Texas Gothic

13



you could fit two of me inside the Hitchin’ Post T-shirt that Jessica brought me. I hoped to make a stealthy exit and call Phin from the car, but Ben was waiting in the dimly lit hall outside the bathrooms, leaning against the wall next to a pay phone with an age-yellowed Out of Order sign.

When I came out, he straightened and peered at me critically. “You okay?”

“I’m not going to melt, if that’s your worry.” And then I bit my tongue, because I remembered about his dad, and why he was so tightly wound, and that not five minutes ago I’d been thinking I should be nicer to him. “Sorry,” I said, the weight of the day dragging down my shoulders. “I just want to go home. Can you tell the others bye for me?”

Ben studied me a moment longer, and I wondered if there was an actual reason he’d asked if I was okay. Like maybe whatever was going on in my head showed on my face. “I’ll walk you out,” he said, in a don’t-bother-arguing sort of way.

Fortunately I didn’t really feel like arguing. As we made our way through the main room, he didn’t take my arm again, but when the crowd jostled us, his hand touched my back, not quite encircling me, but keeping me close so we didn’t get separated.

There was something so … stalwart about Ben. I’d only known him two days and he’d managed to infuriate me most of that time. But there I was, protected by the curve of his arm, and grateful for it. And not just because it felt nice, though it did.

We finally broke through the rabble and out into the warm summer night lit by a few paltry streetlamps and occasional headlights going by on the highway. I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, and now I was doubly glad for Ben’s company, even when he dropped his hand from my side.

“My car is over here.” I nodded to Stella in the gravel lot.

“It’s not hard to spot,” he said, and he had a point. The Mini Cooper did stand out from the cluster of Harleys and the rank and file of pickup trucks.

“So, about Joe Kelly,” I began as we walked toward my car. Ben glanced over warily, but waited for me to go on, which I did. The episode with the deputy’s son was fairly near the top of my overflowing mental in-box, so the topic wasn’t as arbitrary as it sounded. “He’s actually still pissed about what your granddad did to his?”

“Great-granddad,” Ben corrected. He gestured for me to precede him between two trucks, then said, “Grudges last a long time here. Doesn’t help that my dad bought up the Kelly land during the oil bust in the nineties.”

I noted that the McCulloch manifest destiny didn’t sit too well with everyone. “Wasn’t that rubbing salt in the wound a little?”

“Just business.” We’d reached Stella’s back bumper. Ben slouched with his hands in his pockets, watching me fish my keys out of my pocket. “And he paid better than market value. I think he felt bad about the granddad thing.”

“I guess that explains why Deputy Kelly is a ray of sunshine whenever he pops over to your land. But not why the Goodnights put such a burr under his saddle.”

“Oh, I can imagine.”

The comment lacked bite. In fact, he seemed almost at ease. Ironic, when my brain was so overloaded that I couldn’t even seem to get my keys into the car door. I fumbled them and they hit the gravel with a thunk.

Ben reached for them at the same time I did, and we narrowly avoided knocking our heads together. I gave up and leaned against Stella’s fender with a slightly hysterical laugh. “I’ll be glad when Run-into-Things Day is over.”

He retrieved the keys from the ground—after making sure I wasn’t going for them again—and dropped them into my hand. “Any day that includes multiple dead bodies, you should get a pass on running into things.”

He was part of the problem, too. When he was being nice, I couldn’t help wondering whether I owed him an apology over the “Don’t you have parents?” thing or a thank-you for extracting me from the Situation in the bar. Not to mention my inappropriate curiosity about his opinion of my addiction to Victoria’s Secret.

Rather than voice any of those things, or do something sensible like get into my car, I said, “We were talking about the irony of Deputy Kelly being the scion of cattle thieves. And why Joe hates you.”

He gazed at me a moment and I took the opportunity to study him in the dim yellow haze of the flyspecked street-lamp, without a hat or sunglasses. His nose was a little crooked, with a scar across the bridge, and his jaw a little too square. Maybe. “Is that what we were talking about?” he asked. “And not why the Goodnights are a saddle burr?”

“You don’t think we’ve exhausted that subject?” I asked. “Besides, I have a reason for asking.” It seemed odd that the Kelly name kept popping up whenever the Mad Monk did. And even if I didn’t want to go hopping the fence in the middle of the night with Phin’s PKE meter, I was still curious about the ninety-nine other mysteries of McCulloch Ranch.

After a moment Ben shrugged and said, “Joe Kelly and I graduated together. Started at the University of Texas together. Pledged rival fraternities. Destined to be antagonists, I guess.”

“Maybe it’s genetic,” I said. “Your family, his family.” His mouth relaxed into something like a very small smile. “A good old-fashioned feud?”

“Never trust a Kelly,” I echoed.

Wham. The shutters slammed back down. “Where did you hear that?”

Oh hell. Now what? Until I knew where I’d gone wrong, I could only answer with the truth. “From your grandfather. He rode over to the farmhouse this afternoon.”

“Grandpa Mac?” Ben echoed. “Rode over to your house?”

I scratched the side of my nose and chose my words carefully, because I knew better than to tell him why. “I guess he forgot about Aunt Hyacinth being gone.” He continued to stare at me, until I couldn’t stand it. “All right. What did I do now?”

“He road his horse over to your house, and you just let him ride back?”

I should have clued in right then that there was more going on in his head than what was coming out of his mouth. I had known him long enough that the flat tone and expressionless gaze should have been dead giveaways.

