Nancy Pickard - The Scent of Rain and Lightning

Maybe it would all come clear. It had to, she hoped.

“This outcome was unnecessary,” her grandfather was saying. “Billy would have been convicted without the shenanigans. There’s no excuse for it. Don can say what he wants to about how they didn’t know what they were doing, but inexperience or incompetence is no excuse for a lack of basic principles. It’s dishonest to circumvent the law like that, and look where it’s got us now.”

When he saw Jody, his intimidating formality melted and he smiled at her. “Hello, Granddaughter.”

After a moment’s hesitation, she ran over to get enveloped in a hug and then stayed close to him.

“Dad,” Belle said, sounding worried. “I think we just alienated our best protection.”

Meryl snorted. “The sheriff’s department is no protection for anybody, honey. Too few of them and they’re too far away to do us any good. We’re our own best protection. Always have been, always will be. That’s why we have guns.” He looked at his father-in-law. “I promise you this, sir. I’m an older, wiser lawyer now. Billy will screw up, we’ll get him again, and next time it will stick.”

His mother-in-law appeared in the doorway.

“Who’s setting the table for me?”

It made Jody feel anxious to think about what Billy’s “next time” might be, but none of the rest of them seemed to be worrying about that as she followed them in to supper.

AS JODY TRAILED her aunt around the table, laying dinner plates down between the silverware that Belle distributed, she said cautiously, “That was kind of rough in there.”

Belle retorted, “This whole situation is rough, don’t you think?”

“I know, but-”

“What in the world have you got on your head?”

Jody reached up a hand and touched the “found” scarf, which she had forgotten she was wearing, having tied it on after she left her own home. “Just a scarf.”

“You must have found it in a trash bin.”

“It’s clean, Aunt Belle.”

Her aunt shook her head at her niece’s fashion sense.

This was how Jody played what she thought of as her obsessive little game without anybody knowing what she was up to. She was waiting for the time when somebody in her family might blurt out, “Your mother had a scarf just like that!”

“Did my mom wear scarves?” she asked.

Her grandmother entered the room just then, followed by Bobby carrying a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and Meryl balancing fried chicken on platters in both hands. Hugh Senior was pulling out his chair at one end of the table, and Chase was in the kitchen fetching the gravy, green beans, and biscuits. The butter, jam, and a bowl of Waldorf salad were already on the table. Belle and Jody were setting the table with the “good stuff,” as Hugh Senior liked to call it. Apart from Thanksgiving and Christmas and other events of note, Annabelle only went formal at her dining table when she thought it might increase the likelihood of keeping her family on their best behavior. “There’s nothing like white linen napkins to keep a man in check,” she liked to advise her granddaughter.

Belle asked her mother, “Did Laurie wear scarves, Mom?”

“Not that I recall, no.”

“What about earrings?” Jody asked them. “Her ears were pierced, right? Did she ever wear those clip-on things?”

“Oh, God no,” Belle said, and laughed. “She wouldn’t have been caught dead-”

She bit her lip.

“Nice,” Chase said sarcastically, hearing her as he came in.

“Oh, Aunt Belle, don’t listen to him. You didn’t say anything wrong.”

“Everybody’s hypersensitive right now,” Meryl said, with a glance at his wife.

“We’ll all feel better after we eat,” Annabelle remarked. She looked around her table, checking things. “Which I believe we’re finally ready to do. We’ll begin with a prayer tonight, Hugh.”

THE TABLE SEEMED both fuller and emptier than usual to Jody that night-fuller with the additions of Chase and Bobby from out of town, but emptier because they’d arrived without any of their kids. Neither was married at the moment, so the table seemed short of wives, too. When Jody was young, she’d loved sitting at the “children’s table”-two card tables jammed together with a spill-proof plastic cover thrown over them-with her cousins.

At Annabelle’s command, any further talk about the day’s events was delayed until dessert and coffee. “I won’t have that man ruining my family’s digestion on top of everything else,” she announced, and so most of supper was a quiet affair, since there wasn’t anything else on their minds. There were long spaces where Jody heard nothing except the scrape of forks on plates and requests to pass the biscuits or some other favorite food. When anyone started to bring up Billy Crosby, Hugh Senior tapped his water glass with his knife to remind them of Annabelle’s decree.

Finally, the supper plates were cleared away and taken to the kitchen and Belle’s apple crisp à la mode was passed around on dessert plates. Jody, surprised she could be so hungry, ate it all right down to the melted vanilla ice cream that she scooped up with her spoon.

“There’s something I have to say,” Meryl announced. He looked over at his father-in-law. “Chase and Bobby and I spent some time in town today, sir, testing the temperature, if you know what I mean, and I would say that it’s hot, very hot. People are upset, they’re scared, and there’s some big talk going around about forcing Billy out of town. Some of it is just silly-egging his house, that kind of thing-but some of it is downright ugly. Setting fire to their house-”

“No!” Annabelle exclaimed, one hand flying to her mouth.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we heard one old boy say.”

“We can’t control what other people choose to do,” Hugh Senior observed.

“No, we can’t, sir, and I’m not suggesting that we try. We can control what we do, however.”

“What does that mean?” Bobby asked, sounding irritated.

“It means that, speaking as your attorney, I want all of you to keep track of everywhere you go and everything you do and who’s there with you, for at least the next few days, until this maybe begins to die down.”

“Alibis?” Belle asked her husband with disbelief.

“Yes, alibis. Chase and Bobby, it might be better for you to go on back to your places sooner rather than later. If somebody shoots Billy Crosby between the eyes or runs him off the road, I want every member of this family to have a cast-iron alibi for that period of time, and I’d particularly like the two of you to be a couple of hundred miles away. I don’t care if all that happens is that somebody eggs his car, I want every member of this family to be able to prove you weren’t holding the empty carton.”

In the moment of fraught stillness that followed, Jody blurted, “I talked to him today.”

They looked at her with puzzled expressions.

“Talked to who, sweetheart?” her grandmother inquired.

Her heart pounding, she said, “Billy Crosby. I met him.”

Amid the outcries of consternation, it was Chase who exclaimed, “What the hell have you done?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she defended herself. “I’d just been at Bailey’s and when I was leaving you called on my cell phone, Uncle Chase. I was just standing there talking to you-”

“You hung up on me.”

“No, I dropped my phone because I heard him. And then I saw him.”

When she finished telling them about it, she looked across the table at Meryl. “You said I could ask you anything,” she reminded him.

“Shoot,” he told her.

“Why didn’t they test Billy Crosby’s blood alcohol level?”