The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas #7)(28)

Toby had been spying on her.





Chapter Seven




TOBY RACED THROUGH THE TREES, cutting to the left around the big stump, darting past the giant boulder, hurling himself over the trunk of the red oak that had come down in a storm last summer. Finally he reached the path that led to the cottage. Even though he was smaller than a lot of the other guys in his grade, he could run faster than any of them. Gram said his dad had been a fast runner, too.

He slowed as he reached the cottage. She was sitting on the back step smoking another cigarette and staring out into the yard the same way she’d been doing since she got here two weeks ago. It wasn’t as if she had anything to look at. The yard sloped down to a gully, and except for the tomato and pepper plants Mr. Wentzel had put in, Gram’s garden was nothing but a bunch of weeds. There were a couple of apple and pear trees behind the honey house, but they weren’t near as good as the trees in Mr. Wentzel’s cherry orchard.

The woman blew a long stream of smoke but didn’t even notice he’d come back. Maybe she thought if she didn’t look, he’d disappear, but she was the one who needed to disappear. He wished Eli and Ethan Bayner were still here so he could go to their house. They were his best friends—kind of his only friends—but they’d gone to Ohio for the summer because their parents might be getting a divorce.

She flicked her ashes in Gram’s rosebushes. “It’s going to rain,” she said. “The bees are all heading inside.”

He glanced uneasily toward the hives. Fifteen of them sat on the edge of their yard not too far from the border of Mr. Wentzel’s orchard. Gram had loved the bees, but Toby hated getting stung, so he stayed far away from them. At first when Gram had gotten sick, Mr. Wentzel had taken care of the hives, but then he’d gotten sick, too, and he’d had to go live at this nursing home on the mainland. His son was in charge of the orchard now, and he didn’t even live on the island—he just hired people to take care of the fruit. Nobody had checked the hives since Mr. Wentzel left, and if they got too crowded, the bees would start to swarm, something Toby didn’t even want to think about.

He didn’t want to think about a lot of things.

The lady crossed her legs and took a deep drag on her cigarette, holding the smoke in her lungs like she didn’t know how bad it was for her. She had long red hair, and she was tall and real skinny with sharp bones that looked like they could cut you. She didn’t ask him where he’d been. Probably hadn’t even noticed he was gone. He was like Gram. He hated having strangers around. And now there was also the new lady at the Remington house. She told him her name was Viper. He didn’t really think that could be her name, but he didn’t know.

All morning he’d been spying on the Remington house in case Panda, the guy who owned it, showed up, too. Toby’d never met Panda, but he was pretty sure he’d stop sending the money if he knew it was Toby instead of Gram who’d been taking care of the house ever since Gram got sick in January. Toby needed that money or his plan to live here by himself wouldn’t work. The last time Panda had been here was two months ago, and he hadn’t called Gram to complain about anything, so Toby figured he’d been doing an okay cleaning job.

She stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer she left on the steps. “Do you want me to fix you something to eat?”

“I ain’t hungry.” Gram didn’t let him say ain’t, but Gram wasn’t alive now, and he had to make sure this lady knew he could take care of himself so she’d go away and leave him alone.

She stretched out her legs and rubbed her knee. Even for a white lady, her skin was really white, and she had little freckles on her arms. He didn’t believe she really knew how to cook because all she’d done since she got here was heat up stuff Gram had left in the big freezer. Like he couldn’t do that himself.

She finally looked at him, but it was like she didn’t really want to see him. “I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.” She sounded like she was really tired, but he didn’t see how she could be, since she didn’t do any work.

“Then why don’t you leave?” he said.

“Because your grandmother left me this place and made me your guardian and I haven’t figured out what to do about that.”

“You don’t have to do nothing about it. You can go. I can take care of myself.”

She picked up her cigarette pack and stared at the honey house. It was like she’d lost interest.

He stomped past her and followed the flagstone path around the side of the house. Why wouldn’t she go away? He could get himself to school and cook his own meals and wash his clothes and all that other kind of crap. Hadn’t he been doing it ever since Gram got sick? Even those couple of weeks he’d stayed with Mr. Wentzel after the funeral, he’d done stuff. Gram believed in keeping to herself, so she didn’t have a lot of friends except Mr. Wentzel and Big Mike, who used to drive her to the doctor’s. Toby was the one who took care of about everything else.

He reached the front of the cottage. Him and Gram had painted it three summers ago—robin’s-egg blue with light gray trim. Gram had wanted to paint it this purple color, but he’d talked her out of it. Now he wished he’d let her paint it any color she wanted. Just like he wished that he’d never talked back to her or tried to make her feel bad about not buying him a new game system or any of the other stuff he’d done.