There was a semicircle of piercingly bright lights arranged out on the dirt yard, and Faith had a blurred impression of a lot of people, moving back and forth. The man holding her
kicked open the screen door and shoved her outside. She tripped over the rickety steps and sprawled on her face in the dirt, her nightgown riding high on her legs. Rocks and grit skinned the hide from her knees and palms, and scraped a raw place on her forehead.
"Here," someone said. "Take the kid." Scottie was roughly deposited beside her. He was screaming hysterically, his round blue eyes blank and terrified. Faith scrambled to a sitting position, shoving her nightgown down over her legs, and gathered him into her arms.
Things were flying through the air, crashing and thudding all around her. She saw Amos, clinging to the doorframe as two men in brown uniforms bodily hauled him out of the house. Deputies, she thought, dazed. What were deputies doing out here, unless Pa or the boys had been caught stealing something? As she watched, one of the deputies cracked Amos’s fingers with his flashlight. Amos cried out and released the frame, and they tossed him into the yard. A chair came sailing out the door, and Faith ducked to the side. It hit the ground right where she had been, and splintered. Half crawling, with Scottie’s arms locked around her neck and dragging her down, she struggled toward the shelter of Pa’s old truck, where she huddled against the front tire.
Stunned, she stared at the nightmare scene, trying to make sense of it. Things were being tossed out windows, clothes and pots and dishes flying. The dishes were plastic, and made a huge clatter as they landed. A drawer of flatware was emptied out a window, the cheap stainless steel flashing in the lights of the patrol cars.
"Clean it out," she heard a deep voice growl. "I don’t want anything left inside."
Gray! The recognition of that beloved voice froze her, crouched there on the ground with Scottie clutched protectively to her. She found him almost immediately, his tall, powerful form standing with arms crossed over his chest, next to the sheriff.
"You ain’t got no call to do this to us!" Amos was bawling, trying to grab Gray by the arm. Gray shook him off with no more effort than if he’d been a pesky little dog. "You can’t
throw us out in the middle of the night! What about my children, my poor little retarded boy? Ain’t you got no feelin’ at all, treatin’ a helpless child like that?"
"I told you to be out by nightfall, and I meant it," Gray snapped. "Gather up what you want to take with you, because in half an hour I’m setting fire to whatever is left."
"My clothes!" Jodie yelped, leaping out from between the safety of two cars. She began darting around the wreckage, grabbing up garments and discarding them when they proved to be someone else’s, draping her own over one shoulder.
Faith struggled to her feet with Scottie still clinging to her, desperation giving her strength. Their possessions were probably trash to Gray, but it was all they had. She managed to pry Scottie’s hands loose long enough for her to bend down and scoop up an armful of tangled clothes, which she tossed into the back of Amos’s truck. She didn’t know what belonged to whom, but it didn’t matter. She had to save as much as she could.
Scottie latched around her leg like a tick, determined to hang on. Hampered by him, Faith grabbed Amos’s arm and shook him. "Don’t just stand there!" she yelled urgently. "Help me get our things in the truck!"
He shoved her away, sending her sprawling. "Don’t tell me what to do, you stupid little bitch!"
She bounced up, not even feeling the extra bruises and scrapes, anesthetized by urgency. The boys were even drunker than Amos, staggering around and cussing. The deputies had finished emptying the shack now and were standing around, watching the show.
‘.’Jodie, help me!" She clutched at Jodie as her sister stormed past, crying because she couldn’t find her clothes. "Grab what you can, as fast as you can. We’ll sort it out later. Gather all the clothes, and that way you know yours wiil be there." It was the only argument she could think of to gain Jodie’s cooperation.
The two girls began darting swiftly around the yard, gathering up every item they came to. Faith worked harder than she ever had in her life, her slender body bending and weaving, moving so fast that Scottie couldn’t keep up with
her. He followed in her path, sobbing hoarsely, his pudgy little hands clutching at her whenever she came within
reach.
Her mind was numb. She didn’t let herself think, couldn’t think. She moved automatically, cutting her hand on a broken bowl and not even noticing. One of the deputies did, though, and gruffly said, "Here, girl, you’re bleeding," and tied his handkerchief around her hand. She thanked him without knowing what she said.
She was too innocent, and too dazed, to realize how the lights of the cars shone through the thin fabric of her nightgown, silhouetting her youthful body, her slim thighs and high, graceful breasts. She bent and lifted, each change of position outlining a different part of her body, pulling the fabric tight across her breast and showing the small peak of her nipple, the next time revealing the round curve of her buttock. She was only fourteen, but in the stark, artificial light, with her long, thick hair flowing over her shoulders like dark flame, with the shadows catching the angle of her high cheekbones and darkening her eyes, her age wasn’t
apparent.
