Protecting Her Own

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Kim drove along the cozy main street of Lightning Gap, reassuring herself that time had indeed passed. That new shops and stores had moved in, things that couldn’t have existed when she was an insecure teenager in high school fresh from another awful humiliation.

No matter how she felt right that second.

The electronics store that carried smartphones was certainly new. Same with the lack of any sort of video rental store. The internet provider had taken the place of the last one to go.

Even the things she was glad had stayed open and in the same place had adapted with the changing times. Odds and Endings Bookstore was still going strong, thank goodness. But a good part of their business was now conducted online, or by selling ebooks to loyal fans who lived far away.

And venerable old Kay’s Cafe, one of her Auntie Venus’s favorite haunts, now advertised free Wi-Fi.

Close enough, then.

Whatever had happened back there with Steph sucked, and Kim was being perfectly reasonable to feel upset about it. And she was still unwilling to dwell on it all day long.

She turned out of town and headed up the narrow, winding road back toward her great aunt’s house, determined to keep the bad mood at bay.

Her compact sedan wasn’t quite up to the task of climbing even higher without wheezing a bit, but the last thing she was willing to consider right now was a new car. This little beauty had gotten her through the last few years in Atlanta just fine.

Kim was willing to take good care of her sedan for a while longer and put up with the slow ascents rather than taking on a car p*****t.

What on earth had happened back there?

Steph had recognized her, Kim was sure of it. The second she’d opened that door, her eyes lit up. And if she had been pretending, why? What could that possibly accomplish? Besides making Kim feel rotten.

It wasn’t like she’d stormed into the classroom and demanded they resume the at first tentative or later passionate explorations of their youth. That hadn’t even crossed her mind.

Not seriously, anyway.

After a remarkably steep curve that dragged her poor car’s engine even more, she passed the last house before her great aunt’s, wondering at how the yard there still looked empty after a massive oak had fallen sometime the previous autumn. The tree had been big and beautiful enough that Kim noticed even after living away for so long.

It had been a long, long time. Nineteen years since she left for college, and she’d only visited once or twice a year, if that. Maybe her memories of Steph really were a lot stronger than Steph’s memories of her.

That idea made her feel more sad than embarrassed, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

Kim tried to occupy her antsy mind with what she would talk about during the hour they’d given her for Career Day. Well, a solid forty-five minutes with time left for questions.

And that was more than enough to give her a creeping sense of stage fright and panic.

She turned off the paved road onto the gravel driveway that led across the mountain to Auntie Venus’s house perched near the top of the same ridge as the big outcrop on the edge of town. That view was well worth the drive, but she was still grateful that this last bit of road winding through thick stands of trees on either side was mostly level.

The questions crowded into her mind very much like those overhanging trees.

What would she say next week? Make sure you have a nerdy eye for detail? A high tolerance for drawing sometimes shy engineers out of their shells? Maybe a translator’s ability to turn geek-speak into instructions anyone off the street could follow?

Why had Steph pretended not to even remember her?

One last curve, and she saw the full three stories of the back of her great aunt’s house tucked into the rising landscape. Wooden siding aged to nearly black over the decades contrasted with the muted green of grass still mostly asleep for winter.

Neat arrangements of flower and garden beds tucked here and there, with the mysterious magic of Auntie Venus’s early radishes and peas already bright and vivid against the dark soil.

Kim again resolved to figure the whole put-seeds-in-ground, get-food-out-later thing for herself.

She glanced ahead at the rounded graveled parking area beside the house just in time to hit her little sedan’s brakes much harder than she wanted to on the driveway. Thankfully the skid didn’t carry her quite far enough to hit the big brown SUV parked beside her great aunt’s bright yellow pickup truck.

Kim let out her breath hard enough to fog up her passenger side window.

Even if she hadn’t exactly been paying close attention to her driving, the last thing she’d expected was a vehicle parked squarely in her spot.

A Felten County vehicle, no less, with the stylized insignia for the county’s most distinctive feature at the end of this very ridge in a circle on the SUV’s back gate.

She backed up and parked behind the pickup, leaving plenty of room for whoever was here to get back out. The post-startlement shakes reliably started up about the time she made it inside the house and upstairs to the kitchen.

