Читать книгу Beyond Ordinary - Mary Sullivan - Страница 10

ANGEL ENTERED BERNICE’S Beauty Salon.

Bernice was a good person—she’d never looked down on Angel.

“Hey, honey,” Bernice said with a smile, stopping the sweeping she’d been doing and resting one hand on her ample hip. “Haven’t seen you in a while, Angel. How’s school?”

It had been good, but had ended badly. Angel’s smile felt sickly, but she hoped it looked normal. “Good. I’m home for the summer and then heading to the city for a job.”

Angel looked around. The shop hadn’t changed one bit in the time she’d been gone. Red geraniums dotted the windowsill and a monster jade plant stood in one corner.

“You getting your hair cut?” Bernice asked.

Angel shook her head.

“Good. Don’t think Missy or the men in town would like that much.” She laughed.

“Bernice, I’m here about the job you have open.”

Bernice’s smile fell. “Honey, I hired a girl yesterday.”

From the back of the room, a teenager Angel recognized, but whose name she couldn’t remember, stepped out with another woman and walked her to a salon chair.

When the woman unwrapped the towel from her wet hair, she looked at Angel. Her mouth fell open, then quickly closed.

“Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Angel Donovan. What are you doing in town?”

Elsa. Scotty’s daughter. Scotty owned the hardware store. The town liked him, but disliked his daughter.

Elsa had hated Angel in high school, even though Angel had been a few years behind her. Didn’t matter. Boys and men of any age were attracted to Angel.

Angel tipped her head and smiled. If it felt a little mean, so be it. This was Elsa, after all, herself the meanest woman in town.

“My mama lives here, in case you’ve forgotten.” Angel turned toward the front door.

Before she could open it, Elsa said, “William married me, you know.”

Angel turned back. “That’s nice.”

“We have three beautiful children and a perfect life.”

“Fine, Elsa. Let’s get it all out now, ’cause I’ll be in town for the summer and I’m not taking crap from you for the next three months.” She stood, arms akimbo. “To confirm what you’ve always suspected, Bill and I made out one night after a football game.”

Elsa’s face contorted into a mask of rage. “Proving you’re no better than your mother.”

“Who were you? Snow White? You’d been dating Bill for two years—you were still dating him—when you got busy with Matt Long and wound up pregnant. Behind Bill’s back. After that, he wanted revenge. You’re a hypocrite, Elsa, no better than any other woman in town, including me and Missy.”

Angel stomped out of the shop. She was so tired of the fight. It would never end as long as she lived in Ordinary. She stood on the sidewalk to get her rowdy anger under control, then crossed the street toward the diner.

When she stepped inside, the old familiar scents assailed her—bacon and eggs, grilled-cheese sandwiches, burgers.

Within seconds, all conversation seemed to stop.

Someone yelled, “Hey, Angel, when did you get back?”

Sam Miller sat in a booth across from the counter.

Angel walked over and leaned her hip against his table.

“Hey, Sam, how’ve you been?” Angel smiled at the three men with him even though she didn’t know them. By the glances skimming her body, they liked her. Men always did.

Except for Timm Franck.

So what? You don’t want him attracted to you anyway.

She’d been celibate since Neil and planned to keep it that way here in Ordinary. No men. No hanky-panky.

She wrapped up the pleasantries, then made her way to the cash register. George, cook and owner of the diner, asked her what she wanted to order.

There was a time when George had been one of Missy’s boyfriends, but that had changed once Angel had become a teenager and George had wanted to switch daughter for mother.

Both Missy and Angel had booted him out of the trailer and had told him to never come back.

He still gave her the creeps.

The words I’m here about the job stuck in her throat. Could she work here every day with George watching her the way he was looking at her now—with greed?

She almost decided to take the job so she could put him down the first time he tried to touch her, by “accident,” in passing, the way he used to before Angel learned how to fight back.

Man, she would enjoy giving him a piece of her mind.

She wasn’t in town to fight old fights, though, despite what had happened with Elsa. She was here for Mama, and she needed money to leave the second she got Phil out of her mother’s life.

“I changed my mind. I don’t want anything,” she muttered, then left the diner.

Fuming, she strode down the sidewalk to Chester’s Roadhouse, betting that he’d still have enough affection for her and her mom to give her a job.

She’d come home broke. She’d wasted her money on that bike, thinking that she would have her degree in a couple of months and would get a full-time job.

