21

FOR A LITTLE WHILE after the scene in the grocery store when she was three and he was seven, Jody took peeks at Collin whenever she saw him, and sometimes it turned out that he was peeking at her, too.

When that happened, they gave each other shy, secret smiles.

Then they’d quickly look away as if it had never happened.

But then, “Who is that boy?” she asked her grandma one time after they’d been in the grocery store and had seen him at his homework table again.

Annabelle decided it was best to tell the truth.

“That boy’s name is Collin Crosby, sweetheart.” She took a deep breath. “It was his daddy who killed your daddy.”

Jody looked at her with horror.

Annabelle nodded. “That’s why it’s best for you to stay away from him.”

Jody looked at Collin differently then, as if he’d all of a sudden grown horns.

“I hate him!”

“Oh, honey, that little boy hasn’t done anything wrong. You shouldn’t hate him. It’s not his fault that his daddy is a bad man. You should feel sorry for Collin, and try not to hate him.”

“Why?”

“Because it would be awful to have a father like that, wouldn’t it?”

Jody nodded slowly. It was awful not to have a father at all.

When she was a little older she wondered if he missed his father like she missed hers.

She wondered if he loved his daddy.

If he did-if he loved that terrible man, even if it was his father-then she would hate Collin Crosby and she would always hate him, no matter what her grandma said about being feeling sorry for him. She tried to stop peeking at him after that when she saw him in the grocery store or other places around Rose, but her eyes kept looking. When he caught her staring-or she discovered he was looking at her-she didn’t smile even the teeniest smile at him.

Collin stopped smiling at her, too.

And still she couldn’t help sneaking glances through the years.

“Do you like him?” a middle school friend asked her one time, looking shocked.

“Collin Crosby?” Jody was mortified that she’d been caught staring. “Gosh, no!”

It wasn’t that he was cute, although he was.

It was his eyes. His eyes looked serious and kind and somehow gave her the impression that they knew each other better than they did-which wasn’t true at all. She didn’t understand how he made her feel like that. They were the last people on earth who could be friends. Collin Crosby couldn’t possibly know anything about her except for the terrible truth of what his father had done to hers.

When she entered high school and was old enough to entertain the thought, she decided Collin held a creepy fascination for her like a snake, and that it was sick and she should be ashamed of herself and never look at him again.

Soon after that, she turned her head one day and he was looking at her.

Jody whirled around, putting her back to him, but she couldn’t seem to make her curiosity about him stop so easily.

AS THEY GREW OLDER, they navigated around each other with the help of friends, who whispered, “We can’t go that way. Collin Crosby’s over there.” Or, in Collin’s case, “Don’t turn around. Jody Linder’s by the wall.” They averted their eyes when they had to, walked around corners to stay invisible, never joined the same clubs or activities, tactfully slid past each other in school hallways. Jody got tired of always needing to look down rows in auditoriums, gymnasiums, and football bleachers to make sure she wasn’t sliding in near him with her bag of popcorn or her soda pop, but that’s the kind of vigilance it took to keep from causing trouble.

She didn’t know what kind of trouble there might be.

It just felt as if trouble might happen if people saw them together.

He wasn’t popular like she was in her grade, but she could see that he had friends of his own, he wasn’t one of those loners who might show up and shoot off a gun and kill everybody in school, starting with her.

At least, she hoped he wasn’t.

Other people weren’t so sure.

Jody had a feeling that Collin Crosby got watched pretty closely by the adults in town, as if they were all afraid he’d end up like his father. She knew what it was like to be watched all the time, because everybody watched out for her to make sure “the Linder girl” was okay. It was nice, even if it sometimes drove her crazy. But that was different from how they watched him.

Well, they could watch him all they wanted, Jody thought, but she wasn’t going to look at him at all. And she didn’t until the next time.

ACTUAL FRICTION only happened once, and Jody would have done anything to keep it from happening again. She was in high school by them, and one night she was standing behind the bleachers at a basketball game in Henderson City when she took a step back, colliding with somebody else’s back. When she turned to apologize, Collin Crosby was doing the same.

It was only then that she realized she’d spilled pop all down her blouse.

“Nice going, Crosby,” one of her male friends said to him, even though Collin was a lot older and bigger. Then Jody’s friend reached up and shoved Collin’s shoulder. “Back off.” His face rigid but otherwise expressionless, Collin took a step backward. When he started to say again to Jody, “I’m sorry,” her friend got between them. “Shut up, Crosby. Just shut the fuck up! Your goddamned father already did enough to her. Stay the hell away from her.”

Without a word, Collin turned and walked away.

Jody felt breathless from the episode that hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds.

Her boy friends didn’t usually curse that way around the girls.

There’d been real anger there, and protectiveness.

For a moment it unveiled something hidden and violent that scared her and that she had never known existed in the people around her.

Jody was quickly enfolded in her circle of friends again and they moved en masse back to the basketball bleachers. Nothing was said about the incident. Nobody seemed to think their friend had done or said anything wrong, but nobody seemed to want to talk about it, either. Talking about it would have meant referring to her parents. Jody’s heart kept beating hard. She was just glad it wasn’t worse and that Collin decided not to shove back. Did that make him smart, or did it make him a coward? She didn’t know. She felt she should have said something, but she hadn’t. What did that make her? She felt bad, as if she had done something wrong. Or failed to do something right. And she felt bad for him. Her attention was badly distracted from the game and she kept scanning the bleachers, pretending to look at the players as they moved up and down the court, but really looking to see if a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired boy had come in and found his seat again.

She didn’t see him again that night or for a long while afterward.

When she finally did, it was their first real contact since they were children, and this time the two of them were the only ones who knew it happened.

SHE WAS SIXTEEN, fresh from getting her driver’s license and being able to drive solo, and one day her urge to drive and drive and drive alone took her out to Testament Rocks. She went as if pulled there by some strange magnet that compelled her to go, even though she knew that girls weren’t supposed to go out there alone. It was too isolated, too far away from help, too likely to attract the kind of man who would take advantage of its isolation and of her.

Her new used truck, a birthday gift, just kept speeding in that direction, over the asphalt, then over the dirt. She was still getting the hang of this driving-on-highways thing, even though she’d been driving tractors and trucks around the ranch since she was thirteen. Now, with a truck of her own, she loved going fast a little too much. The truck was old and she didn’t care as much as some people would-teenage boys, for instance-about dings in its chassis. So she sped down the long road toward the huge rock formations as if in training for an off-road race.