by Jodi Thomas
But the sheriff wasn’t a coward. He nodded once and said, “Lexie, you’re back. What’s it been? Ten years?”
“Seven, actually,” Lexie said as she looked him up and down from boots to Stetson.
“Time flies,” he answered and turned his attention to the Franklin sisters.
Not exactly a welcome home, Angie thought. This lady was getting more interesting by the minute. It was as if they gave her a parade when she left, and now she’d returned, they all wanted their streamers back.
Angie swore she saw the woman push out her breasts slightly and arch one of her perfect eyebrows. “Well, Dan Brigman, you haven’t changed one bit since you came here the year I turned eighteen. New sheriff that played everything by the book. Tried to arrest Wilkes and me for driving through the canyon one night. We were just kids having fun.”
Dan didn’t smile. “You might have been eighteen, but you were going over eighty. Wilkes told me it was your idea, but he worked a month to pay off the ticket.”
“Of course it was my idea. Like I always say, I don’t have to go to the party. I am the party. Every wild thing Wilkes did was because of me.”
When no one in the shop commented, Lexie must have felt the need to stay on stage. “That man never had a spontaneous or romantic thought in his head. Then one day he just says that he joined the army, like it wasn’t something I should have had a say in.”
“He wanted to serve his country like his dad and grandfather had. I’d call that responsible more than wild.” Dan frowned as if he was thinking of pulling his weapon.
“Always the drama queen, Lexie.” He took a deep breath. “Ever wonder what the town talks about when you’re not around.”
She struck a pose. “In fact I do. I imagine keeping up with my life is the only thing that keeps half the people in this town from dying of boredom.”
Angie wished she were recording this. How could she have thought there would be no drama in a small town? She felt as though she’d stumbled into the middle of a soap opera.
The beauty laughed. “Yeah, I heard the speech. Even my dad thought I should have waited for him, like I had three good years of my life to waste.” She flipped her mane like a stallion on parade.
Angie simply stared. If being self-centered had a smell, the room would need fumigating.
Lexie seemed tired of waiting for a compliment. She twisted her hair in a long rope. When that got no reaction, she crossed her arms to push up her perfect breasts, then widened her stance. Her dress tightened over perfectly shaped legs. If anyone had taken a picture, she’d be on a cover somewhere. “Tell me, Sheriff Brigman, did you ever get over your wife? If so, you might just know where the parties are around this dull town.”
Dan didn’t look as if he even heard her questions. He turned to Angie. “If you’re finished shopping, Miss Harold, I’ll be happy to take you to the museum.”
Lexie jerked, almost tumbling off her five-inch heels. Pretty ones, of course. She looked at Angie as if a frog had just appeared in the room. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t notice you.”
Angie blamed it on that five-foot-three thing again, but really, how could someone miss a whole person in a twenty-by-thirty shop?
The sheriff stepped between them. “Angie, meet Lexie Davis.”
Before Angie could say anything, Lexie laughed. “Well, give the girl a few details, Danny. I’m as close as this town ever got to having royalty. I’m sure she’d want to know who she’s meeting.” She turned her full attention toward Angie. “I was runner-up for Miss Texas eight years ago. I’m married to a very successful plastic surgeon in Dallas now, but all this town seems to remember is that I used to date Wilkes Wagner. We were kind of a thing a while ago.”
Daisy Franklin added, “Dated him almost five years. Broke up with him when he was away fighting for our country. Folks don’t forget that.”
Angie bit back a smile at the expression on Lexie’s face. She looked as though she might have bopped the little Miss Franklin on the head if the county sheriff hadn’t been standing so close.
“We broke up,” Lexie announced. “We went in different directions, and guarding an embassy isn’t exactly like being at war. It’s not my fault Wilkes didn’t move on. I did.”
