Goodbye Earl(48)

“She’s right, Ada,” Kasey said.

The restaurant had been closed for thirty minutes, but it still smelled like good food, a packed house. Two small white candles flickered in glass on the table, and soft Sinatra floated from the speakers. Ada had made chicken piccata and lemon rice. There was an unopened bottle of chardonnay on the table; Rosemarie picked at the foil on the lip. Ada got up and walked away, returning with a wine key and four glasses.

*



Caroline showed up looking like she’d stepped out of a magazine—smiling in a light cowl-neck sweater, shorts, and a pair of espadrille wedges that wrapped around her ankles. “Why haven’t y’all started eating? Were you waiting for me? Sorry I’m late,” she said.

“You look good,” Ada said. “I love your face.”

“Aw, thank you,” Caro said, letting her fingers brush her forehead. “So do y’all! Whew, it’s a wonder I could pull myself together. It’s been a day,” she said, sitting and plucking an olive from the scalloped dish.

“Why? What happened?” Rosemarie asked so innocently that if the situation were different, Kasey would’ve wanted to laugh.

“Oh, just busy. Bakery stuff and I was at my grandma’s helping her weed the gardens earlier and Trey—”

“Caroline, stop. Caro, I was there at the house this morning and heard Trey hollering at you. I saw him grab you and push you, and I don’t want you denying it, because I saw it. I was standing at the door, and I could see through the window because the curtain was twisted up. You can’t stay with him. You have to get out. Now!” Kasey said. She let the words fly without caring about what Caro would think.

It was scary how easily Caro could act like everything was fine. How long could she keep this up? It was by God’s grace that Kasey had been there at that house at the wrong time.

“Caroline, I’m so sorry I didn’t realize how bad it was,” Ada said, putting her hand on hers.

“He’s not gonna get away with this,” Rosemarie said.

“I…I don’t know what any of you are talking about,” Caro said softly after looking at them in silence for too long. She took her hand from underneath Ada’s with no expression on her face and calmly poured herself a glass of wine.





2004


18





Roy lost the garage gig and things got worse. Instead of hanging out at the bar and picking fights there, he took up permanent residence on the couch, and when he was awake—drunk or sober—he was starting fights with Kasey’s mom when she was around or, when she wasn’t, with Kasey. Ranting about how life dealt him a bad hand and being ornery just to be ornery because it was who he was, through and through. Even if she had a million years to think about it, Kasey wouldn’t be able to find one solid, good thing about him.

She’d tried picturing him as a baby. He had a lot of family down in Florida, but Kasey had only met his mom twice—once at her mama and Roy’s wedding and one other time years ago when she was traveling through town. She tried imagining that Roy’s mother loved him, although her brain would lock on the impossibility of even that, since his mother named him Roymont Dupont, so clearly she never loved the boy.

When he wasn’t hollering at home or telling her mom and Kasey how awful they were, he disappeared for entire days or for long stretches in the middle of the night. The week prior, Kasey had seen a gun in his top drawer when she’d gone in there to put away the laundry. Her mom hated guns; she told Kasey that her daddy did too. Roy kept a shotgun in the shed sometimes, but her mom wouldn’t let him bring one in the house. And one time when Roy thought she wasn’t looking, Kasey saw him stuff a box of plastic bags and three huge stacks of cash into his duffel bag before getting in her truck and driving away.



For most of the last two weeks of high school, Kasey stopped coming home completely. After returning from the senior trip to Adora Springs, she rotated nights between Ada’s, Caro’s, and Rosemarie’s. One of those days, she went home for a change of clothes. Her mom was standing in the hallway.

“I…I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were at work. Why aren’t you at work?” Kasey asked.

Her mom pushed her hair from her face.

“I took a day off,” she said, leaning against the doorframe.

“Is he here?” Kasey asked softly.

Angie shook her head no.

“Thank God,” Kasey said. She walked past her mom into her bedroom and pulled her top drawer open. She turned when her mom came into the room, limping. “What did he do to you? Mama? What the hell did he do? Can you walk? Are you okay?” Kasey asked. The fear hung on her voice first, and when it reached the rest of her, she dropped her bag and helped her mom to the edge of the bed so she could sit.

Kasey knelt on the floor in front of her.

“Kick him out now. It’s our farmhouse. It’s Daddy’s farmhouse! Roy has no right to it. Please, Mama. Please! I’m literally begging you to do this,” Kasey said. And although she’d been trying to keep it to herself, Kasey told her mom how guilty she felt for not always being there to protect her, to help call Roy off, and finally confessed how conflicted she felt about leaving so soon for New York, about going away to college and abandoning her mom to suffer all alone if she wouldn’t do anything about it.