“Juvie?” Leslie said. “Like jail?”
Kellen sighed and set his fork down. “Yeah. He had some trouble on a breaking and entering charge. Nothing serious. The kinda shit kids get into at that age. We hired a lawyer to get us through family court. Good guy, did okay by us. You know, I had to have my parole transferred down here, and then I can’t live with anybody under sixteen because of the sex offender thing. But the lawyer got us an exception for Donal, since he’s my brother-in-law.”
“Wow,” I said. It was like getting important news from a telegram: Sean dead, Donal in jail, Kellen and Wavy married. Stop.
“That’s great that he could come live with you,” Trisha said. She and Brice were both trying not to look stunned by their crash course in Wavy’s life.
“Yeah, it’s really great.” Leslie jumped in late, but she made up for the delay by nodding vigorously. “So how is he?”
“He’s doing better. But like I said, it’s hard for him.”
I waited for Mom to say something that would show she was happy, but she sat there looking like she’d been slapped. Despite all her efforts to keep them apart, Wavy and Kellen were together. I felt sorry for Wavy, because we were the only family she had. Kellen and Donal and us. She hadn’t come to rub my mother’s nose in it. She’d come to make up with Mom.
“So when did you get married?” I said.
“She didn’t tell you?” The heavy crease between Kellen’s eyes smoothed out and he smiled. “I thought you told her, sweetheart. Day after we got the bike, we rode down to Vegas and got married. Her roommate, Renee, and her boyfriend followed us down in the car, in case we had any troubles with the bike, but everything was dandy.”
“The postcard. I didn’t realize that was—congratulations!” I’d received a postcard of the Las Vegas strip, but all she’d written on the back was “Thank you,” signed with a W and a heart.
“Was that fun?” Leslie said.
“It was a whole lot of noise and people, and we were tired when we got there, but you know, we had a great ride, and we didn’t have to wait three days for a marriage license.”
“Impatient.” Wavy gave Kellen a sly look that made him grin.
“Hell, we was engaged for eight years. I’d say I was plenty patient.”
Wavy laughed. Mom scowled at her plate.
“We talked about eloping, but Leslie wanted to do the big ceremony,” Brice said.
“What was it like? You didn’t have an Elvis impersonator, did you?” Leslie said.
Mom stood up, like you would at a wedding reception to make a toast, and I thought she would finally say something to make Wavy feel welcome. All she did was put her salad and dessert plates on top of her dinner plate and gather up her silverware.
“You cooked it, Brenda. We can clear it off,” Kellen said.
She let him take the plates out of her hands. While he carried her dishes to the kitchen, the conversation was dead. Mom sat down, but without a plate to glare at, she finally looked at Wavy.
I wondered if she was doing the same thing I was doing, trying to figure out what was different about Wavy. There was something different. Not just that when Kellen came back to the table and ran his finger across his pie plate, Wavy opened her mouth and let him stick the whipped cream in. Something passed between them and he frowned.
“Oh, sweetheart, are you sure you wanna do this right now?” he said.
“Before Donal comes back.”
“Fair enough.”
Wavy took a deep breath and said, “Sean killed Val and Liam.”
Aunt Val had been dead for seven years, but finding out who killed her turned it into a fresh wound. Leslie cried. I cried. Mom fell apart. Everyone else sat there quietly, waiting for it to be over.
Finally, Leslie wiped her eyes and said, “Do the police know?”
Kellen reached for his wallet, chain rattling, and pulled out a folded sheet of notebook paper. With a worried look on his face he smoothed the paper on the table.
“No, we haven’t told the police nothing. I don’t think Donal’s ready for that. He hasn’t exactly been making friends with the cops lately. He wrote this to Wavy, while he was still in juvie, right after we found out where he was. They sent a whole lot of letters while we were trying to get the custody stuff figured out. The first half is about Sean, about the situation. Look, I don’t wanna say nothing rude. I don’t know if I—”
“Just say it,” Mom said.
“The first part is just about, you know, Sean being Donal’s father.”
Kellen wasn’t a fast reader, and he seemed worried about saying the wrong thing. I thought of offering to read it, but it was Wavy’s letter and she’d given it to him.
“That day, when you dropped Donal off at the ranch, he says he went up to the farmhouse and Liam’s bike was there and Val’s car. Donal says, ‘I could hear him yelling.’ Sean, he means. ‘You said you loved me. You promised, you bitch.’ Sorry.”