The Aftermath
The next morning, the charges against me were dismissed.
The jurors walked out of the room, some looking at me with curiosity, a couple with empathy, but most with the same animosity I’d witnessed throughout the trial.
As if my sins—pretending I was someone else and seducing a married man—were grave enough to condemn me for a murder I hadn’t committed.
Billy Ray and I held hands as we rushed out of the courtroom. I hid behind large sunglasses and a loosely wrapped scarf. Regardless, my picture would end up splattered all over the media and the internet before we got home.
From the clamoring newspeople, one voice I recognized rose above the others.
“Hey, Princess, are you glad it’s over?” Tony Vega grinned, his camera aimed straight at my face. “Are you staying in Vegas? Hey!”
I pushed through, with Billy Ray by my side, and drove home in his beat-up Chevy truck that smelled of straw and manure and sweat. Of home.
“It’ll be all right,” he said as he pulled into my driveway.
Inside, I froze, standing by the door and staring at the living room, not knowing what to do.
The dining room table was still covered in heaps of Colton’s files and notepads.
The sofa had most of its cushions upside down, to hide the damage done during the search by police.
It wasn’t a home . . . it was a bereft battlefield, stained with blood.
Billy Ray’s jacket landed on the sofa, and the shirt and tie followed right after. He picked up a black T-shirt from the floor, snapping it in the air a couple of times to shake the dust off, then pulled it on.
“Why don’t I make us a nice rack of ribs?” he offered, putting on the apron he loved.
“It’s not even ten in the morning,” I said, willing myself to walk over to the coffee maker for a cup of that morning’s java.
“It’ll take a while,” Billy replied, undeterred, pulling the freezer drawer open. “I roast them first.”
He busied himself with the ribs, peeling onions and garlic, while I sat on a barstool at the counter, keeping him quiet company. My thoughts wandered restlessly, not noticing the shift in my brother’s demeanor.
“He made me promise I’d send him all your envelopes,” Billy Ray said angrily, driving his knife into the rack of ribs and expertly cutting it in half without hitting bone.
“What are you talking about?”
His brow was furrowed, and his motions were short and forceful, as if he wanted to punch something but chose to cook instead.
He picked up a clove of garlic and started peeling it, but it escaped from his tense fingers and landed on the floor.
From there, he threw it in the garbage with a muttered curse.
“Here, let me show you a nifty little trick I’ve seen on TV,” I said, circling the counter and taking the knife from his hand.
I put a few cloves on the cutting board and crushed them slightly with the flat side of the knife, loosening the skin.
“See? It’s easy now.” I was going for a smile, but he stayed grim. “What envelopes?”
“Whenever you sent me money,” he replied. “He wanted the envelopes, and I, like an idiot, gave them to him. I think he was looking for you.”
I took my seat across from Billy Ray and rested my forehead in my hand. “He might’ve been. When did it start?”
His lips pressed into a line. “The first time he saw an envelope from you was on my eighteenth birthday. He came back for it. For me. I didn’t have any other friends.
And you . . . didn’t call me. Just sent me that thousand dollars.
He was there when the mailman brought it, and that’s how he knew.
He made me promise to send him every envelope I got from you. ”
“It’s okay, Billy Ray. No need to kick yourself over that. I wasn’t using my real name anymore; he had no way to find me. He probably wanted the envelopes for the postmark, to see where he should look.”
“Yeah, I figured.” He continued peeling garlic using my method.
“What did you do for your eighteenth birthday?” I asked, instantly regretting it. Dreading the answer and fighting off a renewed sense of dread that had spilled from my words.
“We had dinner and some drinks. The first time I had beer in a restaurant, served by a waitress who checked my ID. First, she shook her head, then grinned and kept ’em coming as soon as he handed her a crisp fifty.
” He chopped the cloves with the same anger, then spread them over the oil-basted ribs.
Pepper, salt, and herbs came next. He put the tray in the oven and closed it with a deep breath, then wiped his hands on the apron.
“Ain’t too early for drinks now, is it?”
I shook my head and smiled. “No, let’s have one.”
He put a sweaty bottle of beer in front of me and raised his. “To good endings, sis. And to justice.”
He downed the beer bottle in a couple of thirsty gulps, then set it on the counter, still grim.
“Talk to me, Billy Ray,” I asked gently, wondering whether he was afraid we’d part ways again and I’d disappear like I had before. It wasn’t going to happen.
He looked at me with a haunted expression in his eyes.
“That night, when I got home, Dad got angry again and beat the crap outta me. I fought back a little, but he was heavy. Next day, Colton saw me with a black eye and busted lip, and wanted to kill him. I stopped him. Told him to go back to Vegas. I went to the Dallas livestock auction the next day. The money you sent me leased me a trailer to sell some cows and live for another year. When I got home, the bastard was dead.”
I closed my eyes, shaking off the image I had in my mind of Billy Ray putting the rattlesnake in the cooler, like we used to do as kids, and leaving it where Dad would find it. Like Colton had taught us to do, to keep vagrants off our land. I breathed, relieved.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad the bastard’s gone,” he said, getting another bottle of beer from the fridge. He popped open the cap and sent it flying into the trash, then took a swig. “He was bit on his face, sis.”
“What?”
“On his face, not his legs.”
He didn’t have to tell me more. I could easily see the scene.
He’d found the cooler, with the can of beer left as bait, right next to the barn door.
He wouldn’t have suspected a thing, other than his kid being too lazy to bring the cooler into the barn.
He’d opened the lid to look inside, his face close to it, a foot or two up, within the snake’s striking distance.
“No one shed a tear for the bastard, and I guess the cops were quick to call it fate. Colton said he was already in Vegas when it happened, and I was at the livestock auction.” He looked at me as if I held all the answers. “After yesterday, I just don’t know anymore.”
I hugged him tightly, my eyes heavy with tears. “I’m so sorry, Billy Ray. So sorry I left you.”
“It’s all right,” he said after a while, pushing his cap up a little and clearing his throat of the emotion nestled in there. “Just don’t do it again.”