Lone Tree by Bobbie O'Keefe

time.
    Rosalie
gave me a tour of the main house and showed me a bedroom with a canopy-covered
bed in shades of orchid and purple, Mama’s favorite colors. Rosalie explained
it’d been Miles’s daughter’s room, and he’d refused to change it in any way.
She and Angie clean it every week, just like all the other rooms.
    I
want to get back in there. There were things on the desk and dresser, picture
frames and such, and I want to take my time and look at everything. But it’s in
the back of the house, near Miles’s personal quarters, and I can’t just wander
around there on my own.
    Regarding
Miles, he’s still an enigma and probably always will be. Mom had a hard side to
her—Dad and I didn’t cross her unless we had to—and she and her father were
most likely just too much alike. When they went head to head, neither one would
back down, and they both lost. I can’t think of anything more tragic or stupid.
At times I feel angry enough I wish I could knock both their heads together.
But of course I don’t know all of the story, and probably never will.
    The
most intriguing personality here belongs to Reed. I already told you about him.
Believe me, if I let myself, I could fall for him in a big way. But I’d be a
fool to let that happen. I’m carrying too many secrets to become involved in a
romantic relationship.
    Yet
I feel like a fool for letting him get away.
    “Oh,
what a tangled web we weave...”
    Lainie typed her name, clicked send, then leaned
back in her chair and stared at the monitor.
    Yes, she was trapped by the web she’d woven, yet
part of her continued to hold back from leveling with her grandfather. She
still blamed him for the pain she’d seen in her mother. And Lainie still didn’t
know what role he’d played in the relationship between her parents. Until she
was able to trust Miles Auburn, she had to continue to hold herself in reserve.
Regardless of what it cost her.

Chapter Ten
    Temper was a hard one for Carl Henry. It’d already
caused him more than its share of grief, and it’d just done it again.
    Taggart wasn’t the biggest buck in the yard, but he
was the meanest and he was a former boxer. He wasn’t a man to fool with. When
they’d bumped into each other, Carl should’ve kept his eyes down and mouth
shut. Instead, he’d mouthed off and pushed back, and everybody knew that nobody
pushed the boxer around.
    Sure enough, Taggart found him in laundry before
twenty-four hours had passed. The guard’s attention was on a scuffle that broke
out in the doorway—most likely engineered by Tag—while Tag took care of Carl
Henry.
    Because he was no match for the boxer, Carl simply
hunched up to protect his head and groin and took blows upon his shoulders
without offering resistance. But when Tag smashed a fist into his ear, a bolt
of pain rocked Carl’s head back and then a roundhouse exploded on his jaw that
put him down. He wound himself into a ball, but was unable to protect his
kidneys and he got rocked by a brutal kick.
    As Carl had hoped, Tag soon tired of the one-sided
contest. One more well-placed kick, a muttered oath and then he was gone.
    Carl Henry remained on his side, doubled up and
breathing in shallow pants. While he waited for his vision to clear, his mind
filled with images of payback. But it wasn’t Taggart in those images. Those
do-nothing idiots on the parole board were responsible for the fix he was in,
and they’d pay. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know who they were. Anyone on
the outside would do; they were all alike.
    Then there were those special two in that nothing
little town he’d come from who’d put him here in the first place. They needed
payback. Oh, yes, indeedy, they needed payback in the worst way.
    Violence was part of Carl Henry. He understood and
accepted it in Taggart, and he’d accepted it in Miles Auburn. The old man had
the drop on Carl, had whipped him with the stock of his rifle, and that had
been the man’s due—Carl Henry