Then Neil…then Neil had—

Chester needed a bartender. Angel hadn’t gotten her degree, couldn’t do much else, but bartending was something she did really well. She made people happy.

A niggling feeling caught her unawares. Someone was watching her. She stopped before entering the bar and glanced around.

Timm crossed the street toward the diner, looking at her. When they made eye contact, he changed direction and approached her.

What could he possibly have to say to her that they couldn’t have said fifteen minutes ago in his office?

Sunlight did good things for Timm. It warmed his light brown hair to honey and highlighted that face that had matured into strong planes and angles.

He was taller than she’d remembered, and lean. For a nerd, he walked with a surprising athletic grace.

When he got close enough for her to see his eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses, she realized they were chocolate-brown. He wasn’t fast enough in masking his look of admiration of her.

It warmed her. It shouldn’t have.

Timm fit into this town too well.

She didn’t.

“Hi,” she said. Brilliant. Wow, it wasn’t like her to be tongue-tied. But she didn’t want to say anything that would make her look stupid in front of this guy. He was too smart.

“Sheriff Kavenagh saw your bike out on the highway,” he said.

Angel swallowed. Shit. All she needed was to be fined or arrested for starting a fire during a drought.

“So you told him I tried to burn it?” She couldn’t help the aggression in her tone.

“No,” he said. He shifted his gaze away from her, studied the shops across the street, wouldn’t look her in the eye.

“You didn’t? Why not?”

He shrugged. “I was there to stop the fire, so no problem.”

“Thanks,” she mumbled. There was a whole lot more she should say, but the words wouldn’t come out. “Well. I gotta go.” She stepped toward the Roadhouse door.

“The bar’s not open for another hour.” Something in his voice—disapproval, maybe—set her hackles on edge.

“I’m heading in for a job.”

“You don’t want to do that.” The helpful man of a minute ago was gone, replaced by a hard-edged judgmental prude.

“How is it any of your business?”

“I plan to close this place down.”

“Why would you close Chester’s?”

“You saw the bikers last night. They’re ruining the town. Decent people stay away.”

The implication being that she wasn’t decent. Surprise, surprise. The town’s attitude hadn’t changed about her. Why should it have?

Timm had always seemed different, though—smarter—and she was disappointed to find he was no better than the rest of Ordinary’s residents.

Obviously, attending college made no difference in how the townspeople viewed her. They still had her pegged as the trailer-trash girl with the slutty mother.

“Great talking to you,” she said, her sarcasm tainting the sunny day.

Without a word, his expression flattened, and he turned and walked away.

Angel opened the door of Chester’s Roadhouse, irritated by Timm’s assessment of her. Seemed that, in his eyes, the bar was exactly where she belonged.

Stepping into the dark interior, Angel shook off her funk. She gave her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness. It was at least ten degrees cooler in here than outside, thank goodness. Must cost Chester a fortune to air-condition, though.

The place smelled like beer.

Chester had spent his money freely decorating the huge room. Red leather and oak booths lined two walls. The center of the room housed chairs padded with the same upholstery surrounding large round tables.

Angel approached the bar.

Chester was doing well for himself. The bar must bring in good money.

“Hey, Freddy,” she said to the bartender, recognizing him from school. “Haven’t seen you in a while. How have you been?”

“Hi, Angel.” Freddy was a good guy, not too handsome, but not ugly, either. He leaned on the bar and assessed her. “You’re looking well. College treated you okay?”

Angel ignored her spurt of guilt for not finishing and smiled. “I did all right there.”

“What can I get you? Bar isn’t open yet, but I can pour you a soft drink.”

“Thanks, but nothing. I’m here to see Chester.”

Freddy indicated a nearby archway. “Down the hall, last door on your left. Should be open.”

Angel made her way to Chester’s office, where she found him sitting in a leather office chair behind a huge desk covered with piles of papers.

She rapped on his open door. “Hey, Chester.”

He looked up, startled, and smiled. “Angel. I didn’t have a chance to talk to you. When did you blow back into town?”

Angel smiled. “Last night. I’m here for the bartending job in the paper.”

Chester leaned back in the chair and wrapped his fingers behind his head. It made his biceps look huge. Angel totally understood Mama’s crush on him.

“How’s Missy?” he asked quietly. He always asked about Mama.

“As good as can be, considering who’s living with her right now.”

