Draw (Gentry Boys #1)(74)

I’d grown up less than a mile from the prison. My parents had worked there for their entire adult lives. Yet it had somehow become scenery to me. I’d rarely thought about the collection of dire human events which were tied to its presence.

My father still lived in the house I’d grown up in. The neighborhood mostly consisted of families of correctional officers but it was one of the nicer areas of Emblem. I felt a trickle of doubt as I walked up the driveway. I hadn’t talked to my father since the week I arrived in Arizona. He would have no idea that I might show up at his door today. I brushed off the hesitation. We weren’t close but he would be pleased to see me. He always was.

A blowsy blonde answered the door with a cigarette in her mouth. “Yeah?” The woman, who must be my father’s latest girlfriend, looked me over coolly as if she’d already decided to dislike me.

“Hi,” I tried to smile. “I’m John’s daughter, Saylor.”

She took a drag of her cigarette and scratched at the patchy exposed skin above her left breast. “Right, I recognize you. You might remember me too.”

I looked at her more closely. She was vaguely familiar. Then it clicked. She was older, heavier, but she had the same face as one of my former classmates. “You’re Marnie Hart’s mom. How is Marnie?”

She made a face. “Knocked up and layin’ down for a sorry loser out on parole.”

“Oh,” I said, rather at a loss. I never really liked Marnie anyway.

Marnie’s mom was rapidly becoming bored. “Look, John’s on third shift these days and he’s sleepin’.”

“Right,” I fidgeted, feeling ill at ease. “Well I’m just in town for the day so I figured I’d say hi.”

“Whatever,” she shrugged and started to shut the door. “I’ll tell him you were around.”

“You do that,” I muttered, already on my way back to my car.

I paused in front of the garage. The main door was closed but my dad had a longstanding habit of keeping the service door unlocked. I walked in, wrinkling my nose at the oppressive heat and the musty odor. It was filthy and crowded, as garages usually were. My dad hadn’t parked his truck inside in years. I stared at the floor where once I’d had my first sexual encounter with Cord Gentry. It had been quick and dirty, almost a chore; nothing like what we had now. But it had set the stage for everything that happened later. If Cord hadn’t taken my virginity on the floor of that garage I don’t know if we ever would have found our way to each other later. Hadn’t he said something of that nature the night we went swimming together? He’d leaned over and kissed me sweetly on the forehead after musing about the past and the future. I let out a ragged sigh and shut the garage door.

It was after noon and I was hungry so I stopped at the only McDonald’s in town. Seated in a lonely booth, I sighed and called the glowing bride. She yelled at me for failing to answer her call yesterday but relaxed when I told her I had the bouquet. I sipped my soda and listened while she carried on about what a crappy job the hairdresser had done and shrieked at someone about color coordinated napkins.

“I’m already at the Roast,” she said, referring to the seedy restaurant/bar where her wedding was to take place in a few hours. “I’m setting up but it’s a pain in the ass so if you’re not doing anything-“

“Sure, ma. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Aw, baby. I can’t wait to see you.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing that was bullshit but unwilling to spend any time thinking about it. “Can’t wait to see you either.”

The older I got, the less I thought of my mother as ‘Mom’ and the more I thought of her as ‘Amy’. I suppose some women just weren’t meant to be mothers and Amy Cooper McCann was one of them. As I watched her from the doorway of Rooster’s Roast, a dive which squatted off the main drag in town and had changed owners as many times as the years I’d been alive, she was patting her curled hair and fussing at the old man who was the tired current proprietor.

“There’s the bride,” I hailed, waving.

The look she gave me was brief annoyance immediately masked by a smile. “My beautiful baby girl.” I suffered a dry kiss on the cheek as she stared at me critically.

“So how are things, Saylor?”

“Good,” I lied.

She looked behind me. “You come alone?”

“Yeah. Cord couldn’t make it.”

Amy gave a little snort of derision. The last thing I felt like doing was listen to her tear Cord down.

“So,” I said brightly. “Where’s the groom?”

As I expected, Amy’s attention immediately shifted. “He’s at home, getting ready.”

“Where is home?”

She beamed at me. “I moved into Gary’s place about a month ago.”

Last I’d heard, Gary the Gnome occupied a custom built mini mansion at the north end of Main Street.

“How nice,” I managed to respond.

“He insisted that I quit my job too.”

That was surprising. “You left the prison?”

“Sure. I’m going to be a real housewife now. What is that?”

My mother was pointing to the bag in my hand which held the brightly colored purchase I’d made at Walmart.