I push a hand over my smile and turn back to the keys, and my cheeks go hot. Does he mean it?
“I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true, May. I might not know much about raising little girls, but I do know about music.” He leans close, trying to see my face. “I understand that it’s hard for you, coming here to a new home, at your age…but I think you and I can be friends.”
All of a sudden, I’m back in the hallway at Mrs. Murphy’s house, in the pitch dark, and Riggs has me pinned between his belly and the wall, and he’s pressing hard into me, blocking out the air, making my body go numb. The smell of whiskey and coal dust slides up my nose, and he whispers, Y-you and me can b-b-be friends. I can git ya p-peppermints and c-c-cookies. Anythin’ y-you want. We c-can b-b-be best friends….
I jump up from the piano bench, smashing the keys so that a handful play all at once. The noise mixes with the sound of my shoes clattering against the floor.
I don’t stop running until I’m upstairs curled in the bottom of my closet with my feet braced on the door so nobody else can get in.
CHAPTER 21
Avery
When the Stafford camp circles the wagons, we’re a formidable force. For almost three weeks now, we’ve been hunkered down behind the barricades fighting off the press, whose main goal is to paint us as criminally elitist because we’ve engaged premium nursing home care for my grandmother, who can afford it, by the way. It’s not as if we’re asking the public to pay her fees…which is what I really want to say to every reporter who accosts us with a microphone as we make our way to and from public events, meetings, social commitments…even church.
Driving into Drayden Hill after accompanying my parents to church and a Sunday brunch, I spot my sisters in one of the broodmare paddocks with Allison’s triplets. In the riding arena, Courtney has a sweet old gray gelding out for a canter. She’s riding bareback, and as I park, I imagine the rhythm of Doughboy’s strides, his muscles tightening and releasing, the rise and fall of his broad back.
“Hey, Aunt Aves! Want to go out on the trails with me?” Courtney calls hopefully as I walk to the fence. “You can take me home after.”
I’m about to say, Let me go grab a pair of jeans, but Courtney’s mom beats me to the punch. “Court, you have to get ready for camp!”
“Awww, man,” my niece whines, then canters off on Doughboy.
I slip through the paddock gate and totter across the broodmare pasture in my high heels. Along the far fence, the boys are delighting themselves by poking flowers and spears of grass between the slats for this year’s foals to nuzzle. Allison and Missy snap rapid-fire photos with their iPhones. The boys’ little seersucker shorts and bow ties don’t look quite as pristine as they did in church.
Missy squats down and snuggles one of the boys while helping him pull a wildflower. “Awww…I miss these days,” she says wistfully. Her teenagers are away at the Asheville summer camp we attended throughout our childhood. Court leaves tomorrow for a shorter stay.
“These three hooligans are up for rent anytime you want.” Allison’s eyes widen hopefully as she tucks her thick auburn hair behind her ear. “I mean anytime. You don’t even have to take all three. Just one or two.”
We laugh together. It’s a nice moment of stress relief. The last few weeks have tied everyone in knots.
“How was Daddy at the brunch?” As usual, Missy steers back to practical matters.
“Okay, I think. They stayed after, chatting with some friends. Hopefully Mama will make him go kick up his feet once they’re home. We have a dinner to go to later.” My father is determined to keep up the pace, yet the controversy over Grandma Judy is wearing him down. The fact that his mother has become a target in this latest political scuffle is hard for him to bear. Senator Stafford can handle the shots across his own bow, but when his family is caught in the cross fire, his blood pressure skyrockets.
On days when he has to wear the chemo pump strapped to his leg, he looks as though he might collapse under the additional weight.
“We’ll go ahead and scoot out of here before they show up then.” Allison glances toward the