by Ann Charles
Hot damn. Claire grinned. Of all of the nights to skip going to The Shaft. She would have loved to see Ronnie take down a frisky drunk. Who knew her sister even had that in her?
Natalie looked down at Claire. “Kate said the move reminded her of something you would have done. Actually, now that I think about it, Ronnie told me it was something you had taught her.”
Oh, really? That was even funnier, as in a load of hogwash funny, because Claire did not remember ever teaching Ronnie such a move.
She tossed another piece of gravel toward the drive. Her older sister was lying for some reason, and one way or another, even if it involved doing some hogtying of her own, she was going to get to the bottom of it.
“So, Jessica’s father tried to pick up both of you girls?” Gramps asked, returning to the point at where the conversation had derailed.
Natalie nodded.
“I guess he’s not nearly as taken with Mother as she is with him,” Claire said to Gramps.
“It appears not.” He shifted in his chair, his face scrunching in pain for a moment or two. “And while that makes me happy for several reasons,” he grimaced, “I don’t think it’s going to go over well with your mom, which is going to make life even more of a pain in the ass for Ruby and me.”
“Your daughter needs to get laid,” Chester said to Gramps.
Natalie and Gramps both groaned.
“Curse your tongue, old man,” Claire said.
“What? You have to admit she could use some mellowing out. I was hoping Jess’s dad would take one for the team and save us all from her sharp teeth. She could spend some time draining good ol’ Steve Horner-toad dry while we figured out how to get rid of her ass again. I don’t think dumping a bucket of water on her will work this time.”
“Are you guys talking about my dad?” Jessica asked, stepping out from the spindly grove of mesquite trees behind them. She had her Emma book tucked under her arm, but it looked thicker, the pages more wrinkled. A piece of paper acting as a bookmark fluttered in the breeze along with wisps of her red hair that had escaped her ponytail. Her shorts were rolled up so they were way too short and her mouth glistened with a thick coating of lip gloss.
Claire knew exactly who Jess was out to impress. Unfortunately for the freckle-faced teen, Beanpole was at the dig site.
Rather than try to deny what Jess had probably already overheard, Claire said, “We were talking about my mom going with him to dinner again tonight.”
“Oh, right. I think he might be busy though.” Jess held out a handful of dollar bills and change toward her.
“What’s this?” Claire asked.
“It was in your pants’ pocket. Mom had me do the laundry this afternoon.
“Thanks.” She tucked away the change from the pregnancy test.
“What happened to your book?” Gramps asked.
“It fell in the washing machine. I fished it out before it got too wet.”
He sighed. “You need to take better care of your school books. Your mom had to replace the last one you brought home and dropped in the tub.”
“I know. I know.” Jess blew some hair out of her face. “I was being careful, but it slipped.” She looked over at Natalie. “Will you let me borrow your cowboy hat tonight?”
“What do you need her hat for?” Gramps asked.
“I have a date.”
“With who?” Manny asked.
“My boyfriend.”
Claire did a double take. So they had moved to that level now, had they? “You mean the tall skinny kid who works for the college?”
“He’s not a kid. He’s a man.” Jessica’s voice was all breathy when she said that last word.
Claire looked away to hide her grimace.
“You are not borrowing Natalie’s hat,” Gramps said.
“Why not?”
“Because you are not going out with a boy that much older than you.”
Jessica’s face puckered, turning several shades pinker. “I am, too. Besides, Mom already said I could go.”
“Yeah, well she’s going to change her mind after I talk to her. He’s in college, kid.”
“I know. That’s why I like him. He’s way more mature than the boys my age.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m going whether you like it or not, Harley.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am, and you’re not my dad so you don’t get to tell me what to do.” She turned on her heel and stormed off.
Gramps pointed at Claire. “This is your fault.”
She sputtered. “What? How is that my fault?”