“What was I supposed to do? He’s a grown-up! He knew the way to Goodnight Farm; I figured he, or the horse, would know the way back. And,” I went for the big, I’m-so-logical finish, “he said your grandmother was expecting him back, so I knew someone would be watching out for him on your end—”

That was the moment the pieces clicked: What Jessica said about the ranch getting to be too much for Mac McCulloch, and his confusing me and Aunt Hyacinth and talking about Uncle Burt like he was still living. And most of all, why any talk of talking to dead people sent Ben straight up and sideways.

“Oh.” I breathed all that revelation into the sound. All my feelings about Ben churned together inside of me—the hard, bitter feelings and the squishy, tentative feelings—and I don’t know what showed on my face, but I could see that Ben knew that I knew, and he was not happy about it.

“Don’t say it,” he said, at the same time I said, “I’m sorry.”

I don’t know what he’d expected me to say, but that wasn’t it. “For what?” he asked, bluffing it out, I guess.

“About your grandfather,” I said, refusing to play the let’s-not-talk-about-it game. “And about your dad.”

His exhale was more complaint than sigh. “You’ve been busy.”

“Jessica told me.”

“Uh-huh.” His hands clenched briefly in his pockets, and I wondered if he was picturing them around my neck. “And my family just happened to come up in conversation?”

“Actually,” I shot back, because this is where my sympathy got me—arguing in a bar parking lot like trashy reality-TV stars—“I came right out and asked her if you were always such a jackass, or if it was only for my benefit.”

“What is wrong with you?” he demanded, sort of making my point. “Can you not let anything lie? All I want is to get this damned bridge built. And you’re digging up ghosts and skeletons …”

“Look. It’s not like your dad passing away isn’t public record. And you just let me stick my foot in it this afternoon and didn’t correct me.”

He clamped his teeth on a retort, then grudgingly admitted, “All right, that’s true.” Then he was back on the warhorse. “But my granddad is not a subject open for discussion. And I sure as hell don’t want people gossiping about him in bars.”

“It was the bathroom. And it wasn’t gossip. It was a sensitive relay of information.” I poked him in the chest, though not, I admit, quite hard enough to make him back up a step. “And for the record, it was making me feel very kindly toward you until—”

“Was it?” He folded his arms. “Because it’s a little hard to tell with you.”

I glared and refused to be sidetracked. “I was going to say, that for a nanosecond, I could actually understand why you’ve been such a jerk.”

“Maybe you should just quit apologizing. It doesn’t seem to be doing any good.”

“Obviously not.”

I hadn’t noticed the bikers coming out of the bar until one of them, leaning on his handlebars like he was watching a movie, shouted, “Aw, just kiss her already, dude.”

Oh. My. God. Incendiary mortification seemed a real possibility, especially when Ben, just to infuriate me, I was sure, waved back and said, “Thanks for the advice, man. I’ve got this.”

“If you do,” I warned him, my finger raised between us. But then I stopped, because he lifted a challenging brow, like he wanted to know what I planned to do if he did. And I didn’t have a clue.

But here’s what I did know: he was standing very close, so we wouldn’t have to shout across the parking lot. Which had seemed practical until that moment, when I realized how much I didn’t mind him looming over me, when I should have minded a lot. Instead, I was picturing him putting a hand on either side of me on the roof of the Mini Cooper and leaning in and locking his lips on mine.

Dammit! I had much more important things to worry about than how it would feel if Ben McCulloch kissed me.

Ben stepped back so quickly, I knew I wore that question all over my face. He certainly wasn’t wondering the same thing I was. Because I smelled like I’d taken a bath in a brewery. And also, he pretty much hated my guts. And vice versa. Sometimes.

“Should you call your sister or something?” he asked.

“I’m right here.”

We both jumped. Phin stood by Stella’s front bumper, giving Ben one of her dissecting stares, and I could tell it unnerved him. Good.

Mark had walked out with her, and he gave me a sympathetic wave. “Heard about your adventure from the waitress. If it makes you feel better, my mom always said beer makes your hair shiny.”

Ben looked, for a moment, as if he would ask how Phin knew to come outside, then thought better of it and answered Mark instead. “Some guys I knew in college would disprove that.”

“It’s the protein and B vitamins,” said Phin, like this was an actual conversation about grooming and not two guys trying to dispel some serious awkward. “But you have to rinse with it, not drink it.”

“Right.” I opened my car door. “If I get arrested for drunk driving based on the fumes coming from my hair, at least I’ll look great when they arraign me tomorrow.”

“Drive carefully,” said Ben, as if he couldn’t help himself, “and you’ll be fine.”

“Thanks, Dad,” I snapped, then cursed. Jeez Louise, what was wrong with my mouth? “I’m—”

Ben put his hand on the top of my door, essentially trapping me in the space between him and Stella, almost like I’d imagined, but with a completely different expression.

“Just stop apologizing,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

“How about this?” I said, because now it was the principle of the thing. “I’m sorry, jackass.”

I got in, slammed the door—not very hard, because Stella was delicate—and started the engine. It didn’t cover his laugh.

“Hell’s bells,” I growled as Phin got in beside me. I gripped the steering wheel, watching Ben and Mark walk back to the bar. “Why does he make me so mad?”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” asked Phin. “Because I’m pretty sure you don’t want to hear what I think.”

Finally. Something with which I could unequivocally agree.