Sarah glanced at Hannah, and Brandi took note of how Hannah’s eyes opened wide, as if someone were trying to pull something from her and she wasn’t willing to let it go.
“We came home from school,” Sarah finally said.
“Sarah,” said Brandi. “Don’t lie to me.”
“They walked home from school.” Hannah spoke up for her. “They were here when I got home.”
“And your father nowhere to be seen and no way for me to call him.” He refused to carry a cell phone. Hadn’t had one all his life and didn’t see any reason to start now, even though Brandi tried to convince him he might wish he’d changed his tune someday. “Maybe Angel knows something,” she said, and went down the hallway.
Angel was lying on her bed listening to a new iPod. Her old one, of course, was gone in the fire. She’d begged her father for a new one, but he’d said no.
“Where’d you get that?” Brandi asked her.
Angel took her earbuds out and propped herself up on her elbows. “I didn’t steal it, if that’s what you think.”
“I didn’t say you stole it. I asked you where you got it.”
Angel rubbed her thumb over the smooth face of the iPod. “It was a present.”
“From a boy?” Brandi was aware of her voice rising in alarm, but she couldn’t help herself. She knew what a boy would be after with an expensive gift like that, and it wouldn’t be just friendship. “Was it that Tommy Stout?”
“No, not from a boy.” Angel made fun of Brandi’s anxiety, making her voice squeak with mock fear. “I’m not looking for a boyfriend.” Her voice went flat and she gave Brandi a long stare. “I’m not on the prowl like you.”
“That’s enough, Angel. You don’t know a thing about what brought your dad and me together.”
Sure she’d locked eyes with him at Fat Daddy’s one night back in the summer, had told him he looked good in those new jeans. Had said, “Della better keep an eye on you.” She slow danced with him when the jukebox played Rascal Flatts’ “Bless the Broken Road,” and she sang all low and sexy in his ear, “Every long-lost dream led me to where you are.” When the song was done, she said goodnight.
Then she just waited. It wasn’t long before she’d hear a car coming slow down Locust, and when she’d look out her front window she’d see Ronnie in his Firebird, taking his time as he made the turn onto Jones Street. She came to know the sound of that Firebird. Five nights running, Ronnie came by. On the sixth night, she was waiting on her porch, and when she saw him coming, she went out to the curb and flagged him down. She leaned in through his open window. “Might as well come in,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
Angel didn’t know how it could happen. You could be out there looking and not even know it until all of a sudden you were in the scene from your life that you’d been heading toward all along. Then, like that, it all made sense — every damned move you’d ever made, right or wrong. You were where you were supposed to be. Didn’t make any difference that Ronnie was married. Didn’t matter a snap that he had all those kids.
“I know one thing,” Angel said. “You hurt my mom. You and my dad. Maybe you’ve got a way of not thinking about that, but I don’t. I think about it every single day.”
Brandi did too. She couldn’t get it out of her head, the fact that she and Ronnie had ended up together and now Della was dead. At her darkest times, Brandi thought about how part of that was her fault. If she hadn’t come up to Ronnie that night at Fat Daddy’s. If she hadn’t gone out to that Firebird that night at her house and told Ronnie to come in. If, if, if. A world of ifs, forever and ever. For that reason alone, Brandi was determined to love Angel and her sisters and to give them a good home. To make that one good thing she could do.
“That iPod.” Brandi wouldn’t admit to Angel how much what she’d said had shaken her. She made her voice go hard. “Who gave it to you?”
“Missy,” Angel said. “She’s taking us to 4-H tonight.”
“Does your dad know about this?”
“Maybe you should ask him,” Angel said. Then she stuffed the buds back into her ears, and gave Brandi the sweetest smile.
Soon it was evening, the dark coming on early. Out in the country, off a gravel road that snaked back a mile to the west of where the trailer had been, the pole light came on in Lois and Wayne’s barnyard.
They’d been resting, dozing in their reclining chairs, waking from time to time to watch out the picture window as the squirrels and jays and quail came to feed on shelled corn tossed around the blue spruce. They’d kept the lights off, and now it was dark in the room and they talked back and forth in that quiet, just the two of them out there in the country.
“Have things stopped spinning for you?” Lois wanted to know, and Wayne told her he thought he felt some better and maybe could eat a little supper.
She made some grilled cheese sandwiches with sliced tomato, the way he liked them, and opened a can of tomato soup she’d brought home from the store. He said he could come in to the table to eat, but she told him there was no need. She’d set up TV trays, and they could eat in their chairs, maybe even put on the television. Not the news — they’d had enough of that — but maybe that Wheel of Fortune television show they liked to watch. They’d sit there and eat their supper and try to guess the puzzles on Wheel , and little by little — though they didn’t say this — they’d try to get back to some normal way of living.
“It’s a good thing we didn’t try to take on the girls,” Wayne said when Lois brought him his supper. “The way I am, and you having to take care of me, I don’t know how we’d manage.”
Lois turned on the TV and found the channel for Wheel . She and Wayne sat there, eating, watching the pretty woman turn over the letters of the puzzles, but they didn’t try to guess like they usually did.
“It couldn’t be true about Ronnie, could it?” Lois finally said. “He wouldn’t have done anything like that, would he?”
“Turn it up.” Wayne pointed to the TV. “I can’t hear what they’re saying.”
_________
Missy had been thinking about Angel all day and how maybe she shouldn’t have given her that iPod — even Pat said it was bad business — but she’d wanted to do something nice for her, something to let her know she didn’t hold any bad feelings over the way Angel had treated her after the funeral when the girls had packed up and left with Ronnie and Angel hadn’t told her a word of goodbye, hadn’t even waved at her as Ronnie drove away.
Out of all the girls, Angel was the one who most worried her. Angel, who seemed to have a turnip for a heart. Missy was determined to save her from her own anger, to keep reminding her that there were good people in the world who loved her.
“So you’re going to give her an iPod?” Pat said to her that morning at breakfast. They were sitting at the table just after dawn when the light was watery and the radio was on. WPLP was giving the farm market reports from the Chicago Board of Trade before turning to the local news. “That’s how you’re going to teach her about goodness?”
“It’s a start,” she said. “It’s just a way to love on her for a while. What’s wrong with that?”
Pat didn’t answer at first, but she could tell he thought she was overstepping her bounds and heading down a dangerous path.
“You control their money,” he finally said. “Isn’t that enough?”
Why did he have to say a thing like that, a thing that caught her by surprise and made her look at herself the way he saw her: a woman desperate with need? She couldn’t deny it — didn’t want to deny it, really. She wanted instead for the two of them to acknowledge what was lacking between them so they could let it draw them closer. She wanted to say, Don’t you see how this is our chance?
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