10. Chapter 10
“No fucking way,” Jase said again.
He reached into his back pocket for the Polaroid his dad gave him a few weeks ago.
Smiling up at him from the moment captured in time, Jason and Theresa Young, clad in black leather, stood in front of a tree in full bloom.
Beside the tree was a rock wall and a barbed wire fence still standing today.
He ran around the car and shoved the picture in his brother’s face. “Look—look at this.”
“What?”
“Mom and Dad. We’re here,” Jase exclaimed.
Graham studied the field and the fence. “Impossible.”
“This is the same road they drove down.”
“Where did you get this picture?”
“Dad gave it to me. Look again. It’s the same.”
“Do you know how many fields we’ve passed?” Graham shook his head and Lindsey peered over his shoulder at the Polaroid. “That’s not even the same tree.”
“Well, that was how many decades ago. The tree is dead, but the rock wall. The fence. It’s all there.
” Jase turned the picture over and read the note on the back aloud.
“‘Ran out of gas in Kentucky. Back on the road thanks to Farmer Pederson.’” He pointed to the farm Lindsey mentioned. “And there’s the farm.”
“No, it’s a farm. Not the farm. It doesn’t mean—”
“I was right,” Jase said. He shook his brother’s shoulders, feeling slightly less dead inside than he had in months. “He is up there laughing at us. Son of a bitch.”
“Wait a minute—where are you going?” Graham called after him.
“Can I see that?” Lindsey ran to catch up with Jase. He let her have the picture and kept walking down the road toward the farm.
“What are you doing?” Graham asked.
“Going to meet Farmer Pederson,” Jase said. “See if he can give us some gas.”
“You’re nuts.”
“You have a better idea?”
“I’m going with him,” Lindsey called back to Graham. “I want to meet the farmer.”
“Great,” he hollered. “You’re both nuts.”
“Come with us,” Lindsey urged.
“Someone’s got to stay with the car in case—”
“In case we get tied up in the barn?” Lindsey teased.
“That’s a good job for you,” Jase hollered over his shoulder.
Sundress bounced up to him on her toes, matching his stride.
“You really think it’s the same farm?” she asked.
“Odds are good, knowing my old man,” Jase said.
She handed the picture back. “What do you mean?”
“Things like this just always happened. He had a horseshoe up his ass, or something.”
Had. He couldn’t get used to talking about his dad in the past tense.
“How so?” she asked, oblivious to the wind taking liberties with her skirt.
Jase didn’t make a habit of getting chummy with Graham’s girlfriends. Any woman worth the time wouldn’t waste a year with his brother.
“It’s hard to explain,” Jase said.
“I really miss him,” she said quietly.
Jase glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. She was staring across the field. There was a stiffness in her shoulders and gait, reminding him of how hard it was sometimes to walk and talk and get out of bed now that his old man was gone.
Instead of saying how sorry she was that his dad died—which they would all say now because that’s what people did—I really miss him meant it was her loss too.
“You remembered the car?” she asked after a few beats.
He remembered sweating in the way back seat of their Country Squire on a hot summer drive while chocolate ice cream ran down his arm and dripped on the vinyl.
He remembered the way his mother’s lips moved as she sang along to the Rolling Stones and his dad reaching over to stroke the back of her neck.
“Sort of,” he said, shaking off the residue of old memories.
“Graham doesn’t talk about him. Everyone else says he’s a lot like you. Or, you’re a lot like him. Or were.”
“Yeah, well, not where it counts.”
He felt her eyes on him, dissecting him. Both her scrutiny and the sun were too fucking hot and uncomfortable.
“You don’t want me here.”
“What?” Jase looked down and she was gone, having planted her feet a few paces behind him.
“You don’t want to know me, do you?” she asked.
“Picked up on that, huh?” he muttered. She had balls to come out and ask. His brother’s past girlfriends would’ve played nice to keep the peace. Well, except for Helen, who probably still kept Graham’s testicles in her purse just to give them the occasional squeeze.
“That’s what I thought,” Lindsey said.
He frowned. “I just don’t see the point.”
It might’ve been the first honest thing he said to her. He didn’t know why he wanted to punish her except for her taste in men.
That, and she’d played him before he even knew her name.
“I get it,” she murmured. “When you thought you could take me for a ride, I was worth your time.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, he shrugged and said, “Yeah.”
“Wow. I really didn’t want to believe any of the things Graham said about you were true,” she said. “My mistake.”
She abruptly turned away, her flowered dress spinning a few paces behind.
Blue. Her underwear was blue with laced edges, which distracted him from the way her face changed, the dullness in her eyes, all the playful teasing from their introduction, even the pain of his father’s loss flicking off like a switch.
“Son of a bitch,” he growled. Jase swore he heard his old man calling him a shit-for-brains from beyond the grave for being a dick. “Wait!”
She stopped and reluctantly faced him.
“Graham and I—we don’t exactly get along.”
“And I’m his girlfriend, so why bother?” she asked.
“You’re one of about a hundred,” he said.
Her face scrunched up. “What?”
“He’s always had girlfriends, one after another. Since sixth grade, it’s never fucking stopped. I don’t bother getting invested.”
“Okay.” Her stomach hitched on a laugh that didn’t make it out of her belly, and she strutted up to him.
“I don’t need you to be invested in me. I’m here for your dad.
I want to know him, and you can either help me or not.
But don’t for one second get me confused with your brother, or whatever it is you hate him for. ”
She reminded him of a wildcat at the zoo, daring Jase to stick a finger in her cage.
“Yeah. Okay.”
He moved out of the way as she brushed past him on her way to the farm.
“I don’t remember any of Graham’s girlfriends ever giving a shit,” he said on her heels.
“Well, don’t confuse me with them either.”
“You got it, babe.”
“And don’t call me babe.”
“You got it…Sundress.”
She glared at him, the spark back in what Jase noticed were light blue, almost gray eyes. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a miserable flirt?”
“Actually, I’m a fairly successful flirt. Most of the time.”
“When you’re not hitting on your brother’s girlfriend.”
“Is that what you think I was doing?”
“If I had to guess.”
He laughed. “If I was hitting on you, Sundress, you’d know.”
“Oh my gosh,” she muttered, and he thought she was going to let him have it.
She was pointing to the white letters painted on a dented mailbox. “Pederson. We’re here.”