Having a surprise drop-in visitor spend time pretty much anywhere else in the house was unthinkable. The kitchen was the obvious and beloved heart of the house.

Kim had heard tales of all the discussions about where to put the rooms in this wonderfully odd house her whole life, since her great aunt and her first husband built it before she was born. The slope of the land turned the three-story back of the house into one and a half toward the front where the porch was.

As far as Kim and everyone else was concerned, Auntie Venus’s long-fought battle to get the kitchen, dining room, and living room upstairs and the bedrooms and laundry rooms on the partly underground floors was well worth it.

The wide open space she stepped into now had been modified over the years, removing walls and adjusting the layout as trends (and husbands) changed. Sure enough, her great aunt sat at the sweet little kitchen table in the middle of a bunch of wooden cabinets and shelves recently painted white.

Even though she sometimes missed the cozy kitchen of her elementary school years—with four tan walls and dark cabinets—Kim had to admit the changes made the whole upper floor feel much larger. The dark green stone floor and big windows up front made it feel like being outside.

Sitting at the table beside Auntie Venus was a guy about her age, wearing jeans and a golf shirt, with the same thick brunette hair as Kim’s. His was trimmed into a typical short business cut, but with the same spiked-up bangs he’d had since high school.

Her first cousin Jay Murray, dropped by to marvel at the return of the wayward city girl at last.

“Kim!” He bounded to his feet and caught her in a big hug. “About time we ran into each other!”

“Hey there, Jay,” she said, smiling to soften their usual teasing. “Good to finally see you. I’ve been right here with Auntie Venus the whole time. I’m sure you heard the news all around the county the second I got back.”

He wrinkled his nose and shook his head, waving one hand toward Lightning Gap.

“I don’t much pay attention to all that gossip unless I have to. Certainly not when it comes to my own crazy family, or pretty much anyone who lives up on this mountain. Come on over here and sit down. Auntie Venus baked up a mess of her best chocolate chip cookies despite my protests.”

Auntie Venus winked when Kim looked her way, surely at the idea of Jay avoiding gossip under any circumstances. She’d changed into one of her usual colorful ensembles. Today a swirly gauze skirt made of scraps in every shade of the rainbow and a black long-sleeved sweater, with her silver hair twisted and looped on top of her head.

Kim sometimes wondered whether her great aunt actually needed any help, or if she just wanted the company.

“Oh yes, Jay protested all right,” Auntie Venus said. “Protested his way to turning on the oven and fetching a bag of my frozen cookie dough from the deep freeze downstairs.”

Jay waved his hand again as he sat, but his grin gave it all away.

“Well, you can’t much blame me, not with your amazing cookies. I really am glad to see you, Kim, don’t think I didn’t care. I thought you might want a little bit of time to get yourself settled and adjusted. And I’m happy to report the gossip down at the town council didn’t amount to much more than curiosity.”

Kim sat, adding two of the cookies that were more dark chocolate than anything else to a bright yellow plate from somewhere in South America. Same place her Auntie had gotten the idea to add a touch of cayenne pepper to the divine cookies.

“I guess that’s good news,” she said. “Curious I can handle. It’s nosy and prying into my business I was dreading moving back here.”

“That may very well be the case out in the county,” Auntie Venus said, pouring a glass of milk for her. “But you know that’s not the way of it here in Lightning Gap. People are happy to have you back home is all. Just like me.”

Kim chewed her perfectly sweet and spicy mouthful, then chased it with a long swallow of milk.

“I think it’s worse in my imagination than anywhere else. Everyone was friendly out at the high school today. Almost everyone. How’s the town council going, Jay?”

Jay raised one eyebrow at her, then half-smiled. He hadn’t missed things like her little slip there, not even when they were kids.

“It’s going. I was just telling Auntie Venus you coming back here isn’t the only big news. You’re a lot happier to talk about, though. You remember David Holfield, right?”

Kim tried not to scowl or sigh. She managed not to look at her great aunt, either.

“I remember him,” she said. “Steph Holfield’s father.”

“Right, right. I remember you and Steph being pretty close back in school. Anyway, he’s the county sheriff now, not sure if you knew that. There’s been a guy missing from over in Laurel Gap for a few weeks now. Just vanished, or that’s what they thought.”

