“Wait. Did Silas say anything to you about the kissing? Do you think he said something to Grayson?”
“No, and he won’t. He’s probably in a daze right now, thinking he dreamt it.”
“He is not! Why do y’all act like I’m the only girl in the world when it comes to him?”
“Because you kind of are,” Ada said, taking the turn up the driveway. She thought of the dark night they killed Trey and the police investigation and Rosemarie’s cancer ticking her life away and taking time from them. She shoved those thoughts aside again. She’d much rather talk about Silas and Kasey kissing, so she leaned into that. “Why do you think he hasn’t gotten married and hasn’t kept a girlfriend for more than, like, a year?”
“Silas hasn’t not gotten married because he’s waiting to marry me! He hasn’t! That’s ridiculous!”
“No, what I mean is that he obviously measures his feelings for other women by his feelings for you, and when they don’t match up, he doesn’t stay interested for long. Miss Myrtle’s been trying to marry him off to every woman who comes into the diner for years! Whenever a single woman stays at the B and B and starts chatting her up, Mrs. Castelow always throws in that she has a single son who’s handsome and kind and good at, like, everything,” Ada said.
“You’ll like Devon too. He’s also handsome and kind and good at, like, everything.”
“Maybe, Kase, but I haven’t met him yet, because you keep him from us.”
“I do not keep him from you!”
“Kasey, you do! He was here in Goldie for, like, two days and you hid him!”
“I didn’t hide him. You said yourself that there’s enough going on here right now. How am I supposed to explain it all to him? I can’t! I finally told him about Roy and what he did, and I told him I need more time with everything,” Kasey said.
“Silas knows Devon was here. He figured it out.”
“Figured it out how?”
“Well, Miss Nancy saw Silas over here and then she saw a mystery car come after Silas left. She told him that.”
“Did Silas say anything else about it?”
“Not really.”
“Not really or not at all?” Kasey asked.
“Do you want him to feel a certain way about it, Kase?”
“No! He can feel however he feels. I didn’t know Devon was coming here! I didn’t plan that.”
“Why does it feel like we’re fighting? I don’t want to fight. I don’t have the energy to fight,” Ada said, stopping the van by the house. She was exhausted—the sort of exhausted that felt permanent.
“We’re not fighting. We’re hungry. Just come inside and eat,” Kasey said.
Ada grabbed the bag of leftover food from the backseat. She’d left some at Leo’s and given some to Caro, but there was still plenty for her and Kasey to right their attitudes.
*
Later, Grayson and Silas showed up with Beau, and the men got the fire going in the pit outside. Beau had been hanging out with Caro and Mimi, and he’d left after Caro had fallen asleep. On the walk to his mom’s house, he’d bumped into Silas leaving the police station for the day. Ada and Grayson’s boys were spending the night with Grayson’s parents; they’d FaceTimed Ada and Grayson at bedtime, and Ada kissed the screen saying goodbye. Life had felt so tenuous lately, and she was anxious to hug her sons again in the morning, glad they were happy and safe at their grandparents’ watching superhero movies and staying up too late eating junk; it was exactly what they should be doing on a summer night. Ada had been an absolute mess about everything that was happening, but her children would never know that, because like most mothers, she’d learned to compartmentalize her feelings and wants into one small section of herself and leave the rest open for being Mama and Mama only.
When Beau was in the bathroom and the rest of them were sitting around the fire, Ada said quietly, “And we’re sure Caro will be okay with us telling Beau?”
“She’ll be okay with it,” Kasey said.
“I think so too,” Ada said.
“Maybe Caro already told him?” Grayson said, crossing his legs at the knee. Ada loved it when he crossed his legs like that. Once, she’d seen a picture of his great-grandfather sitting in a chair with his legs crossed, and she thought of his great-grandfather a lot when Grayson did it too. How relentless and strong the Castelow DNA was, how it’d completely taken over her DNA and created four little Castelow clones in their children. She pictured her dark-haired boys as grown men with their long legs crossed. She often thought about the men they’d grow up to be. Her first thought after she brought the rock down on Trey’s head was that she didn’t want to be taken away from Grayson and the boys. Not ever.
This has to work.
“I don’t know, but he’s basically in this with us already, so it’s a bit late to act like he isn’t,” Kasey said. She took a drink from her bottle of beer.
“Y’all know I can’t work at the station anymore, right? I mean, obviously I’m quitting soon,” Silas said. He was drinking whiskey; he was exhausted. Ada knew the look on her brother-in-law’s face, even in the firelight. “I’m in it with y’all too, and I’ve been listening to these women telling their stories all week.”
“Well, don’t quit right now. Wait a little bit or it’ll look bad,” Ada said.
“All the women coming in…that’ll make a difference, right? Especially Nosy Nancy’s story? They don’t have a case, do they?” Kasey asked him.
“If the women want to keep talking, we’ll let them talk. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Nancy says she watched it happen. The rest depends on what the coroner comes back with,” Silas said.
“We didn’t ask those women to step up; they did that on their own,” Kasey added.
“I know y’all didn’t,” Silas said. “You didn’t ask our mom to go down to the police station either, but she did what needed to be done anyway.”
Ada had been praying that his answer about the Foxberrys having a case would be an easy no, but she also thought about her mother-in-law, Joanna, and how she’d never backed down from a fight in her life. Grayson told her that Joanna had sat in front of her brother’s desk with that chief of police nameplate on it and had once again given him the entire rundown of everything the Foxberrys had ever done wrong, going back at least fifty years.
Ada thought about Beau’s aunt doing the autopsy—prayed that what she came back with held more water than the other autopsy report. For anything the Foxberry family tried to throw at them, there was a woman on their side who could throw just as much or more back.
“The Goldie coroner’s not going to find anything that’ll get y’all in trouble.” Beau’s voice in the dark startled them all. He was standing next to them now. “My aunt Lucinda already told me she was going to make sure it was airtight for now and later if anybody comes sniffing around. I told Caro that tonight, but I don’t know if she heard me…maybe she was already sleeping. But really, don’t worry about our coroner one bit. My aunt was married to an abusive asshole once too.”