“Lots of military service in your family.” Sam and Craig’s dad had been retired army.
Sam shrugged. “Because of Dad, we’re all used to the service as an option. It’s not a huge leap like it is for some families. Craig always liked Deidra, but when he was in high school, she was way too young for him to think about as a date. He did call her when he found out another kid from Wright was going to UT Dallas, and he says they were gone on each other after the first date.”
“Aw. That’s so sweet. I guess all this trouble has been really hard on them.”
“Yeah. Craig was pretty mad at me and Mom for a while, and then he accepted it, but Deidra’s folks freaked out. The wedding got postponed a couple of times.”
I nodded. Sam had told me how his brother’s fiancée’s family had reacted to the news that her about-to-be mother-in-law sometimes ran on four feet.
“So instead of sending out new invitations, the Lisles just put a notice in the Wright paper.”
“How big is Wright?”
Sam laughed. “About as big as Bon Temps. Except in the tourist season. There’s a river that runs a little west of Wright, and there’s a lot of rafting and camping. At night, those rafters and campers are looking for something to do, so there’re a couple of big bars that have live bands. And there’s a western-wear store and a riding stable for beginners on up, for when people want to take a break from the water. Stuff like that. Wright’s a pretty conservative place, though. Everyone’s glad when the tourists leave in the fall.”
“Has your mom had any trouble with the rest of the town since the shooting?” Sam had been the target of one protest in the Merlotte’s parking lot, but since then things had died down—for good, I hoped.
“I’m reading between the lines, but yes, I think people haven’t been as friendly as they used to be. Don’s a local guy. He’s got cousins and stuff all around Wright.”
“He’s in jail now, right?”
“Yeah, he couldn’t make bail. He never denied he shot Mom. I don’t understand why there’s any sympathy for him.”
I didn’t say anything, but I could sort of understand feeling sympathy for someone who’d suddenly discovered his wife changed into a different creature. Of course, shooting that wife was a gross overreaction, but watching your wife transform into a dog . . . That would shake any man. However, that was not my problem to solve, and I was certainly sorry the whole incident had happened.
I was not walking into a normal, happy family wedding. I already knew some of what Sam was saying, but maybe I should have asked more questions before I got in the truck. I thought of the shotgun my brother had given me, sitting uselessly in the closet in my house.
“You look kinda worried, Sookie,” Sam said, and I could read the dismay in his brain. “I wouldn’t have brought you if I thought there was a way in the world something bad would happen to you.”
“Sam, I hope you have the whole picture of what’s going on in Wright,” I said. “I know you asked me to go with you before you started dating Jannalynn, but I really wouldn’t have minded if you’d wanted to take her.” He understood the subtext. Though he’d told me Jannalynn’s habits and manners weren’t family-pleasing, she had excellent natural defenses. In fact, she was the enforcer for the Shreveport pack. What was I going to do if we were attacked? Mind-read someone to death?
“This isn’t any mob situation,” Sam said, and he laughed. “I finished high school there when my dad retired from the military, and Mindy and Craig did even more of their growing up in Wright than I did. People will get used to the new things in their world, even the people in a conservative little place like Wright. These are just regular folks. They’ve known us for years.”
Pardon me if I felt a tad skeptical.
I saw the black Focus one more time, and then I didn’t spot it again. I told myself that there were hundreds of cars on this section of interstate, and a hell of a lot of them were going west like we were.
The landscape got less and less green, more and more arid. Trees were smaller, rocks were more plentiful, and there were cacti in the scrubby brush. After the turnoff south, towns were fewer and farther between. They were small, and the stretches of road were lined by fences of all kinds. This was ranching country.
Wright looked very normal when we rolled in. The highway ran through Wright going north–south, and it was the main drag. In its stretch through Wright, it was called Main Street, which made me smile. It was a one-story town. Everything was low and long and dusty. I looked at the people we passed, the gas stations, the Sonic, the Dairy Queen, the McDonald’s. There were three motels, which seemed excessive until I remembered that Sam had told me about the river west of the town. The trailer park was full, and I saw a few people walking west, flip-flops on their feet and towels over their shoulders. Early vacationers. We passed a rental place for canoes, tubes, rafts, grills, and tents.