“You and Mac are sleeping together without any talk of commitment. You’re setting a bad example.” He crushed his beer can and threw it on the ground. “Next thing you know, she’ll be pregnant, too.”
Claire covered her face and growled out several of her favorite swear words.
“Ha! I knew it, chica.” Manny clapped.
“That explains the no smoking bet,” Chester said. “And all of your bitchiness.”
Claire glared at Gramps from between her fingers. “So much for keeping a damned secret, huh?” She parted her palms when she spoke. “What’s next? The combination to the safe?”
“I’m sorry, Claire.” At least he had the decency to look sheepish. “At least your mom doesn’t know about it.”
Lowering her hands, she turned a gunslinger glare on the other two troublemakers. “Well, let’s all make sure it stays that way, got it?”
Chapter Thirteen
Claire sat alone on Ruby’s front porch step, leaning against the post, listening to the bullfrogs croaking to each other down by Jackrabbit Creek. The sun had taken its final bow before sinking behind the purple shrouded mountains to the west, its fading salute painting the sky with pink and lilac brush strokes.
She checked Ruby’s cordless phone for the fifth time in as many minutes, making sure yet again that the batteries were still working.
Where was Mac, damn it? He was supposed to have called before supper. She thought about leaving another voicemail, but really the previous three would probably get her point across when he finally checked his phone. Grunting in frustration, she set the phone on the step next to her and watched an airplane contrail cut eastward through the sky until it disappeared into a pink cloud.
How was Mac going to react if she were pregnant? Would he insist on marriage? She squirmed on the hard wood step, every instinct in her reacting as always to the thought of marriage and its long term, breath-constricting bonds. Would he be willing to continue the loosey-goosey arrangement they’d had since Claire had started staying with him? Would he insist his baby have his last name?
“Gah,” she shivered in the warm evening air.
How in the hell could she be pregnant? She had been so careful with not missing a pill … well, most of the time. There was that week where she couldn’t find the pill packet. And then there was the time she had missed two days in a row, but she’d popped both pills as soon as she had remembered.
Damn.
Shit.
Fuck.
This was heavy stuff, not just another job to quit or a college class to drop or a bad date to slip away from out the bathroom window. She was the last person in this family capable of taking care of a baby or raising a kid. Her mother had not designated her as the number one screw-up by randomly drawing names from a hat.
She picked up the phone again, squinting down at the dark LCD screen, trying to force it to ring through telekinesis. It sat lifeless in her hands.
The screen door opened behind her, the floor boards creaking after it slapped shut.
Claire jammed the phone in her back pocket like it would start talking on its own at any moment and spill her deep, dark worries.
“On evenings like this,” Ronnie said, standing over her, “I understand why Grandma was so enamored with this place.”
“We sprinkled her ashes back by the creek. You remember that old cottonwood tree where she
scratched Gramps’s and her initials in the heart?”
Her grandmother’s love of the place was one of the reasons Claire was so attached to this corner of the state in the first place. It was part of why she had fought so hard to help Ruby keep her R.V. park last spring and the surrounding land and mines. The other part had everything to do with Ruby herself and the faith she’d had in Claire from the start.
“Katie and I hiked to the spot last week. It’s perfect.” Ronnie seemed to hesitate. “We need to talk, Claire.”
“Damned straight we do.” It was about time Ronnie stopped avoiding her. “Have a seat.” Claire scooted over to make more room for her sister.
“Not here.” Ronnie walked down the porch steps and hesitated at the bottom. “Let’s take a walk.”
Claire raised one eyebrow. “Who are we keeping secrets from?”
“I’ll explain if you come with me.”
She stood to follow and her butt cheek rang. She tugged out the phone.
It was Mac. About damned time. “I’ll catch up in a minute, Ronnie. I have to take this.”
“I’ll wait,” her sister said, coming back to the porch steps and sitting down.
Dang it. There was no way she could talk to Mac about a possible pregnancy with Ronnie right there.
