Genny's Ballad: The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series, Book 5

by Becki Willis

  “We dated all through high school,” she told him. Her voice was reverent. “Tommy Evans was... there wasn’t a word invented to describe Tommy,” she decided. “He was the life of any party. A dare devil. He was fast cars and broken curfews and stupid pranks, all rolled up into laughing green eyes and a killer smile. He could talk himself into — or out of — any situation. It was impossible to stay mad at him. Teachers could never discipline him. Girls could never resist him. Everyone loved Tommy. He was just that kind of guy.”

  “And you loved him.” It was not a question. It was a sad realization.

  “With every fiber of my teenage heart.” She said the words without hesitation. The next admission came with a measure of reluctance. “But loving Tommy was exhausting. He was so...” Again, she found herself at a loss for words. She sighed and started over.

  “For Tommy, it was always about adventure. Always about excitement. I was happy to stay at home on a Saturday night, watching the night sky. Just holding hands. But Tommy always wanted to be in the middle of the action. We always had to do something with ‘the gang’. The only time it was ever just the two of us was when... well, you know.”

  She tossed him a glance; saw the way his jaw tightened. He stared straight ahead, his hands stuffed into his jeans. His feet kept pace with hers.

  “We broke up at least a half dozen times. Tried dating other people. Always got back together.” She gave a small laugh at the fruitlessness of it all. “He graduated before me. When he left town, it broke my heart. I thought my life was over. But he came back for me, saying he couldn’t live without me. And the day I graduated high school, we decided to run away and get married.”

  Genny did not realize she was crying until she had difficulty seeing the road. It swam before her, a blurry ribbon of black against black.

  “My parents said we were too young. They were right, of course, but I was too young and foolish to realize it. I was in love. And the most exciting boy in the world wanted to share his life adventures with me. A part of me wanted to marry him right that minute, before he changed his mind, because with Tommy, you never knew. And yes, a part of me wanted to marry him to get away from the house, from the parents I always argued with.” Genny paused long enough to make another painful admission. “Neither were good enough reasons to get married, but what did I know?”

  They walked another twenty paces. Genny gathered the courage to keep walking, to keep talking. Another ten steps, as she brushed the tears from her face.

  “We got as far as Galveston.”

  Cutter finally spoke up, his voice like gravel. “You don’t have to tell me, Genny. Not if it hurts this much.”

  Her voice was small. “You need to know.” Another twenty feet, and she continued.

  “His parents caught up with us there. Told us we needed to come home. There was someone waiting at home to talk to Tommy.” He heard the sorrow move into her voice, bending it almost to the point of breaking.

  “An old girlfriend was there. He— sometimes when we broke up, he hooked back up with her. He knew how much I hated her. And I think that’s why he did it, because he knew how much it hurt me to see him with her.” She wiped away another trickle of tears. “He had been with her when he moved away. And she was there at the house, on what should have been our honeymoon, and she was — she was— she said she was pregnant!”

  “Ah, Genny.” His voice told her he shared her pain.

  She kept walking, too caught up in the story to stop now. “We had the marriage annulled that same day. Tommy didn’t want to, but how could I stay married to him, knowing someone else carried his child? If it had been anyone else but her... But I could never share him. Not with her. Not with Kayla.” She spat the name.

  Cutter sucked in his breath. “Kayla? Kayla Irwin?”

  “Kayla Sorenson back then.”

  She heard the confusion in his voice. “...Callie Beth?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “That’s what I thought tonight, when I first realized who her mother was. But the age was wrong. And then I remembered Kayla already had a child, a cute little girl that she sometimes brought along when it was convenient. Her parents raised the baby, a little girl they just called Beth.”

  “Who was her father?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know if Kayla knows. She was always rather . . . promiscuous in high school.” Genny shook her head in regret. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I know you and Callie Beth are friends.”

  Cutter didn’t say anything for several more steps. He finally made a rather obvious observation. “Callie Beth doesn’t have a younger sister or brother.”