“People can grill on the sandbars in the river,” Sam said. “It’s fun. You take your ice chest out there, a tube of sunblock, drink your beer, and grill your meat. Get in the water whenever you want.”
“I wish we had time to do that,” I said. Then, thinking that might sound like a complaint or a hint, I said brightly, “But I know we’re here to get this wedding done! Maybe you can bring Jannalynn over here sometime later in the summer.”
Sam didn’t respond. I’d seen Jannalynn be aggressive, physical, even savage. But surely she had a softer side? I mean, it couldn’t be all skull-cracking, bustiers, spike heels, and kill-my-enemies. Right?
It was a warm feeling, seeing the town where Sam had done a lot of his growing up. “Where’s your school?” I asked, trying to picture the young Sam. He turned east to take me by the little high school where he’d played sports and been named Mr. Yellowjacket. Yellowjacket Stadium was about the same size as Bon Temps’s Hawks Stadium and in much better repair, though the old high school had seen better days. The town library was brand-new, and the post office was proudly flying the flag. It whipped in the warm wind.
“Why’d your dad decide to retire here after he left the service?” I asked. “What do people do here besides cater to tourists?”
“They ranch, mostly,” he said. “A few of them farm, but mostly the land’s too rocky, and we don’t get much rain. A lot of people make the bulk of their income during the tourist season, and they just coast along on odd jobs the rest of the year. We get a big influx of hunters when the tourists run out, so that’s a major source of income, too. My dad commuted to Mooney, where Doke and Mindy live now. He had a job doing security for a big plant over there. It manufactures wind turbines for wind energy. Doke works there now.”
“And you-all moved here instead of Mooney because . . . ?”
“My dad wanted us to have the whole small-town experience. He thought it would be the best way to finish out my teen years and to bring up Mindy and Craig. Some of my mom’s family was still living in Wright then, too. And he loved the river.”
I looked at the people coming in and out of the businesses we passed. There were lots more brown faces than I was used to seeing, though even Bon Temps had experienced an upsurge in its Spanish-speaking population in the past decade. Some were identifiably Native American. There were very few black faces. I’d really traveled somewhere different. In addition to the differences in skin color, there were more people in western-style clothes, which made sense. We’d passed a rodeo ground on our way into town.
We took a left when we were within sight of the south boundary of the city limits, turning onto a narrow street that could be anywhere in the United States. The houses were small ranch styles, one or two had a trailer in the backyard where maybe a mother-in-law or a newlywed child lived, and most had a prefab toolshed tucked into a corner of the yard. There were lots of open windows. People in Wright didn’t turn on their air conditioners as early as we did in Bon Temps. Instead of garages, th
ere were carports attached to almost every house, some to the side, some added on in front.
At Sam’s mom’s home, the awning extended over half of the front of the house, covering enough area to park two vehicles. Unattractive, but efficient. “This is the house you lived in after you-all moved to Wright?” I asked.
“Yeah, this is the house Mom and Dad bought after Dad got out of the army. Don moved in here when he and Mom got married. By the way, she’s still Bernadette Merlotte. She never took Don’s name.”
Bernadette Merlotte’s home was a modest house, maybe twelve hundred square feet, with white siding and ornamental dark green shutters. The little yard space had barely any grass because it was almost entirely given over to beds containing flowers, smooth river rocks, and concrete statues, which were various in the extreme. One was a little girl with a dog, one was a large frog, and one was a creature that was supposed to be a fairy. (Any fairy I knew would want to kill Sam’s mom after a good look at that statue.) From the dry state of the patches of grass and dirt, it was evident that Sam’s mom cared for her flowers lovingly.
