . . incident, while I was rotting in juvie and Ethan was in jail, one of Ethan’s thugs had paid the bar owner, who also owned the apartments, a little visit. The landlord had quickly refunded Caro’s security deposit and that month’s rent, and the owner’s sons had helped her move. I just hadn’t known she’d moved into the upstairs of the Laundromat.
Mom stood up and headed for the kitchen, and I trailed after her, wondering why I hadn’t kept my mouth shut. I grabbed an apple from the green glass bowl on the counter and bit into it, trying to figure out what to say, but she surprised me by leaving the subject of Caroline and going back to Victoria.
“You like this girl?” She had her back to me, but I could tell from the tension in her shoulders that she was worried.
“‘Like’ isn’t a strong enough word,” I found myself admitting. “I don’t know exactly what the word is, though. There’s nothing between us yet, though, so quit worrying. I just want to get to know her. She’s . . . different.”
Mom turned around and leaned back against the sink. “You said yet, so I know you plan to go after her. Mickey, please be careful. I’ve always thought this feud was absolutely ridiculous, but it’s deadly serious to your father. I don’t know all the reasons why, either, but there has been quite a history of financial double-dealings and other problems between the two families over the years, too.”
“Ethan’s blaming Victoria’s father for trying to get more law enforcement around here to protect his rich horse people. More cops means less freedom for his criminals.”
Her eyes were troubled. “Ethan is more dangerous than ever. I’ve heard stories . . . just stay away from him for a while, okay? And Mickey, I think there was a problem between your dad and Richard Whitfield over Anna Mae, back in high school.”
I choked on my apple. “Anna Mae? Are you kidding me?”
Mom got that pinched look on her face. “She was the beauty of the county back then, or so I hear.”
“So her looks didn’t always match her troll-like personality?” I grinned but then had to duck when Mom tried to thwack me in the head with a dish towel.
She smiled a little, too, but then she got serious again, fast. “I wish I could tell you to stay away from this girl, but since I know that won’t work, maybe let’s not mention Victoria Whitfield to your father just yet, Mick.”
Probably a good idea, but I was getting awfully tired of hearing all the reasons why I should stay away from Victoria, especially when I knew I had no intention of doing it.
Chapter 13
Victoria
It was the high point of a small-town Kentucky week: the Friday afternoon of a home football
game. I wouldn’t be there, though. I’d be spending the evening at the ranch, instead, because Melinda had skipped school again, claiming a migraine, and spent her time figuring out how to pick the lock on Dad’s booze cabinet. And she’d figured it out at least a few hours before I got home from school, according to the results of my personal Melinda Drunk-o-Meter.
Glassy eyes? Check. Too-careful pronunciation and increasingly devious attempts to hide both the bottles and her breath? Check. This time, though, I was rebelling. Instead of trying to sober her up and hide the evidence, I’d left the cabinet door swinging open, half off its hinges. I’d just smiled and nodded when Melinda snuck by me in the kitchen, hiding her stolen glass bottle under the crocheted throw from one of the chairs, while I prepped the chicken and put it in the oven.
We were finally going to have it out. It was the perfect storm of events: Melinda was drinking, Buddy was staying overnight with a friend, Gran was out to dinner with her friends, and Mrs. Kennedy had weekends off. Mom, Dad, Melinda, and I would be the only ones home, and this time my parents would have no excuse not to see how bad their daughter was becoming.
She needed rehab. At the very least, we needed not to have a liquor cabinet in the same house with a budding alcoholic.
Dad hit the door first, but went straight for the shower. I don’t think he ever actually touched a horse, but he always wanted to wash off the day whenever he’d been anywhere near the barns. Or maybe it was another stench he was washing off every time he thought about the failure of his business in the city.
He wasn’t good at losing, my dad. He didn’t take it as a challenge—it didn’t build his character. He was definitely not the type to pick himself up by his bootstraps. No, he raged and fought and kicked and screamed until the bitter end, and tried to take as many people down with him as he could.
Mom didn’t get home until I was pulling the baked potatoes out of the oven, and she headed straight for the wine fridge and pulled out a bottle. I mentally smacked myself in the forehead. I’d forgotten about the wine fridge. Probably because Melinda hated the taste of wine, but if we took the other alcohol away, I bet she’d find a way to drink it.
