a man, you little prude.”
Michelle stiffened. It was the same old song and dance. Roberta thought Michelle was backward and stupid.
“Oh, go on to your room,” she muttered. That wide-eyed, resigned look was irritating.
Michelle went without another word.
She sat up late, studying. She had to make the best grades she could, so that she could get a scholarship. Her father had left her a little money, but her stepmother had control of it until she was of legal age. Probably by then there wouldn’t be a penny left.
Her father hadn’t been lucid at the end because of the massive doses of painkillers he had to take for his condition. Roberta had influenced the way he set up his will, and it had been her own personal attorney who’d drawn it up for her father’s signature. Michelle was certain that he hadn’t meant to leave her so little. But she couldn’t contest it. She wasn’t even out of high school.
It was hard, she thought, to be under someone’s thumb and unable to do anything you wanted to do. Roberta was always after her about something. She made fun of her, ridiculed her conservative clothes, made her life a daily misery. But the reverend was right. One day, she’d be out of this. She’d have her own place, and she wouldn’t have to ask Roberta even for lunch money, which was demeaning enough.
She heard a truck go along the road, and glanced out to see a big black pickup truck pass by. So he was back. Their closest neighbor was Gabriel Brandon. Michelle knew who he was.
She’d seen him for the first time two years ago, the last summer she’d spent with her grandfather and grandmother before their deaths. They’d lived in this very house, the one her father had inherited. She’d gone to town with her grandfather to get medicine for a sick calf. The owner of the store had been talking to a man, a very handsome man who’d just moved down the road from them.
He was very tall, muscular, without it being obvious, and he had the most beautiful liquid black eyes she’d ever seen. He was built like a rodeo cowboy. He had thick, jet-black hair and a face off of a movie poster. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life.
He’d caught her staring at him and he’d laughed. She’d never forgotten how that transformed his hard face. It had melted her. She’d flushed and averted her eyes and almost run out of the store afterward. She’d embarrassed herself by staring. But he was very good-looking, after all—he must be used to women staring at him.
She’d asked her grandfather about him. He hadn’t said much, only that the man was working for Eb Scott, who owned a ranch near Jacobsville. Brandon was rather mysterious, too, her grandfather had mused, and people were curious about him. He wasn’t married. He had a sister who visited him from time to time.
Michelle’s grandfather had chided her for her interest. At fifteen, he’d reminded her, she was much too young to be interested in men. She’d agreed out loud. But privately she thought that that Mr. Brandon was absolutely gorgeous, and most girls would have stared at him.
By comparison, Roberta’s friend, Bert, always looked greasy, as if he never washed his hair. Michelle couldn’t stand him. He looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl and he was always trying to touch her. She’d jerked away from him once, when he’d tried to ruffle her hair, and he made a big joke of it. But his eyes weren’t laughing.
He made her uncomfortable, and she tried to stay out of his way. It would have been all right if he and Roberta didn’t flaunt their affair. Michelle came home from school one Monday to find them on the sofa together, half-dressed and sweaty. Roberta had almost doubled up with laughter at the look she got from her stepdaughter as she lay half across Bert, wearing nothing but a lacy black slip.
“And what are you staring at, you little prude?” Roberta had demanded. “Did you think I’d put on black clothes and abandon men for life because your father died?”
“He’s only been dead two weeks,” Michelle had pointed out with choking pride.
“So what? He wasn’t even that good in bed before he got sick,” she scoffed. “We lived in San Antonio and he had a wonderful practice, he was making loads of money as a cardiologist. Then he gets diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides overnight to pull up stakes and move to this flea-bitten wreck of a town where he sets up a free clinic on weekends and lives on his pension and his investments! Which evaporated in less than a year, thanks to his medical bills,” she added haughtily. “I thought he was rich...!”
“Yes, that’s why you married him,” Michelle said under her breath.
“That’s the only reason I did marry him,” she muttered, sitting up to light a cigarette and blow smoke in Michelle’s direction.
She coughed. “Daddy wouldn’t let you smoke in the house,” she said accusingly.
“Well, Daddy’s dead, isn’t he?” Roberta said pointedly, and she smiled.
“We could make it a threesome, if you like,” Bert offered, sitting up with his shirt half-off.
Michelle’s expression was eloquent. “If I speak to my minister...”
“Shut up, Bert!” Roberta said shortly, and her eyes dared him to say another word. She looked back at Michelle with cold eyes and got to her feet. “Come on, Bert, let’s go to your place.” She grabbed him by the hand and had led him to the bedroom. Apparently their clothes were in there.
Disgusted beyond measure, Michelle went into her room and locked the door.
She could hear them arguing. A few minutes later they came back out.
“I won’t be here for dinner,” Roberta said.
Michelle didn’t reply.
“Little torment,” Roberta grumbled. “She’s always watching, always so pure and unblemished,” she added harshly.
“I could take care of that,” Bert said.
“Shut up!” Roberta said again. “Come on, Bert!”
Michelle could feel herself flushing with anger as she heard them go out the door. Roberta slammed it behind her.
Michelle had peeked out the curtains and watched them climb into Bert’s low-slung car. He pulled out into the road.
She closed the curtains with a sigh of pure relief. Nobody knew what a hell those two made of her life. She had no peace. Apparently Roberta had been seeing Bert for some time, because they were obviously obsessed with each other. But it had come as a shock to walk in the door and find them kissing the day after Michelle’s father was buried, to say nothing of what she’d just seen.
* * *
The days since then had been tense and uncomfortable. The two of them made fun of Michelle, ridiculed the way she dressed, the way she thought. And Roberta was full of petty comments about Michelle’s father and the illness that had killed him. Roberta had never even gone to the hospital. It had been Michelle who’d sat with him until he slipped away, peacefully, in his sleep.
She lay on her back and looked at the ceiling. It was only a few months until graduation. She made very good grades. She hoped Marist College in San Antonio would take her. She’d already applied. She was sweating
