“You look nervous as cat sitting in a room full of rocking chairs, boy,” Jeb said quietly, talking around a toothpick.
Brody stopped thumping his foot long enough to shoot Jeb a heated glance.
“You waiting for her to get back with John?” Jeb asked pointedly.
“Who? Lou?” Brody chewed his fingernails.
“Who else?” Jeb chuckled. “I doubt it’s John who has your tail in such a twist.”
“Actually, it’s both of them. They just took off and didn’t say a word about when they would be back. I had hoped to get to talk to Lou before I leave to go home tonight. I wanted to talk with her about something important.”
“How important?” Jeb asked.
“I’m not sure, Jeb.” Brody sighed and reached into his back pocket, retrieving the envelope Lou had dropped in the limo the night before.
He held it out to Jeb. “Do you know what this is about?”
Jeb accepted the envelope and opened it with his weathered old fingers. “This looks like it’s her business, Brody.”
“Not any more, Jeb. I want it to be my business now.” He drew in a deep breath. “I had hoped to get to talk to her about it before I left today. But then I acted like an ass and she took off with John.”
Jeb chucked again and adjusted the toothpick in his mouth. “That happens to all of us sometimes. What are you in such a hurry to get home for?”
“Work, Jeb. I have a lot of work to catch up on.” He ran a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Is that really what you want?” Jeb asked candidly.
Brody sighed. “I don’t know what I want, Jeb.”
“I think you need to figure it out. Quickly,” Jeb replied. He waved the envelope. “But don’t you worry none about this. I’ll see what’s going on.”
“My flight is at eight tonight, Jeb. Can you give me a ride to the airport?”
“If that’s what you need, I reckon I can.”
Brody got up from the chair and went inside to pack his suitcase.
****
As Lou and John pulled out of the drive, Lou reached over, pulled her sunglasses from her purse and put them on. Her hand tapped against the steering wheel.
John sang out, “Somebody’s got a boyfriend…”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He continued to grin at her boyishly. It was hard not to laugh at John sometimes, no matter how stern she wanted to be.
“I bet he’s seeing red right now because you just drove off with me.” He patted his chest proudly, a feigned show of bravado.
“He was seeing red before I drove off with you,” Lou mumbled at him.
John soberly replied, “Jealousy is a hard emotion to deal with, Lou.”
“He doesn’t have any reason to be jealous. It’s not like he’s staying or anything. We don’t even have a relationship.”
“Sure looked like a relationship to me, with the way he was clinging to you at the funeral.”
“He wasn’t clinging,” Lou protested.
“Yeah, right.” John snorted.