when he tried to stand, Frances kept hold of his wrist. “Trace LaRue. You will ask politely to be excused.” Watching resentment and temper flood into Trace’s brown gaze, Mary Rose wondered if her mother had pushed too far.
Then John Bowdrey looked up from his dinner. “Do as your grandmother says, Trace.” His stern tone would not be argued with.
Trace’s shoulders slumped. “Can I be excused? Please?”
Frances smiled and patted the back of his hand. “Of course, dear. Run and do your homework.”
Mary Rose wondered if her mother heard the boy’s snort as he left the dining room. “This might not be the best time for etiquette lessons, Mother. Trace and Kelsey have enough problems just handling their lives these days.”
“Etiquette makes even the worst situation easier.” Frances got to her feet. “Shall we clear the table?”
“Sure.” Mary Rose wasn’t surprised when her father simply got to his feet and left the dining room without offering to help. Her mother had him well trained—domestic responsibilities were strictly female territory.
Kate had used her fine china for dinner, which meant hand washing all the plates and the sterling silverware that went with them. Trapped at the sink in Kate’s ivy-and-white kitchen, up to her wrists in suds, Mary Rose was held hostage to her mother’s commentary on the state of Kate’s life.
“I can’t imagine what she was thinking, letting L.T. leave like that.”
“He didn’t give her a choice, Mother. From what Kate says, I gather he announced he was moving out, picked up his bags and did just that.”
“She should have stopped him, for the children’s sake.”
Mary Rose blew her bangs off her forehead and scrubbed at a spot of gravy. “How would she have stopped him? Thrown herself in front of his car? Grabbed hold of his knees, weeping and pleading? Kate has some pride, for heaven’s sake.”
“There are ways to hold on to a man who wants to stray.” Frances Bowdrey’s voice was tight, low.
When Mary Rose turned to stare, all she could see was her mother’s straight back. “Mother? What—?”
Trace came into the kitchen. “Didn’t Mom say there was cake?”
His grandmother turned. “I believe she made a German chocolate cake. Have a seat in the dining room and we’ll bring in dessert and coffee.”
He shook his head. “I’ll just take a piece to my room.” Despite her repeated protests, he got a plate, cut a two-inch-thick slice and poured a glass of milk, then disappeared again.
Mary Rose followed her nephew down the hall. “Trace, is your mom still talking to Kelsey?”
“Never did. Kelse wouldn’t open the door. Kate’s in her own room.” Taking the stairs two at a time, he left her standing at the bottom.
“What a mess this is.” Frances spoke from just behind Mary Rose. “I think I’d better talk to Kate. She’s got to do something.”
“Mother…” Mary Rose put a hand on Frances’s arm to keep her from climbing the steps. “Dad’s waiting on his cake. Why don’t you fix his coffee and the two of you have dessert? I’ll talk to Kate.”
Obviously torn, the older woman glanced upstairs and then toward the living room, where her husband sat with the newspaper, his foot crossed over his knee, jiggling in a way they all knew well. “You’re right. But be sure to tell Kate I’ll call her tomorrow. There are things she needs to hear.”
I doubt that. But Mary Rose kept her skepticism to herself as she climbed the stairs.
WITH RELIEF, Kelsey heard Kate’s door open and shut, and the murmur of voices behind it. She’d been afraid Aunt Mary Rose was coming up to talk to her about this afternoon. About booze and teenagers and the evils thereof.
And she would really hate to have to tell her favorite aunt to go to hell, especially on her first night in the house.
She glanced at her backpack on the floor at the foot of her bed. She had two tests tomorrow, and a boatload of homework waited for her attention.
Tough shit. Rolling off the bed, Kelsey grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the bottom of her sweater drawer and stuck her head out into the hallway to be sure the coast was clear. A second later, she was closing Trace’s door quietly behind her.
“Ooh, cake.” She tossed him the cigarettes and snatched up the remains of his dessert. “You ate all the icing, jerk.”
“That’s the best part.” He lit a cigarette for each of them, passing hers over as he went to open the windows. “Was that Auntie M coming upstairs?”
Kelsey drew in a deep lungful of smoke. “Had to be. Grandmother wouldn’t be so quiet.”
“I wish she’d stay out of our business.”
“M?”
“Gran. Drives me crazy, the way she’s always giving me orders. How’d we get such a witch for a grandmother, anyway?”
“I take great comfort from the fact that she’s not really ours.” Kate had married their dad when Trace was a baby, after their real mother had disappeared. So the Bowdreys weren’t actually their grandparents at all, not by blood anyway.
“That’s right. We turn eighteen, we never have to see her again.”
“Hell of a long time to wait.”
“Tell me about it.”
They smoked together in peace for a few minutes. Trace’s room was at the back corner of the house above the screened porch, with windows on two walls and big trees blocking the outside view. Kate had let him paint the walls and ceiling black and put up wildly colored posters—not rock groups, but totally weird computer-generated artwork. Some of the posters glowed in the dark; Trace’s room was an eerie place to be with the lights out.
“I got Janine’s ID finished,” he said, rummaging through the papers piled deep beside his computer desk. “Looks good to me.”
He handed over a North Carolina driver’s license with a picture of her friend Janine Belks, currently a sophomore in high school, but recorded on the license as age twenty-two. Kelsey nodded. “You’ve got those holograms down cold. I don’t think the guys at the license bureau could tell the difference.”
“Just be sure you get the money before you give it to her, okay? I don’t like getting ripped off.”
“No problem.” Another long silence flowed past. “There’s a party Saturday night. Gray Hamilton’s folks are going up to Chapel Hill for the soccer game. He’s got the house to himself.” She blew a smoke ring, then grinned. “And a hundred of his closest friends.”
Trace shook his head. “Boring.”
“I suppose you can do better? Like playing computer games with Ren and Stimpy?”
He gave her the finger
