After the wedding.
“Oh! So Diane Donner has a restraining order against the farmer whose cows she bought? And that farmer is here tonight?” Sienna looked at me with wide eyes, engrossed.
“No. The restraining order against Miller wasn’t granted,” I clarified, sneaking another peek at Jenn. She still looked happy. Good. “Miller hasn’t made any threats against Diane, so the court ruled against her. I think he just really wants those cows back. But Miller has made threats against Kip.”
“Kip Sylvester.” Billy supplied the cretin’s full name once more.
“Kip Sylvester, Jenn’s father,” Sienna said, like she was trying to untangle all the ways folks in our small town intersected. “Kip was also the principal of the high school, right? Before running off with the school secretary, Elena Wilkerson—”
“Wilkinson,” Billy gently corrected. “And Elena’s sister is the one in jail for hitting Diane over the head and leaving her for dead last year by Old Man Blount’s bee boxes.” Billy sent me a quick glance, not voicing that Elena’s sister had also been the one who held Jenn and I up at gunpoint in Jenn’s house. The woman’s fifteen-year prison sentence included her attempt on our lives.
“So Miller doesn’t like Kip Sylvester.” Sienna took a sip of her wine, looking around at the crowd thoughtfully.
“No one likes Kip Sylvester,” I said. “Miller, Danvish, the Hills, Leffersbees, Badcock, Gangersworth, Lees, Lamont, Paytons—the list goes on and on.” It really did go on and on. I couldn’t think of a single person in Green Valley or the surrounding areas who didn’t wish ill on the man.
“He’s got a lot of enemies in these parts. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll stay far away.” Billy glanced down at his glass, studying it, and I knew he had his own private thoughts on the matter.
We stood in contemplative wordlessness for a brief moment, and I again took the opportunity to seek out the sight of Jenn. She was now engaged in discourse with my big dumb brother, Beau. For the record, I meant dumb in the best sense of the word, sweet and loyal, like a dog. He and his lady friend, Shelly Sullivan, held her attention, and Shelly must’ve said something funny because Jenn—
“Oh my God.” I heard Sienna suck in a surprised-sounding breath a split second before she gripped my arm, clearly startled.
I covered her hand with mine. “Are you okay?”
“Cletus!” She stepped in front of me, blocking my view of the rest of the room. “If Kip Sylvester has so many enemies”—her unmistakably alarmed gaze arrested mine, and then jumped to Billy’s—“then why is he here?”
Chapter Two
*Jenn*
“Rejection steals the best of who I am by reinforcing the worst of what’s been said to me.”
Lysa TerKeurst, Uninvited: Living Loved When You Feel Less Than, Left Out, and Lonely
Gasps from behind me distracted me and my momma from the joke Shelly had just told. She and Beau also seemed to find the sound distracting as her smile faltered at the swell of exclamations fluttering around us.
Laughter forgotten, both Shelly and Beau leaned to the side and peered around us. My friend’s reaction—flinching back, the way her smile immediately fell and her gaze hardened—was the second sign something was amiss.
“Oh good Lord!” my mother—who’d already rubbernecked to assess the issue—hissed at my side and gripped my arm. I started to glance over my shoulder too, but my momma’s hand tightened. “Do not turn around. Don’t give him the satisfaction.” She straightened her back, lifting her chin, her lips pinched. “I will deal with this.”
Despite my mother’s instruction, I turned and watched her walk toward the barn doors and to the couple who’d just entered. Now I gasped, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up painfully, and a shiver chased uncomfortable goose bumps over my skin as my stomach fell right to the floor.
Oh no.
“Diane.” The distinct disdain of my daddy’s voice rose above the remnants of conversation his presence hadn’t yet quieted. Just the sound of him . . . Oh no!
He wasn’t looking at me. Even so, my heart took off at a gallop, my throat suddenly dry, and a tremor of either fear or rage—or maybe both—made me feel unsteady on my feet.
“Jenn, I’m here.” Cletus, abruptly at my side, slid his arm around my waist like he knew how much I needed his support, his strong hands and assurances, his solid warmth, his strength; like he knew how much I needed him.
A relieved rush of air left my lungs, and I leaned into him, grateful beyond words for his timely appearance. “Cletus.”
“I’ve been here the whole time,” he whispered against my ear in a tone meant to soothe. “I’ve got you.”
I nodded, able to swallow around the rocks rising in my throat. Of course I’d known Cletus was here. I’d spotted him hiding (or trying to hide) along the far wall as I’d entered. Even though I’d felt his eyes follow as I greeted our guests, it had been obvious to me he had no desire to budge from the safety circle of his family.
And that was fine.
We would sit next to each other at dinner. I’d made certain our table’s seat assignments were occupied by his family, despite my momma’s protests such an arrangement would be gauche. Cletus didn’t have to venture into the crowd and chitchat if he didn’t want to.
But the sudden appearance of my deranged father and his equally deranged mistress had been enough to spur him into the crowd and to my side. I wasn’t surprised. When I needed Cletus, he was always, always there.
“This is awful. Why is he here?” I moaned, searching his handsome face. Both compassion and frustration were etched into the lines around his mouth and on his forehead.
“We’ll get rid of him.” Cletus smoothed his big, warm hand up and down my back while shifting his eyes to Beau. The brothers then stared at each other, as though communicating silently.
After a protracted moment, Beau leaned toward his older brother, his whisper urgent, “I’m sorry, Cletus. You’re not Duane. What do you want me to do?”
“He wants us to stand between the clusterfuck over there and Jennifer, blocking her from view so her father can’t see her,” Shelly answered, already pulling Beau by the wrist to position them both.
“Well, isn’t this nice. I guess the invitation to my own daughter’s engagement party got lost in the mail?” My father’s voice boomed over the continued murmurs and gasps of those assembled, like he wanted to make sure he was heard by all.
I couldn’t see much, not with Beau and Shelly now forming a wall between me and the unfolding ugliness, but I could make out the line of my mother’s stiff back, confronting my father all on her own. My heart lurched, hating she was over there all by herself, dealing with those people. I should be with her, helping!
I was just about to say as much when—just as abruptly as Cletus had appeared next to me—Billy Winston and Hank Weller came out of nowhere and flanked my mother, causing my lurching heart to soar. Thank goodness.