There was a little sidewalk winding to the front porch from the covered driveway, and the “porch” was flush with the ground. This was a slab house.
After an almost imperceptible sigh and a moment of bracing himself, Sam jumped out. I didn’t stand on ceremony. I slid out, too. I wanted to stretch my legs and back after sitting in the truck for so long, and I was almost as nervous about meeting Sam’s family as if I were his real girlfriend.
A screen door slammed, and Sam’s mother hurried down the sidewalk to hug her son. She was about my height, five-six, and very slim. She’d had his hair color, but the red gold had faded now. She’d obviously spent a lot of time out in the sun, so at least we’d have that in common. Then she was in Sam’s arms and laughing.
“It’s so good to see you!” she cried. After giving Sam a final, hard hug, she pulled away and turned to me. “You must be Sookie. Sam’s told me a lot about you!” The words were warm and welcoming, but I could tell how she really felt . . . which was more like cautious.
Shaking hands seemed a little too distant somehow, so I half hugged her. “It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Merlotte. I’m glad you’re doing so well.”
“Now, you just call me Bernie. Everybody does.” She hesitated. “I thank you for taking care of the bar while Sam came down when I was shot.” It was an effort for her to so casually mention what had happened.
“Are you going to let them come in, Mama?” said a young woman standing in the doorway.
“You just hold your horses,” Bernie said. “We’re coming!”
There were a few moments of confusion as we got out our hanging and overnight bags. Finally we went into the house. Bernie Merlotte’s right-hand neighbor, a man in his sixties, came out into his yard—ostensibly to check his mailbox—while all this was going on. I happened to catch his eye, and I gave him a friendly nod. To my amazement, he looked right through me, though I knew from his thoughts that he could see me plainly.
That had never happened to me in my life. If I’d been reading a Regency romance, I would have termed it “the cut direct.” No one else had noticed, and he wasn’t my neighbor, so I didn’t say anything.
Then we were inside, and I had to stuff my bafflement into a corner of my mind because there were more people to meet. The small house was crowded. First there was Sam’s sister, Mindy, a young mother of two. Her husband, Doke Ballinger, was as thin and laconic as Mindy was plump and chatty. Their children, five-year-old Mason and three-year-old Bonnie, eyed me from behind their mother. And finally I met the groom, Craig, who was like a more carefree clone of Sam. The brothers were the same in coloring, height, and build. His fiancée, Deidra Lisle, was so pretty it hurt to look at her. She was lightly tanned, with big hazel eyes and reddish brown hair that fell to her waist. She couldn’t have stood five foot two, and she was all compact curves and femininity.
She shook my hand shyly, and her smile showed that her teeth were as perfect as her complexion. Wow.
She was pregnant. She was hoping she wasn’t showing, that no one could tell. Now that I knew, I could sort of sense that other mind floating around inside her, but it was a weird read—no language, no thoughts.
Well, another thing that was none of my business. More power to them. I was the only one who could sense that other presence in her womb.
By that time Bernie was showing me to a very small room that contained a pullout couch, a sewing machine, a computer desk, and a card table that was cluttered with scrapbooking materials. “We’re not fancy here,” Bernie said. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping in what the magazines call the all-purpose room. Course, I just call it the room-Mindy-finally-left-out-of-so-I-could-have-it-back.” There was a hint of challenge in her voice.
“No, ma’am, I don’t mind at all.” I set my bag down by the end of the couch. “I’ll just hang these up in the closet, if that’s okay,” I said, taking my hanging bag over to the closet door in the corner and waiting for her permission.
“Go right ahead,” Bernie said, and she relaxed a bit.
The closet had just enough spare room right in the middle.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bernie said. “I meant to get in there and make you some more space. It’s taken me longer to get over this injury than I’d figured.”
“No problem,” I said. There was a hook on the outside of the closet door, so I hung my bag there rather than cram it in and wrinkle my dress.
