Leaving L.a.. Rexanne Becnel

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СКАЧАТЬ slammed out of the car, resolved in my goal to just collect my due and get started on a new, normal life. From upstairs I heard Tripod’s mournful howl, and I spied his ugly snout pressed against the window glass. He probably needed to visit the nearest tree.

      I trotted up the steps, crossed the porch and walked into the house—only to be confronted by Carl.

      “The least you could do is knock.”

      I ignored him. “We need to talk,” I said to Alice, who stood farther down the hall, in the doorway to the kitchen. “By the way, better collect your toy dog. I’m about to let Tripod out.”

      “And that’s another thing,” Carl hollered up after me. “That dog is too big to be allowed indoors—”

      He broke off when Tripod charged down the stairs in one big hurry. The dog leaped up, planting his one front paw on the front door, barking his impatience.

      “What’s the matter?” I cooed to him once I reached the door. “You’re acting like an old man with prostate trouble.” I turned pointedly to Carl and smiled. He looked a good fifteen years older than Alice and not particularly well preserved.

      I opened the door, Tripod ran out, then I turned to Alice. “Where do you want to go to talk?”

      “Can it please wait?” she asked, her voice soft, her hands a nervous knot at her waist.

      My sister is really pretty. She takes after my mother with her sunny hair and vivid blue eyes. She was over forty now and still heavier than was considered healthy. But she was a lot thinner than I’d ever seen her. She looked good. Sweet and soft. Put her in a blue bonnet, and she’d be my image of Little Bo Peep.

      I, meanwhile, apparently took after my unknown father. Red hair, pale skin. Thank God not too many freckles. I was taller than Alice and Mom, with bigger boobs—which I sometimes loved and sometimes hated. Let’s just say they have their uses and have got me past a lot of locked doors a lesser endowed woman couldn’t have entered.

      But that was neither here nor there. “Wait for what?”

      “Daniel’s missing.”

      “Missing? No, he’s not. He’s at his friend’s house. He asked me for a ride.”

      “Without telling me?” All of sudden Alice’s soft side turned fierce.

      “He told you he was going. I heard him.”

      “Well, I didn’t. What friend?”

      “Some kid. I don’t know. Josh,” I said as the name came back to me. “Yeah, Josh.” Of Voodoo Fest and four-wheeler fame.

      Alice and Carl shared a look. “I’ll go get him,” Carl told her. “If you’ll be all right,” he added, shooting me an aggrieved look.

      “I’ll be fine,” she said, patting his arm.

      I slapped my hands, rubbed them together, and grinned. “Well, good. That’s settled. So, big sister. Shall we have that talk?”

      I walked past them and into the kitchen. My stomach had started growling the moment I drove up. Since the house was half mine, I decided that everything in it was, too.

      I stood in the open refrigerator checking out the healthy selection of white bread, bologna and processed cheese. Yuck. I strained to hear the muffled conversation in the hall. Though I couldn’t make out most of the words, I didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know Carl was royally pissed.

      Poor Daniel. I didn’t envy him the ride home.

      Bending back to the refrigerator, I noticed some bacon and took it out, then found eggs. “Do you have any grits?” I asked when Alice came in. “I haven’t had any decent grits since—” since G.G.’s last Southern tour “—since forever.”

      She handed me a Martha White bag and a pot, then sat down while I started the grits, put the bacon in the microwave and slapped a thin pat of butter into a cast-iron skillet. I was seriously hungry. “Want any?” I added as an afterthought.

      “No.”

      I worked in silence as the grits bubbled and thickened. Once I turned them off, I broke three eggs in the skillet. “So here’s the deal,” I began as I scrambled them. “Mom was Granddad’s and Nana’s only heir, and we’re her only heirs.” I turned off the skillet and scraped the eggs onto a plate. “This place is half yours and half mine. And I want my half.”

      She frowned. “You want me to split the farm in half?”

      “I don’t want any part of this godforsaken place,” I said. “What I want is half the value of the property. And I want it as fast as I can get it.”

      I sat down at the kitchen table and started to eat, as if I was totally nonchalant and this conversation was not absolutely critical to my escape from my past—my pasts in both Louisiana and California.

      She shook her head. “But I don’t have any money, Zoe. I can’t afford to buy you out. And this place is hardly god-forsaken. It might once have been but not anymore. Lester and I made it into a good home. A God-fearing home.”

      “Well, good for you. But that doesn’t change anything. It’s still half mine and I’m willing to sell you my share. Surely your wonderful husband had life insurance.”

      She stiffened. “He only had a burial policy.”

      “You’ve got to be kidding! With a family and all—”

      “He had health problems. A bad heart. Life insurance was too expensive, okay?”

      I wanted to ask how old he’d been when they got married, fifty? Sixty? But I didn’t. “So he left you in the lurch. Isn’t that just like a man.” I fixed her with a sharp eye. “Is that why you’re hooking up with good ol’ Carl? Need another sugar daddy?”

      Finally I got a real rise out of her. “Just because you’ve lived a debauched life doesn’t mean the rest of us have!”

      I gave a sarcastic snort. “I was here for seventeen years, Alice. I know exactly what sort of debauched life we lived.”

      “I was raised in it, yes. Just like you. But I never lived my own life that way.”

      “What makes you think I did?”

      Her eyes narrowed. “Come on. I saw that music video, Zoe.”

      “Really? Which one?”

      “There was more than one?” Her face was a study in horror.

      I just smiled, folded my hands on the table and nodded. But inside I was raging. How dare she judge me?

      “The one I saw was about ten years ago. You were dancing in this low-cut dress, rubbing up against some guitar while this man watched you.” She shuddered.

      I, too, shuddered in disgust when I thought of Dirk and the Dirt Bags, but for an entirely different reason, though that wasn’t her business. “How did you ever come to see that video?”

      “Sue СКАЧАТЬ