Kathleen O'Reilly - Just Let Go...

Austen had never liked the eyes watching him, judging him. He didn’t have Tyler’s brains, Tyler’s ability to shut everything out. So Austen had done what he could; when that didn’t work, he ran, possibly committing a class C felony in the process—as rumored around Tin Cup, where folks liked to believe the worst of the Hart family. Once he’d gotten the hell out of town, the air was a little clearer, and eventually Austen had made a quasi-respectable name for himself in the state’s capital.

The receptionist at the desk was Delores Somebody, a girl who had flirted with him in high school. Most girls did at one time or another. It was a rite of passage: hurling spitballs at the principal, cheating on a math exam and screwing Austen Hart. Most adolescent males wouldn’t mind that part, would have actively encouraged it. Yes, Austen had actively encouraged it, but he had minded it, too. A Hart was late-night material, the 2:00 a.m. phone call on a Saturday night. Everybody knew it except for Gillian, who thought she had the power to change it all. Yeah, right.

“When are you checking out?” Delores asked, nodding to the small bag he had packed, her eyes still a little flirty.

“Tomorrow.” 9:30 a.m. to be exact. As soon as the papers were signed. After that, Austen would disappear from this town once again. He ran his fingers over the fresh daisies on the counter, simply because he could. Simply because there was no one to look at him sideways anymore, no one to follow him around in the stores.

“That was Gillian Wanamaker you passed on the way in.”

“No kidding?” he said, sliding his sunglasses into the suit pocket. “She’s changed.”

“Not so much. Still thinks she runs this town.”

Austen hid his smile. Knowing Gillian, she probably did. “I’ll grab my stuff and be out of your hair.” With a polite nod, he collected the room key and picked up his bag, heading for the privacy of his room.

Her laughter caught him from behind, and Austen forced himself to slow down, walk easy. “No bother,” she called out. “It’s been a slow day. You should hit the night life. Get a beer at Smitty’s. There’s a lot of people who would like to see you again.”

“Maybe,” he lied.

A few minutes later, he had kicked off his boots and taken a shower, scrubbing off the dust of the road. The room was a clean, serviceable yellow, with a king-sized bed, a wall-mounted TV and a wide variety of flyers that extolled the virtues of Tin Cup, Texas: a modern recreation of Texas past. After reading a few pages, Austen put the booklets back in their place. In the ten years since he’d been gone, they’d built a new bank, a library, four churches and a ball field.

Golly, gee willikers, Wally.

That had been the hardest thing about Tin Cup, the consistency. Feeling not so much like a tourist, Austen stretched on the bed, closing his eyes, because he didn’t care, he didn’t have to care. It was in the middle of all that not caring when his cell rang.

“Hey, honey. Missing me yet?”

Carolyn Carver was the governor’s oldest daughter, and as such had a high opinion of her own importance. As Austen was a state lobbyist, her opinion wasn’t too far off. The cell connection was rotten, so Austen moved to the window where the static cleared. “I just got here, just walked in the door. I think I’m going to kick up my feet, and watch the cow tipping from my window.”

West Texas wasn’t a land for the faint of heart. It was hot and brutal and flat, an endless landscape of scrubby oak trees, dotted with the oil pumping units, their metallic heads bobbing up and down, feeding off the earth.

“When you coming home?” Carolyn asked. He’d been seeing her off and on for almost a year, and managed their relationship carefully. Austen wasn’t going to get serious with Carolyn, and she knew that, but he wasn’t going to make her mad, either.

“Shelby can do one-fifty when pressed, but I’d better play it safe. You know these country cops and the speed traps.”

“You can tell them it’s a state emergency. Tell them that Carolyn Carver wants to get laid.”

He laughed aloud because he knew she expected him to. “You keep that thought, and I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Maggie Patterson called looking for you. Said she was hoping to catch you before you left. Did she call your cell?”

“No.”

“Well, she said you couldn’t do anything from out there, anyway.”

“What did she need?”

“Some kid in the after-school program got arrested, and you’ve been duly appointed to bail him out, or talk him out, or bust him out. I swear, if her husband wasn’t your boss…”

Austen frowned. There wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do remotely, but maybe… “I’ll give her a call. See what she’s got on her hands.”

“A hard knock in the head from a crew of gang-bangers who know how to hot-wire a car, that’s what she’s going to have on her hands if she’s not careful.”

Austen didn’t even flinch. “Your father’s tough on crime. It’ll look good on his campaign posters.”

Carolyn giggled because in her world she wouldn’t know how to hotwire a battery. But Austen did.

“There’s a new band playing at Antone’s tonight. Jack Haywood doesn’t want to go alone.”

“Jack’s an okay guy, but don’t let him make you pay for dinner. That boy doesn’t have any class at all.”

She laughed again, and he moved toward the bed, hearing the reception go spotty. “Listen, Carolyn, I’m having trouble with the lines out here. Gotta go,” he told her, and then hung up, letting himself breathe.

Once again, he sacked out on the bed, but the curtains were half-open, letting him see to the outside, letting him see exactly what nothingness was putting the sweat on his neck. Idiot, that’s what he was. He moved to the window, and pushed back the sheers, and gazed out on the land. His shoulders ached from the drive, and he rolled them back, slowing his pulse, embracing the calm.

Why did he let the ghost of Frank Hart get to him? Why did he let this town crawl under his skin? Because it was who he was.

He picked up his cell, called Maggie only to find out that L.T., one of the boys in the program, had gone for a joyride. Maggie’s afterschool program was her pride and joy, but criminal activities always put a damper on its fundraising, so Austen did what he always did and promised to clean up the mess. Quietly, of course, and then he called Captain Juarez of the Austin P.D. After promising that L.T. would attend one weekend of Youth Corps Training and then sweetening the deal with a few seats to the Longhorns’ home opener for the captain’s trouble, Austen called Maggie and let her know that L.T. had been sprung.

One more delinquent back on the street. In Austen’s expert opinion, sure, you could put lipstick on a pig, but no matter how much you tried, it’s still a pig, and before long, that pig is going to end up being cooked and served up for breakfast, alongside scrambled eggs and a hot cup of coffee.

The next moment, he heard a discreet tap on the door. There wasn’t room service at the Spotlight Inn, and he hoped to God it wasn’t the cops…

Unless it was Gillian.

Not a chance in hell, answer the damned door.

It was Delores, still wearing the same flirty smile, only now it looked apologetic, as well. “I know that I shouldn’t be here, but Gillian called to check up on things, which I know wasn’t the truth, but during the conversation, she let it slip that she was going to Smitty’s—not that she wasn’t being completely obvious because the girl doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body, and I almost didn’t tell you—”

Delores took a breath. “—but I decided I should, because, even though it’s not my place to poke my nose where it doesn’t belong, I thought, what if she’s there, and you’re not, and everybody thinks poorly of you because you’re not, and then I’d have to live with the guilt of my actions. In the end, I just couldn’t do it.”