when her father died?” Gertie asked.
“I don’t know that I’d say dating, as such, as they were still kids,” Brenda said. “But there was a group from the area that hung out together and Liam was part of it. Hang on a second.”
She got up and retrieved a photo album from a hutch and flipped the pages.
“There you go,” she said. “I took these at a local rodeo right before Tiffany’s dad died. There’s Tiffany and Liam on the right.”
We all leaned in to look at the photo. It was a group of teens standing in front of a fence. There were horses in the background and the name of each teen was carefully penciled in below their image. I didn’t need the names to spot Liam and Tiffany, though. They looked the same but younger—that kind of young in the face that you lose when you hit your twenties.
“Who’s the sourpuss off to the side?” I asked, pointing to a woman frowning at the teens.
“That’s Emilia, Tiffany’s mother,” Brenda said. “If I remember correctly, Tiffany was supposed to be on punishment for her grades, but she’d sneaked out to go to the rodeo.”
Brenda tapped the photo where Liam and Tiffany were. “I think most people could see Liam and Tiffany were sweet on each other, but in a good way—an innocent young teen way. I didn’t see any cause for concern back then and trust me, I know the signs of a toxic teen relationship. You know what I’m saying, Gertie.”
Gertie nodded. “Oh yeah. So when her father died, did Tiffany keep hanging out with the group?”
“No,” Brenda said. “That was probably the second big blow to hit her. That group of kids were big into rodeo and Tiffany had been an up-and-coming barrel racer. She really loved her horse, but after her father died, her mother said they couldn’t afford to keep him as they were paying stable fees, food, vet, and entry for all the competitions. When her mother sold the horse, Tiffany stopped hanging out with the group. Stopped hanging out altogether that I could see. I’d spot Liam’s truck at her house on weekends but I never saw them out anywhere from then on…until her mother remarried. Then it got so her mother was always looking for Tiffany because she didn’t want to come home.”
“What do you think was going on?” I asked. “Abuse? Because I get depression over losing her father and her horse, but that look of long-term illness you described plus the complete shift in behavior says something went very wrong.”
Brenda blew out a breath. “I suspected as much. Even asked Tiffany about it a time or too—in a roundabout way, you know. Just trying to get her to open up a bit about the man and what was going on with her life. But every time I brought him up, her face went blank and she bolted.”
“Because that’s not a red flag,” Gertie said.
Brenda nodded.
“Did you try talking to her mother?” Ida Belle asked.
“Of course,” Brenda said. “But I could tell straightaway that woman wasn’t going to hear anything about anything. She’d always been weak, you know? Had to have someone propping her up. She’d found a replacement and by God, wasn’t nothing I or anyone else said going to shift her thinking on the matter.”
“So she stuck her head in the sand and ignored the fact that her daughter was likely being abused by her husband,” I said. “What a piece of—you know what, that’s even too kind.”
Brenda nodded. “I talked with the principal and social services and all of them had a go. Just so you don’t think I left it at trying to talk to her mother. But Tiffany wouldn’t say a thing so there was nothing they could do. The girl just moved like a zombie through high school until she turned eighteen mid senior year. All the teachers wondered if she’d drop out and take off. Well, you could have knocked us all over with a feather when she up and married Gil. No one had seen that one coming.”
“I can’t imagine you would,” Ida Belle said. “No one in Sinful saw it coming, either. I mean, we knew Tiffany spent a lot of time over at Gil’s house, but we always assumed she was there to see Liam and preferred it to her own situation as Gil wasn’t exactly an involved parent.”
“Not as much supervision,” Brenda said. “And that’s the logical road to take. I