“Yeah, I hear you.” He frowned. “Hey, I thought you finished college. Is the economy so bad you can’t get a job even with a degree?”

Angel sat in the chair in front of the desk. “I’m hanging around for the summer. To help Mama with the wedding and to take care of her place while she and Phil take a honeymoon.” The lies rolled off her tongue easily. If she felt any guilt about lying to a good friend like Chester, she ignored it.

Chester shuffled papers on his desk. He blushed the way he always did when Missy was around.

“So, I see you’ve got Freddy working behind the bar. What hours do you need me for?”

“Freddy’s going to night school.”

“No kidding? What’s he studying?”

“He wants to be an accountant.”

“Cool. I can mix drinks. I worked as a bartender in Bozeman when I was at school. Do you need a reference?”

“Nah. I trust you, Angel.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “I need a bartender for the evenings—from six until one-thirty. There’s usually a bit of cleanup after the bar closes, but you’d be out by two, latest. I’m usually here until three, going through the receipts and counting the cash, so you’ll never be alone.”

He stood to walk her out. “You’ll be a great asset here, Angel. With your looks…” Chester grinned. “You’re a hell of a lot prettier than Freddy is.”

Angel laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty good at having fun, too.” She knew her place. Knew exactly her value. Here in Ordinary, she was a party girl, through and through.

She left the bar after agreeing to start work that evening and walked down the street to the candy store, Sweet Talk. While she was home, she would reconnect with the only other family she had.

Two years ago, she’d found out that she had a half brother—Matthew Long. Matt’s dad and Missy had had a relationship for years when Matt was young and Angel had been the result of that affair. Mama had never told her who her father was.

Not kosher of Mama to sleep with another woman’s man, but so like Missy.

Fortunately, them both being only children meant that Angel and Matt had latched onto each other. From the very beginning, he’d insisted that he was her full brother—there was nothing half about their relationship, he was her brother in every way that counted. She couldn’t imagine being closer to him than she was now. And she adored his wife and children.

In fact, she needed to pick up candy for her nephew and niece, thus the visit to Sweet Talk. For six-year-old Jesse, she chose a chocolate rabbit that wore a housecoat and carried a candle and a book, all decorated with icing sugar dyed in pastels. For two-year-old Rose, she bought a small chocolate rabbit with pink lips and a pink icing dress. Adding to her purchase, she selected a bag of humbugs for Jenny and salted Dutch licorice for Matt.

She tipped her head through the doorway to the candy-making room and waved to the owner, Janey Wilson. Looked as though Janey was about to pop out another kid. How many were Janey and C.J. up to now? Four? Five?

Angel returned home to ask Mama if she could borrow her car to drive out to Matt’s ranch.

Angel stepped into the quiet house. She’d noticed that the garage door was open and the car gone. Nuts. When she walked into the kitchen, she found that she wasn’t alone.

Phil sat at the table, drinking coffee.

He glanced up when she entered, his eyes skimming her body before settling on her face.

His demeanor always surprised her—so mild-looking, yet there was something behind his pale eyes that sat wrong with Angel. Something like…a banked hunger, as if he could never get enough to satisfy his cravings.

Not a tall man, why did he seem so much bigger than he actually was? Wiry strength threaded his forearms, though, and crafty knowledge gleamed in his eye. Angel would be a fool to underestimate him.

“Where’s Mama?”

“Grocery shopping.”

Phil had a mass of grocery-store coupons spread neatly across the table. Angel felt vaguely nauseous. Mama was still hoarding those stupid things?

“Don’t tell me you collect coupons, too?” Angel asked, her tone derisive.

“Why not? If you work at it hard enough, you can save a lot of money.”

Angel turned and poured herself a cup of coffee. Mama had pinched every penny until it squeaked and her obsession with discounts and coupons had sparked a loathing for them in Angel.

“What’s so wrong with using coupons?” Phil asked.

She wasn’t about to tell him that they reeked of poverty, and reminded her too much of growing up in that crummy old trailer.

Phil stacked the detergent coupons on top of each other and fastened them with a paper clip. Then he picked up assorted coupons and fastened those together.

Control freak.

“Why did you clip those?” Angel asked, despite not wanting to care. “They’re different products.”

“They’re only good until the end of the month, so your mother and I will watch for specials and use them before the expiry date.”

Cheapskate.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, he peered at her sharply. “No one handed me an education. I get by in this life however I can.”