Angie’s brain was on overload. Lexie was exactly the kind of woman she’d thought would belong on Wilkes’s arm. Beautiful, tall, nice shoes. Maybe she should have been jealous, but Lexie was simply reminding her of what she’d known all along. Great-looking men don’t go for mousy women. She was angry for even daring to hope.
Rose got a word in. “I heard this husband of yours, the doc, is moving on, too. You already shopping for number three?”
Lexie opened her mouth as if she planned to say something ugly to the Franklin sisters. “Do you know, I believe I’ve reconsidered,” she announced with a false smile plastered across her perfect lips as she moved toward the door. “I don’t think I’ll need an appraisal after all, ladies.”
She pivoted, her perfect hair brushing against her perfect bottom as she walked out the door. “Good day, Miss Franklin and Miss Franklin...and whatever your name was.”
Angie looked back to Dan in time to see the sheriff wink at the Franklins. “She forgot me,” he whispered. “How lucky can a guy get?”
Rose and Daisy both tried to hide their giggles.
“Angie.” He smiled. “You’re going to be late to work. I’d better do my duty.” He offered his arm as if he were a formal escort to a ball.
The two women watched as Angie walked out. She thought she heard one of them whisper, “Wish we could have told that Lexie that our Wilkes has him a new girl.”
As the door closed, she whispered to Dan, “That’s not true. Wilkes and I are not together.”
The sheriff leaned near. “The Franklin sisters are never wrong. If they say you are, you are.”
Angie blushed and changed the subject. “Did your paperwork come in?”
“Yep.” Dan smiled. Somehow seeing Lexie had changed his dark mood about this daughter. “I’ve already sent it to Wilkes. He’s picking up Yancy, and they are on their way to Austin.”
“What?”
Dan grinned. “Don’t worry, he’ll be back in a few days and tell you all about it. In the meantime, he told me to ask you to stay at his place. It’s safer. And don’t forget to feed Uncle Vern. The old guy can handle cereal for breakfast and a sandwich for lunch, but he needs something for supper.”
“But I don’t even know...”
Dan interrupted, probably guessing her next question. “You’ll find your way around the kitchen. The housekeeper keeps the place well stocked. I’m guessing the old guy will eat anything you make.” He hesitated. “You’d be doing Wilkes a big favor. He doesn’t like to leave the old guy alone and Vern hates it if he thinks Wilkes sent a babysitter. This way he can think he’s guarding you while Wilkes is gone.”
Angie felt as if she’d been reading a spy novel and somehow skipped a chapter. All she could do was nod as she muttered, “Doc Holliday and I will keep an eye on the place.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lauren
THE SATURN HER FATHER gave her for graduation was loaded down. Lauren was only taking Polly home for a long weekend but they were prepared for anything. Computers and books for studying, clothes for the unpredictable weather, boots, rain gear, bathing suits if they lucked out and had a warm sunny day on the deck.
Polly was riding with Tim in the Jeep ahead of Lauren. He’d packed a backpack and a bag of Cheetos. Right now they had the top down on the Jeep and kept waving back to her. Now and then a Cheetos would hit the windshield as though they were passing a snack back to her.
The doctor said that Polly should take it easy for a few days, eat regular meals and stay away from alcohol.
Lauren felt as if
she was watching a robot slowly turning into a human. Step by step Polly Anna, as Tim called her, was changing. Cussing less, even smiling now and then. The trashy clothes were gone, but the red stripes in her hair were still there. Polly wanted to be the center of attention and Tim gave her that, but she refused to answer any questions about her past. It was almost as though she was born the day she walked into Lauren’s dorm room.
Lauren tried to make up a past that fit her. Polly’s father had beat her. Her mother had sold her into the sex trade. She was older than she looked, and this was the fifth college she’d flunked out of. She was younger and wanting to go wild a semester before the school found out she was a genius.
Not one of Lauren’s theories worked.
