Milk? The explanation, which had been unnecessarily thrown in, seemed ludicrous now. Did the drugstore even have milk? Mom would see right through it.
“They ought to arrest him,” she said.
“For what?”
“For arson, that’s what! If he hadn’t disappeared after he burned the church down, they would’ve arrested him twelve years ago.”
I didn’t know why my mother always put me on the defensive. “Mom, no one ever proved Nate had anything to do with that.”
“Oh no? Then what do you call his sudden disappearance from town? You know it was an admission of guilt.”
“Maybe it was just an admission of defeat.”
Mom hesitated for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice cracked. “How can you defend him? Have you forgotten his father murdered yours?”
Once again, I felt slapped down. “Of course I haven’t forgotten.”
“Well, I hope you don’t fall back into his trap again. Neither of those boys are any better than their father. It’s genetic.”
I sank onto the couch, suddenly too weary to go on with this. “Meanness doesn’t run in families. Nate was probably as affected by Daddy’s death as I was. His life changed too.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”
My eyes strayed to the mug on my table. “No.”
But she knew. She had found some empty whiskey bottles in my bedroom when she was helping me pack. “Brenna, you’re under a lot of stress, but you’ve got to get hold of yourself. Drinking isn’t the answer, and neither is Nate Beckett.”
“There are no answers,” I said. “I’ve even forgotten the questions.”
“Aren’t the kids coming home today?”
“No,” I said. “He has a donor dinner tonight. He demanded to keep them one more night.”
“Trying to rehabilitate his image?”
“No doubt.”
“Well, you shouldn’t play along. If he wants to play hardball, you should too.”
“Maybe. I have to go, Mom. I’m really tired.”
I clicked off the phone when she hung up and stared at it, my mind wandering back to the days when Nate Beckett had seemed like the answer. But it was so long ago.
I picked up my laptop and started to type.
I never expected falling in love to result in my father’s murder.
We were kids, just sixteen, and he was my first love. Dad said the Beckett brothers were bad news, because the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Their father, Roy, was a drunk and a menace. That was the worst thing I’d ever heard my father say about another man. He usually showed grace, as the preacher of the biggest Baptist church in our area.
But to me, Nate wasn’t like my father said. Instead of the wild and reckless spirit the Beckett brothers were reputed to have, Nate Beckett had a sweet, affectionate, loyal spirit. He understood my conviction to wait for intimacy until I was married, and he promised never to compromise that. And he didn’t. He never pushed me beyond the limits I’d set for us.
But Daddy didn’t believe that. He went to his death thinking badly of me. He would have called it reckless to sneak out with the boy he had warned me not to see. And I guess you can’t get more reckless than causing a death.
I told my dad I was sleeping over at my friend Janie’s house, which was going to be true after my date with Nate, but we stayed out past curfew. Georgi found out I wasn’t with Janie, and she did her proper sisterly duty. She told our parents.
Dad thought the worst about me and panicked. What would I be doing with Nate if I was lying to him about where I was?
When I finally got to Janie’s house, she told me what a mess I was in. My dad was looking for me, and he wasn’t happy. I hurried home.
When I got there, my dad’s car wasn’t in the driveway. I ran in and found my mother in her robe, pacing in the living room. “Mom? Where’s Dad?”
“What were you doing with Nate Beckett? Where were you?”
“We just went out. We were talking. Where did he go?”
“He’s going to find Roy Beckett and make sure that boy never ever lays a finger on you again!”
I was horrified. We hadn’t done more than kiss. “He didn’t! We just wanted to see each other. We weren’t doing anything wrong.”
“You lied and defied us. What is he supposed to think?”
I got the rest of the details of that night secondhand, after the fact.
My dad found Roy Beckett propped on a stool in a drunken stupor at Flannigan’s Bar. Witnesses later testified in court that my father’s face was red with fury and that he’d been shaking as he’d turned Roy around on his stool to face him. In a quiet, seething voice, he told Roy to keep his son away from his daughter.
According to the witnesses who testified at the trial, Roy looked at him with his bloodshot eyes and asked, “My boy and the preacher’s kid?” Letting out a delighted laugh, he’d gotten up, staggering. “My boy and the preacher’s kid! Whassa matter, Preacher? You afraid my boy’s gonna make her forget all them fire-and-brimstone sermons of yours?”
It happened so fast that the accounts differed, but one thing all the witnesses agreed on was that my father grabbed Roy and shook him. Roy hurled himself at my dad, and a raging barroom brawl ensued.
Eugene, the bartender that night, tried to break up the fight, but only succeeded in moving it outside.
I found it hard to picture my sweet, loving father so angry he would confront another man like that, but accounts said the two men had gone outside, screaming threats at each other all the way to Roy’s truck.
Several people spilled out of the bar to watch the fight that consisted mostly of yelling, and before it came to blows again, my father reined in his emotions and walked away. He got into his car and drove past Roy on the way out of the parking lot. “Keep him away from her!” he yelled out the window.
Roy got into his truck and pulled out behind him.
No one saw what happened after that, but a little while later, someone found Dad’s car on the side of the road, about two miles up from the bar. Someone had run him off the road and shot him.
Roy claimed he had gone straight home and gone to bed. Someone else had followed the preacher and ended his life, he insisted. But everyone was sure Roy was the killer.
I stopped typing, unable to write more of that tonight. The pain of that time was still fresh. The funeral had been a horror, and afterward my mom, Georgi, and I went to my grandmother’s house in Denver, where I finished high school.
I never heard from Nate again.
A couple of years later, when the church burned down, people buzzed about the possibility that Nate had done it to get even for his father’s incarceration. But I was sure he hadn’t done it. I couldn’t blame him for leaving town. He’d had his father’s act hanging over his head, just as I had my father’s death hanging over mine. He was the only one who could understand the extent of that guilt.
I got up and forced myself to go to my bedroom. I kicked off my shoes and dropped on top of the bedspread.
Loneliness overwhelmed me like a cold, uncommitted lover. It made me long for that feeling I had had with Nate years ago. It had seemed so simple, the clean, pure love between us. But love had a way of igniting and burning out, especially when guilt was there to douse the flames.