C's Comeuppance: A Bone Cold--Alive novel (3 page)

“Me?” C pointed to himself. “Do I look like I want something?” he asked Harrison. “Do I?”

The boy giggled. “You are being awfully nice to mama, but I thought it was because you wanted to stay here tonight and she said she was going to kick—”

“That’s enough, Harrison. Why don’t you go get us some more milk, sweetie?” Lyla held out her glass for him and he reluctantly rose and took it to the kitchen to refill.

“Tsk, tsk, Lyla, banishing the boy.”

C watched her roll her eyes. He was enjoying this. His therapist had long held that a little bit of behavior modification would go a long way. Pity he’d taken so long to experiment. The shock value alone would keep him amused for months. “Maybe I’m contrite,” he added.

“I’ll believe that when pigs fly.”

“So cute and country, Lyla.”

“So smarmy, C. Confess—it’s good for the soul. What did you do this afternoon?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” He folded his hands in front of himself and waited until Harrison was back at the table. “I went to DamSite.”

“Did you see Grandpa?”

“What would Grandpa be doing in DamSite?”

C humphed. Here he was all ready to elicit much needed info and the kid was usurping him as usual.

“No, I didn’t see the old man.”

“I bet you saw plenty of others and, Harrison, what would Grandpa be doing there?”

Harrison looked down at his plate and C suspected the boy’d been caught in his exuberant outcry. “Sometimes he goes to play poker.”

“Oh.” Lyla pursed her lips.

Harrison scanned her face and started pleading. “Mom, you can’t tell Grandma because Grandpa said if she ever found out she’d make him wish he were dead!”

“She’s quite capable of that!” T chuckled from the other side of the table.

C found the whole relationship perplexing if not downright abnormal. Dub and Red, Lyla’s first set of in-laws, had reluctantly accepted T into the family fold after loudly and publicly decrying his every move and motive for months. But with the announcement of the arrival of a new grandchild, they’d forgiven all and taken on the tendencies of smothering relations. C involuntarily shivered. That was one of his first things to check before becoming even semi-serious in a relationship: the fewer family members around, the better.

“So why go to DamSite?”

“T told me that if I was so fond of this area, I should just get my own place.”

“How considerate of him.”

C smiled over at his brother and then quickly looked at Lyla. She’d narrowed her gaze. Obviously, California was about as close as she wanted him to be.

“Well, DamSite wasn’t really very helpful.” He watched her look lighten. “I think they were raising the prices even as we spoke. And I did break up a poker game.”

She smiled weakly. “So what else do you need to know about DamSite?”

“Nothing. I went to the other one first.”

“Lake Country?”

“That’s my Sunday school teacher’s place,” Harrison added.

“What?” C choked on the word. Didn’t it just figure, he thought. Only a Sunday school teacher could be so—so—! He shot Lyla a wide-eyed look.

“Did that answer your question?” She had the nerve to smile pleasantly at him.

“Harrison, I’d like some more tea.” T held out his empty glass and the boy sighed as he reached for it.

As they heard the refrigerator door open, C could hold it in no more. “That frigid bitch is teaching your child in church?”

“Hold your voice down! What happened?”

The three adults waited in silence as Harrison set T’s glass down noisily, slopping a piece of ice over the rim. “Mom, can I go play with Shep? I’m tired of waiting on y’all.”

“Yes, sweetie. Go on. Uncle C and Sam will clean up.”

They watched him as he slid through the doorway, and only after hearing the tap of his feet down the log steps, did they start back.

“She’s a bitch! A frigid bitch and I can’t believe you’d let her near him!”

“And I repeat—what happened?”

“Hold it!” T raised his hands and they both stared at him. “Jemma? We’re all talking about Jemma Lovelace?”

“Yes,” C and Lyla answered in unison.

“What did you do to set her off?” T asked. “Be your usual charming self?” He scooted back from the table and made an obscene hand gesture. “Want a little something extra with the house description?”
“Sam!”

“Lyla, let’s face it, Jemma’s hardly C’s type!”

“Well, you didn’t have to send him on the great house hunt!”

“I had to get rid of him somehow.”

“Much as I’m enjoying this blow-by-blow of how to dispose of me, I’d like to get some answers.” Lyla and T turned to him. “Good.” C squared himself in his chair. “Just exactly what is that woman’s problem?”
“I wasn’t aware she had any.”
“T, now you can do better than that.” He turned to his brother. “Surely you’re not so reformed that you can’t still call them as you see them.”