  “I know.” This time, her voice did break. “She lied.”

  When she regained her composure, she cleared her throat and continued. “She lied, Cutter. But the damage had already been done. I couldn’t stay here and watch. I left town and Maddy, being the dear and loyal friend that she is, went with me. We moved into our dorms at Sam Houston and went to summer school. And two weeks after he married me and divorced me in the same day, Tommy married my arch enemy.”

  Genny struggled to finish the rest of her sad tale. Her voice was low and uneven, scraping along the edges of her broken heart. “And three weeks after that, when Tommy realized that Kayla had lied and that I had left him for good, he drove his motorcycle into the path of an oncoming eighteen wheeler.”

  “No!” Cutter cried, horrified. He vaguely remembered the story now, from when he was still a kid.

  “Yes.” There was a world of heartache in the single whispered word.

  Her feet lost their momentum. Genny was suddenly weary. She stopped in the middle of the road, staring up into the vast emptiness of the sky.

  “There were some who blamed me,” she said on a broken whisper.

  He jerked his head toward her. “You?”

  “Yes. They said if I had loved him, truly loved him, I wouldn’t have left him.”

  “That’s a bunch of bull, Genny!”

  “They said I gave up too easily. That I should have stayed here and fought for him.”

  “He slept with someone else, Genny. He’s the one who gave up too easily.”

  Leave it to Cutter to come to her defense, even after all these years. “That’s what I always thought,” she said with a sad smile.

  They both watched as an airplane arced across the sky, traveling to some unknown destination.

  “So you’re telling me you’re still in love with the guy.” His voice was sad. Defeated.

  “No,” she said slowly. “No, I’m not in love with Tommy, not anymore. Maybe I never was. Maybe I was in love with the idea of Tommy, and all that he stood for, the absolute freedom that he represented. He was a free spirit, if ever there was one. Or maybe I did truly love him, as much as a girl can love a boy like that.”

  Weariness seeped into her bones. Genny stepped to the side of the road and plopped down, right there on the pavement. There was no cushion, no barrier between her and the asphalt. The road still echoed the heat of the day, but she welcomed the warmth into her tired bones. With no shoulder on the side of the pavement, her feet rested in the dirt.

  Cutter lowered himself down beside her.

  “It would have never lasted,” she said. “He would have always been looking for the next adventure. He would have never been satisfied.”

  “Some people are like that,” he acknowledged softly. “They spend their whole lives searching, never realizing they have the whole world right beside them.”

  “I never let go of the anger,” Genny realized. “I never let go of the heartache. I thought I had, but I hadn’t. All this time, I kept it all bottled up. The anger, the guilt, the sheer uselessness of it all.”

  When he reached out to take her hand, she did not resist. “Is that what you’re doing out here tonight? Turning it all loose?”

  “I’m trying.”

  After a few moments of silence, Cutter bumped his shoulder into hers. “It’s not a
Saturday night,” he said softly, “but you know what we’re doing.”

  Genny frowned, not following his train of thought.

  “Watching the night sky. Just holding hands.”

  Instead of leaning into him, she pulled away. “I don’t know if I can do it, Cutter,” she said, her voice again low and raw.

  “Do what?”

  “This. Us.”

  Her words hurt him. He flinched, as surely as if he had slapped him. “You don’t feel the same way about me?” he asked lowly.

  “I’m not sure that has anything to do with it,” she said in a sad voice.

  “It has everything to do with it! You either love me or you don’t.”

  “Tonight... when I saw Kayla again... And Callie Beth. And you...”

  “They set me up, Genny. I tried to warn you. And then I tried to get out of it. But her mother is so pushy, and so bossy. And it was her birthday, and I didn’t want to completely ruin it for her.” He was rambling, trying to make her understand. “I ruined it anyway, when I ran out looking for you, but that was because I saw your face, and I knew there was something very wrong, something more than me being there with Callie Beth. I told you about the party, you know. I wasn’t sneaking out behind your back.”

