Chapter Seven
The crowd disperses, and I follow Travis back over the levee. Show’s over. The tow truck dragging a huge rotting chunk of my past pulls onto the levee road, then heads for town.
Travis and I climb into his truck. My entire body is numb.
He blasts the AC and glances over at me, his eyes wide and knowing.
A nervous energy radiates off him. His eyes study me, a crease forming between his brows.
I see the worry in his expression, worry for me.
But he quickly reaches for my hand and squeezes it in a way that tells me he’s confident this will still be okay.
I need that right now. My confidence got towed away with that car.
Both of us are silent as he pulls away from the levee. My throat constricts around the questions in my head: How much trouble am I in? How worried should I be? But I remain quiet, my mouth unable to form the words.
Sweat rolls between my shoulders and down my back.
But I know the heat isn’t the real problem.
The real problem started years ago, that last summer in Broken Bayou.
When the hot, lazy days had lulled me into a state of laissez-faire, as the locals called it.
That is, until the day Mama whipped into the driveway of Shadow Bluff, yelling “Girls!” at the top of her lungs.
Mabry and I ran to the porch and found her draped across the hood of a bright-red convertible, waving her arms like a Price Is Right model and laughing her throaty laugh. “Look what I got!”
“What the hell is that?” I said.
“It’s a car, Willa.”
“Where’s the old station wagon?”
“I traded that piece of shit in. It was on its last leg anyway.”
“Does this car even have a back seat?”
“Of course it does.” Mama scanned the inside. “Kind of.”
“You can’t afford to buy Mabry colored pencils, but you can afford that?”
“Well, sugar girl, colored pencils can’t drive us to the grocery store, can they?”
Mama sauntered onto the porch, fanning her face, speaking with a soupy accent she didn’t normally have. “I’mma need some lemonade, y’all.”
As she passed us, I noticed a smudge of purple high on her cheek. At first, I thought it was makeup, but one thing Krystal Lynn never messed up was her makeup, not ever.
“What’s that?” Mabry asked, pointing.
Mama’s long fingernails hovered over her cheek. “Nothing, baby girl. Mama just ran into a door at work is all.” And she flitted into Shadow Bluff without a care in the world.
My heart thumps in irregular beats. Travis pulls off Main onto the lane leading to Shadow Bluff.
“Travis,” I say. “I think we need to talk.”
He turns into the driveway and stops in front of the porch. It feels like we’ve been gone for days.
He finally looks at me. “Don’t worry about the car.”
I can’t see his eyes through his sunglasses, but his voice sounds earnest, not angry. “I’m a little worried.” I inhale a long breath and let it out.
My hands start to shake. Travis lowers his sunglasses. His expression matches mine. On edge. “I’ll take care of it.”
“No. This is my mess.” One of many, I think. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll talk to Chief Wilson. I’m the one who dumped the damn thing in the bayou all those years ago.”
He lowers his chin like he’s dealing with a petulant child.
“No one will know you were with me,” I add quickly. There, it’s said. There’s no dancing around it anymore.
“I wasn’t with you,” he says.
“True, but you were close by. And you knew what I was up to.”
“Because you came to my house and asked me for help.” His tone has changed. The frustration in it is palpable. I wonder if it’s geared toward me or himself. Probably both. And I don’t blame him. I was young. And, despite thinking otherwise at the time, so naive.
“I’m sorry, Travis.”
His dash radio squawks, and he slides his sunglasses back on. “I have to go. Look, Willa, I’ll help you figure out a way to handle this.” I open the car door. He adds, “Just don’t say anything yet. My job is all I have. I don’t want anything or anyone to jeopardize that.”
“I understand.” And I do understand. Vulnerability starts when you have something to lose.
And I have something to lose as well. But I have no idea what taking care of it will look like.
Do I tell the police the same story Mama told me all those years ago?
That she wanted me to dump that car for insurance money.
I may have been able to convince myself money was the reason then—a crime, yes, but one I could eventually make right, justifiable because of my age—but now that I’m back here, now that I’ve seen the car, I’m starting to understand insurance fraud could have been just another one of Mama’s many lies.
I certainly don’t remember us ever receiving a check.
I do, however, remember a large stack of cash in the glove box of our old car the day we left town.
Insurance companies don’t operate that fast, and they don’t pay cash.