When they reached the lake, Lauren moved Polly into what Pop and her called “Mother’s room.” But, except for a few nights back around her sixteenth birthday, her mother had never slept in this house on the lake. Lauren and her father had moved in while she was in elementary school. Margaret had come out for moving day, hauling some of her books and things as if she was really moving in, but even at five years old Lauren knew something was wrong. Margaret had left that night.
She thought her mother didn’t want the lake house, but it turned out after a few years of lies and excuses that Margaret Brigman didn’t want them. Lauren decided Margaret didn’t want to be a mother, but Lauren feared her pop thought she left because she didn’t want to be a wife.
Logic would have predicted that she and Pop would have been miserable, but it wasn’t that way. They kept each other’s spirits up. All her childhood memories were of the two of them living life in the small house. Now that she’d been away from home she realized how precious those years were.
She never, not for one minute, doubted his love.
Like now, Lauren thought. Pop had complained about her bringing her roommate home on such short notice, but he’d stocked the kitchen with snack food. He’d been angry when he found out Lauren was skipping class to come in Thursday, but then called back to tell her to check her tire pressure and make sure she had plenty of gas.
They pulled in and Tim immediately found the kitchen and announced they were having lunch on the deck. He wrapped Polly in a quilt and carried her to the deck despite her protests, then lugged out a card table of snacks.
In the cool shade of autumn leaves, they watched sunlight dance over the water, and Lauren smiled. She was home.
A little after five her father showed up wearing his uniform and a huge grin.
“Your dad’s a hunk,” Polly whispered as they saw him heading toward them.
“No, he’s not,” Lauren whispered back.
Dan Brigman shook hands with Tim and smiled warmly at Polly as he told her she was welcome to stay as long as she liked.
When he excused himself to lock up his service weapon, Polly whispered again, “Hunk.”
“No way,” Lauren answered.
Tim broke into the argument. “Since I’m the deciding vote, I stand with Lauren. To me he just looks like a sheriff, and if you knew how strict he was, Polly, you’d stop staring at him like he was puppy-cute.”
They all laughed.
The rest of the evening was cooking hot dogs on the grill and telling old stories about people in town. Lauren knew all the stories, she was even in the one Tim told about the Gypsy House, but she loved listening anyway. Tim had a way with words. He was a natural storyteller.
While Tim and her pop cleaned up, Lauren took Polly for a walk along the lake. She introduced her to a few of the neighbors and even met the woman who had just moved in a few weeks before. Polly seemed fascinated that Angie Harold was a curator. She even asked if she could take a tour of the museum later.
“Of course,” Angie said. “Drop by anytime.”
“I will.” Polly smiled. “When I was a kid, babysitters used to drop me off at the museum by our house and pick me up at closing time. I loved wandering the place and picking my lunch from the vending machines.”
The curator was busy loading up her car, so Lauren didn’t want to take up too much of her time. “We’d better go,” Lauren said. “You look like you’re busy.”
“I’m just loading up a few supplies. I’m house-sitting for a few days and want to use my own pots to cook in.”
Lauren wanted to ask why, but didn’t. First, no one in Crossroads hired a house sitter. They just told their neighbors to keep an eye on the house. Second, what did it matter which pot you used. She’d met two curators in her life and both seemed odd. This one who only cooked with her own pots and the old one at the Ransom Canyon Museum who never stopped talking. Anyone who went in the museum found out he followed them around like a living portable headset.
As they walked back in the dark, Polly thanked her for bringing her to such a quiet place.
“I needed this,” Polly whispered.
“I know,” Lauren answered as they picked their way along the path between boat docks. She waited for her roommate to say more.
Finally, Polly added, “I wish I’d grown up in a place like this. My house is more like a war zone when my folks are home, which isn’t often. They travel all over the world on photo shoots for magazines. I’ve heard coworkers say they never fight on the job, but the minute the day is done, the yelling begins.”
“So who looked after you?”