They both heard the car rumble down the driveway along the side of the house.

A minute later, Mama walked in the door. Still a beautiful woman, voluptuous and sensuous in the way she moved, she looked tired this morning.

Angel knew she’d put those dark circles under Mama’s eyes with her attitude toward Phil. Despite knowing it was the right thing to do, Angel felt a worm of disgust at her own behavior crawling under her flesh.

She looked out the window. The barely driven Grand Am Mama had inherited from Hal sat inside the garage.

“Phil, can you close the garage door?” Missy’s arms were full of groceries. “It’s sticking again.”

Phil stood and took the two full grocery bags from her and placed them on the counter.

“Any more bags in the car?”

“One more.”

“I’ll get it.” He left the kitchen.

Okay, so he was more a gentleman than Angel had given him credit for.

Missy hugged Angel. “Can I get you some lunch?”

“I can make my own.”

“I know, but you’re home and I want to do it.”

Angel stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Mama, can we talk?”

A flash of fear flittered across Missy’s face. “About what?”

“Phil,” Angel rushed on, determined to say something before Phil returned.

The garage door screeched.

“No,” Missy breathed.

“Mama, please,” Angel said, but heard Phil on the stairs. A second later, Phil entered with the last bag. It joined the others on the counter.

Angel’s frustration mounted.

“How much did we save?” Phil asked Missy.

“Four-thirty-five.” Missy smiled at him, obviously absurdly relieved that Angel hadn’t been able to vocalize her thoughts about Phil.

“Good girl.” Phil caressed her hip and she preened under his attention. Phil sat at the table again.

Angel turned away.

Missy pulled a frying pan out of a cupboard.

“What are you doing?” Phil asked.

“I’m making an early lunch for Angel.”

“So this is what you’re planning to do here?” He directed the question toward Angel. “Have your mother cook for you?”

“I didn’t ask her to cook,” Angel said, hating the way Phil questioned everything Missy did.

“I want to make her lunch, Phil.” Missy’s placating tone grated.

Phil stared at Angel with a thunderous frown and asked, “Are you planning to freeload off your mother?”

“What about you?” she snapped. “Are you working?”

“No.”

“Then you’re freeloading,” she shouted.

“Angel, he can’t work,” Missy explained. “He has a disability.”

“Yeah? I didn’t know they considered being brain-dead a disability.”

Phil surged out of his chair.

Missy slapped a restraining hand on his chest and held him back. “Angel!” Distress rode high in her voice.

Phil breathed loudly and stared at Angel with something close to hatred in his eyes.

The plastic clock on the wall ticked a loud cadence in counterpoint to Angel’s hard-driving pulse.

“Go ahead,” Angel said. “Take a swing at me, big man. Prove to Mama who you really are.”

Too clever to show his hand, Phil retreated, his thin smile bordering on insolence.

“While you live in my house, Angel,” Missy said, “treat Phil with respect.”

Angel reeled from the disappointment on Mama’s face. What? Had that really happened? Had Mama taken a man’s side against Angel? Mama and she were a team. The Donovan girls against the world.

What were they now? A crowd of three, with Angel the odd person out? Shocked, she left the kitchen, shaken by Mama’s need to defend Phil over her.

She sat on the bed in her room and hung her head, so scared. What if she lost Mama?

Phil was too clever. Angel led with her emotions, going off like lightning, while Phil calculated every angle, every advantage.

A short time later, she heard Phil leave. Wherever he was going, it was without the car.

She rushed to the kitchen.

Mama sat at the table with her cheek resting on one hand, looking so despondent that Angel put her arms around her from behind and whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry, Mama.”

She couldn’t bring up the issue of Phil again today. She’d handled it all wrong. Time to regroup and figure out how to do it better.

Missy patted her arm and said, “I know, honey.” There was a subtle but tangible distance in her.

Abruptly, she stood and said, too brightly, “Let’s have lunch.”

Throughout the meal, Missy maintained that distance. For the first time in their lives, the chatter between them was uncomfortable, made more so with her forced gaiety and Angel’s equally forced responses.

God, how was Angel going to get rid of Phil? For the first time, it occurred to her that if it came to a showdown, Mama might choose Phil over her. The prospect seemed impossible, but Angel could never have predicted her mother’s earlier behavior.

Oh, Mama, I don’t want to lose you.

Angel swallowed the last mouthful of her sandwich, and it felt like sawdust clogging her throat.

