Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(50)

Torie’s wine glass stalled in midair. “Uh-oh.”

Shelby looked shocked, and even Warren seemed taken aback. “No man in the Traveler family would ever do anything like that, not even Kenny.”

It occurred to Emma that the Travelers had a peculiar moral code. Apparently it was acceptable for Kenny to pretend he was a gigolo, for Torie to go through two husbands and live off her father’s money, for Warren to get a woman thirty-one years his junior pregnant, but it wasn’t acceptable for her to experience a very natural misunderstanding.

“Shelby called Peter a forgotten child,” she pointed out with some asperity. “She told me Kenny had abandoned his responsibility to his own flesh and blood. And Peter looks like a miniature version of Kenny, doesn’t he? What else was I to think?”

Torie glanced over at Kenny and shrugged. “Put like that, I guess it’s a natural conclusion for somebody who doesn’t know you too well.”

Kenny would have none of it. “She knows me plenty well.”

“Actually, I don’t,” Emma pointed out. “We only met three days ago, and, technically, you’re my employee.”

That brought Warren’s eyebrows to the center of his forehead, but Kenny merely snorted.

Shelby had been silent, but suddenly it was as if someone had lit a fire under her. “Peter looks exactly like your baby pictures. You’re two peas in a pod, and that’s what makes this whole situation so ugly. You only have one brother on the face of this earth, Kenny Traveler, and you’ve turned your back on him.”

Kenny rescued a table knife from Peter’s reach. “I haven’t turned my back on him.”

But Shelby was off and running. “You’re lazy and irresponsible. You don’t go to church, you roam all over the country, you refuse to date any of the nice girls I’ve found for you, you hand your money over to drug runners, and you don’t show one single sign of settling down. If that isn’t turning your back on your responsibility to your baby brother, I don’t know what is.”

Emma wasn’t following this, but, as she tried to sort it out, Shelby’s voice grew choked. “Your father is fifty-eight years old! He doesn’t eat right. He doesn’t get enough exercise. He’s a heart attack waiting to happen, and he could die any minute! That leaves Peter and me. And if something should happen to me, my baby boy would be alone.” Her face crumpled. “I know all of you think I’m being silly about this, but that’s because none of you know what it’s like to be a mother.”

Torie shoved herself back from the table and headed for the bar.

Shelby went on. “I never knew I could love anybody like I love Peter, and I just can’t stand thinking about my baby all alone in the world.”

“He wouldn’t be alone,” Kenny said with such exaggerated patience that Emma suspected he’d been over this ground before. “In the first place, the chances that both of you will die before he’s grown are minuscule—”

“Don’t tell me that. It happens all the time!”

“—and I told you I’d be his guardian.”

“What kind of guardian would you be for a little boy? I can’t sleep at night worrying about it. You live all over the place, you currently have no job! You get into fights and mess around with bitchy women.” She shot Emma a quick, apologetic glance. “I didn’t mean you.”

“Thank you.” Emma realized no one had mentioned the possibility of Torie becoming Peter’s guardian. Why was that?

Shelby looked over at her husband. “You agree with me, don’t you, Warren?”

“I’m not ready to climb into the grave yet, but I have to say that it’s hard to see Kenny as anybody’s guardian.”

Emma’s spine stiffened, and even though this was none of her business, she couldn’t keep silent. “Kenny would make a fine guardian.”

They all stared at her.

She blinked her eyes, not quite certain what had come over her, but knowing she had to speak. “It’s obvious he cares about Peter, and Peter adores him. Shelby, I sympathize with your concern, but as an educator, I believe I can safely tell you it’s misplaced. One only has to see Kenny and Peter together to understand that you couldn’t find a better protector for your son.”

Everyone looked over at Peter, who was busy gumming away on Kenny’s thumb.

Shelby’s eyebrows drew together. “Just this afternoon you thought Kenny had abandoned him. Haven’t you changed your mind awfully fast?”

Emma replied simply. “I know him better now.”

For the first time since their blowup, Kenny regarded her with something other than chilly courtesy. The beginnings of a smile caught the corners of his mouth, but whatever response he might have made was lost as Shelby leaned forward.

“But Peter’ll need a mother’s influence, too. And what if Kenny marries someone awful, like that bitch Jilly Bradford?”

Torie returned from the bar, a wine glass in her hand. “I don’t know why you ever asked her out, Kenny. The only thing she had to recommend her was an eleven handicap. Plus a D cup.”

“She had other things,” Kenny said defensively. “Unlike your and Shelby’s friends, her IQ was in three digits.”

“That’s not fair,” Shelby said. “You dated my sophomore roommate, Kathy Timms, and I distinctly remember she was Phi Beta Kappa. Or was it Phi Mu?”