The Barefoot Summer Page 7

  “Gracie!” Jamie yelled from the dock.

  “I gotta go. ’Bye.” Gracie ran as hard as her little legs would carry her toward the dock.

  “Cute kid.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Ever wish you had a couple of children?”

  He had no idea how much his question stung. She’d always wanted children, especially a daughter. But a miscarriage six months after she’d married Conrad had ended that dream. The doctor had said that the possibility of ever conceiving a child was a million to one and carrying one to term would have even slimmer chances.

  “Do you?” she shot right back at him.

  “I married my career and lost two wives because of it. No children. I’m too old to start now,” he said.

  “And that is?”

  “Forty-five. By the time I got one through college, I’d be pushin’ seventy.” He pointed at sky over the lake. “Look at that moon and the way it’s reflected in the water. Gorgeous, ain’t it?”

  The lake was indeed acting like a mirror, but she didn’t give a damn about the moon. She wanted him to either tell her that she wasn’t a suspect or get up off his butt and go find the real killer.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Waylon said.

  “I don’t intend to,” she said. “What are you doing in Bootleg in the middle of the week?”

  “I told you that I have a little ranch in Mabelle. My folks owned it. My dad died several years ago and my mother last year. So I spend most weekends here and come and go pretty often through the week when I can get away from the desk. It’s not a long drive from Dallas,” Waylon answered.

  “So you grew up in this area?” Kate asked.

  He nodded. “Went to school right here in Bootleg. Know everyone in this town and quite a few in Seymour.”

  “Hattie and Victor?”

  Another nod. “Yes, and I knew Iris, too. So I already knew the scuttlebutt on Conrad Steele. And before you ask, there was not a shred of evidence that he caused Iris to have that heart attack.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask. Conrad was smarter than that. If he had anything to do with her death, you would never catch him. Did you ever meet him?”

  “No, but my mother told me about the little wedding reception at this cabin when they married.”

  She’d been conned by Conrad with his compliments and pretty face. Waylon couldn’t begin to work his charm on her.

  “How long are you staying in Bootleg?” she asked.

  “A couple of days this time, but I’ll be around pretty often. How about you?”

  “Until you tell me that I’m not a suspect.”

  “Fair enough,” Waylon said.

  Fair?

  If life had been fair, Conrad Steele would have never entered her life.

  Amanda dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. She was doing better. This was the first time she’d gotten all misty eyed that day, but the sunset reminded her of lying on the deck in Conrad’s arms the last evening of their honeymoon. Tonight Conrad was supposed to be sitting beside her, his hand on her baby bump, smiling every time their son kicked. The only thing that made her happy was the decision she’d made about his name. When the boy was born, he would be Conrad Jonathan Steele Jr., and she would call him Jonathan or maybe Johnny.

  She would raise her son to know that his father was a hero who’d tried to stop a robbery, and she would never tell him about the other two wives or about Iris. He would have to grow up without a strong male role model in his life. Amanda had not had a father figure in her life, either, just Aunt Ellie, but she’d survived. This baby would have a mother who loved and wanted him very much. She swiped at a fresh batch of tears.

  She laid her hand on her stomach. “I wanted more for you, baby boy. I wanted you to have the storybook daddy who played catch with you and taught you how to throw a football.”

  Aunt Ellie’s ringtone startled her. She didn’t want to talk to anyone right then, but she answered the call. It was Aunt Ellie who’d saved her hide on more than one occasion, so she couldn’t be rude.

  “I’m on my way home from work and thought we could chat while I drive,” she said. “We had a great day. Wanda and I went for the buffet down at the pizza joint on our way home to celebrate.”

  “I’m watching the sunset from the deck. Don’t talk to me about pizza. I’m craving it, and all I had for supper was an omelet and toast.”

  “You sound depressed. Are you okay? If that place and those two women are upsetting you, it’s not good for the baby. Come on home. Wanda has said she’ll help me out in the store the rest of the summer so you won’t have to come to work every day, but you’d be close to your doctor and you’ll be near the people who love you.”

