Mind Games

“Of that sweet little boy!”

“No, he said they love Bray. They don’t really approve of Ty. Of what he’s done with his life.”

That didn’t lessen Lucy’s outrage. “Makes me think even more of him because I think less of who raised him up. That boy’s got talent flowing over, and he put it to good use. He still is while raising a happy child all on his own.”

“He shrugs it off, but it hurts him a little. I could feel that without trying. I don’t know that it’s like it was with Dad, but it made me think of how some just can’t or won’t love and accept who you are.”

Amused, and more than a little in love, Lucy watched Bray race to talk to the chickens. “We’re not kin, but we’ll be family to them.”

“He kissed me.”

Lucy kept shelling peas. “I don’t find that a surprise, honeypot. He looks at you with wondering in his eyes. Did you kiss him back?”

“It was … fleeting. I don’t want to get mixed up, Grammie. I can remember how intense my feelings were for him when I was sixteen. But that was harmless, fantasy, innocent. Something else is stirring up now.”

“Oh, darling, I was just about gone over Harrison Ford back in my day.”

“Really?”

“And I still wouldn’t turn him away from the door today—especially if he came calling wearing that Indiana Jones hat.”

“Is that why you have the complete set of DVDs?”

Lucy sent her a sly, sidelong smile. “A woman’s entitled to her fantasies. And a teenage girl, too. You didn’t know him, not the man—well, hardly more than a boy himself back then. You knew his music, what they wrote about him, what he said in interviews and such, but that’s an image. Now you know him.”

“I’m starting to, so something else is stirring up. But I don’t know how long Riggs will hold off pushing at me, or how to explain any of that. And I’d have to, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I have to if something comes of what’s stirring up?”

“Would you want someone who didn’t accept you for who you are?”

“No, but … I’ve been so careful. After I told Asher—”

“You didn’t deserve what that boy said, what he did. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve you.”

“No, I didn’t, and no, he didn’t. But it left a mark.”

Thea’s hands worked on the shells as she thought it through. “I’ve told myself what happened with Asher was, in the long run, a good thing. It taught me to be more careful, and I have been. But I haven’t been really serious about anyone since. I think this could be serious, for me.”

“You’ll do what you need when you need.”

Over where Bray talked to the goat, Bunk let out a woof. His tail wagged with it, but he stayed beside the boy.

Lucy chin-pointed as she continued to shell.

“That’s Nadine coming down from the hills, both kids in tow.” She started to smile in welcome, then her face went to stone. “Goddamn it, she’s sporting a black eye. Favoring her left hip.”

“I see that.”

Thea laid a hand on Lucy’s, and together they saw more.

The angry man lashing out, the crying children, the woman weeping as she fell.

“Not for the first time.” Lucy’s voice rang cold. “And it won’t be the last.” Sighing, she set the peas aside and rose. “We’ll do what we can for her.”

She’d gone to school with Rem, Thea remembered. A year behind him, and now she had a little girl about Bray’s age, a boy not quite two, and an aura of such resignation clouded over her it broke the heart.

Thea went in to get cookies for the children and sweet tea for their mother.

“Miss Lucy.” Nadine shifted the thumb-sucking, towheaded baby on her hip. “I hope we’re not disturbing you.”