  “I know that. And I could see how miserable you were. But, still... It was Kayla. My archenemy. I know it’s not your fault. You had no idea. And I know it’s not Callie Beth’s fault. She can’t help who her mother is. But... you’ve dated her for a long time. You’ve been close to her, and to her parents. And... And I just don’t know if I can get past that,” Genny admitted rawly. “There would always be that reminder of Kayla.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “You have no idea what she did to me, Cutter. Just like Pembrook Harris, Kayla made my life a living hell. Didn’t you hear her tonight? Even after twenty years, she couldn’t resist taking jabs at me. At the fact that she’s married and I’m not. That you are Callie Beth’s long-time boyfriend and that I’m still alone. That I’m too old for you.”

  “It always comes back to the age thing, doesn’t it?”

  “Even if I could get past the age thing, I’m not sure I could get past this.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’d throw away what we have together, because a woman I once dated is the daughter of a woman your old boyfriend once dated?”

  “That’s a very simplified description, and you know it. Tommy is dead because of Kayla’s lies.”

  “And you somehow feel guilty, even though it was in no way your fault, and now you’re willing to throw away your own happiness as way of punishment. Is that was this is?”

  She passed her hand over her face. “I don’t know, Cutter. I don’t know anything anymore. All I know is that I am tired. So very, very, tired. I know there is someone stalking me, and Pembrook bit my hand today, and Kayla is back in town and she’s Callie Beth’s mother and...”

  He broke into her babbling. “Wait. Pembrook bit you? When? How?” He grabbed her hands, looking for evidence. He saw only a small smudge of a bruise on her right hand.

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I left my purse at the café and my house is still a mile away and I have blisters on my feet.” To her chagrin, she burst out in tears. She teetered on the brink of exhaustion.

  “Ah, Genny darlin’,” he said, gathering her up in his arms. “Come on, darling, let’s get you home.”

  “I don’t think I can walk,” she whimpered.

  Cutter pulled out his phone. “Then we’ll call Maddy to come get us.”

  “You could go back for the truck.”

  The phone connected and he spoke into it, giving Maddy the barest of details. Even without the full story, she was on her way.

  “I can always depend on Maddy,” Genny sniffed.

  “You can depend on me, too, Genny. I’m not leaving you, not even to go back for the truck.”

  Because there was nothing else she could think to do, Genny hid her face in his chest and collapsed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “She’s exhausted.”

  “Too soon after the ordeal with the fire.”

  “She probably never fully recovered the first time.”

  Genny heard bits and pieces of conversation as she drifted in and out of sleep. She was in her own bed, surrounded by her favorite comforter and the faintest whiff of leather, pine, and wood smoke. A smile touched her slack lips. Cutter.

  When she awoke again, sunlight was streaming through her window. Her feet felt heavy and her head felt light. She jerked upright, trying to see the clock.

  “Whoa, there, girlfriend. Settle back down.”

  “Derron? What—What are you doing here?” she asked. Her tongue felt fuzzy and thick, and there was an odd taste in her mouth. It tasted almost like a weed of some sort. The kind that grew in the woods, not the kind that people smoked. She peeked beneath the covers and found her feet wrapped in heavy bindings.

  “We’ve all been here. I finally convinced that hunk of a boyfriend of yours to go to work. He was making me depressed, drooling over you the way he was. Brash has been in and out. He’s no better,” Derron lamented. “Looks at Maddy with those adorable puppy-dog eyes of his. Reminds some of us schmucks that we still haven’t found that someone special.” He wallowed in self-pity for a full two seconds before rambling on. “The twins came by before school, and Blake offered to stay home and sit with you, as long as he could leave for football practice. Granny Bert was here. She force-fed you one of her God-awful smoothies with some magical herbs she swears will make you right as rain, whatever that means. Put some salve on your feet and said if you stayed off them for eight hours, you wouldn’t have a single blister.”

