Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(6)

"He doesn't have to," I said, regretting having told her anything. I couldn't imagine Flip going to any trouble for something he plainly considered to be a minor issue.

"Honey," Flip protested, "I don't see no point in making trouble with the landlord on our first day—"

"The point is you should be man enough to stand up for my daughter." Mama glared at him. "I'll do it, damn it."

A long-suffering groan from the sofa, but there was no movement save the flick of his thumb on the remote control.

Anxiously I protested, "Mama, don't. Flip's right, it didn't mean anything." I knew in every cell of my body that my mother must be kept away from Louis Sadlek.

"I won't be long," she said stonily, looking for her purse.

"Please, Mama." I searched frantically for a way to dissuade her. "It's time for dinner. I'm hungry. Really hungry. Can we go out to eat? Let's try out the town cafeteria." Every adult I knew, including Mama, liked going to the cafeteria.

Mama paused and glanced at me; her face softening. "You hate cafeteria food."

"It's grown on me," I insisted. "I've started to like eating out of trays with compartments." Seeing the beginnings of a smile on her lips, I added, "If we're lucky it'll be senior citizens' night and we can get you in for half-price."

"You brat," she exclaimed, laughing suddenly. "I feel like a senior citizen after all this moving." Striding into the main room, she turned off the TV and stood in front of the fading screen. "Up, Flip."

"I'm gonna miss WrestleMania," he protested, sitting up. One side of his shaggy head was flattened from lying on a cushion.

"You won't watch the whole thing anyway," Mama said. "Now, Flip...or I'll hide the remote for an entire month."

Flip heaved a sigh and got to his feet.

The next day I met Hardy's sister, Hannah, who was a year younger than me but almost a head taller. She was striking rather than pretty, with a long-limbed athleticism that was common to the Cateses. They were physical people, competitive and prankish and completely the opposite of everything I was. As the only girl in the family, Hannah had been taught never to back down from a dare, and to rush headlong into every challenge no matter how impossible it seemed. I admired such recklessness even if I didn't share it. It was a curse, Hannah informed me. to be adventurous in a place where there was no adventure to be found.

Hannah was crazy about her older brother and loved to talk about him nearly as much as I loved to hear about him. According to Hannah. Hardy had graduated last year but was dating a senior named Amanda Tatum. He'd had girls throwing themselves at him since the age of twelve. Hardy spent his days building and repairing barbed-wire fencing for local ranchers, and had made the down payment on his mama's pickup. He'd been a fullback on the football team before he'd torn some ligaments in his knee, and he had run the forty-yard dash in 4.5 seconds. He could imitate the song of nearly any Texas bird you could name, from a chickadee to a wild turkey. And he was kind to Hannah and their two young brothers, Rick and Kevin.

I thought Hannah was the luckiest girl in the world to have Hardy for a brother. As poor as her family was, I envied her. I'd never liked being an only child. Whenever I was invited to a friend's house for dinner, I felt like a visitor to a foreign land, absorbing how things were done, what was said. I especially liked families that made a lot of commotion. Mama and I were quiet-living, and even though she assured me two people could be a family, ours didn't seem complete.

I had always hungered for family. Everyone else I knew was familiar with their grandparents and great-uncles and second and third cousins and all the distant relations that met up for reunions once every year or two. I never knew my relatives. Daddy had been an only child like me, and his parents were dead. The rest of his people were scattered around the state. His family, the Jimenezes, had lived for generations in Liberty County. That was how I got my name, actually. I was born in the town of Liberty, a little northeast of Houston. The Jimenezes had settled there way back in the eighteen hundreds, when Mexico opened the area to colonists. Eventually the Jimenezes had renamed themselves the Joneses, and they either died off or sold their land and moved away.

That left only Mama's side of the family. Whenever I asked her about them, she turned cold and quiet, or snapped at me to go play outside. One time I saw her crying afterward, sitting on the bed with her shoulders hunched over as if they were laden with invisible weights. After that I never asked her about her family again. But I knew her maiden name. Truitt. I wondered if the Truitts even knew I existed.

But most of all I wondered, what had Mama done that was so bad her own family didn't want her anymore?

Despite my worries Hannah insisted on taking me to meet Miss Marva and her pit bulls even after I protested they'd scared the wits out of me.

'"You better go make friends with 'em," Hannah had warned. '"Someday they'll get past the gate and run loose again, but they won't bother you if they know you."

"You mean they just eat strangers?"

I didn't think my cowardice was unreasonable under the circumstances, but Hannah rolled her eyes. "Don't be a scaredy-cat, Liberty."

"Do you know what happens to people who get dog-bitten?" I asked indignantly.