C watched his twin squirm in the oak chair, shoot a be-damned look to his wife, and start speaking. “She’s always been a bit uptight around me. A bit—” he waved his hand from side to side, “—a bit cold I guess. Not real friendly.” He chanced a glance at Lyla. “You know she’s not.”

“She’s very reserved.”

“So that’s the new catch-phrase for ballbreaker.” C nodded to himself. “She’s reserved.” He drew the word out. “Well, what’s she reserving it for?” He asked Lyla directly. “Or should I ask who?”

“You should probably ask whom.”

“Fine, Lyla, fine. Mince words with me. You live to do it.” He stood abruptly. “Pardon me if I don’t help you do the dishes, but I’ve got a plane to catch. I’ll just go to the airport and sit stand-by.” He threw his napkin on the table and turned toward T. He caught a plaintive look in his brother’s eye and couldn’t help himself from stealing a backward glance at Lyla.

“Oh, all right!” She scooted in the chair and C heard the sound of it scrape on the pine floor. “Sit back down, C. You can still fly stand-by for all I care, but I’ll satisfy your curiosity.”

He flicked the hair over his shoulders and turned to her with a glint in his eye. “Then I want all the details about you and—”

“I’ll satisfy your curiosity about Jemma.”

“Damn, but you drive a hard bargain. You expect me to clean up, too?”

“As your conscience dictates.”

“Good. I knew there were times it would pay not to have one.” He reached for his tea, downed the glass in a gulp. “So tell me about your friend Jemma. She is your friend?”

“Yes.” Lyla fiddled with the edge of the placemat. “Jemma’s never been married, she’s older than I am—”

“Whoa. How much older?”

“Let’s see.” Her fingers counted on the edge of the table. “When I was a freshman in high school, she was a freshman in college. Four years older. That makes her two years older than you.”

T started laughing. “An older woman. Who would have thought?”

“Never dated an older woman, C?”

“Who said I was interested in dating her! My God, what an awful thought. She couldn’t even be polite and the room was sub-zero from her being so frigid.” He reached for the last piece of Italian bread. “And, yes, I have dated an older woman.” He dipped the bread into the dressing on the salad plate. A mischievous grin tapped the edges of his mouth. “We both did.” He raised his eyebrows at T. “Remember Constance?”

T nodded his head and shared a long look with C. “One doesn’t forget Constance.” The brothers simultaneously stretched their legs.

“Constance must have been quite an education for you boys.”

“We were eighteen.” C bit at his lower lip. “I think it’s safe to say Constance took me from boy to man.” He couldn’t quit grinning at the thought. “What about you? Through the druggy haze—”

“A man would have to be long dead not to remember Constance. Drugs wouldn’t dim the memory.” T sighed.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me about this tonight?”

T shook his head. “Probably not, Lyla. It would be like Bertie telling her secrets. You wouldn’t want to know.”

C wrinkled his nose at T’s mention of Alberta Osborne, Lyla’s mentor and busybody extraordinaire. She had immediately made up her eighty-something mind about him and he hadn’t come out on the side of the angels.

“So let’s get back to Jemma.” C popped the last bite of bread into his mouth. “What made her such a bitch? How
does
she stay in business?”

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone refer to her as such. Start at the beginning. You must have tripped a wire somewhere.”

C chose to ignore the barb. “Well, after I can’t find a place to stay, thank you very much, I decided to take T’s advice and find a permanent place.” He smiled wickedly at Lyla. “And Frigid Country was the first place I came to. I go in and there’s this fat broad guarding the front office—”

“Carolyn. The fat broad is Carolyn. And she’s one of the nicest—”

“I don’t care. All the fat ones are nice, aren’t they? Well, to be such a bitch, Jemma sure wasn’t skinny! But fat broad was in my way and she wasn’t the boss.”

“I’m beginning to get the picture.” T helped himself to another serving of lasagna.

“So I tell her I don’t want any coffee, I want ol’ JT whose name is out on the sign. Seems JT doesn’t come round any more—”

“He had a stroke three–four years ago.”

“—but the daughter’s in, so I go in and introduce myself.”

“As if introductions were necessary at this point.”