  Amanda managed a weak smile. “I’m only an hour away from you and my doctor, and I’m fine right here, where Conrad and I spent the happiest time of our marriage.”

  “And those other two?”

  “We’re staying out of one another’s way for the most part. Jamie and Gracie spend a lot of time down near the lake. The deck is mine unless Gracie decides to play out here, but she’s a good kid. She doesn’t bother me much. And the front porch is Kate’s.”

  “Well, I hope you find some closure,” Aunt Ellie said. “I’m driving into my garage. Talk to you later. Love you, kiddo.”

  Amanda flipped through the pictures of her and Conrad on her phone, taking time to touch his face on every one. He’d said his “sister” Kate called him Conrad but he hated that name. He’d always wished that their mother, Teresa, would have called him by his middle name, Jonathan, but his father’s name was Jonathan James Steele, so he had to be Conrad.

  She rolled over to the last picture of them together. Aunt Ellie had taken it in the shop right before he had to leave the last time she’d seen him. His smile was genuine, and his eyes were twinkling. Yes, Conrad loved her. He might not have divorced those other two women, but she would never believe those stories about Iris or about him bringing other women to the cabin. Iris had probably only loved him like a son. If he was here, Conrad could explain the women that Hattie thought she saw at the cabin. They were most likely clothing store owners that he was trying to cultivate to sell him their sale merchandise at the end of every season.

  Are you an idiot? a voice in her head shouted. Strange, but it sounded exactly like her best friend, Bailey, who had served as maid of honor at Amanda’s wedding. You should be throwing a hissy at that bastard, not moonin’ around after him.

  She sat up a little straighter. Bailey was in Germany, stationed there with her husband, who was in the service, and Amanda hadn’t told her about the situation. Still, that was exactly what she would say if she knew.

  Just to be sure, she sent a text to Bailey: Call me when you have time. Lots I need to tell you.

  The phone rang before she could lay it back on the table beside her. Amanda hit the screen and answered. “Bailey, what are you doing awake at this hour? It must be four o’clock in the morning there.”

  “It is, but I’m having one of those sleepless nights. Catch me up,” Bailey said.

  “Conrad was killed,” Amanda said and went on to tell her the rest of the story.

  “I knew there was something hinky about that man. I wouldn’t say anything only because you were so much in love with him. He had shifty eyes and wandering hands. I steered clear of him. What a mess.”

  “I thought you’d support me.” Amanda pouted.

  “Support you, yes. Listen to you defend a son of a bitch like that, no, ma’am. You need to wake up and smell the coffee or the roses or whatever the hell it is that you smell when you wake up. Take a lesson from those other two you told me about. Get an I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude or I’d-like-to-kill-him-again one, but stop feeling sorry for yourself and see him for what he was, and that’s a con man,” Bailey told her.

  “He loved me,” Amanda declared.

  “No, he did not. He didn’t love anything but the game,” Bailey shot right back.
“I’m going to hang up now, and you think about the fairy tale you’re telling yourself and then think about the reality. Call me in a day or two when you figure out which one is really right. Good night.”

  “’Night,” Amanda said, not bothering to hide her upset.

  She hefted her weight off the lounge, stomped barefoot into the house, and went straight to her bedroom. She eased down on the bed and curled up around a pillow, pretending that it was Conrad’s back and he was there with her. A dozen pictures flashed through her mind, starting with the week she’d met him, the whirlwind romance, the small but pretty church wedding, the honeymoon in that very room, and then the shiny black casket at the graveside service.

  Then the pretty things all disappeared and she could see a line of faceless women, all with numbers in their hands, lined up from the bedroom door, through the house, down all those steps and out to the lake. There was no counting the women that Conrad had slept with in this very bed. Her eyes popped open as reality hit her smack in the face. She slung the pillow across the room. Anger set in. She wanted to hit something, kick holes in the walls, burn down the cabin—anything to get the misery out of her heart.

