Page 26

Her verbal dig was like a slap to the face. I stumbled back a step but then caught and steadied myself. “’Cause I’m damn good at my job.”

“Do you have to put a cuss word in every sentence you say?”

Shit, if the word “damn” bothered her so much, she’d hate to hear the way I talked around my friends. Dropping my hat on the table, I pulled my hair out of the ponytail it had been in at the back of my neck, then redid it so it was tidier. Damn thing wouldn’t stay in its elastic holder no matter how many times I pulled it tighter. “Why’s it so hard for you to believe I’m good at what I do? Can’t you see how much I love it?”

“Well, now I know you love it.” She offered a rare smile and walked behind me to pull the few strands of hair I’d missed from under the collar of my work shirt. “Lemme do it.”

She pulled the ponytail out again and worked on making it nicer, and I thought, This woman is nothing if not miserable.

Her smiles were few and far between, and the truth was that she’d never admit to me being proficient at my job because she didn’t believe it was right for a woman to hold any kind of authority. Like a lot of people, it was the way she had been raised. It was my daddy’s opinion when he was alive. She would never have argued with him, and she didn’t feel the need to change now. She all but threw a fit during the last presidential election when there were no less than three women running. It had never made sense to me. She was a woman, for shit’s sake, but she’d be the first to tell you it wasn’t right.

After she’d fixed my hair, she patted my shoulder and walked around the table to grab the bag of medicine. “In my day, we didn’t have lady deputies or sheriffs. It’s just a little unorthodox.”

My eyes bugged out of my head while I tried for the millionth time to understand the nonsense coming out of her mouth. “What century do you live in?”

“Huh?”

Pick your battles, Abey. “Never mind.”

She looked in the bag again, picking up each bottle of medication and checking the label like I’d trained her to do, because before April Cunningham took over running Wisper’s pharmacy, Abel Jameson was the pharmacist, and he was eighty-five and well into the throes of dementia before his family had made him retire. Mama’s blood pressure medication had been mixed up with some little kid’s ADHD meds. That had been a fun trip to the hospital.

“I get my social security check Wednesday,” she said. “You wanna take me out to Idaho Falls? I need new shoes, and I s’pose I’ll take you to lunch, too, to that steak place you like so good.”

“I’m gonna be workin’ a lot. Can’t Bax take you? I don’t know if I’ll get a day off this week.”

“Your brother’s a busy man, Abey. You know that. He’s got his hands full with Athena and the farm.”

I had a big soft spot for my twelve-year-old niece, so I didn’t argue. Since we’d lost Candy, Bax and Athena had been having a hell of a time, especially Athena, and living on a stinky farm with my big dumb brother, the poor kid needed a break every now and then. The least I could do was keep her ornery grandma away from her when I could.

“Okay, well, how ’bout Dixon? He lost his job, didn’t he? He should have plenty of free time.”

Too bad my other brother, Brand, the only successful member of our family besides me, lived too far away to be any help. Lucky fucker.

“My baby boy’s goin’ through somethin’. You know he’s got the depression, and you oughta be more considerate of his situation. Besides, they done took his truck away. Hauled it right outta his driveway.”

“Who did? His truck was stolen? Why didn’t he call me?”

“No. It was them foreclosure people. You know,” she said with a wave of her hand, dismissing the fact that her “baby boy” was an irresponsible fuckup.

And for the record, I was her damn baby! I was the youngest. Out of the four of us, Dixon was the third in line for the white-trash throne, and Baxter was the oldest. Brand was the second-born, and he’d hightailed it out of Wisper the second he graduated high school. We didn’t see him but once or twice a year, if we were lucky. His construction company in Sheridan kept him just busy enough that he didn’t get roped into coming home very often. He’d even offered to build a second house on the farm for Mama to live in, but she’d refused that too.

She was actively trying to be miserable. There could be no other explanation.

“You mean his truck was repossessed?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said, ain’t it?”

“Well, that’s great,” I muttered while I unloaded the totes of groceries onto her counter, after I’d reorganized all her dirty dishes. I had no clue where they’d all come from, but she had a substantial collection of well-worn plastic cups with kids’ cartoons on them. Maybe she’d picked them up at a thrift store. “Can you just order your shoes online? I don’t think I’ll have time to take you all the way out to Idaho Falls, maybe not till next month.”

“No. I gotta try ’em on, and you know that shippin’ fee all them online stores charge is a racket.”

“Oh my God, Mama. I’ll pay the damn shippin’ fee.”

“Abey Juniper Lee! Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain. How many times I gotta tell you?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

DEVO