Page 39 of Brett and Rowdy
“Ashley, honey?—”
“Don’t you Ashley honey me,” she snapped at Dan. “That man has been nothing but good to me. For more than twenty years, he has had my back—every fucking day for twenty-one years. So I am not going to watch my mouth. I am going to tell the truth.”
“And what is that?”
She glanced around as if to make sure no one was watching them, and then she looked at Dan who raised an eyebrow at her, his expression odd, maybe impatient, he wasn’t sure.
Ashley sighed. “Well, the truth is that the truth isn’t mine to tell you, even as much as I want to. If Rowdy wants you to know, he’ll tell you himself. But I swear to God, if you walk away right now, you better not wanna ever see him again, because I will take his ear, and I will bend it against you as hard as I possibly can. If you’re gonna have a booty call and then give up right away because you don’t understand everything that’s going on in everybody else’s life, then you’re not the kind of guy I want him to be involved with.”
Wow. Brett just sat there and blinked a little bit because, one, she was right, he thought, and two, nobody had taken him to task like that since his grandpa died. Well except for Rowdy last night.
“Look, I know it’s probably petty of me, but I don’t like feeling that everybody knows a secret but me, and that everybody’s just sort of laughing at me behind my back.”
“But see, that’s the problem. It’s not about you. This is about Rowdy and about that little girl who loves him so much she’s fixing to go to New Mexico and move in with him. And if he wants you to know the deal about that, then he’ll tell you. But I can tell you, as I’ve already said more than once, he did not cheat on you with me, and he did nothaveto put his name on Madison’s birth certificate.”
He took a full minute to ponder the implications of that. Maybe more than one, especially the way Dan and Ashley stared at him when he finally opened his mouth to talk. But there were a lot of outcomes there and a lot of possibilities.
“Okay, but no onehasto. I guess he did the right thing.”
“No, he did more than the right thing. He did everything, and I’ll never forget it, and I’ll always be grateful to him. You put that in your pipe and smoke it for a while, and then you ask him what’s going on.”
Brett spread his hands in surrender. “Fair enough.”
She arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow. “So, are you gonna stick around for barbecue?”
Brett nodded. “Yeah, I think I am.” He kind of wanted to apologize for pissing her off, but at the same time, she hadn’t exactly been forthcoming and/or kind to him, so he just kind of put that in his pipe and smoked it, just like she’d said.
When Rowdy and Madison came back, Madison was looking back and forth between Brett and her mom with some sort of radar, like she knew something had happened. Rowdy couldn’t see their faces so maybe he couldn’t read the tension in the room, but Dan was overly cheerful when he spoke.
“You guys ready to go have some food?” Dan asked.
“You know I am,” Rowdy shot back. “I am starving. Throwing an axe to make as much money as I did today is hard work.”
“You did great, Daddy.” Madison looked so excited. “And I get my cut right? My usual cut?”
“You know it. Fifty percent for my girl.”
Madison boogied. “I love it. Now I can buy those boots that I want.”
“I think you ought to wait and buy them in New Mexico. They’re cheaper there.”
“Yeah, but are they that rad, because those ones I want here are pretty damn cool.”
“Well, baby, I don’t know what to tell you. I mean maybe—maybe—you would find some even cooler on the drive. We can stop someplace amazing, like taking the southern route through Texas. We can do that and look if you don’t trust small-town New Mexico.”
“Oh, that sounds so much more fun than Oklahoma and Arkansas! Let’s do that.”
“Good deal.” Rowdy turned his head toward Brett. “You doing okay? You’re awfully quiet.”
“I’m fine.” He didn’t mean to make it quite so sharp, but that was how it came out.
Rowdy frowned a little. “All right. Where do y’all wanna go?”
“Do you wanna head to big D’s?” Madison asked. “It’s my last chance for a while, so I would love to go get some.”
“Sounds good to me.” Brett actually liked the place. It had a good menu, and it had the distinction of being run by a former football player.
“They got anything besides pulled pork?” Rowdy asked. “I don’t remember y’all taking me there before.”