  “Damn him for doing this to me.”

  Feeling as dirty, as if she’d been violated, she went straight to the bathroom and took a long, cool shower, washing her shoulder-length hair twice and lathering up her belly three times. “I will not name you after that man, my son. You’ll have a good strong Irish name, like Liam or maybe Desmond, and I will think of something else to tell you about your father. It won’t be that he was a hero. And you will not have any of his looks or ways. I’m your mother.”

  She felt a little better once she finished and was dressed in a baggy T-shirt that came halfway to her knees. But when she went back into the bedroom, she could not make herself even sit on the bed. She paced around it a few times and finally turned her back, closed the door, and went to the living room, where she pulled the cushions from the sofa. She tossed them to one side and pulled out the hidden bed. It might not be comfortable, but it would be a place that Conrad had never used. Or was his name even Conrad? Maybe that wasn’t even the name on his birth certificate at all.

  How do you know that? Bailey’s voice was back in her head. He might have used all the beds, including the sofa.

  “Because the one thing that I can believe that he told me was that he hated to sleep on sofas. It reminded him of his childhood,” Amanda answered out loud as she went out to the deck, picked up her phone, and found a message from Aunt Ellie.

  Rather than sending a text, Amanda called and ranted for half an hour about the bed. When she finished her aunt Ellie was laughing so hard she had the hiccups.

  “Now there’s the red-haired fireball of a niece that I raised. I wondered when that wimpy woman that had taken over her body would be banished. Welcome back, real Amanda Hilton.” Ellie chuckled. “I will bring you a bed tomorrow. There’s an extra twin-size one in storage in my garage. I’ll be there by six, so be on the lookout for me.”

  “Thank you, Aunt Ellie. It will be more comfortable than the sofa, I’m sure. And bring a five-gallon can of gasoline with you.”

  Ellie gasped. “You will not set fire to a mattress in town. Those damn things burn forever, and the smoke would be awful. Besides, after all the women he’s had on the thing, the fumes might be toxic. We’ll talk about it when I get there.”

  “Thank you, but I intend to burn it or take it to a landfill. I won’t have that thing in my cabin,” Amanda said.

  “See you tomorrow. Anything else you want me to bring?”

  “A loaded sub sandwich with cold cuts and lots of Italian dressing,” she said.

  “You got it,” Aunt Ellie said.

  She laid the phone to the side, picked up the remote, and turned on the television, but before she could flip through the channels, the sliding doors out to the deck squeaked open. Gracie didn’t pay a bit of attention to Amanda but headed straight to the bathroom with Jamie right behind her.

  Jamie stopped in her tracks and raised an eyebrow.

  Amanda narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not sleeping in that bed another night. Aunt Ellie is bringing me another bed tomorrow after she closes the shop. Good night.”

  Jamie giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Amanda asked.

  Jamie stopped and looked back. “It took you long enough to figure it out.”

  Kate smiled as she came in the front door. “She’s young and slow.”

  Amanda shook a finger at Kate. “Just because you are old doesn’t mean you are so smart. You married him, too.”

  “Yes, I did. But I did not spend one night in that bed.”

  “Me, either,” Jamie yelled from the hallway.

  “And I won’t spend another one,” Amanda declared.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was one of those days when if something could go wrong, it did. Even if there was no way something could go wrong, it did anyway. Kate started out the morning by burning her breakfast toast, spilling coffee all over her favorite pajamas, and killing a spider on the kitchen counter. She’d just put the ingredients for a smoothie into the blender when someone knocked on the door. On the way to open it, she stumbled over Amanda’s flip-flops and almost fell face-first across the living room floor.

  “What in the hell is Waylon doing here this early?” she mumbled as she slung open the door.

  “Good mornin’,” Hattie said cheerfully.

  Kate frowned.