I stop my thoughts from going any further. I need to stay present, in control.
I look at Travis and say again, “I’m sorry.” Knowing that my career hangs in the balance based on my stupid actions makes me sick to my stomach. If Travis had done something years ago that could jeopardize it, I’d be furious. But these days, I’m the only one jeopardizing what I’ve accomplished.
He nods but keeps his gaze forward. “I’ll try to come by at some point. And, Willa,” he adds. “Don’t go anywhere.”
I climb down from the truck and watch as Travis leaves in a cloud of dust.
As I walk past my car, I notice a note slipped under the wiper. It’s from the lawyer, apologizing for missing me this morning and saying he’d like to come back by and introduce himself. I sigh. Great.
Now what? I look at my car. I could load those boxes and drive out of here, that’s what.
But Travis just asked me not to go anywhere.
And I probably need to straighten out this problem rather than run from it.
Dumping my mother’s car in a bayou may turn out to be only a stupid stunt that hurts no one.
At least, that’s what I need to tell myself right now in order to placate that part of my brain that has my nerves sizzling like downed power lines.
Birds whistle in the oaks around me as I trudge up the steps and open the front door.
The house greets me with a cough of dust. I pause in the foyer.
Sunlight scatters through the front windows onto the white-sheeted furniture.
I’m halfway up the front stairs when a sound comes from somewhere down the hall, a thumping noise.
Close to the kitchen. It’s probably nothing, but with everything that’s happening in this town, I’m not taking any chances.
I bound up the rest of the stairs and find my handgun sitting on the bedside table in the front bedroom.
I start to pull up Travis’s number, then realize I never asked for it; he asked for mine.
I type in 9-1-1 but feel too foolish to hit call.
I settle my breath. It’s daytime. There’s nothing to steal in this house.
No one would break in and be that loud. I ease back to the staircase and listen.
It’s quiet. But just as I start down the stairs, a loud thud comes from the dining room, and I scream.
A bird flies from around the corner, past the stairs to the parlor.
Shit. I lower my hand, grab the railing, exhale.
At the bottom of the stairs, I find the bird flapping wildly against the parlor window.
I open the front door, take one of the sheets off the chairs in the parlor, and shoo the bird back to freedom.
The house is quiet again. No intruder. Thank God.
All I’ve ever shot is paper. If a person had come running at me, I’m not sure I could have pulled the trigger.
The exact opposite of what my conceal-carry instructor said.
“Don’t buy a gun unless you are mentally capable of shooting a person.
And,” she’d added, “if you do shoot an intruder, you’d better kill them. Otherwise, they’ll sue you.”
I move to the kitchen and check the warped door.
Sure enough, it’s open. I push it closed and pop it with my hip until it stays shut.
In an instant, I see Mama dancing into this very kitchen the night of my seventeenth birthday in a swirl of smoke and Cinnabar perfume.
She wore a skintight stretch-denim jumpsuit with a thick gold zipper running from her crotch to, in theory, her neck.
The zipper was nowhere near her neck, though.
Mabry looked up from her sketchbook. Her little mouth fell open. “Boobs.”
Mama flipped her curled hair and smiled. “Darn tootin’, boobs.” She pointed at the both of us. “And if you girls don’t grow a pair soon, I highly recommend figuring out a way to buy them. These suckers will open doors you didn’t even know existed.”
The Aunts gawked at Mama over their Coke-bottle glasses.
Mama grinned a smeared red grin. “Mabry, sugar, you can come with me after all. Let’s let your sister have her night.
” Mama’s voice slurred a little as she zeroed in on me.
“You made it clear you don’t want either of us around.
We wouldn’t want to mess up your birthday plans, now would we? ” She stumbled a step.
Mabry chewed on her fingernails and stared at me.
I wanted to tell Mama no, Mabry was coming with me.
But the thought of my date with Travis and having a night to myself shut that voice down before I even had a chance to form the first word.
Mabry would be fine. She would be with her mother, for God’s sake.
But that argument felt as flimsy as Krystal Lynn’s bra.
“Don’t wait up!” she yelled, pulling Mabry toward the shiny red convertible, then whipping out of the driveway, the Judds belting into the hot August night.
Thoughts of that car and Travis and Mama swirl in my head. What had Mama asked of me?