My stomach drops.
“I did nothing to Shelby.”
He gives me a look. “Come on, man. You think drunkenly having your way with her little sister and then never speaking to her again is nothing?”
My breath leaves me in a rush. “What?”
Caison’s face is serious now. “She told Matty that the night of your graduation party, you had sex with her in the barn. Then you went back to the party and left her there.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No. That didn’t happen.”
“Can’t imagine Shelby would lie about something like that.”
My mind races as I think back on that night.
Nothing.
No memory. No flashes. Just empty space.
“I don’t remember much about that day other than getting into it with Pop after the ceremony,” I say. “He was pissed because I’d told him I wasn’t going to the University of Wyoming in the fall.”
It was a hell of a fight. Momma got upset. I almost canceled the party, but it was too late.
“Rick Morris brought a case of corn liquor he had stolen from his grandfather’s basement, and we sat out at the bonfire and got wasted,” I say. “Next thing I remember is waking up in the hammock on the back porch the next morning.”
“Well, somewhere between the bonfire and the hammock, you—”
“No.”
“I think maybe you need to talk to Shelby.” He sighs. “And we both need to brace ourselves because she’s gonna kill Matty, who will then want to kill me.”
My head is spinning, and suddenly, every interaction I’ve had with the Storm sisters starts to make a terrifying kind of sense.
Matty is in a mood.
Not her usual all-business, tight-jawed,let’s get it donemood. This is different. It’s like she’s holding herself together with baling twine and sheer will.
She’s been barking orders since sunrise and then disappearing into her office like it’s the only place she can breathe. By midmorning, she snaps at Cabe for parking the tractor too close to the fence line and then tearfully apologizes ten minutes later. Now she’s disappeared again.
Yesterday, she left halfway through the afternoon and never came back. Didn’t answer texts.
Caison finally called to say she went to his place and fell asleep, watching a movie. Which isn’t a big deal. It’s just not like her to not tell Grandma she was going to miss supper.
That alone is enough to set all of us on edge.
Charli, Cabe, and I are standing at the back of Cabe’s truck while he unloads feed, the late afternoon sun slanting low across the yard.
“She missed the progress meeting with the contractors this morning,” Cabe says, lifting a bag onto his shoulder. “Called me five minutes before they showed up to tell me she overslept and asked me to get Albert to handle it.”
I blink. “Why didn’t she just call Daddy herself?”
He shakes his head. “Hell if I know.”
“It’s so not like her,” Charli says.
No, it really isn’t.
Matty Storm is the most professional person I know. She could be bleeding out, and she’d still show up ten minutes early with an attitude and a plan.