  “I’m here for Gracie. Jamie said I can have her the next three mornings for Bible school down at our church. Is she ready?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “You haven’t had your morning coffee, have you? I’m an old bear until I get my two cups, too. I’ll just see if they’re out on the deck and you go get a cup poured,” Hattie said.

  Kate stepped aside and let her enter the cabin. Hattie stopped in her tracks when she saw Amanda on the sofa. “Why isn’t she in one of the bedrooms? That can’t be good for her back.”

  “She wanted the master bedroom but changed her mind last night,” Kate explained.

  Jamie slid back the doors out onto the deck and smiled at Hattie. “She’s ready. We were having breakfast burritos while we waited.”

  Gracie’s dark ponytail was held up with a bright-red bow that matched her red-checked sundress. Her white sandals showed wear, but Jamie had taken time to polish them. Gracie tiptoed across the floor and put her hand in Hattie’s.

  “I’m ready. You will be my teacher, right?” Gracie slipped her hand in Hattie’s.

  Oh, to be as trusting as a child, Kate thought.

  “Yes, darlin’ girl, I will keep you right beside me all day,” Hattie said. “I’ll have her back by one. We feed them lunch before we turn them loose.”

  Jamie bent down and kissed Gracie on the forehead. “Have fun. When you get home, I want to hear all about your new friends.”

  “I’ll try to remember all their names.”

  Jamie handed Hattie a piece of paper. “Hattie, here’s my phone number in case she wants me to come and get her before the Bible school is done.”

  “I’ll get that programmed into my phone,” Hattie said. “And Gracie, I can’t wait for you to meet Lisa.” Hattie led her out of the cabin, talking the whole way.

  Jamie followed Kate to the kitchen and started to dump what was left in a skillet into the trash, then paused with a frown as she stared at Kate’s burned toast and the mixture in the blender. “The toaster runs hot. You got to stand over it and watch it like a hawk or it will burn the bread every time. It’s so old it doesn’t have a setting on it. Whatever you’ve got in that blender looks like ground-up grass. There’s enough egg mixture left for a couple of burritos. You want it?” Jamie asked.

  “If she doesn’t, I do,” Amanda said from the sofa.

  Kate set the blender in the refrigerator and nodded. “They do smell good. I could eat one.
”

  “Well, rats! I could eat them both.” Amanda padded barefoot from the living room to the kitchen. She went straight to the microwave and put a cup of water into it to heat. When it dinged, she stirred instant decaf into it, added sugar and milk, and took a sip before she carried it to the table.

  “Too bad. I’m having one,” Kate said. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Horrible, but better than if I’d been in that bed,” she said honestly.

  Jamie whipped up two burritos in a few seconds, put them on a plate, and set them in front of Kate and Amanda. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table with them. “Y’all ever hear of the seven steps of grief?”

  Amanda bit the end off the burrito. “I thought it was twelve steps. I went past denial into anger last night.”

  “It’s five,” Kate said.

  “I’d expect someone as old as you to know,” Amanda said.

  Jamie cocked her head to one side. “Age can knock the socks off youth any day of the week, so be careful. There are two of us older than you.” Jamie shook her head. “Back to the stages of grief. Tell us what happened to make you leave that bed. You whined for that room like a two-year-old wanting a cookie. So what changed your mind?”

  Amanda swallowed and took a sip of coffee. “I talked to my friend Bailey, who was my maid of honor when I got married. Let’s just say she started to open my eyes, and then I went into that room and I could see all those women who’d been there before and after me. It was not a pretty sight. I went from denial and shock straight to anger.”

  “Pain and guilt is step two,” Kate said.

  “I tied that up with denial.” Amanda laid a hand on her stomach. “He’s kicking. I wish he’d been a girl now, because I don’t want him to grow up like Conrad.”

  “You really did do a turnaround, didn’t you?” Jamie laughed.

  “I honestly did. Now tell me what to expect on the rest of this grief crap. Have y’all hit the second stage yet?”

  “Oh, honey, I started with anger in the cemetery,” Jamie said.