“What’s the matter with your neighbor?” I said, my mind suddenly leaping back to my previous source of misgiving.
“Jim Collins? Oh, he’s such a grouch,” she said with a half smile. “Why do you ask? Was he giving you a mean look when you came in?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t pay any attention,” she said. “He’s just a lonely man since his wife died, and he was a big friend of Don’s. Don helped him out in the yard all the time, and they went fishing together. He’s blaming me for all Don’s problems.”
That seemed a strange way to refer to Don’s being in jail for shooting her. “Jim Collins hates you,” I said.
She gave me a very strange look. “That’s a lot to read into a look across the yard,” Bernie said. “Don’t worry about Jim, Sookie. Let’s go get you some ice tea.”
So Sam hadn’t told his mom that I could read minds. Interesting.
I followed Bernie down the short hall and into the kitchen. The kitchen was quite a bit larger than I’d expected, since it also encompassed an eating area set in a bay window. Deidra was sitting at the big round table with Mindy’s little girl, Bonnie, in her lap. The child was holding a soggy cookie and looked quite happy. Through the bay window, I saw Mason and his dad in the backyard playing catch with Craig and Sam. I went to the door and looked out at the family scene. When he saw me, Sam darted an inquiring look my way, to ask if I was okay. He was willing to come in if I needed support.
I smiled at him, genuinely pleased. I nodded reassuringly before I turned to the table. There was a pitcher of tea and a glass filled with ice ready for me. I poured my tea and sat down beside Deidra. Mindy had put a laundry basket full of clean clothes on the kitchen counter, and she was busy folding them. Bernie was drying dishes. I’d thought I might feel like an intruder, but I didn’t.
“Sookie, you’re the first girl Sam’s brought home in years,” Mindy said. “We’re dying to know all about you.”
Nothing like cutting to the chase; I appreciated the direct approach. I didn’t want to lie to them about our relationship, but Sam had brought me here to deflect the wedding fever. I would have felt worse if Sam and I hadn’t been genuinely fond of each other. After all, I told myself, I was literally Sam’s “girl friend,” if not his “girlfriend,” so we were more bending the truth than breaking it.
“I’ve worked for Sam for several years,” I said, pi
cking my words carefully. “My mom and dad passed away when I was seven, and after that my grandmother brought me and my brother up. Gran died a couple of years ago, and I inherited her house. My brother lives in my parents’ house,” I added, so they’d know that was fair. “I graduated from high school in Bon Temps, but I never got to carry my education any further than that.”
This Sookie-in-a-capsule got a mixed reception.
“Is your brother married?” Mindy asked. She was thinking of her own brother who was getting married, and the possibility of another grandchild to make her mother happy. Bernie was going to get one sooner than Mindy imagined.
“He’s a widower,” I said.
“Gosh,” Deidra blurted, “people in your family don’t have a long life expectancy, huh?”
Ouch. “My parents died in a flash flood,” I said, because that was the public story. “My grandmother was murdered. My sister-in-law was murdered. So we never got to find out how long they would live.” Actually, they’d all been murdered. I’d never put it to myself like that before. People in my family really, truly had a short life expectancy. If I followed the family trend, I could expect to meet my end through violence in the not-too-distant future.
I glanced at the appalled faces of Sam’s womenfolk, who’d gotten more than they’d expected. Guess they wouldn’t be asking me any more personal questions, huh? “But my brother’s still alive,” I said brightly. “His name is Jason.”
They all looked relieved. Deidra grabbed a napkin and began dabbing at Bonnie’s smeared face. “Bonnie, you have a chocolate mouth,” Deidra said, and Mindy and Bernie laughed while Bonnie stretched her mouth into a wide grin, enjoying the attention.
“How big is your family, Deidra?” I said, to get off the topic of my life.
“I got two sisters,” Deidra said. “I’m the oldest. They’re seventeen and fifteen, still in high school. And I’ve got two brothers, both older. One brother works here in Wright, and one brother’s in the army.”