Slow Dollar by Margaret Maron Page B

radiating so much resentment and suspicion that I wanted to slap him for his self-centeredness.
    “From you? Not a d—” I caught myself just in time. Much as Daddy doesn’t like anybody cussing in front of me, he likes it even less when I cuss. “Not a blessed thing, Andrew. Just put her out of your head and don’t give another thought to what kind of a life you let your daughter have and what she’s going through right now.”
    I turned back to Daddy. “Her boy’s dead and she wants to bury him at the homeplace.”
    He looked at Andrew and his voice was courteous. “That all right with you, son?”
    Andrew stood up, jammed his John Deere ball cap back on his head, and pushed open the screen door. “Do what you think you need to, Daddy. You and Deb’rah both, since it looks like y’all’ve adopted her. Just keep me and my family out of it, okay? Them carnival tramps is nothing to do with me or mine and that’s how I aim to keep it.”
    “She’s no tramp,” I called to his retreating back. “And you tell April or I’ll do it for you.”
    He never looked around, just got into his truck and drove off with a great spray of dirt.
    I guess I must have given an involuntary sigh because Daddy reached out and patted my hand.
    “Don’t let him get under your skin, shug. He’s got to huff and blow about it awhile, but he’ll come ‘round. Don’t forget, he did try’n do the right thing back then.” He cut his eyes at me. “Just the way you did with Allen Stancil.”
    Like Carol for Andrew, Allen Stancil was a part of my past I’d just as soon not talk about and certainly not with Daddy, so we sat silently for a few minutes, sipping our iced tea and watching a pair of wood ducks dabbling out on the pond. It’s still pretty peaceful here. Without the occasional beep-beep-beep that drifts in on the wind during the workweek as dump trucks back and haul, one could almost forget the pile of houses that are being built across the creek a half mile away. On this quiet Saturday afternoon, all we could hear at the moment were birdsongs and the hum of insects.
    “I reckon Sue told you a lot of things there towards the end,” Daddy said finally.
    I nodded.
    “Things you still ain’t talked about?”
    “A few.”
    “I won’t much use to her there for a while, was I? To you, neither, the way I put it all on you like that.”
    No denying that it had been hard. I was the only child still at home that summer. The boys were all busy building careers or getting their crops in, getting married, getting divorced, getting babies. And Daddy was gone half the time, too. All of them were unnerved by her dying and the intensity of her need to talk. Daddy was hurting so bad and in such deep denial that he couldn’t—
wouldn’t
—listen until it was almost too late.
    “She understood,” I said, taking his big, work-roughened farmer’s hand between my own. “You were there when she needed you the most. And she knew that you would be. She told me so.”
    He squeezed my hand tight, then pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “Durn ragweed,” he muttered, as if I didn’t know that he’s never been allergic to any plant. “I believe I could drink another glass of that tea if you’re offering it.”
    As I refilled his glass, he said, “Tell me about Olivia. Or Tallahassee, I reckon I ought to say.”
    So I told him as much as I knew, omitting the circumstances of Braz’s conception and the fact that Tally’s first marriage had been in name only. And yes, I sort of glossed over Braz’s record so that it didn’t sound too much worse than Reese’s and A.K.’s. Or Andrew’s and Will’s.
    Or his, either, for that matter.
    “A lot of people look down on carnival people, think they aren’t much good,” I said, “but—”
    “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Like that Cher song.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Don’t you remember? Your mama used to like it. I learned how to play it for her to sing. ‘Gypsies,