She tapped the button to accept the call. “Hello?”
“Hey, Slugger.” His voice was static-laced, which usually meant he was out in the boonies somewhere. But he was supposed to be home by now, packing to come to the R.V. park later tonight.
“Where are you?”
“Uh, well, there was a setback …” crackle “… the job site.”
“But you’re still coming tonight, right?” She really needed to see him right now, not wanting to take the pregnancy test until he knew what was going on.
“Yeah, about that. I’m still …” hiss crackle “… won’t make it home until after midnight.”
“You mean home here?”
“No, home, as in where you and I share a king sized bed in Tuc …” hiss.
“Shit.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” his voice grew fainter. “I will call …” then he was gone.
“Mac?” She waited to see if he would come back to her.
Silence issued from the phone, not even a single spurt of static.
“Mac, can you hear me?”
Still nothing.
She held the phone away from her and put an evil curse on it.
“Maybe he’ll call back,” Ronnie said, pushing to her feet. “In the meantime, there is something I need to tell you.”
Claire set the cordless phone down on the porch. If Mac was not coming here tonight, he might as well not bother calling again. She did not want to spend another evening steaming up the phone’s screen. She wanted him there with her in the flesh, partly because he had such great flesh, but more importantly because she missed him and his level-headed, logical, stubborn ass.
Sighing, she adjusted her Mighty Mouse hat lower on her head. How had she come to this … this … pathetic inability to go for a week or more without her boyfriend around? Next thing she knew, she would be howling about her lovesickness under the nearly full moon. Chester would never let her live that down. Manny would probably join her for kicks.
Time to focus on the pocket watch and tuck her Mac-plus-baby worries away for another night. She joined Ronnie’s side. “Let’s go over by the bridge. Jessica’s hearing radar rivals most species of bats.”
They had not made it two steps when the screen door slammed open so hard it practically shuddered on its hinges.
“Leave me alone!” Jessica yelled back into the General Store, making the bullfrogs down at the creek swallow their tongues. The whole desert seemed to suck in its breath, waiting for her next outburst.
Claire shot Ronnie a questioning frown, and her sister shrugged, shaking her head.
“Jessica Lynn Wayne!” Ruby appeared in the doorway at the same time her daughter ran down the porch steps with tears streaming down her cheeks. She rocketed out the screen door after Jess. “You get back in here right now and explain this!” She held a white strip of paper in her raised hand.
The fury in Ruby’s voice made Claire’s neck hair stand on end. What in Hades was going on?
Deborah filled the doorway next, her expression smug as she watched the scene on the other side of the screen door.
“Look at Mom’s face,” Ronnie said to Claire, her tone doused with an extra dose of venom. “She’s used her evil powers to unleash another tornado on someone’s life and is reveling at the flattened aftermath. One of these days I’m gonna rain some of my own destruction on her miserable world.”
“Wow.” Claire hit Ronnie with a set of raised eyebrows. “Bitter, party of one, your table’s ready.”
“You would be, too, if you knew the half of it.” Ronnie glared hard at the screen door, as if she were trying to burn a matching set of eyeball-sized holes into the mesh.
What was Ronnie talking about? Did it have something to do with why she seemed to be staying as far from their mother as if she were carrying the ten plagues of Egypt in her fancy Coach purse? “You’re starting to sound like a grade-A whack job, Ronnie.”
She turned to Claire, her gaze shuttered. “Maybe I am psycho. That would explain a few things.”
Like what?
“Jessica Lynn, you stop right there.” The threatening tone in Ruby’s voice snagged Claire’s attention. Jess had almost made it to Ruby’s old Ford, the keys jingling in the girl’s hand. “If you take another step, you’re grounded for the next month!”
Stopping in her tracks, Jess turned, her arms crossed, her back stiff as a two-by-four, her green eyes flashing at her mother in the pre-twilight.
Ruby stormed toward her, a cloud of dust practically billowing in her wake.
