She turned to go, but Delaney grabbed her arm. “No, come in. I’m worried about you.”
Rebecca let herself be dragged inside and breathed a little easier when Delaney insisted Conner go back to bed. “I can take care of this,” she said. “You get some sleep.”
He shoved a hand through his rumpled hair, gazed with bleary eyes at his wife, then shuffled down the hall.
“Sorry,” Rebecca said when he was gone.
“Don’t worry about it,” Delaney replied. “Come on into the kitchen. I’ll make us a cup of herbal tea.”
Rebecca followed her and slumped into a chair while Delaney put some water on to boil.
“So what’s wrong?” she asked, sitting across from her.
Rebecca poured salt on the kitchen table and began moving it around with one fingertip. When that didn’t ease the tension humming through her body, she sighed and said, “I’m in trouble, Laney.”
Her best friend stiffened, as though bracing for the worst. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Booker, does it?”
“Actually it does. But not in the way you think.”
“Then what?” she said, her voice tentative.
Meeting her gaze, Rebecca said, “I burned down Josh’s truck tonight.”
Delaney stood, as quickly as she could in her condition, and pressed a hand to her chest. “You what?”
“It was an accident. He called Buddy today and told him every terrible thing I’ve ever done. And Buddy said he wasn’t sure whether he even wanted to set a date for the wedding anymore. And…and I just felt so helpless and frustrated and angry. I shouldn’t have gone out to Josh’s place. I know that. But I really didn’t mean to burn his Excursion.”
“You want to explain how it happened?”
Rebecca told her about how she’d dashed off to Josh’s, planning to confront him—and how pointless that had seemed by the time she’d reached his house. When she finished by describing the careless toss of her cigarette butt, Delaney didn’t respond. “Say something,” she finally prodded.
“I’m trying to think,” Delaney replied. “I mean, Josh had no right to do what he did. I can’t believe he’d involve himself in your personal life. But I doubt the police will give you much sympathy.”
“Josh might not have done anything illegal, but when he called Buddy, I’m sure he left out all the stuff he did to provoke me while we were growing up.”
Delaney dropped her head in one palm. “You mean like breathing?” she muttered.
Rebecca stared down at the salt granules on the table, feeling almost as minuscule. “Like…like…I don’t know,” she said. “Why did he have to call Buddy, anyway?”
Delaney wiped the salt Rebecca had poured onto the table into her hand and went to toss it down the sink. “That’s what has me stumped,” she said, turning on the water. “You guys rarely see each other anymore. You were letting the past go. You were calling a truce. So why the sudden involvement?”
Rebecca got up and began to pace. “I don’t know. I haven’t done anything bad to him for years.”
“The last time was when we stole his truck and stranded him and Cindy at the old skinny-dipping spot, remember?” Delaney said.
Rebecca easily recalled the warm, dark night they’d seen Josh at the movies with Cindy Westover. They’d chanced upon his pickup a few hours later, parked not far from Culver Creek with the keys dangling inside, and knew he and Cindy were probably taking a swim—or doing more than swimming. Either way, it had been too good an opportunity to pass up. “That was nine years ago.”
“Maybe he’s still holding a grudge.”
“He was the one who left his keys inside.”
“Hormone-induced frenzies don’t lend themselves to cautious thinking,” Delaney pointed out.
“Then it would’ve been a bigger mistake if they’d left their clothes in the truck, too.” Rebecca folded her arms as she paced; she felt so fidgety, she didn’t know what to do with her hands. “In any case, he and Cindy had to walk a few miles in the dark. So what? It wasn’t even cold out.”
“They had to walk ten miles, at least,” Delaney corrected. “But forget I brought it up. This is different. You could be in big trouble here. You didn’t just borrow his truck this time—you destroyed it.”
“Ten miles is no big deal,” Rebecca insisted, because she didn’t want to think about the repercussions of the here and now. “Josh and Cindy walked home and found Josh’s truck parked in his driveway, keys inside. No harm done. Surely he didn’t call Buddy to get me back for that.”
“Who knows? He has a long list of grievances to choose from,” Delaney said.
Most of which he’d enumerated quite nicely for Buddy, Rebecca thought, pivoting at the end of the kitchen and coming back.
“That wasn’t exactly the last contact you had with him,” Delaney went on.
Rebecca gave up crossing her arms, because she was too nervous to hold her arms so still, and began fiddling with the bottom of her sweater. “But I didn’t do anything unkind last summer. I was out of my mind for a little while and nearly tore off his clothes and begged him to take me. What would make a man angry about that?”
“I can’t say,” Delaney said, leaning against the counter. “I only know you’ve been different since that night.”
“How?”
“Less volatile. More reflective. Certainly far less vocal about your dislike for Josh Hill. Why’d you ever leave the Honky Tonk with him?”
“You already know. I was drunk.”
“You seem to remember a lot about that night for being drunk.”
Rebecca would’ve had to be deaf to miss the skepticism in Delaney’s voice. “Last summer has nothing to do with now,” she said, changing the subject as quickly as possible.
“Who knows,” Delaney said.
“I know.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
Delaney pulled her chair away from the table to make more room for her belly and sank down again. “You couldn’t simply have asked him why he called Buddy,” she said, tucking her long hair behind her ears. “You couldn’t have gone to the door and said, ‘Keep your nose out of my business.’ Instead, you had to toss a cigarette butt inside his SUV.”