“Only team that matters here in Howling."
“What's with that anyway, shouldn't you guys be following the Seahawks?"
"Howlers have always followed Packers, ever since one of the Harris family played for them in the thirties. He blew out a knee in the warm up and never played another game, but we've backed them ever since."
"So on the strength of that you people follow the Packers." Ethan shook his head. "Small towns are just plain weird."
"Those Longhorns are amateurs by comparison.”
Take that back, McBride, or I’ll gut you.”
Ethan and Jake had pretty much gone at each other like this since the day they’d met each other in Iraq.
“So you reckon Annabelle sold her car because she had to?”
The question was from Branna, who had been interrogating Ethan about Annabelle’s actions since he arrived.
“We’ve had this conversation, Irish. I don’t know, but it’s my hunch she did.”
“She’s proud, that one, and if I say anything she’d fire up at me and you, Jake.” Branna took a sip of her pink cocktail.
“Then don’t say anything, and let it play out. You see her all the time. You’ll know if something’s wrong.” Ethan thought he sounded reasonable, but Branna still scoffed.
“Annabelle Smith can hide her feelings better than anyone I know. Seriously, she’s like an armadillo.”
“Fancy armadillos being able to hide their feelings. I’d always thought of them as an open, sharing sort of creature.”
“It’s a shock to me,” Jake said, looking around the room.
Branna rolled her eyes. “The point here is that Annabelle will never show how she’s feeling, and you’d need a crowbar to get any information out of her.”
“Just watch her, Rosebud. You’ll know if something’s up sooner or later,” Jake added.
“How long’s her uncle been gone?” Ethan wanted to know more about Miss Annabelle Smith, and there was no one better to ask than these two.
“He died the year after I left, didn’t he, Jake?” Branna said. “And that left Belle at eighteen to look after her younger brothers.”
Jake nodded. “Yup, Gerry Black died where he lived his life, at the gambling table in Lincoln City. His heart gave out. Supposedly he was on a winning streak and the excitement was too much.”
“Must have been hard.” Ethan thought about Annabelle. Had she been all alone with her two brothers after Gerry Black’s death?
“It was because there was no other family. Annabelle took a job in reception in Mom’s clinic right after she graduated, and stayed there until her brothers were ready to leave school. When Cooper went away to college, she arranged for Zach to move in with Walt and Elizabeth Heath, and Annabelle then went away to learn to be a nurse.”
“How did she survive financially?”
Jake looked at Branna and then Ethan before answering.
“That I don’t know. She refused help, but of course it came anyway by way of groceries and other things. For the most part she kept that family afloat, and I have no idea how, considering she didn’t earn a lot working at the clinic.”
Ethan thought about that as he watched the dance floor. How had she survived? What had she done to earn the money she needed to help her brothers?
“So how do you think she did it?”
“She wouldn’t have done anything underhanded or illegal. For all that she talks big, she has the soul of a puritan, and I’ve never known her to break the law,” Branna said. “She once told me that her uncle had cured her of lawbreaking. Apparently Gerry Black liked to walk the wrong side of it for most of his life.”
“So what’s her history?”
“Her dad left and her mother died when she was young. I don’t know the details, but Gerry was a loser from what Dad tells me,” Jake said. “Which probably means that Annabelle raised her brothers for a lot longer than any of us realize.”
