Page 82 of The Daring Times of Fern Adair
“That we got separated after the shoot-out.”
He’d lied to his brother. Something he’d never done before. The cot squeaked as she shifted, awkwardly, so she could face him. Cal turned onto his back, and she rested, half-sprawled atop him.
“You don’t think he believes you,” she said.
He readjusted the pillow, then lay still again. “I shouldn’t have lied to him. He sniffed it out.”
Cal brushed his fingertips lazily from her hip to her thigh. At Hazel’s Motel, he’d said he couldn’t have Fern around his brother. She’d put him between a rock and a hard place.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Concern pooled low in her stomach, where not many minutes ago, there had been nothing but heat and undiluted wonder.
“What will he do?”
“Don’t know,” Cal said with an easy shrug. “He thinks I’m the snitch.”
Fern went still. “You mean for the Jacky Boys? No. He couldn’t think that.”
But then again, there was nothing about Rodney’s mind that Fern could claim to understand. She only hoped that being brothers, being blood, protected Cal from whatever anger Rodney might feel from being lied to. Her finger traced the narrow valley between Cal’s pectorals, then lower, to his stomach, where she gingerly avoided his two still-healing gunshot wounds.
“Helen said she has a theory about why Rod is so different from you.”
“Oh yeah? What is it?”
“She said it was your story to tell, if you were so inclined.” Cal’s chest stopped moving in slow, even breaths. He went rigid beneath her, and Fern realized she’d said something wrong.
“You don’t need to tell me anything,” she quickly added.
He moved the pillow again, as if he couldn’t get it into a comfortable position, then hooked an arm behind his head. Fern kissed his chest and rested her head on it. She closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat.
“We had another sister,” he said after a minute. Fern opened her eyes again. “Bethel. I was twelve, Rod was eight. Eugenia had to be five or six. But Bets—that’s what we called her—she was a year old. Barely walking around.”
Bets. It was the name he’d been murmuring incoherently after he’d been shot. At the Bluebird Diner, he’d said he didn’t want to talk about her, and Fern had assumed it was a woman. A past lover.
The muscles under his skin, along his arms, and in his chest and stomach, tightened, as if he were bracing himself against the story he was about to share. It made her nervous.
“We were playing in the front yard, me and Rod, and I was supposed to be watching Bets. It was hot, and I guess I needed a drink, or maybe Rod asked me to get him one, I don’t remember. I just know I went inside for some water. Our mother was ironing, and Genie, she was playing in the kitchen with some dolls. Ma asked if I was keeping an eye on Bets, and I said sure, sure.” His fingers rubbed agitated circles into the small of Fern’s back.
“I was back outside, coming down off the front steps. This guy, I guess he’d lost control of his Runabout. Came roaring up over the curb, onto the grass.”
Fern’s throat closed off. She’d known Bets was gone when he started the story, but this… Cal’s throat grew hoarse.
“She just disappeared under the front wheel. It was like the auto ate her up.”
She swallowed the fist in her throat. “Oh, Cal.”
The circles against her lower back slowed. He took a breath. “There was a lot of screaming and crying. I don’t know how much time went by, but our pop was suddenly there. He’d come home from the shop, so someone must’ve called him or gone to get him. The thing is, they couldn’t get Bets free. The Runabout’s wheel well got all twisted up and…and she was still in there. Dead, but stuck.”
Fern’s stomach roiled at the agony Cal’s family had faced. She hadn’t thought it could get any worse.
“You watched?” she whispered, horrified.
“No, our neighbor, Mrs. Gates, brought us into the house while a bunch of men, including our pop, tried to get her out. But it was worse inside. We could hear our ma wailing from the bedroom. The worst sound I’ve ever heard.”
Fern laid her cheek against his chest, overwhelmed. But he wasn’t through.
