Page 90 of Old Fashioned
I nodded, framing her face with my hands. “My brothers will be here tomorrow. I’ve been trying to get a lawyer but…” I sighed. “I think Patrick knows we’re onto him, orsomeoneknows, because every time I get a lawyer willing to talk to us, they pull out the next day or even hours later, saying there’s a conflict of interest.”
She frowned. “He can’tpossiblyhave that much power over that many lawyers. Did you go to people outside of Stratford?”
I nodded. “I even talked to two in Nashville. I don’t know, Sydney… I think we’re in deeper than we realize.”
Her eyebrows tugged together, a defeated sigh leaving her chest as she watched me. “What do we do?”
A breeze rolled in over my mother’s front yard, whipping Sydney’s hair about and stirring up something deep inside me. It felt like the heavens were taking up arms with us, like my father had just dropped down and landed beside me, ready to fight.
“Tomorrow, when Noah and Mikey are here, we assemble the troops. We make a plan,” I said.
My chest caught fire again, puffing out, my heart racing loud and heavy in my ears as Sydney watched me. I saw the same fierce determination reflected in her eyes, and another gust of wind blew through the trees and through my soul, too.
“Then, we go to war.”
Jordan
On Monday evening, after the workday was done and the sun had already set over our small, sleepy town, Patrick Scooter walked us back through his immaculate home and into his office.
It was a dark and royal room, with deep mahogany bookshelves that lined three of the walls, and the only onenotlined with books boasted a floor-to-ceiling glass window that I imagined had an impressive view when the sun was shining.
I was glad you couldn’t see anything out of it now.
Patrick was annoyed we were there — that much was clear. His annoyance seemed to grow when Mallory opened the blinds that covered the large window, and cranked a wooden handle to the right of it, which opened the bottom at a small angle to let a cool breeze in.
“There, that’s better,” she said. “It’s always so stuffy in here.”
“It’s cold outside,” her father argued. “And close the blinds, I don’t want anyone being able to spy in on us.”
Mallory rolled her eyes, sitting across from her father in one of the chairs opposite his side of the desk. “No one iswatchingus, Dad. It’s Stratford, Tennessee, for Christ’s sake, and dinner time on a Monday.”
Patrick grunted, but didn’t argue further, and my heart raced in my ears as I kept my eyes on him and away from the window Mallory had opened.
Noah and Logan were with us, and Logan sat in the chair next to Mallory, while Noah and I stood behind them. We were all quiet, letting Mallory do all the talking for now — as we planned.
If we knew anything right now, it was that wehadto stick to the plan.
Patrick Scooter hadn’t changed much in the years since my father had passed. He had an old western feel about him, almost never seen without one of his many cowboy hats donning his head of white hair. His face was long and lean, but hard at the edges, and the wrinkles in his tan skin were deep and severe. Mallory told us that he used to be nothing but kind to her when he spoke, a farce that she began to see through as a teenager.
It didn’t seem to be that way now.
I wondered howshefelt — being in the same room with her father for the first time in almost a year. After she told him she was with Logan and she turned down the job he tried to giveherfirst, inviting that it go to Logan. Instead, he’d ripped away the small art gallery in town that he’d bought for her and exiled her from the family. Everything had changed then, as she’d told us, and he stopped putting effort into the charade of pretending he and his daughter had a good relationship.
He hadn’t even wanted anything to do with them when he found out Mallory was pregnant.
What was possibly even worse was that Patrick seemed to control his wife, Mary, who had watched me carefully when we first arrived at the house. She looked worried that I’d mention how I’d seen her at Mom’s earlier in the season, but I’d made a promise to my mom that I’d never say anything, and I’d kept it.
Still, I could see the pain in Mallory’s eyes, and the longing in Mary’s, like she wanted to hug her daughter and kill all the drama that had separated them.
But one look from her husband, and it was clear who was calling the shots.
It made me even more sick when Patrick sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, waiting. Because he hadn’t asked to see his daughter when he found out she was pregnant, but when she fed him the lie we’d come up with that pertained to Scooter Whiskey Distillery business — of course, he found the time.
He was a piece of shit.
And by the end of this night, we’d prove he was a murderer, too.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with us,” Mallory started, all business as she rested her hands on her baby bump.
