Page 78 of Moonshine Lullabies

She was afraid he’d reject Tate and ask for a DNA test and that’d be it. She didn’t want that for Tate and shereallydidn’t want her rapist to have custody of her kid.

“I don’t know a judge in his right mind that’d do that,” Cy said, and I looked up at him.

“Really?” I asked. “Ain’t you watch the news?”

Cy scowled, and he shook his head.

“Wasn’t but this past year a judge ordered custody of a woman’s teenage daughter to the man that’d raped her mamma when she was sixteen an’ he was thirty. Then ordered that woman to pay her rapist child support.”

Cy an’ Jess’s daddy made a disgusted noise and closed his eyes shaking his head, lighting off in a string of Cajun French that could only be a string of muttered curses.

“No way,” Cy said, and I pulled out my phone and opened it up, did a search and handed him the first article that came up.

“Weren’t but two parishes over. On up there in Tangipahoa,” I said.

He swore off in a similar string of choice words that I couldn’t understand and dropped my phone like it was a snake that’d bit him after reading the screen.

“I don’t know what this world’s comin’ to,” Cy’s daddy just kept slowly shakin’ his head.

“You want revenge, or I wouldn’t be sitting here,” I said after I made a point of turning off my phone. I looked at Cy and he said, “Left it in my truck.”

We both looked at his pappy and he set an old-school flip phone in front of him.

“I only need the damn thing to make calls,” he said, and I had to laugh. He opened it up and turned it off anyway.

I nodded.

“You think you can be cool all the way to the Fall?” I asked. “Cy here mentioned a huntin’ accident might be in order.”

His daddy nodded, “It’ll be hard,” he said, “but if my daughter can do it for fifteen years, what’s a few months of pretendin’ everything’s fine?”

I nodded. It was a good way of lookin’ at it.

“Alright then,” I said. “I do believe that’s all that needs to be said on that for right now.”

“I don’t know how I could ever make this up to her,” her father said, and I shook my head.

“I don’t know that y’ can, and I don’t say that to be cruel. I say it because I can’t fathom it either.”

“I appreciate you helpin’ me,” he said, and I nodded.

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna need your help, too. Jessie-Lou begged me not to tell a soul about all this but I’m a firm believer that y’ can’t just ignore an infection. Not a physical one, an’ not one in the soul, neither, an’ just expect it to heal on its own.”

“You want from me?” he asked. “Just say it an’ it’s yours.”

“Just the first time we meet up in front of Jesse-Lou, shake my hand like you meetin’ me for real for the first time. Like this meeting never happened. I know we saw each other at the house, but we ain’t never been properly introduced.”

He nodded and said, “I can do that, if you tell me anything I might need to know on how to even begin to try an’ fix this thing with my daughter.”

“That goes without saying,” I said nodding. “I don’t want to see her hurt anymore. I just want to see her happy.”

Her daddy nodded eagerly and said, “I’d like the same. A man only wants that for his children and somehow a long the way I messed up. I was so focused on making them independent and dependable, I forgot there was more to life than just efficiency an’ hard work.”

He looked at Cy.

“I’m sorry for that, son.”

Cy shook his head, “We all fucked up where Jessie’s concerned. I’m workin’ on it, too.”

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