She averted her face, hoping Randy wouldn’t notice her as Booker said, “Federal drug charges. I got busted for selling crack when I was twenty. I was pretty messed up in those days.”
“But you’ve changed.”
“I don’t do drugs. I don’t hang out with other people who do them. I’m not angry anymore.”
Rebecca stirred another packet of sugar into her coffee because it gave her a way to occupy her hands. “What was it like in prison?”
“Bad enough that I don’t want to go back.”
Rarely did Booker embellish his statements with any detail. Rebecca would have questioned him further, however, if she hadn’t heard Jeff say something to Judy and Rick, the late-night cook, that caught her attention. Something about a car fire.
“That thing is toast, man. You should see it,” Randy said, sitting at the bar in front of the cooler that contained the pies the owner of the restaurant made daily.
“No one’s going to be driving that charred heap,” Jeff concurred.
“Does Josh know what happened?” Judy wanted to know.
“He knows his Excursion’s destroyed. He doesn’t know how it happened, though.”
“A vehicle doesn’t just burst into flames for no reason,” the cook said.
“What vehicle?” Rebecca asked, forgetting that she didn’t want Randy to notice her.
Her brother-in-law swiveled to face her. His expression turned to a glower when he saw Booker with her, but he answered. “Josh Hill’s Excursion just burned to cinders.”
Rebecca felt a chill go down her spine. The same vehicle she’d been sitting in only a couple of hours earlier? The same vehicle she’d been smoking in?
“How’d the fire get started?” she asked, scarcely able to breathe.
Randy shrugged. “Don’t know. There was a gas can in back. Josh had just filled it for the Quad Runners and forgotten to take it out. We think that had something to do with it.”
“So you’re saying the Excursion…what? Spontaneously combusted?” she asked, her voice sounding reedy, even to her own ears.
“Not in this cool weather,” Jeff said, his voice as skeptical as his words. “It would’ve taken a spark of some kind.”
Rebecca tried to recall what she’d done with the butt of her cigarette. She’d been sitting in the truck smoking, talking to Booker. They’d decided they were wasting their time, and she’d flicked her cigarette away. But it had fallen on the damp ground, hadn’t it? She couldn’t remember. She’d been so preoccupied with what Buddy had said, and what Josh had done to make Buddy say what he’d said, and what she was or wasn’t going to do in response, that she hadn’t been paying attention. Maybe she’d flicked the butt into his Excursion by accident. Or maybe she hadn’t done it by accident at all. Maybe her subconscious had wanted to destroy Josh’s fancy SUV….
The “bad seed” stuff her father had mentioned echoed in Rebecca’s mind. It was too much of a coincidence that she’d been smoking in Josh’s truck the same night it burst into flame, wasn’t it? Had she provided the spark?
Oh, God… She opened her mouth to ask if a cigarette butt could have started the fire, but Booker interrupted her by squeezing her hand.
“We’re sorry to hear that,” he said to Randy and Jeff, taking over the conversation. “But Rebecca and I better get going. It’s late, and we’ve already been here for ages. Isn’t that right, Judy?”
“Huh?” the middle-aged waitress said, her mind still obviously immersed in the shocking news about Josh’s Excursion.
“We’re ready for the check,” Booker replied.
“Oh, yeah.” She walked over and slapped their ticket on the table.
Booker tossed a five on top of it before pulling Rebecca from the booth.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she murmured as they made their way to her car.
“No,” Booker said. “I’m not.”
But she knew he was. She knew it from the tenseness of his body, the soberness of his eyes.
“What am I going to do?” she asked after he put her in the passenger side of her car and took the driver’s seat himself.
“Nothing.”
“I have to do something.”
He started the engine. “No, you don’t. Considering the past, there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell anyone will believe what happened was an accident. How are you planning to explain what you were doing at his house? And I’m an ex-con. I can’t exactly lend you credibility. So we’re not going to say anything. Josh’s insurance will replace his ride, and that’ll be the end of it, okay?”
“But what if it was my fault?”
“If?” he said.
And that was when Rebecca knew for sure: she’d burned Josh’s new Excursion to the ground.
REBECCA’S HEART ECHOED the thumping of her hand on Delaney’s door.
“Laney, it’s me. Open up,” she called, shivering. When she and Booker had arrived at Granny Hatfield’s, she’d gone inside and tried to sleep. But she’d only tossed restlessly in her bed. When the emotions swirling inside her refused to settle down after an hour, she’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and headed out, hoping to speak to the one person who’d always been able to make sense of the world. Delaney.
The porch light snapped on and Rebecca stepped back. Finally. Thank goodness. But she wasn’t very pleased when she saw Conner’s sleepy face through the crack in the door, instead of Delaney’s.
“Rebecca?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
Rebecca rubbed her palms on her jeans, suddenly resenting Conner as much as she resented all the other changes life had brought over the past year. Now that Delaney was married, she was mostly unavailable. Buddy had postponed their wedding—indefinitely, this time. Her next closest friend was an ex-con. And she was living with Hatty, for God’s sake. Could things get any worse?
“Um…yeah,” she said. “Sorry to wake you, but…I really need to talk to Delaney.”
“Rebecca?” Delaney gently pushed Conner out of the way and opened the door wider. “What’s going on?”
Rebecca glanced uncomfortably at Conner. She shouldn’t have come. Conner was obviously disgruntled at the disturbance and, being so close to the end of her pregnancy, Delaney needed her sleep. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’ll call you in the morning.”