Auntie Venus shook her head.

“Not all that nasty business with those Phipps boys, is it? I think they’ve been at each other’s throats since I was in high school.”

“It might well be,” Jay said, drumming his fingers on the table. “This is a Stan Phipps that’s turned up. That’s the big news, you see. He’s not missing any more. Some hikers found him today, not far from the main road into Lightning Gap.”

Kim’s stomach dropped, and she pushed the plate with her second cookie away.

“I hope you’re not about to share the gory details, Jay.”

He held one hand up and shook his head.

“Course not, I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know much, to be honest. Just that he’s no longer among the living, and no one knows how or why. All I will say is he didn’t look like he laid down and went to sleep. He had some kind of…help along the way. With the shape he was in and where he was found, he was moved after whoever did this was finished with him.”

“That kind of thing can’t happen very often here, can it?” Kim said. “I don’t remember hearing about any murders or whatever it is when we were kids.”

“No, not at all,” Auntie Venus said. “I’ve always heard it said that Lightning Gap helps keep us safe, and I believe it.”

She took a deep breath and stared toward the front windows.

“I heard stories about a couple who died not too far from where Jay’s talking about, but that was an accident. Ran off the road in a snowstorm, way back during the Great Depression. That was the baby a pair of local lovebirds took in when they were first married. They don’t think Stan Phipps was murdered?”

Jay shrugged and held one hand up, tilting it back and forth.

“Not sure just yet. No one seems to know why he would have been over here in the first place. His family and work and everything else are in Laurel Gap. Sheriff Holfield probably knows a lot more by now than I ever will.”

“I’m sure he does,” Auntie Venus said. “How was your visit to the high school, Kim?”

So neither one of them had missed Kim saying almost everyone was friendly.

“It was fine. They got me set up for Career Day, for kids who want to learn more about writing. I’ll get forty-five minutes to talk and look goofy, then fifteen to do my best not to sound foolish answering questions.”

Jay pointed at Kim’s plate and raised his eyebrows.

“You go right ahead.”

He grabbed the cookie and got right back to talking.

“Career Day can be so much fun, I might have to swing by and see what you have to say. I’ve been down there a few times myself. Town council isn’t much on its own, but they love to hear about running a hardware store for some reason.”

Auntie Venus shook her head, like Kim expected she would.

“No, honey, I meant did you get to visit with Stephanie?”

Jay opened his mouth, then settled for filling it full of cookie and nodding.

“I saw her,” Kim said. “Just for a minute or two. She seemed pretty busy, I guess.”

Jay raised his eyebrows for a quick second, then stared down at his empty cookie plate as if he could refill it with his mind.

“What, Jay?” Kim said. “What do you know about her?”

“Steph? Nothing worth talking about. Nothing to worry about for sure.”

He started to reach for yet another cookie from the big plate, but Auntie Venus slapped his hand right before Kim could.

“Gossip is one thing, Jay,” Auntie Venus said. “But we’ve all known Stephanie since she was a little girl. I think Kim would like to know if she’s okay. So would I.”

Kim started to protest, but it was too late. They’d both already seen her face.

“Okay, I guess,” Jay said. He stopped drumming his fingers or trying to snatch another cookie by folding his hands together on the table. “It’s just…word is she had a pretty rough time of it up there in Louisville. Nothing she did, mind you. But that husband she hooked up with turned out to be a rough fellow to live with.”

Kim’s stomach twisted this time, remembering how Steph had pretended not to know her.

“Rough how?” she said before she could stop herself.

“I don’t know much,” Jay said. “Only that she has a protective order against the guy. With her dad being sheriff, word got around within law enforcement pretty quickly, then trickled out to county government, too. Not sure why or how long it lasts.”

“Oh no,” Auntie Venus said, shaking her head. “Poor Stephanie. I’m sure she was glad to see you then, Kim.”

“Maybe,” Kim said, grabbing the last cookie before Jay could. “We’ll see how it goes.”

She made a point of not looking at either her cousin or her great aunt. She didn’t especially want to know how they felt at the moment.

Because if Steph had all of that on her mind, maybe she’d only been pretending not to remember after all.