Looking for Trouble (Jackson: Girls' Night Out 1)

“Any luck with the strays?”

“We found two. I suspect the last one made a good meal for something. He was that steer with the bad eye, remember? Anyway, I’ll try one more time tomorrow.”

She set a pot of coffee on to brew and opened the fridge. “I’ll put a chicken in for you two, if that sounds good.”

“I can make a chicken,” he said, just as he always did, and she answered just as he knew she would.

“I know you can.” But she rinsed one off and stuffed it with lemon and garlic all the same. Once she had it in the oven, she started sweeping the kitchen, ashamed to see the dust bunnies chasing across the floor ahead of her broom.

“You gonna stay for dinner?”

She glanced down the hall where her brother had disappeared. “No. I don’t think so.”

“It’s probably best. He’s not going to be pleasant.” As if on cue, the muted sound of loud music started up from the other side of the house. He was twenty-six years old and still handling stress like a teenager.

“God,” she muttered and got back to sweeping. When that was done, she bundled the tablecloth up and took it outside to shake out the crumbs.

“All right now,” her dad said when she got back in. “We’re fine. You don’t need to take care of everything.”

She ignored him and poured a cup of coffee, fixing it up with sugar and no cream just the way he liked. “Sit down and relax, Dad.”

“I can’t. I’ve got to drive over to the feed store.”

She reversed course and took the cup of coffee to the counter instead of the table and poured the contents into a travel mug. It was a thirty-five minute drive. She didn’t want him nodding off, and after that confrontation, he definitely looked tired.

“Dad,” she started, but then she didn’t know what she should say. She wanted to apologize again, for all of this, but none of it was her fault. Except the letter in her dresser. That was her fault. Her mother’s ashes were ready to be picked up, they’d been ready for six weeks, and for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to go get them. It felt shameful and wrong, and she didn’t want to tell him.

“I’m fine, Sophie,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’ll all be fine.”

Yes. They would. He’d always promised her that, and he’d always been right. They’d gotten through those first few days and weeks and months. And they’d gotten through school-yard cruelty and every new person whose eyes went a little wide when they realized who you were. They’d get through this, too. This was nothing.

But as soon as she was back in her car, Sophie was crying again. She had no idea why. This lawsuit was stupid and untimely and just plain wrong, but it wasn’t the end of the world. So why did she have to pull her car over as soon as she was out of sight of the house?

She dug blindly through her purse for Kleenex, but as soon as she wiped her eyes tears spilled out again. She finally gave up and laid her forehead on her steering wheel to cry.

It couldn’t be that she was sexually involved with one of the Bishops. She wasn’t that shallow, or at least she didn’t think she was. This pain was deeper than that. It hurt. Her stomach ached with it. And she felt...terrified. Shaky.

That had nothing to do with Alex. How could it?

She just wanted this over. All of it. She wanted to have a normal family and a normal past.

And that was it, wasn’t it? She’d thought it was finally over. The Bishops were having their dedication and then people would finally forget.

The welcome truth was that the story wasn’t that interesting anymore. For so many years, the fates of Dorothy Heyer and Wyatt Bishop had been a mystery. Rumors had flown, every one of them pushed and plumped up by Rose. Where the pair had gone, what had happened, whether they were still together or ever had been, who had spotted someone fitting their descriptions.

No one had known what had happened, so anything could have happened. Any delicious, scandalous, awful thing.

But in the end...it had been almost boring. They’d been in Wyatt Bishop’s truck together, hauling a camper up an ancient road to a campsite on Bishop land, and the dirt had given way. All those years their bodies had been lost in a narrow canyon near an abandoned town, and that was the end of it.

The story was finally done. Everyone could move on.

But not anymore. Thanks to her immature, thoughtless, aimless little brother, the story was delicious again. Scandal tinged with bad behavior. This was a small town. Everyone knew the players. There were sides and they would be taken. Rose Bishop might not be sympathetic, but she was good at propaganda. People didn’t like Rose, but they sure loved her stories.

Sophie took a deep breath and then let the sobs fall from her throat. She was so sick of dealing with what her mother had done when Sophie was only five years old. She was so damn sick of that being her life. Maybe she should dye her hair. Maybe she could change her name. Alex’s brother had done that. Shane had gotten so sick of being Shane Bishop that he’d changed his name to his mother’s maiden name. Of course, that itself had been a scandal. There was no way to get away from it. Except to leave.

Sophie found another tissue and mopped up again. She had to stop crying; the tissue packet was empty.

Anyway, there was no point crying. She couldn’t leave. Her dad needed her, and as tough as it was to be Dorothy Heyer’s child, it was a blessing to be Greg Heyer’s daughter. He hadn’t turned his back on her all those years ago. She wouldn’t turn her back on him now.