“Babysitters when I was little. A housekeeper once I was in school during the day. It was a revolving door. I got to where I called them all Betty. No one stayed long. Once, when I was six, the old lady my folks had hired to stay a month died before the first week was out.”
“What did you do? Call the police? Go to the neighbor’s house?”
Polly shook her head. “I was afraid I’d get in trouble. I lasted almost a week on cereal and popsicles. But the old lady’s sister kept calling to check on her. After about a dozen times of me saying I didn’t know where she was, the sister called child welfare.”
“Oh, my god! How terrible that must have been for you. Your parents had to come back early?”
“No. My parents were working and apparently didn’t want to be bothered. They refused to take the call. I had nowhere to go and the cops wouldn’t let me stay at the house alone.”
“What, no friends or relatives?”
Polly didn’t say a word.
Lauren had her answer.
“Welfare put me in a group home. It wasn’t so bad. Kind of like the dorm. When my folks came back, I talked them into putting me in boarding school so they could do as they pleased.”
“How’d that work?”
“Fine. I got in trouble a lot. Finally, I just ignored everyone. Once you’re marked as a troublemaker, you learn to go with the flow.”
Lauren took in everything Polly had said. The girl was right about one thing, Lauren had been very lucky to grow up here with her dad. “Polly,” she said as they neared the steps up to the deck. “You’re welcome here anytime. My pop said it and he means what he says.”
In the low glow of the porch light Lauren thought she saw a smile from Polly.
“Don’t tell Tim,” Polly whispered as she nodded toward Lauren’s dad and Tim cleaning up the grill. “He already feels sorry for me.”
Lauren thought of telling her Tim felt more than just sorry for her. She’d seen it in his eyes. Tim cared for Polly, even if he didn’t know it yet. At first he might have been just helping Lauren out with her troubled roommate, but it had grown to something else. Something between them that had nothing to do with her.
When Tim finally crashed out in the living room and Polly was sound asleep in her room, Lauren heard her pop playing his old CDs.
She walked into his study and leaned against the door frame. For the hundredth time, she said, “You need to buy some new music.”
“I always feel at h
ome with the music my mom used to play.” He switched to the old Carpenters’ song she’d thought about Monday when it was raining.
Without a word she moved into his arms and danced to “Rainy Days and Mondays.” When she was little, he used to carry her when they danced. When she grew tall enough, she would stand on his boots as they danced. When she was finally in her teens, he taught her how to twirl and dip as if the living room was a ballroom.
As the music circled round them, he said, “I’ve missed you, kid.”
“I know, Pop. I’ve missed you, too.”
“You know any rainy day you ever have, you can always come home no matter how old you get and tell me your problems.”
“I know, Pop.” She hugged him tighter, wishing she could tell him about how scared she’d been when she saw Polly bleeding, and how hurt she was when Lucas backed away from even trying to love her.
But maybe she didn’t have to tell him. Maybe his just being there and offering was enough.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Austin
Wilkes
WILKES FELT AS IF he and Yancy had been chasing ghosts since early Wednesday morning. As he drove through the streets of Austin, Wilkes tried to put it all in order.
He hadn’t been able to sleep the night Angie moved in. About four, he’d given up trying and gone downstairs to work on his computer. He wanted to find out more about the Stanley House that drew Yancy. If the wagon at the museum had been owned by the Stanley family and they had arrived with the first cattlemen, then they were like family. They stood with the Kirklands and the O’Gradys and the Collinses and his ancestors, the Wagners. Now that he’d seen the wagon at the museum, it made sense that the Stanley family might have been called Gypsy.
About six o’clock a link blinked on that Wilkes hadn’t noticed before. A family named Stanley joined with another family to form a blacksmith and farrier business in early Texas. They’d even put an ad in the Austin paper in 1872 saying they’d be willing to travel for employment. That same year Kirkland drove his herd onto this part of Texas. Surely he would have brought both a blacksmith and a farrier along, and as fast as the population grew they’d be in demand.
