“Well, according to Buddy-boy, your pal needed the fundraiser. Now listen, if you told him you were going to do this thing, then you need to do this thing. You can’t get a job if you’re a quitter. And besides, I told you to call me the next time you had something to show. Wasn’t I getting an invitation?”
Her pulse was pounding now. She grit her teeth, thought about all the times Robin had bitched about the old man. She was beginning to see things Robin’s way. “I hadn’t planned on it,” she said evenly.
“What?” he asked, clearly surprised. “Why wouldn’t I get an invitation?”
“Because all you have done is criticize my involvement to begin with.”
“That’s not true!”
“And now that Bud Reynolds has called you up after what, two years, to tell you I am not behaving like he wants me to behave, you have turned around and called to lecture me. You have called up without knowing the facts to tell me what I’m doing wrong again. Well, thanks, Dad. Thanks for your expert advice on every little thing in my life. Now that you’ve delivered it, we can hang up. Good-bye!” she said, and clicked off the phone. And dropped it on the grass like it was on fire.
She was getting pretty ballsy with this hang-up business—now her father? She sat there staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring again, waiting for Dad to build up a head of steam and fry her right to the tree stump.
But the phone didn’t ring.
Very carefully, Rebecca leaned over, picked it up with two fingers, then hurried toward the house, almost throwing it on the back porch in her haste to get away from it. She stood there a moment longer, certain it would ring, and could picture Dad, his face red with rage—no way could he live without having the last word!
But the damn thing didn’t ring, which was entirely too spooky . . . and also liberating when she thought about it, and she did a small victory pump for the real Rebecca shining through.
Right. But just in case he did call back . . . Rebecca wiped up a beach towel from the padded wicker furniture, and stomped off with her new bad self toward the river to join Grayson and Jo Lynn.
Those two had apparently given up the frog hunt, for they were sitting, side by side, on the edge of the dock, their legs swinging freely beneath them above the river. “Mind if I join you?” Rebecca asked as she took a seat next to Grayson.
“How’s that barn coming?” Jo Lynn asked.
“Full of bees and lots of junk. It’s going to take some work.”
“Ah, well. Can’t sit around, so you might as well work. We were just going up for ice cream. You want some?” she asked as Grayson put on his sandals.
“No, thanks I’m going in for a swim. Jo Lynn? If the phone rings, don’t answer it, okay?”
Jo Lynn looked at her curiously, but when Rebecca gave her a halfhearted shrug, she smiled. “Okay,” she said, and took Grayson’s hand, led him up the grassy slope to the house.
Matt stopped at Sam’s Corner Grocery in Ruby Falls, bought a pack of gum and two huge bouquets of roses, which he pieced together as one. He asked the checker (a big girl who, in her smock, reminded him of a Red Delicious apple), if she knew Rebecca Lear. “Sweetie, everyone knows Rebecca Lear,” she said.
“Miss Texas, right?” he asked as he handed her a fiver for his purchase.
“Huh?” she asked, squinting up at him beneath a mound of teased hair.
“She was Miss Texas.”
The woman, whose name tag read Dinah, gasped, slapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes grew wide. “She was?” she squealed, and immediately whirled around to the only other checker in the store. “Did you hear that, Karen? Rebecca Lear—you know, that real pretty girl that lives down on the old Peckinpaugh ranch? She was Miss Texas!”
“Miss Texas?” Karen cried. “You’re kidding!”
Both women looked at Matt to see if he was kidding. “I’m not,” he quickly assured them.
“How come she never told us?” Karen demanded of him.
“I, ah . . . I don’t know why she didn’t. I thought that’s what you meant when you said everyone knew her.”
“Oh, no, I meant because of the dogs,” Dinah said as she handed him his change and receipt.
“Old man Abbot just shoots them strays, you know that?” Karen said while she used her little finger as a toothpick.
“Oh, he does not!” Dinah exclaimed.
“Does too.” Karen insisted.
“If you could just point me toward her house?” Matt asked.
Dinah spared him a glance— “Straight down fourteen oh six, big stone fence and wrought iron gate right after the cemetery” —before beginning to argue Karen’s source of information on old man Abbot.