Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

“Leave it be,” Val said. “You had your dinner. ”

“What is it?”

“Turkey soup and get your nose out of it, thank you very much. ”

Henry Guthrie sighed and set the lid back on the pot. “There seems to be an awful lot of it for one skinny little fella like Crow. ”

“I made enough for his lunch tomorrow. ” Val finished a clue and then looked up. Her father was still loitering by the pot, trying to look earnest and hungry. She shook her head but she was smiling. “Pop, if you’re really that hungry, just take some. You go wandering all around a thing hoping it’ll jump at you. ”

“Well,” Guthrie said with a smile, his curiosity getting the better of him, “maybe just a little. I wouldn’t want to steal food out of Crow’s mouth, you understand. ”

“Uh-?huh. ”

He fetched a dish and a ladle and scooped a brimming bowlful, an amount that scarcely dipped the level in the heavy spotted black pot.

“There’s crackers in the cupboard. ”

“No dumplings?”

“Pop…”

“Crackers it is, then. ” Guthrie took down a box of saltines, rummaged in the fridge for a bottle of spring water, and sat down at the table across from his daughter. A discerning eye could see the kinship between them. She had his strong bones and dark hair, but her coloring and her laughing mouth were from her mother’s Irish stock, not her father’s brooding Scottish blood. The elder Guthrie had heavier features and his once jet-?black hair had gone silver since Val’s mother had died two years before. His nose was hawked and beaky and he had a thick mustache that dipped into his spoonful of soup as he blew on it and sipped.

“How is it then?”

“Just like your mama’s. ”

Val smiled. “Her recipe. ”

Guthrie’s eyes crinkled into a warm grin that softened his dour face into an expression of great love and humor. Val loved him and he knew it, even if she sometimes nagged at him to eat right and take better care of himself. He had slipped a little after Margie had passed, but Val had hounded him until he had begun to take regular meals and even cut down on his drinking. Now she was trying to get him to switch to decaf, but she was going to have a damned hard fight of that. Unleaded coffee was obscene.

He ate the soup, which was thick with fresh turkey, corn, celery, potatoes, and green beans. He didn’t dare put salt in it: Val would never let him do it without a familiar and long-?winded lecture on high blood pressure. Besides, the soup was good enough not to need it.

Val sat and watched her father eat, enjoying it. Playing the domestic role was new and somewhat out of character for her, but she did it now for her father with no regrets. Left to his own devices, her father would live on pizza and Glenlivet, black coffee and Big Macs. She couldn’t bear the sound of his arteries squeaking shut. Still, she was no kitchen girl, not like her sister-?in-?law, Connie, who seemed blissfully happy to cook, clean, and beam vapidly at her husband, Mark, Val’s only brother. Val worked on the farm, out in the field, driving the tractor, harvesting the corn, bartering with wholesalers, doing valve jobs on the Bronco. Connie had her little herb garden and made adorable little needlepoints with poignant scenes of kittens with balls of yarn that made Val want to vomit. Connie always wore a dress, even when weeding her prim little garden. Crow often whispered to Val that Connie was a Desperate Housewife waiting to pop, and that she had some deep dark secret; but after knowing her for years, Val still couldn’t see any trace of depth in her sister-?in-?law, just as she was totally unable to see what Mark saw in her beyond a purely superficial prettiness.

Watching her father eat his soup, Val felt a little wave of acceptable domesticity waft over her. Lately she’d been trying out that domestic angle on Crow, and she found she liked that, too. Of course, she planned to teach him how to cook because hausfrau was definitely not how she viewed herself. A dash of domesticity here and there was fine.

Guthrie dabbed a cracker in his soup and watched his daughter watching him. “Something on your mind, pumpkin?”

Val shrugged. “Not really. ”

“Meaning there is. ” Guthrie stifled a grin. “Not really” meant the same thing to Val as it had to her mother.

“Oh, it’s nothing…”

“Something with Crow? So…you guys have a fight? He seemed pretty chipper when he bounced out of here this morning. Whistling and grinning, and I won’t ask why. ”

“Oh no, nothing like that. I’m just concerned about him, that’s all. ”

He lowered his spoon. “In what way?

She drummed her fingers on top of the crossword puzzle for a moment, looking down, then glanced up at her father. “He’s doing something that might be very dangerous. ”

“Oh? He’s not…?” Guthrie made a gesture as if he were knocking back a shot.

“Dad!”

“Just asking. ”