The Lonesome Young by Lucy Connors Read Free Book Online Page B

business and felt entitled to offer opinions or advice. But I tried not to let any of it show on my face, for my mother’s sake.
    The reverend pointed at the doors to the hall. “Why don’t you go help your mother rescue your pa? The mayor’s talking to him, and that woman couldn’t get to a point slower if she walked there backwards. City-council meetings would test Job himself these days.”
    “I will in a minute. I just need to finish up here,” I said.
    The minister hesitated, looking at me and then Ethan, but then he shook his head and left.
    “Yes, sir , Reverend Dohonish, sir. Of course we want to be right with God ,” Ethan said, mocking again. He headed for the door to the parking lot. “I’ll be in touch, little brother.”
    “Don’t waste your time,” I told him.
    “Got nothing but time,” he called after me.
    Jeb grabbed my arm to stop me when I started to walk past him. “Did he ask you? Are you going to do it?”
    I yanked my arm out of his grip and gave him a look. “Since when have I ever had anything to do with Ethan’s business? Never have, never will.”
    Jeb bit his lip, and he looked scared. “Mickey, we need help. There’s a problem, and it’s bad. If you—”
    “I can’t, Jeb. I can’t do it. I won’t do it.”
    “But you’re blood. Our brother ,” Jeb said fiercely. “You owe us.”
    I’d been starting to feel sorry for him, but “you owe us” put paid to that. “I don’t owe you anything, but I’ll give you some advice for free. Because you’re my brother, I don’t want anything to happen to you. Get out of Ethan’s business before you end up in jail. Or worse.”
    I knew it was a waste of breath, but it somehow eased my conscience to say the words.
    Jeb shook his head, his eyes bleak. “You don’t understand. It’s too late. I’m screwed. Leave, stay—it doesn’t matter. It’s six one way, half-dozen the other. They know who I am now, and they know I’m the one who messed up.”
    “Who’s they ?” It didn’t sound like he was talking about Ethan.
    He shook his head, misery plain on his face. “I can’t. I’m already in deep enough.”
    “So you want to pull me in, too?” I’d known he was weak, but I’d never thought he was this selfish. A trace of guilt sliced through me at the expression in his eyes, though. Ethan played him like a fish on the line, and Jeb was clearly over his head in whatever this was. Whoever they were.
    “Never mind. Ethan wants you, he’ll get you. He always does.” Jeb took off after delivering that parting shot, and I watched him all the way out the door as my flash of sympathy died.
    Reverend Dohonish walked up next to me, and he was watching Jeb, too. “You in any trouble, son?”
    “Not yet,” I answered grimly.
    I wondered how long it would be the truth.

CHAPTER 7
    Victoria
    G ran and I sat alone, the weight of hundreds of staring eyes practically boring into the back of my head, and I pretended to concentrate on Father Troy’s sermon about redemption. Too bad my parents had refused to come. If anybody in the family needed any redemption, it was them.
    The front pews of the Saint Francis Episcopal Church had wooden partitions in front of them, and when I was a little girl and Gran had taken me to Sunday services with her, I’d always wondered why. To keep the congregation herded back from the priest? To keep Father Troy from looking up our skirts as we sat there, all alone in the Whitfield pew?
    Gran had shushed me when I’d asked, pretending to be scandalized, but I’d seen her lips quiver as she’d fought back a smile. She hadn’t always been Episcopalian; I knew that much. She’d grown up in the Methodist church, but then she’d married my grandfather and been inexorably sucked into a new life, a new social class, and even a new religion—Whitfields always went to this church.
    In fact, they’d built it. Back in 1890 or something, and it even had been known briefly as the Whitfield Episcopalian