Page 16 of Home Body
“Oh my word. Is that your brother Zach? Who’s with him?” Llayne had slowed to a crawl as they neared the sign and pulled onto the shoulder to stop behind an old Chevy.
Kenyon gathered the skirt of her gown and jumped out. “Jessa?” she hollered. “Zach! Holy moly, look at what you’ve done!” She waved her arms in a merry dance, clapped her hands over her mouth in disbelief, and howled with laughter.
Llayne, the mother after all, got out and yelled at her son. “Zach! You get down from there this instant! It’s dangerous. Jessa, get down.”
“Oh, hi Mom. Hey, Kenyon. Like it?” Zach, in typical eighteen-year-old fashion, ignored his mother’s concern for his safety.
Zach stood on the scaffolding at the foot of the gargantuan billboard with Jessa sitting on his shoulders to lift her up highenough to graffiti the sign. She had a wide paint brush in hand. As the couple turned to the intruders, a glop of bright pink paint fell off Jessa’s brush onto Zach’s forehead. He didn’t even flinch.
Jessa spread out her arms in glee. “What do you think?” The gesture caused the miscreants to totter like a cheerleading tower gone bad. Zach struggled to get his footing, Jessa yelped, and he finally steadied himself.
“Get down now!” Llayne insisted. “Before you’re the death of me!”
“Just a minute.” Jessa turned back to the sign and painted a giant exclamation mark at the end of her handy work.
Zach stooped to let her down. She didn’t even bother to bring the paint brush and paint can with her when she climbed down the ladder that looked suspiciously like the one that had been in the O’Brien’s garage. Zach gingerly followed, hopping off about halfway down.
Kenyon bounced around wailing, “I love it! Thank you so much!”
“Now, now. Let’s calm down,” the mom demanded. “That’s against the law, you know.”
“Oh yeah?” Zach threw his best smarmy grin at his mom. “You gonna call the cops on us?”
“I don’t know. I mean, well, I should.”
A car sped by and honked approval. The young folks waved wildly in return.
“Mom.” Kenyon pointed dramatically. “Look at it. It’s perfect.”
“Perhaps so. But still, I can’t condone having my children break the law.”
“I bet if you called Sheriff Allen he’d laugh his ass off.”
“Well, maybe he would.”
“And,” Zach added, “you know Dad will.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Llayne rolled her eyes. “I must confess. It is funny.” She cracked a grin.
They all looked up at the sign. Under the picture of the handsome, charming lawyer Chad Damon, where it’d said, “The moral choice,” Jessa had crossed out the “al” and painted “on” above it. It now read, “The moron choice.”
Llayne burst out laughing. “Okay, okay. Let’s all get out of here before somebody gets arrested.”
Zach got in his mom’s car and Kenyon hopped in with Jessa.
“I was so afraid you’d hate me forever,” Jessa moaned as she hit the gas and took off, her old Chevy beater surprisingly peppy, “for not telling you about Tamara and Chad. Kenyon, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to hurt you. They said…”
“Jessa. Stop. It’s okay. I don’t hate you. In fact, right now I’m pretty darned impressed, what with your artistic talent and all. I know you go back to Central in a couple of weeks. What you got planned in the meantime?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“Well, in my purse at home I have two tickets to an all-expenses paid ten-day trip to Cancun. Paid for by the moron. Wanna come on my honeymoon with me?”
“Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“You bet I do!”
