Snow in Texas

Chapter Thirty-One: Colin. Jenny.

Thirty-One

Colin

"You need to bum a smoke?"

"No. I've got some." Colin pulled his pack from his pocket and dropped into the offered patio chair. It was cold out here, the grass already shiny with frost in the security light, but he figured smoking in the house around the kids was a no-no. And he figured Ava wouldn't be shy about explaining that to him.

Mercy lit one up and took his own seat, blowing smoke up into the clear, black sky.

"Y'all've got a big yard," Colin said. "Plenty of room for when the kids get bigger."

"Decent grass in it, too."

"Bermuda?"

"Uh-huh."

"That'll be good in the summertime."

"That's what I figure."

"This is weird, isn't it?" Colin asked.

Mercy shrugged. "Little bit." Colin could hear the man breathing, the quiet expansion of massive lungs. "Seen your mom lately?"

His dinner rolled over in his belly. Mom. She'd told him about Remy – Remy the elder, and not the baby in the bathtub inside – a few months before. She'd set a plate of hot biscuits down in the center of her contact-paper-covered kitchen table and waited until his mouth was full before she covered her face with her hands.

"God...Colin..." she'd gasped. "I shoulda told you a long time ago. I shoulda! But I never did say it out loud. Larry had to know – all he had to do was look at you – but I thought, if I said, if I told you, he'd leave me."

The biscuit had lodged in his throat and he'd choked for a bit to find his voice. "Told me what?"

"Larry wasn't your daddy," she'd admitted through gapped fingers, crying. "Remy was. Remy Lécuyer."

There had always been a photo of Larry and Remy in the hallway outside the bathroom. He'd gone to it, Evie calling after him, trying to tell him the sordid story. He'd squinted at the grainy photo, his own ghostly reflection lurking in the glass.

Larry O'Donnell had been Irish, pale, broad-nosed and narrow-shouldered.

Remy had been tall, strong, dark, French features and Cherokee coloring, hair blue-black in the sunlight of the picture. That nose – that French aristocrat nose.

Colin's nose.

"I haven't talked to her since she told me," he said before he could catch himself. This wasn't the person he wanted to admit things to – his brother, of all people.

He waited for a reprimand.

Mercy said, "Dee told me. The last time I saw her before she died. I tried to smother her to death."

Colin stopped breathing.

"But Ava stopped me." Mercy made a face and flicked his half-smoked cig down onto the concrete. "She kicked the bucket anyway, not like I had to do it." His eyes looked black when they lifted. "I just wanted to."

The wind stirred the branches of the pear trees, the bare limbs rattling together, groaning.

"Ava says all of it's 'misplaced,' the way it makes me feel." He put a hand on his chest. "That it's not my fault, or your fault, and I shouldn't let it change my memories of Daddy."

What a strange thing it always was to hear a man of Mercy's size call his father Daddy. Like a child was trapped somewhere inside the monster.

"What does Jenny say?" Mercy asked.

Colin cleared his throat. "That we ought to try to get along better."

"Smart ladies we got."

"Yeah. We should probably listen to them."

"Yeah, but then we'd never live it down," Mercy said...and grinned.

~*~

Jenny

She'd forgotten all about Colin's dinner with Mercy and Ava until he called her just after eleven. She was wide awake, reading in bed in the fruitless hope that a story would ease the strain of worry. She answered her phone after the first ring. "Hi, sweetie. You back at the clubhouse?"

A beat passed before he said, "You alright?"

"Yeah. Fine."

"Then why do you sound like that?"

"Like what?" She drew her knees up, suddenly impatient and somehow more worried.

"Like you're out of breath." His voice hardened. Suspicion? Worry?

Jenny forced herself to relax. "I'm queasy," she lied – since she wasn't at that moment – "and the deep-breathing helps."

"Ah." She heard him unclench, all the way from Tennessee. "Sorry."

"Perks of mommyhood." She went back to her earlier question. "So you're back from dinner?"

"Yeah."

She chuckled. "Why do you sound like that?"

"'Cause I wanna come home."

Warmth stole across her skin, rushed to all her dark corners. She was silent too long, as she cupped the weight of his words and hugged them close.

"Jen?"

"You said 'home.' You want to come home."

"Uh...yeah. I guess I did." He cleared his throat. "Well, that's what it is." She heard his smile, the way the curve of his lips lifted his words up at the end.

Jenny pushed the chainsmoker from her mind, snuggled down into her pillows, and said, "Tell me how dinner went."

"Ugh. Fine..."