He looked slightly hurt.
“Well, I’m very glad you’ve decided to stop spending your days dead drunk,” Cricket said as Shirley set a cup of black coffee in front of Juke and then disappeared without a single word. “I’m giving you a second chance, thanks to Griffin. You owe your cousin a great deal. He seems to care more about you than you care about yourself.”
Cricket’s admonishment was delivered a bit high-handedly.
Juke, however, looked nonplussed. “Well, Mrs. Crosby, the anniversary of my wife’s death always does that to me. Makes me want to numb myself so I can’t feel. Not healthy, but I usually get past it. What can I say? You caught me on a bad month.”
His words were almost too honest. Made me twitchy to hear him say such a thing so easily. Shouldn’t it be hard to admit that kind of hurt? I had my fair share of dings growing up the way I did, but I could never be so matter-of-fact about my own shortcomings. Maybe that was my problem. I played everything too close because I didn’t want people to know I was human. That I hurt. That I cried. That I had weaknesses. And I had just spilled the greatest shame of my life to Cricket, and she hadn’t rejected me. In fact, she’d extended me grace and comfort.
Cricket’s face reflected an apology to my cousin. “Uh, I guess it must be hard. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks. But you’re right. I’m glad to have family that cares enough to pull my head out of my ass.”
Those words seemed to slide inside me like a quarter into a slot, swirling down, dropping into the till of my soul. In my quest to rinse the stink of prison off me, I had set my family aside as if they had no value. Juke had tried to self-medicate, isolating himself from his life, and I had tried to wall off a part of who I was. Like those dresses I made from the marred fabric of a past life, I needed to accept my own history. I needed to value the people who cared about me. Even Ed Earl had shown he cared enough to make amends, and his penance might allow me to pursue the dream of designing my own line of reconstructed clothing. So though I still harbored resentment toward him, I couldn’t overlook that he had given me a real opportunity to take a chance on myself. My family, for all its flaws, cared enough to hold each other accountable, to make amends, to lend a hand when called upon. They were a piece I needed to incorporate into the redesign of my life. I couldn’t throw them away.
Juke pulled out a legal-size envelope and spread several photos on the table. “I believe these are what you’ve been waiting on.”
The photos were of Scott and Stephanie. One had even been taken at the gala and featured the two of them in the corner looking chummy. The others were intimate—twined arms, locked lips, time-stamped. One was at the country club, if the golf carts were any indication. One was on a porch stoop with what looked to be Stephanie’s house in the background.
Cricket picked each one up and studied the photos.
“How did you get this one?” she asked, pointing to the photo taken at the gala.
“I know a guy at the Daily. They were there taking photos, and I asked if he would let me look through them. It was just a hunch. I found them in the background and blew it up. The cheapskate made me buy the photo from him, but it was worth the twenty bucks, mostly because you attended this function as husband and wife, and here he is all intimate-like with his mistress.”
“But they’re just talking.” Cricket set them down. “I’m meeting with my attorney tomorrow. I’ll take these to her and see what she thinks. It might be enough, especially since it seems like there were several people who already knew about the affair.”
Juke looked pleased. “I told you I would get them.”
“Yes, you did. And now I have a little more work for you. I need some research done on a particular man. Let me show you these brochures and explain what we suspect. I’m hoping you have some suggestions on who I should call and how I might be able to use this information as leverage.” Cricket began pulling the information Skeet had given her from her bag, and since I already knew the scoop, I excused myself and walked toward the bar where Dak was washing some glasses.
“Hey,” I said, leaning against the counter, “you wanna make a bet on who gets voted off tonight? I’m wagering on the crooner. He’s lame.”
Dak chuffed. “No way. That twangy country chick is about to board a plane back to Georgia.”
“Nah, she’s good.”
“If you like annoying blondes who act like they just left the farm. I saw that girl’s Insta. She knows what’s up. All that wide-eyedness is an act.” Dak set the clean glasses on a drying mat.
“Stalker,” I teased.
He looked up, a twinkle in his eye. “I may need to go to Georgia to console her.”
I gave him a flat look.
“Hey,” he said, flicking the towel from over his shoulder into his hands so he could dry the glasses, “Jeremy just got here, so I’m about to go home to feed Glory. Wanna ride and see my place?”
“Who’s Glory?”
“She’s the prettiest yellow Lab you’ve ever seen. Smart as a tack.”
That made me smile. “You’re mixing your idioms. Don’t you mean sharp as a tack?”
“That too.”
I knew I really shouldn’t go with him—if I did, he would know that I wasn’t unaffected by him. But he already knew that. Dak was smart as a tack himself. Thing was, I wanted to go. I wanted to see if his house looked like the one he and I had always talked about. Rustic with big windows that showed the lake from every room, a stone fireplace, and heart pine floors. Maybe double swings on the porch and window boxes full of bright blooms.
He lifted a shoulder. “Wanna see?”
I knew in that moment that he wanted me to go because he wanted me to see all that he’d done. The bar was his public persona—slightly brash and down-home—but his home was who he truly was. Dak wasn’t the sort to invite someone in capriciously. So this was big for him.
I looked back at Cricket. Then at the opening door, through which walked my big, good-looking cousin, his eyes zipping straight to Cricket. “Yeah. I would love to see your place.”
“Cool.”
So after I texted Cricket that I was heading out, I climbed into Dak’s truck yet again, and in ten minutes we were skirting the lake, the waters peeking through the newly green trees at me. We hugged the northern part of the lake, small communities of clumped single ranch houses clinging to the edges of larger gated homes on the water. When we got to a huge turn, Dak pulled down an almost-hidden gravel road that dipped down toward the water. Thick bushes were side bumpers for his truck, and when we broke from them, before us was a tree-dotted span of lawn and a brown cedar home with window boxes and a red door.