The Scent of Rain and Lightning Read Online Free PDF Page B

kid’s action and lack of reaction. “Never. Not as a joke. Not playing around. Never on anybody else, and most important of all, not on yourself.”
    “I’m sorry,” the boy said, and looked as if he meant it.
    W HEN HE GOT BACK behind the steering wheel, still feeling shaken by what the seven-year-old had done with the gun, Hugh-Jay found Chase in the passenger side of the front seat.
    “Did you see that?”
    “We all did that kind of thing. On ourselves. On Belle.” Chase smiled at the memory of tormenting his sister. “That was fun. Don’t you remember?”
    “No, we didn’t.”
    “Yeah, it’s irresistible. We played around, just like him.”
    Hugh-Jay shook his head, finding that hard to believe but feeling comforted nonetheless. They were all still alive. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. “Dad would have killed us,” he said, still skeptical. “Mom would have killed us and then killed us all over again.”
    “Not if they didn’t see it.”
    “You were a big help just now,” Hugh-Jay said then, with mild sarcasm. He told his brother about their father, about the truck, about how Chase was going to have to get out again and drive Billy’s truck over to Hugh-Jay’s home. “You can park it behind the garage. Make sure it’s out of sight. I hope we aren’t making things worse for her.”
    “Again.” Chase put a hand on the door handle. “Yeah. Me, too.”
    “What do you mean, ‘again’?”
    “That’s what I said earlier, that I hoped we weren’t making things worse.”
    His brother shot him a suspicious glance. “You’re not screwing around with her, are you?”
    “Billy’s wife? Are you kidding? Hell, no.”
    “She kept looking at you.”
    “Beats looking at you.”
    Hugh-Jay laughed, and Chase grinned at him.
    “Give me some credit, will you?” the younger brother requested.
    “For what, respecting another man’s marriage?”
    Chase grinned again, as he opened the door again. “No, for having better taste in women.”
    It hit Hugh-Jay wrong, and was one of the few moments in his life when he didn’t like his middle brother very much. “Let’s go home,” he said sourly. “To my home. My wife. My supper. My television set.”
    “Sheesh,” Chase joked as he stepped out. “Possessive, are we?”

    T HAT EVENING SEEMED to pass peacefully in Rose and on the farms and ranches all around it. Chase parked Billy’s truck behind his brother’s garage and threw the keys onto their kitchen table, where they remained until he got ordered to set the table. He flirted supper out of his pretty sister-in-law, Laurie, and then pushed his giggling three-year-old niece Jody on the swing in the backyard. Then he walked over to Bailey’s Bar & Grill for a few beers before returning to a guest bedroom at his brother’s house.
    Hugh-Jay called their father to ask about the truck, and Hugh Senior said, “Valentine told your mother in the grocery store last week that Billy was still driving, in spite of his license suspension. She told your mother that sometimes he has their little boy in the car when he’s been drinking. Your mother and I discussed it, and we agreed that we could not with good conscience allow that to continue. So we decided to take the truck away from him in the way best suited to help his wife and son. I suppose we could have reported him to the sheriff, who could have set up a trap for him, but how would that help Valentine pay the rent? It wouldn’t. But purchasing the truck for more than they can get for it from anybody else will help them, plus it will keep Billy from killing himself or somebody else on the road.”
    Hugh-Jay couldn’t argue with his parents’ logic.
    He was proud of them for doing it.
    Out at High Rock Ranch, Annabelle and Hugh Linder ate a light supper of cold fried chicken with their youngest child, Bobby. Even their daughter Belle was gone, spending the evening at her bank-cum-museum, closing a deal on a stuffed buffalo head. Over Annabelle’s