Hate You Not

She laughs, like she knows some kind of private joke, like the Bay is going to be leveled by an asteroid in an hour.

“You can visit them,” she offers. “If you stay in your lane and out of mine. They’ll be back later. They’re at a…thing. You can visit any time you like if you can be polite and respect me. But otherwise?” She shakes her head, her slender jaw hard. “Get back in that fancy car of yours and go back where you’re from. And take your judging with you.”

I’m not letting this end here. “What am I judging, with an offer of helping you out?” I ask, being completely disingenuous.

“See!” She throws her arms up. “That’s it. ‘Helping me out.’ I don’t need your help. Why do you think I would?”

“Oh, I don’t know?” I arch a brow. “Your recent acquisition of two young children?”

“Acquisition!” She laughs, but it’s derisive. “Of course to you that’s what it is.”

“It’s a word,” I say sharply. “I used it correctly.”

“Yeah, well, I’m great with kids. I’m a kid person. In fact, I always wanted children.”

“Are you married?”

She pops her eyes like she’s surprised I asked, then quickly says, “It doesn’t matter.”

“Do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?”

I can see surprise cross her face. “Not a girlfriend, no. A boyfriend—” She shakes her head, one brow lifting as, again, she gives me a censuring look. “That’s not any of your business.”

“So you do.” I smirk. “Is he good with children? It takes patience.”

She laughs like she thinks I’m crazy. “I never said I have a boyfriend, first off. But if I did, it wouldn’t matter. I’m their guardian, so they come first.”

“And the farm?” I say it softly—playing a card.

“What about it?” She knows I know. I can tell she does, because her face takes on a look of bareness, that sweet, soft mouth of hers going softer.

“What if you don’t make it?”

“Make what?” But she understands. Again, it’s all there on her face, which has gone hard and cold.

“What if the bank gets the farm?”

Fury twists her pretty features. “Just who do you think you are? You don’t know anything about my life. My family’s farm. You don’t know anything about us! You should leave now.” She walks forward, which forces me to take a few steps back.

“It’s a reasonable question,” I say, now standing in the screen porch doorway. “Will you have to move them? Uproot them again?”

“That is not going to happen!” She folds her arms, her chest heaving. “This farm is just fine, thank you very much. It’s a better life here than that cesspool you call home, with all the drugs and the garbage in the streets and the nobody giving a horse’s rear end about what happens to any of it, least of all you! You didn’t even come to their funeral! Who are you to come down here and tell me what for!”

“Tell you what for?” It’s so damn funny, I’m near laughing.

She gives me a death glare. “Don’t make fun of me because you’re unimaginative and like to use foul language.”

“Who said I like to use foul language?”

She shoots me a yeah-right kind of look. “I know your type the second that I seem them.”

“Second that you see ’em, eh?”

She nods. “Condescending, rude, presumptive.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is presumptuous.”

“I believe the word I used is just fine.”

“Say that again. Say ‘fine.’” I drag the word out the way she does, with her twangy accent.

Her eyes glitter, and I think I see her swallow. “You’re a bully.”

“I want what’s going to be best for my niece and nephew. Nothing more and nothing less.”

Her jaw hardens. “I’m good with them—and for them. I’m like their mother. Their mother was my sister. I’m familiar, and I’ve got a good home for them here.”

My pulse kicks up a notch. Now she’s second-guessing herself, softening. Now’s the time to go for the jugular.

“I see an untenable situation. Where’s the crops here? Where’s the cattle? What about school?”

“They’re enrolled at school.”

“What school?”

“The one their mama went to,” she says in a hard tone.

I feign shock. “You don’t mean the local school?”

“The local school, yes. It’s a wonderful establishment.”

“It’s got subpar ratings. Something like a C- on those school rating sites. I looked.”

“No it—”

“Yes. It does. They’ll never get into college from there.”

“They—”

“And who will study with them?” I ask.

“I will.”

Her cheeks are red now, so I know she’s good and pissed off.

“Did you go to college, June?”

“I don’t think that’s—”

“Any of my business? No, I’m sure you don’t, because you didn’t. What about high school?” Her face pales. “How can you educate them if you yourself aren’t educated? That’s a valid question.”

“Oh, you know what is a valid question?” She steps closer, her face mannequin still. “I’ll tell you a valid question.”