“I want to go!” Jessie leaps from the house, eyes bright and hopeful.
We all turn to look at her. “No.” The word comes from each of us.
She presses fisted hands to her hips. “Why? Because I’m not a ‘boy’?”
I’m not sure why she put the wordboyin air quotes. “No, Calamity, because you’re not”—air quotes—“twenty-one.”
“You don’t have to go to the Chute,” she argues. “You can go somewhere I can get into.”
Wyatt laughs snidely. “Yeah, let’s go to the underage bar. I can’t wait to have a Shirley Temple.”
“Fuck you,” she snaps.
“Watch your mouth,” Wes growls.
“Oohh, Wes is practicing being a dad,” Jessie taunts.
“Jessie,” I say calmly, like I do when Peyton starts handing out the sass. “Cussing and being rude isn’t going to help you get your way.”
“Oh, right.” She nods solemnly. “I should be quiet and amenable, like a good girl. Stand down and forget I have opinions.”
If her goal was to make all three of us feel like shit, then it worked.
Wes is the first to break. “Fine, you can come. We’ll pick up a six-pack and go to the overlook.”
The overlook is the informal term for an area just outside town on the far east side, known for its higher elevation and views of gently sloping hills leading down into a valley. I haven’t been there in years.
Right now, the thought of sitting there with my siblings and having a beer sounds like something I desperately need.
* * *
We saidwe’re meeting back at the homestead, so I don’t know why someone is knocking on my front door. I’m almost to the door when it opens and Wes steps in.
“Come on in,” I say sarcastically.
“I need to borrow a shirt,” he says, holding out his sleeve. A long swath of oily black covers him. “I stopped to look at that tractor we’ve been working on and must’ve brushed up against some grease.” He starts for my bedroom.
“I don’t think I have any clean shirts,” I say to his back, trying to keep the panic from my voice. My bed is covered in papers. Books. My laptop is open. I’d been peering over my resumé when he knocked, quadruple checking for errors. The job opening at the Verde Valley Community College posted yesterday, and I’d like my application to be one of the first they see.
Wes stops in the middle of my bedroom. He looks around. “I know you’ve always liked to read, but I didn’t know you were full-on obsessed.”
Of everything in his line of sight, he starts with my crammed bookshelves?
“I found myself with more time on my hands after everything started happening with Anna. The kids went to bed and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night watching endless sports and drinking beer.”
Wes nods, walking the length of the bookshelves. He glances at the bed, strewn with paper and the laptop with the bright screen that might as well have a blinking neon light on it. It’s so obviously a resumé. The heading, the bullets, the format. Little else looks similar. He still doesn’t mention it.
I could tell him to get the hell out of my room. He may be my boss and my big brother, but it’s my house.
“I read Grisham. And some Stephen King, but it’s scared me a few times.” He sends me a warning look. “Don’t tell anyone I told you that.”
Through the disbelief I’m feeling that this conversation is taking place, I manage a smile. “It’s in the vault.”
Wes pulls open my closet and rifles through my shirts. “You going to tell me why you have an updated resumé open on your computer?”
I cross my arms and lean on the doorjamb. “That depends. Are you asking as my brother, or my boss?”
Wes pulls a shirt off the hanger. “Brother.” He takes off his stained shirt and changes. “Though I can’t help it if the information bleeds over. Nobody isthatgood at separating personal and professional.”
