“At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, ‘Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?’ Jesus replied, ‘Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.’”
So it was him. Manny, reading stories to the Bible thumpers of Pecan Hollow? Never in her life would she have guessed it. It was unnerving, this change of character, and the quickness to settle in her town. Flagrant even. An affront. But soon, the rounded murmur of his voice, both familiar and, in this context, foreign and out of place, began to have a sedative effect. For a moment, she felt childlike and open. Then she heard a rising chatter and scooting of chairs, signaling the end of the meeting. She rose quietly, crossed over to Warbucks, and started untying his tether.
“When did you get here?” Manny said, suddenly at her side.
She backed up and tripped over the gutter that ran from the side of the building. He reached out to steady her.
“Whoa, there, Kitty Cat!” He held out his hands to show he meant no harm.
She pushed him off. The shame of being discovered scorched her face. He smiled in a doting, parental way, as if Kit could do no wrong. She had melted under that look as a kid, but today it felt condescending. She took two long steps away from him.
“Hey, what are you doing lurking around back here?” he said. “You could have come in, you know.” There was a small Bible, feathered with paper notes, sticking out of his pocket.
“I was out for a ride. I didn’t know you’d be here.” She found it difficult to meet his eyes. “Since when do you read the Bible?”
“Since prison,” he said with a little shrug. “First, I read it because I was bored. Then I came to hate it, because it showed me a side of myself I didn’t want to see. Now, of course, I treasure it, because I see now that God accepts me just as I am.”
She chafed at his bald piousness, not just the fact of it, but the feeling that she didn’t know him anymore.
“So you’re just clean now or something? No more cons, no more crime?” She got madder as she spoke. “What do you do for money if you’re not stealing it out of someone’s pocket?”
He smiled and passed over the dig. “Who’s this handsome fella?” He approached the horse, knuckles up. Warbucks pushed back and shied away, but Manny gripped him by the bridle and stroked the bow of his neck.
“Leave him,” she said.
“Easy, easy there,” he said. Warbucks yielded but did not relax.
“Listen, I don’t get what you’re up to, why you’re here,” Kit said. “But I don’t need you making trouble in my life.”
“I’m making trouble?” he said. “You’re the one out here spying on me.”
He could always turn it back on her. Kit wanted to evaporate. She punched the side of the church and yelled. Warbucks nickered and snatched a spray of weeds by the gutter.
“Don’t mess this up for me,” she said, ignoring his taunt. “I like my life. I’ve been just fine here without you.” She leaned against the wall and took a breath. “What do you want from me?”
Manny looked down at his boots and kicked up a divot in the grass.
“Look, the last thing I want is to cause you trouble. I spent the last decade praying for you, wishing you good things, feeling sorry for what I did to you.”
“Sorry? Ha!” She heard the waver in her voice. “Since when are you sorry for anything?” She wanted to hate him and fear him.
“Kit, I’m here because I want to earn your forgiveness.”
Forgiveness. Something in her crumbled at this word.
“Oh, yeah?” she said. “What for?”
“Let me count the ways,” he said. “For starters, I blew it that last day. Shouldn’t have been drinkin’ and going off script. Stupid.”
“What was all that about anyway?”
He moved slightly toward her. “Kitty Cat, you really wanna hash this out here? Let’s go somewhere and talk.”
She shook her head and stepped back. There was too much to atone for. She couldn’t shake the image of those two cooks knocked out on the floor or the look of terror on Mrs. Stoker’s. He didn’t deserve to be here or to see Charlie, whom he hadn’t even wanted. She should chew him out, or fight him, but all she could think to do was run. She tugged the loose end of the lead rope and in one swift movement had hoisted herself onto Warbucks’s back and was tearing off.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was mosquito hour, when the insects emerged in a lowlying fog against the green haze of dusk. The smell of warm moss and manure hung in the humid air. Charlie hurried up the steps and smacked a blood-swollen mosquito at the back of her neck. She felt like she was starving. Since she hit puberty (oh, how she despised the word), she had fits of hunger that came on like a riot.
Charlie opened the refrigerator door and let it clunk against the cabinets—something Kit hated—in pointless protest. Even though they had, in their way, made up after the scuffle in the front yard, Charlie was still sore. That man was the first ever person from Kit’s past, the first proof that her mother hadn’t just materialized as an adult the same time Charlie was born. She was so thirsty for a story, to know about her mom, that she was tempted to hunt down the man and ask him herself. She supposed Kit loved her, the way a mom has to love a child by definition. But she had a feeling that Kit, like a racehorse prancing in its stall, would bolt if anything released her from that duty.
The fridge was typically sparse. A glass bottle of buttermilk, a filmy packet of bologna, a jar of pickled okra. She emptied the bottle in one long swig, then wrenched open the jar, fished out a spear of okra, and wrapped it in bologna to tide her over while she decided what to do for dinner. She looked for change in the coffee can under the sink and found just enough to eat out.
The stench of bug spray, the hard stuff, hung around her as she approached the diner. After she entered she stood in the blast of air-conditioning for a moment before straddling a swivel chair at the counter and double-checking the coins in her pocket—$3.16. Her old babysitter, Sandy, came by to take her order.
“Oh, hey, Charlie. How you?” she said, looking glad to have company.
“Pretty good. Pretty hungry.”
Sandy shimmied the skirt of her uniform down from where it had ridden up at the widest part of her hips and flipped to a fresh page on her notepad. “All right, whatcha having?”
“Can I have a peanut butter malt and a side of buttered toast for three bucks?”
“Sure,” Sandy said with a snap of her gum. “What do you say?”