“Now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever did say who I was.” He stacked his dishes and silverware. “I told her I wanted a house and she said she couldn’t help me.”
“Just like that.”

“Wham, bam, thank you sir, no dice. Go next door.”

“Ooh. You did make her mad if she referred you to DamSite. She didn’t look anything up on the computer or offer you one of those newspaper ads they seem to print every day?”

C squirmed. “She fiddled with that computer for about thirty seconds. For all I know, she was e-mailing DamSite that a pigeon was on his way.”

Lyla smiled. “You didn’t call her a frigid bitch?”

“Doesn’t sound like he had to.” T finished off the lasagna, licked his fork. “Maybe you could call her and see how her day went, Lyla?”

“Sam, I’ll do no such thing.”

“Not even to help your brother-in-law before he leaves town
for good
?”

“Oh, tit-for-tat, is it?” C stood. “Lyla does a little spy work to find out what
I
did wrong when I didn’t do a thing and I get banished?”

“Well, Lyla?” There was a glint in T’s eye that even C couldn’t miss.

“Gonna’ tell me about Constance?”

“Maybe you can worm it out of me later tonight. After you call Jemma. After Harrison’s in bed.” He lowered his voice. “After C’s gone.”

She twisted her lips and took a deep breath. “Okay, I’ll do it.” Standing, she shook a finger at C. “But then you’re gone!”

Chapter Three

J
emma held her mother’s elbow as they climbed the bleachers at the high school football stadium. The autumn breeze swung her hair into her face and she found herself swiping at it, almost toppling them.

“You know, Jemma, I can hold on to the handrail and be perfectly all right!” her mother scolded. She jerked her arm out of Jemma’s grasp and determinedly pulled herself up one more step before collapsing at the first empty set of seats.

Jemma settled in beside her mother. Even though they’d climbed only four steps, her mother was winded. That shortness of breath combined with her mother’s arthritis did not bode well for the coming winter.

“Hey, Jem-Jewel, you’re losing your touch.” The sarcasm dripped off Wiley Rose like oil. Which, when Jemma looked up at the man, wasn’t a bad comparison. The part-owner of DamSite had inherited everything he had from his father, including half of a business that could have run itself if there hadn’t been so many hands in the till, and dark good looks that had deteriorated into smarminess from living just barely on the legal side of any dealings. The ‘Jem-Jewel’ nickname had been his special gift to her when they were in high school, when he’d wanted to show up the daughter of his father’s rival. Everyone had forgotten it but him.

Jemma stared at him as he leaned on the metal railing, one foot poised to pitch himself higher in the stands in pursuit of the current Mrs. Rose, number four if memory served. It would be her son they were there to watch. Wiley himself had managed not to be fruitful. It was all the proof Jemma needed that there was a God. “And how’s that, Wiley?”

“One of your clients showed up at our office today. Mr. Eddie C Samuels himself!”

“Told you I referred him, did he?” She smiled up at Wiley and blinked her eyes. “I’ll be expecting a finder’s fee. I’m sure you’ll oblige.”

“When pigs fly, Jem-Jewel.” He launched after his wife, calling some appropriately tacky endearment in her general direction.

“That man!” her mother breathed out. “I feel like I need a bath just being in his presence!”

Jemma could hardly disagree and nodded silently.

“Do you see James Thomas?” Jessie Lovelace always referred to her son by both names, a way of distinguishing him from her husband, JT.

Jemma’s eyes scanned the area around them, then sought the field. Neither James Thomas nor his wife, Doree, was in view. “They must be running late. But I see Mandy.” She stood and waved, calling the girl’s name. One of the manes of blonde hair temporarily stopped conferring with her friends and turned to wave back, yelling hello at her grandmother as well. Jessie visibly brightened.

James Thomas and Doree arrived halfway through the second quarter, all apologies and bright smiles. Like how many kids did they have to keep up with, Jemma asked herself.
One!

The Thursday night junior varsity game became interminable, and not just because the home team was losing. Normally, Jemma enjoyed Mandy’s cheerleading and gymnastics. Seeing the squad do all the things she’d never had the opportunity to try, whether because of her mother’s undue vigilance or her own reticence she no longer knew, was usually all she needed to feel part of her family and community. She’d prided herself on dumping all the ill feelings from her past. Only stress would bring them back.