The bravado holding Jess up seemed to deflate. She cowered before her mom. A whimper escaped her lips and then she crumpled to the ground. “I swear, Mom,” she held her hands together as if praying for Ruby’s mercy. “We didn’t do anything more down in the basement than kiss on the lips. We wanted a little privacy to talk, that’s all.”
Alarms clanged in Claire’s head. Jess took Beanpole down in the basement where all of Joe’s valuable antiques were stashed? What was the dang kid thinking?
“Then explain this.” Ruby shook the strip of paper over Jessica’s head.
“I found it after I dropped my book in the washer. I needed a bookmark when the clothes were done and grabbed it. That’s it, I swear.”
“Bullshit.” Ruby ticked off numbers on her fingers. “For one, I saw that hickey on your neck that you were trying to hide with my scarf the other day. Two, you have been wearing your shortest shorts and peek-a-boo tank tops a lot lately. Three, Deborah said you were implying something about going all the way.”
Okay, hold the phone, Claire thought. That was old school speech, not the way teens talked these days. Claire took a step toward Ruby. Something was all bungled up with this picture. Claire’s mother had to be setting Jess up for a fall, but what she had to gain was yet to be seen.
“Ruby.” She held out her hands to calm the red haired fire starter. “Jess may be flirting heavily with Beanpo … I mean her boyfriend, but I don’t think she is the type of girl to throw away her virginity on any old boy.”
“Why not? You did,” Deborah said from where she now stood at the top of the steps, her chin held high. Slap a crown on her head and unroll the red carpet at her feet and they would have a new queen. Off with her head! would be written in Latin on her royal coat of arms.
Ronnie moved closer to Claire, speaking under her breath. “Don’t look directly into Mom’s eyes. You’ll lose your soul.”
“What was that, Veronica?” Deborah’s focus lasered onto Ronnie. “You know better than to mutter after all of the money your father and I spent trying to correct that overbite of yours.”
Their father had had nothing to do with what Kate and
Claire had for years jokingly called the Beautification of Veronica Morgan refurbishment project. Ronnie had been their mother’s Frankenstein’s creation. Their father had given up long ago on saving his oldest from Deborah’s clutches, focusing instead on protecting Claire and Kate from receiving the lobotomies and neck bolts.
Ronnie opened her mouth to say something, or maybe to spew a lungful of flesh-eating scarab beetles.
“It’s not worth it,” Claire told her sister before Ronnie lost control and caused mass destruction.
Deborah’s glare bounced back and forth between the two of them, reminding Claire of one of those cat wall clocks with the bulbous eyeballs. Tick tock, tick tock.
“You can’t trust teenage girls, Ruby,” she turned her clock eyes back on Ruby. “They have one thing on their minds—making babies.”
Making babies? Ha! Claire wished she could go back to the time when having sex was … wait! Claire looked closer at the slip of paper in Ruby’s hand. Her vision tunneled. “Can I see that, Ruby?” She reached for the paper.
Behind Ruby, Gramps and his merry men rolled up in the golf cart he used to tool around the park. “What in the heck is going on?” He asked his wife. “We could hear you two yelling clear back at Manny’s camper.”
“Yuccaville called to complain about the racket,” Chester added.
He grunted when Manny jabbed him in the ribs. “Cállate idiota.”
Deborah sniffed. “Ruby is upset because she found out that my sixteen-year-old stepsister appears to be having sex.”
“What!” Gramps turned on Jess, his face reflecting disbelief and then disappointment.
“It happens to the best of us,” Manny consoled, patting Gramps on the shoulder.
“Those teenage hormones are hell bent for leather.” Chester puffed on his cigar, shaking his head. “I remember my first time. She insisted on me strapping on this—”
“That’s enough, you two.” Ruby cut in, silencing the two troublemakers with one glare.
“Ah, Jessica,” Gramps struggled to push to his crutches. “What were you thinking?”
