Chapter Twenty-Three
Piedmont, Louisiana
“Johnny,” Grant screams. He looks back at me. “What the hell?”
Grant jogs toward the front of the school, and I follow. An engine revs behind the school, and a moment later the black SUV is racing toward us.
“Shit,” Grant yells. He grabs my arm and pulls me close to him as Johnny races past us, the back tires spinning in the gravel as he guns it and lurches forward.
“Johnny,” he yells, but the SUV is gone.
He exhales and moves his hand down my back. “You okay?”
I nod, shifting away from his touch. Johnny could have easily hit us, and if he was trying to send a message by driving so close to us, message received.
Grant runs his hands through his hair. “I’m going to need a ride back now.” He looks at my father’s truck.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I pull out onto the two-lane road with Grant buckled in next to me, trying like hell to get a call out.
“Give it a second,” I say.
He looks over at me. “This feels above my pay grade.” He shakes his head. “I’m here to help him reacclimate, and now he’s stolen a car.”
“You going to report it?”
He shakes his head. “I’m going to get him on the phone before I do anything.”
“I bet he’s going to his house. That’s where I’d go. It’s hidden.”
Grant looks up from his phone. “How do you know where his house is?”
I glance at him. “Lucky guess.”
Grant rubs his face. “Right.”
“Want me to take you there?” I say.
He shakes his head again. “No. I need to get back to Riverbend. Johnny can keep the car tonight.”
Relief floods over me. The last place I want to go is that dead-end street. I drive through Piedmont toward the road that leads to the interstate.
“What kind of insurance was he talking about?” I say as I turn right at the stop sign.
Grant studies his phone again. “I don’t know, and I’m not going to speculate on it with a reporter.”
“You knew who I was last night,” I say, testing him.
“Are you kidding?” he says, turning his body to face me. “I had no idea.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “Everybody recognizes me.”
“News flash. Not everybody.”
I look over and study his face. He looks like he’s telling the truth. He turns back to the windshield.
“We’ll have to sort this part out later,” he says, keeping his eyes forward.
“Agree,” I say even though I have no idea what sorting it out later will look like.
We’re talking about it as if it’s a business transaction that needs working through when it’s anything but.
Aside from the rumors about me, I don’t usually have nights like the one Grant and I shared.
I want to call it foolish, but Grant doesn’t feel foolish, which could be the very thing that’s got me off kilter with him.
I merge into traffic on I-49 north. “You should be good to make a call,” I say.
He holds his phone up and punches a number.
A few seconds later he ends the call and tries again, and again ends the call.
He taps on the screen, then types out a text.
I glance at his phone, trying to read it.
I can only make out the words call me before he catches me looking and moves the screen so I can’t see.
“We need to be careful here, Rita,” he says.
“No shit.”
“I mean seriously. I’m not saying a word about . . . last night.”
“You and I are in complete agreement on that,” I say, keeping my eyes forward.
“Why did you mention that skull to Johnny?”
I look at him, but I don’t answer. I wait a beat, then face the long ribbon of road in front of us.
“You’re not the only one who gets to ask questions,” he says.
“Didn’t say I was.”
“Put yourself in my shoes,” he says.
“Put yourself in mine.”
“I want to help Johnny. He’s got a hard road ahead of him. Getting out is one thing. Acclimating to a society that has changed drastically in seventeen years is something else completely. I want to make sure he doesn’t mess up.”
“Off to a roaring start,” I say, and Grant cracks a smile. Then he laughs. He laughs so hard, I start to laugh.
“Stop,” he says, still laughing. “This is serious.”
“I know,” I say, trying to regain my composure. “You stop.”
Finally, we both take deep breaths.
“Seriously,” he says, wiping his eyes. “I know this isn’t funny. I think I’m losing my mind.”
“We’re just coping,” I say. “What made you want to be a liaison?”
“My dad.”
I glance at him. “He was one?”
Grant keeps his head turned away from me. “No. He was an inmate.”
I’m not the only one in this car with a haunted past.
His phone chimes, he hurries to swipe it open, and exhales. “Okay, good.” He types something out, then sets his phone aside. “Johnny is going to meet me with the car.”
“Where do you need to go?”
“Just take me to the hotel,” he says.
The sun is hanging low in the sky when I finally pull into downtown. I drop Grant two blocks over from the hotel so no one will spot us together. He climbs out, then leans back in.
“Let’s help each other,” he says.
I nod, but I don’t make any promises. His goal and mine are not quite aligned. Unlike him, I’m not completely convinced Johnny Adair is someone I need to be helping.
Thirty minutes later I’m in the neighborhood that backs up to my father’s property again, and I get out, unlock the back gate, and drive through, relocking it after.
This day is only half over, and it feels as if it has come full circle. As I steer out of the woods, I see a plume of smoke in the distance and hear the beeping of a bulldozer. Maybe not quite full circle.
There’s still something my father and I haven’t discussed: my mother.
I follow the driveway to the left, away from the house.
I lower the window and follow the sound of beeping and the smoke until I find him at the crest of the hill.
Trees are scattered all over the ground like they’ve been plucked from the soil and discarded.
Whatever caused this damage must have been terrifying.
I watch him from the truck a minute as he puts the dozer back in gear and pushes a stray burning log back onto the burn pile.
Debby waves to me from the opposite side of the bonfire.
I shake my head. My father is still wearing his robe.
I think he would have preferred to wear his white terry cloth even on the bench.
When my father sees me and backs the dozer away from the flames, I pull up next to him and hop out. The dirt here is like silt, soft and feathery. Not like the red clay in the lake bed. Dust flies up as I walk toward the bulldozer. My father kills the engine and opens the door.
I shield my eyes from the bright sun and look up at him. “Can we talk?”
He looks at the burning logs and says, “Later.”
“Dad.”
“Later,” he repeats and climbs back up into the dozer.
I pull away as he whistles toward Debby, who is carrying branches and limbs way bigger than her.
“Food’s on the table,” she yells. I wave out the window to her.
The three dogs greet me as I walk into the farmhouse.
The kitchen is quiet, but a plate sits on the table with Saran Wrap over it and a sticky note with my name on it.
It looks like pork chops and mashed potatoes.
A nice light lunch. I pick it up and start to scrape it into the trash, then stop. I’m starving.
I heat it in the microwave, then sit at the breakfast table and eat every bite of the food Debby prepared. I bypass the bar on my way to the back stairs. Hair of the dog may not be the best idea after all.