Refusing to believe that anything would come between her and Missy, she forced the dire thoughts from her mind.

They’d be okay. They always had and always would be.

Deciding to stick with her original plan to visit Matt—and to put some space between Mama and her—Angel asked to borrow the car. Before leaving, she kissed Mama’s forehead. Her responding smile was so vague it chilled Angel.

What was going on in Missy’s mind these days? Was it only the outburst between them and Phil that had her distracted? Or was something else bothering her?

Angel worried that question all the way to her brother’s place with no resolution.

Matt’s ranch was large and prosperous. Matt and his wife, Jenny, worked hard for what they had.

As she drove up the lane, Jesse ran out of the stable.

“Auntie Angel,” he screamed when he realized who was in the car. A second later, Matt stepped out into the sunlight with a big grin splitting his face.

She stepped out and Jesse threw himself against her legs, wrapping his arms around her. He was getting so big. She adored this little guy.

Her blue funk fell away.

Here, with these people, she found a peace foreign in every other area of her life.

This was a good family that Matt had made work by overcoming all of the pain and sorrow of his past. Angel wondered whether someday she would be able to do the same for herself. She planned to. Somehow.

“Where are Jenny and Rose?” she asked, her voice muffled by Matt’s chest because he’d wrapped his arms around her tightly.

Angel loved having an older brother. Maybe if she’d known about him in high school, she could have gone to him for advice when boys started to sniff around her once she’d started to develop this double-edged sword of a killer body. Maybe things could have gone differently for her….

“I can’t breathe,” Jesse wailed against her thighs, and Matt pulled away, laughing.

“How long are you staying this time?” Matt asked.

“I’m staying in Ordinary only a few weeks.” She refused to call it home. As soon as she figured out how to deep-six Phil and Missy’s marriage, she was getting out of here and staying away. She’d warned Matt enough times that she wouldn’t end up in Ordinary permanently. At some point, he would have to believe her.

They all entered a house that smelled like bananas.

They found Jenny and Rose in the kitchen. Half a pot of chicken-noodle soup sat on the stove and a loaf of banana bread cooled on the counter.

Angel spotted the mix box in the recycling bin in the corner of the kitchen. Jenny was a terrible cook. She did nothing from scratch.

She rushed to give Angel a big hug, but not before Angel noticed her belly and hooted.

“Another baby?”

“Yes,” Jenny said, beaming.

Women everywhere were having babies, while Angel…well, none of her encounters with men seemed to last long enough to reach the let’s-commit-and-make-babies stage. She swallowed her sorrow.

Enjoy your niece and nephew.

She walked to the table and kissed the little blond-haired, blue-eyed doll sitting in the high chair.

Rose giggled and kicked her feet. “Up, Auntie Angel.”

Angel lifted the tray away from the chair. It looked as though more noodles had ended up on it than inside her niece.

Rose kicked her feet and said, “Angel. Up. Peese.”

Angel laughed and blew her a raspberry. “Hold your horses, squirt.”

Rose blew a raspberry back at Angel, sending spittle flying. Angel made a show of jumping out of the way, and Rose giggled.

Angel unbuckled Rose’s belt and lifted her into her arms, sniffing her kid scent of powder and baby shampoo and chicken-noodle soup.

She kissed Rose’s nose. “What are you up to today?”

“I played dollies and bocks and pee-peed in my potty.”

“You did?” Angel exclaimed.

Rose nodded emphatically. “Big girl now.”

“You certainly are.”

Rose picked up a strand of Angel’s long hair. “I grow up pitty like you.”

No, don’t. It’s too much. It’s a burden. I want to be loved for myself, not for my face and my body.

She wanted the same for Rose, to be loved for the beautiful person she was inside. “Auntie Angel?”

“Yes, Rose?”

Rose spread her hands, as if puzzled. “What you bring me?”

Everyone laughed and Angel sent Matt and Jenny a wry smile.

“This habit of bringing gifts every time you show up is going to have to stop,” Matt said.

“Sure,” Angel said. “Next time. Come on. There’s something for each of you in the car.”

Matt wrapped his arm around her as they walked outside.

Here is where I feel at home, where I’m accepted and loved, completely and utterly. On Matt and Jenny’s ranch, she wasn’t trashy Angel Donovan. Here, she wasn’t Missy’s daughter. In this house, she was a good sister-in-law, a loving sister and a world-class aunt.

