“But if it hadn’t been for Dana back when AJ got into all that trouble before, he would have seen prison time. Paul knows that. What’s his objection?”
“I don’t know.” Lily was lying, and possibly her dad knew it. She could feel his gaze, but she couldn’t meet it. She was afraid he would see, as Paul must have, the warmth of her feelings for Edward, the telltale signs of her attraction for him that wouldn’t go away. It was three years since they’d last met at their place—one of them—the little roadside café with the terrible food and worse coffee north of Greeley. It had been raining that day, hard enough that she’d felt the wet seeping through the thin soles of her flats, splattering her ankles. Standing beneath the awning with Edward, waiting for a break in the storm to make a run for it, he had brushed the side of her hand; he had linked his little finger with her own. Even the memory of that—his slightest touch—heated her longing for him. And it was wrong. It could never be.
Sudden birdsong shattered the silence, and she shied from it. See me, see me, see me, it seemed to cry. Lily hunted for the singer and spotted him, the bright-red flash of a cardinal flitting through the bony spread of an old live oak near the drive.
Her dad said, “You realize whoever murdered Becca could have AJ’s credit cards and driver’s license, his bank-account numbers.”
“But his wallet was found in his apartment.”
“Was everything in it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we know they’ve got his truck, unless they’ve ditched it by now.”
An image darkened Lily’s mind of AJ, driving God knew where, with a gun to his temple. She slammed a mental door on it. “If he’s picked up in another state, it might be days before we hear,” she said, and it didn’t surprise her when her dad locked her gaze.
He knew the reference Lily was making. When she’d gone off with Jesse Kerman after graduating from high school, her father hadn’t known where she was until she was arrested and jailed a week later in Phoenix for being an accessory to armed robbery and murder when Jesse held up a mini-mart. The police there had kept her almost seventy-two hours before allowing her to call her dad. He’d been out of his mind with worry by then. Lily had always thought fear was the reason he hadn’t killed her when he got to Phoenix with Paul.
She’d been eighteen, only months younger than AJ had been when he’d been arrested. The charge had been similar, too—accessory to murder. Even the circumstances were similar. AJ had been out with a rough gang of friends he’d taken up with, like the crew of guys Jesse had ridden with, guys who were into mostly petty crime. They were an older crowd, the way Jesse’s crowd had been, and seemed dangerous in a way that AJ had thought he wanted to be. Who knew why. Lily hadn’t understood the compulsion in herself. But it had taken AJ to the same wrong time, wrong place as it had Lily. In AJ’s case, at a party, a fight over a girl had ended in gunfire. Two people had died, three had been injured. AJ had tried to stop it; evidence had ultimately proved that, the same as evidence in Lily’s situation had proved her innocence. But it had taken months of expensive legal wrangling, and once AJ’s ordeal was over, Paul was finished. That’s when he’d delivered his ultimatum: AJ could enlist or get out. Either way, Paul was done supporting him. AJ needed discipline; he needed to grow up, find a direction. Be a man.
Lily had been torn.
Her dad had had a similar response when he’d brought her home from Phoenix. Get a job, go back to school, or get married, he’d said. He and Paul had gone out on a limb for her, and she’d been given a second chance. He wasn’t about to let her piss it away. “I never thought I’d say this,” he’d told her, “but I’m glad your mother’s dead, that she didn’t live to see what you’ve done to yourself.”
It had nearly crushed her, hearing him say that. Lily had always thought she would be a better person if her mother had lived. She wouldn’t have made so many terrible and irrevocable mistakes.
She looked over at her dad now. “Did AJ ever tell you that he dreamed of this house while he was in Afghanistan?”
“Yeah.” Her dad scrubbed his hands down the tops of his legs to his knees. He looked at Lily, looked away.
“What?”
“You know,” he began, “this—what’s happening now—you know it’s not got shit to do with that gang crap he got into before he joined the marines. He was responsible for that, and he knew it—not for the violence, those people getting killed, but for getting involved with those losers to begin with. This deal, the murder of this girl—it’s different.”
She knew, Lily said.
Her dad went to the porch rail, tossed the last of his coffee into the yard, and he was turning back when both he and Lily were distracted by the noise of car engines. Within a couple of minutes, two SUVs, one shiny black, the other a sun-faded red, came into view and parked in the driveway, near the front of the house.
“What’s he doing here?” her dad said when Erik got out of the new SUV, a Lexus, Lily thought.
“Let it go, Dad,” Lily said. “He’s as worried about AJ as we are.” Then, watching Dru and Shea get out of the older-model SUV, she felt a sinking sense of regret and added, “We need to pull together for AJ’s sake,” and she was admonishing herself now as much as anyone.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Lily told Erik, hugging him tightly as he came up the porch steps. He was as tall, broad shouldered, and strongly built as AJ, and she was loath to let him go. “When you didn’t call me back, I started to worry you’d disappeared, too.” She thought of the times when the boys had been younger and they’d gone off somewhere on the ranch, promising to be home by dinner, how she and Winona had looked at each other when it got to be dark thirty and there wasn’t a sign of them or the sound of hoofbeats. A few times either she, Win, or her dad had saddled up and gone to hunt for them. But that worry paled in comparison, and Erik must have sensed it, because he apologized.
“New job,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
“Ha!” Her dad snorted. “I heard about that. You’re a car salesman, right? Up in Greeley? That where you got the Lexus? Is that why you went to work there? So you could drive a fancy car without having to pay for it?”
“Dad . . .” But even as Lily was provoked by his attack on Erik, she understood it. She wondered if it could be true, that Erik had chosen to be a car salesman over xL’s ranch foreman so he could drive an expensive car, act like a big shot. Although she’d heard him deny it, maybe he preferred living in town, wearing a coat and tie to work, having clean fingernails. Maybe the job of car salesman was perfect for him. Unlike his mom, who was quiet and reserved, Erik was easygoing and sociable to the point of being boisterous. He was perfect for a career in sales.
Lily touched his arm. “I’m glad you’re here now,” she said, meaning it.