  That explained the horrid taste in her mouth. Genny smacked her lips, trying to dispel the after effects of one of Granny Bert’s notorious smoothies.

  “Eight hours? But I have to go to work!” She sat forward again, her head spinning. Probably another side effect of Granny’s herbs.

  Maddy appeared in the doorway with a fresh glass of iced water. “Here, drink this. And you’re not going anywhere before noon.”

  “But—”

  “We have everything covered.”

  “But this is going to be a crazy busy day. It’s Thursday, isn’t it?” She wavered for a moment, uncertain of how long she had slept. When Maddy nodded, she continued, “People always flood into town. They love the way the cheerleaders and the band and the football players all walk through both towns, meeting up at a central point to have a huge community pep rally. It has such a small-town feel to it. They love the bonfire, and the speeches by the players, and the whole corny, wonderful thing. I can’t just lay here in bed. The café is going to be packed today!”

  “You’re telling me,” Derron said, propping his feet onto the edge of her bed. “I might need some of Granny Bert’s wrappings, myself. I swear I feel a blister popping out on my twinkie.”

  At Genny’s confused look, Maddy supplied, “In a Pinch to the rescue. Turns out there’s not much this man can’t do. Who knew he was such an excellent server? Your customers loved him.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, girlfriend, staying on your feet all day,” Derron said. “I only covered the breakfast crowd and I need a soaking footbath.” He shrugged. “The tips were nice, though. And I did get one phone number from a prospective hottie, so it’s all good.” He flashed his charming smile and batted his eyes in exaggeration, making both women laugh.

  Genny rearranged her pillows and propped against the iron headboard. “So what happened with Pembrook? Did you give him the brush-off?”

  Derron hefted a dejected sigh. “Turns out, I didn’t need to. Obviously, he was just using me to get to you. He was the one to ditch me, the minute we left the tea.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Maddy broke in. She stared at Derron. “You know Pembrook?”

  They caught her up to speed on yesterday’s events. The whole time they discussed the s
ordid details, Genny rubbed the offended hand he had held. Her skin still burned at the memory. The faint bruise still lingered.

  “So if Pembrook was with you,” Maddy said, trying but failing to keep the censure out of her voice, “he couldn’t have been the one to set the fire in your yard.”

  “Hey, don’t judge. I had no idea,” Derron defended himself. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to meet someone around here? Even the hottie at the café was from out of town. It’s hard, dollface, let me tell you.”

  “Focus, Derron. As hard as it is to imagine, this isn’t about you.” Maddy wrinkled her nose to soften the harsh reality.

  “Whatever.”

  “But Maddy is right, you know,” Genny said. “Unless Pembrook snuck out of your house, set the wreath on fire, and then snuck back inside, without you ever knowing any of it, he couldn’t be our little fire bug.”

  “Didn’t you two already tangle with one fire bug recently?” Derron muttered. “Can’t you find a new mode of torture?”

  “I prefer none at all, thank you very much,” Genny said. “But I didn’t go looking for this. It found me.”

  “When did this all start?”

  As Genny gave him a brief run-down, Maddy pulled out her notes to make certain she had the details right. She was still working the case, even if the men did try to take over.

  “So you got the first phone call when they aired the episode about ripping out the back porch and making a new laundry room.”

  “Complete with all new Valco appliances,” Maddy whipped. She had heard the sponsor’s name so often, it was now second nature to her. That wasn’t just a large capacity, front-loading washing machine. That was a Valco Mega-Wash in aged copper, model number J105F-3C.

  “Yes, that sounds about right,” Genny agreed.

  “That was the episode where Cutter tracked cow mess across your floor. He took one look at your face and went to get the broom. Then he came over and brushed a kiss across your cheek.”

  Genny shook her head in rebuttal. “He didn’t kiss me.”