Carolina Moon

can’t.”
    “I like who you are.”
    “Last night you had trouble with it.”
    “Some,” he admitted. “You worried me. You were frantic,” he added, laying a hand over hers before she could pull away. “Then fragile. Made me feel clumsy. I didn’t know what to do, and I’m used to knowing.”
    “You didn’t believe me.”
    “I don’t doubt what you saw, or felt. But I have to think part of it could be mixed up with coming here, with remembering what happened to Hope.”
    She thought about the call from Abigail, about the dates of both murders. But she held back. She’d trusted before, shared before. And had lost everything.
    “It is all mixed up with me coming here. And with Hope. If it wasn’t for Hope, you wouldn’t be sitting here now.”
    On more even ground again, he sat back, continued to eat. “If I’d seen you for the first time four, five weeks ago, if we’d never met before and there’d been nothing between us till then, I’d damn well have figured out how to get myself sitting here now. Fact is, if we’d started weeks ago instead of years, I do believe I’d already have you in that very interesting bed.”
    He smiled, slow and easy, when she set the spoon back down in her soup with a little plop. “I figure it’s time we got that out in the open, so you can think about it.”

14
    T he drive was pleasant enough and reminded her of all she’d missed by not staying close to J.R. There was such a hugeness to him, in his voice, his laugh, his gestures. Twice she’d had to dodge his arm as he’d thrown it toward her to point out something along the highway.
    He seemed to swallow you up with his simple joy of being.
    He sat in the little car, his knees all but up to his chin, his big, wide hand clutching the gearshift the way she’d seen some young boys clutch a joystick during a video game.
    For the fun and competition.
    The way he dived into the day they might have been racing to some mad picnic rather than a painful family duty.
    Living in the now, she thought, that was his gift, and a skill she’d struggled to master all her life.
    He got such a kick out of his new car, zipping and roaring up the interstate with his CDs of Clint Black and Garth Brooks blasting, and a natty glen plaid cap snugged down on his lamb’s wool mat of ginger-colored hair.
    He lost the cap just past the exit for Sumter when a frisky tail of wind caught it and flipped it toward the ramp and under the wheels of a Dodge minivan. J.R. never slowed down, and laughed like a lunatic.
    With the top down and the music up, conversation was exchanged in shouts, but J.R. still managed to hold one, with his topics of interest bouncing like a big rubber ball from Tory’s store, politics, fat-free ice cream, and the stock market.
    As they approached the exit to Florence, he allowed as he hoped they’d have just a bit of time to slip by and visit his mother. It was the first time since he’d picked her up that he mentioned family.
    Tory shouted out that she’d love to stop and see her grandmother. Then she thought of Cecil and wondered if J.R. knew about the new arrangements. Thinking about that kept her mind occupied and entertained until they bypassed Florence and headed northeast.
    She’d never been to her parents’ place outside of Hartsville. She had no idea what either of them did now for a living, or how they spent their time together or apart.
    She’d never asked her grandmother, and Iris never brought it up.
    “Nearly there.” J.R. shifted in his seat. Tory felt his mood shift as well. “Last I heard, Han, he was doing some factory work. They, ah, leased a patch of land and were raising chickens.”
    “I see.”
    J.R. cleared his throat as if about to speak again, then fell silent until he turned off the main road onto a shoulder-less twist of pitted asphalt. “I haven’t been up to see their place. Ah, Sarabeth gave me the directions when I said I’d come to see what was what.”
    “It’s all right, Uncle Jimmy, don’t fret about me. We both know what to expect.”
    The scatter of houses that could be seen were small and skeletal, yellowed bones stuck on overgrown yards or dust bowl lots. A rusted pickup with its windshield cracked like an eggshell tilted on cinder blocks. An ugly black dog leaped on its chain and barked viciously while less than a foot away a child wearing nothing but grayed cotton underwear and a tangle of dark hair sat on an old dented washing machine abandoned in a