WHEN PHIL RETURNED TO the house, Missy still sat at the kitchen table, exactly where she’d been when Angel had left, with her head in her hands, trying to figure out what to do.

“Hey, babe,” Phil said. “Come on.” He walked down the hall to their bedroom.

Missy followed him, less and less happy about their afternoon “dates,” as Phil called them. Why couldn’t Phil ever get enough no matter how often she satisfied him—every night, most mornings and every afternoon?

Her frustration grew. Maybe today she could change that. How? For a woman who knew as much about sex as anyone could, she was drawing a blank. She had to make this work with the man she was about to marry.

When she entered the room, Phil was naked from the waist up and unbuckling his belt.

His pants dropped to the floor. Skinny legs. Small chest. It was hard for Missy to whip up enthusiasm day after day.

Phil’s face turned hard. “Where’s the car?”

Warily, Missy said, “Angel took it to visit Matt.”

She pulled off her blouse and Phil stared at her breasts. She swore he liked them better than her face.

“You shouldn’t have let her take it.” His lips pulled back into a snarl. Phil was angry. Could she use it to charge up the sex?

She dropped her pants and the tiny scrap of red lace of her thong. She turned her back to him and climbed onto the bed, hoping that the sight of her would excite him to new heights.

“Hurry up,” he said. “Get under the blankets.”

She didn’t want to hurry, was sick of hurrying, of giving and not getting. She turned onto her back but didn’t climb under the covers. Instead, she bent her knees and spread her legs. Go down on me, Phil. He never had before. She wasn’t sure what he would do if she asked. She needed satisfaction today.

“Please,” she whispered. Phil, honey, give an inch.

He shook his head, pulled off his boxers and lay on top of her, entering her without foreplay.

He worked on top of her while Missy pictured massive biceps, big penises, large hands rough on her skin, anything to excite herself.

“Do that thing,” Phil ordered.

“What thing?” she asked, trying to spike his anger, trying to spark an unpredictable reaction, hoping he would get a little rough with her.

“Move your muscles inside.”

She did and he shook. His arms trembled and he dropped onto his elbows.

He was done.

“Thanks, babe.” He breathed heavily in her ear.

For a second, she held him close to bind him to her, afraid to let go. Phil, I need you. Angel will be gone soon. Then all I’ll have is you.

In only one more week, they were getting married. Then everything would be fine. It had to be. She had no one else.

Phil rolled off her. “Move, babe.” She did and he slid under the covers.

Missy opened the drawer of the bedside table and handed him a big cotton hankie. “Here,” she said. “Don’t mess my sheets.”

He took it, cleaned himself, handed it back to her and said, “Wake me at four.”

As if she could forget. He did the same thing every day. Such an overgrown boy. A child in a man’s body. What had happened to him when he was a kid?

Missy had asked, but Phil wouldn’t talk about it.

She showered, dressed, then returned to the kitchen, where she stood in front of the window, frozen by her own unanswered needs.

The grass needed mowing.

TIMM SAT IN FRONT OF his computer. There was something he needed to know, not quite sure why he felt guilty delving into Angel’s business.

He was a reporter. Reporters were naturally curious people.

He looked up the bike’s license plate. It had been a Montana plate. His memory was one asset that worked in his favor as a journalist.

Angel owned the bike. Even more curious, he typed her name into an internet search engine and found an article dated nearly three months ago.

Young Man Dead—DUI

Both Neil Anderson’s motorcycle and his girlfriend, Angel Donovan, came away from a single-vehicle accident with minor scratches.

Neil, a promising young student at Bozeman University, wasn’t so lucky. He died on impact when he was thrown and his head hit a tree.

At the autopsy, he was determined to have had a blood alcohol level higher than .08.

Close friends and family of the victim expressed shock, since Anderson never drank and didn’t frequent bars.

The officer who investigated the crash stated that Montana has the highest incident rate of alcohol-related car accidents in the country.

Timm jumped up from his desk to pace. Angel hadn’t changed. He’d watched the impetuous fool try to burn a bike—scratched and dented, maybe, but nearly new. He remembered the party girl she used to be. Clearly she’d gotten the Anderson kid started on drinking. Timm was a fool to like her, to defend her, to lie to Cash through omission.

So, she was burning the bike…because? Probably because it had killed her friend.

Angel was wrong, though. The bike hadn’t killed her friend. She had.