What was apparent was her uncanny resemblance to Renee Devlin, a woman who had only to walk across a room to bring most men to some degree of arousal. Renee’s sensuality was sultry and vibrant, beckoning like a neon sign to male instincts. When the men looked at Faith, it wasn’t her whom they were seeing, but her mother.
Gray stood silently, watching the proceedings. The rage was still there, still cold and consuming, undiluted. Disgust filled him as the Devlins, father and sons, staggered around, cussing and making wild threats. With the sheriff and his deputies there, though, they weren’t going to do anything more than shoot off their mouths, so Gray ignored them. Amos had had a close call when he’d pushed the youngest girl down; Gray’s fists balled, but she had jumped up, apparently unhurt, and he had restrained himself.
The two girls were rushing around, valiantly trying to gather up the most necessary items. The male Devlins took out their vicious, stupid frustrations on the girls, snatching things from their arms and throwing the items to the
ground, loudly proclaiming that no goddamn body was going to throw
them
out of their house, not to waste time picking things up because they weren’t goin’ nowhere, goddamn it. The oldest girl, Jodie, pleaded with them to help, but their drunken boasting drowned out her useless efforts.
The younger girl didn’t waste her time trying to reason with them, just moved silently back and forth, trying to bring order to chaos despite the clinging hands of the little boy. Despite himself, Gray found his gaze continually seeking her out, and himself unwillingly fascinated by the graceful, feminine outline of her body beneath that almost transparent nightgown. Her very silence drew attention to her, and when he glanced sharply around, he noticed that most of the deputies were watching her, too.
There was an odd maturity to her, and a trick of the lights gave him the strange feeling that he was looking at Renee rather than her daughter. The whore had taken his father from him, driven his mother into mental withdrawal, and nearly cost his sister her life, and here she was again, tempting men in her daughter’s flesh.
Jodie was more voluptuous, but she was noisy and cheap. Faith’s long, dark red hair swirled over the pearly sheen of her shoulders, bared by the straps of that nightgown. She looked older than he knew she was, not quite real, an incarnation of her mother drifting silently through the night, every move like a carnal dance.
Unwillingly, Gray felt his shaft stir and thicken, and he was disgusted with himself. He looked around at the deputies and saw his response mirrored in their eyes, an animal heat that they should be ashamed of having for a girl that young.
God, he was no better than his father. Give him a whiff of a Devlin woman and he was like a wild buck in rut, hard and ready. Monica had nearly died today because of Renee Devlin, and here he was watching Renee’s daughter with his cock twitching in his britches.
She walked toward him, carrying a pile of clothes. No, not toward him, but toward the truck behind him. Her green cat eyes flickered at him, the expression in them hooded and
mysterious. His pulse leaped, and the look of her broke his tenuous hold on his temper. The events of the day piled up on him and he lashed out with devastating fierceness, wanting the Devlins to suffer as he had suffered.
"You’re trash," he said in a deep, harsh voice as the girl drew even with him. She halted, frozen to the spot, with the kid still clinging to her legs. She didn’t look at Gray, just stared straight ahead, and the stark, pure outline of her face enraged him even more. "Your whole family is trash. Your mother is a whore and your father is a thieving drunk. Get out of this parish and don’t ever come back."
Twelve years later, Faith Devlin Hardy returned to Prescott, Louisiana.
Curiosity had been her companion on the drive up from Baton Rouge, and she hadn’t thought much beyond her reason for going back. Nothing about the road was familiar, because when she had lived in Prescott she’d seldom ventured farther than the small town, so no memories rose to link the past with the present, the girl with the woman.
But when she passed the Prescott city limit sign, when houses became closer together, forming actual streets and neighborhoods, when the tall pine and hardwood forests gave way to service stations and convenience stores, she felt an aching tension begin to grow in her. It increased when sheTeached the town square, with the redbrick courthouse looking exactly as it had in her memory. Cars still parked at angles all around the square, and park benches were still situated one to each side, for the old men to gather there on hot summer days, sheltering beneath the dense shade of the immense oak trees that grew on the square.
Some things had changed, of course. Some of the buildings were newer, while a few of the older ones were no longer there. Flower beds had been added to each corner of the courthouse square, no doubt by the enterprising Ladies’
Club, and pansies nodded their purple funny faces to passersby.
For the most part, though, things were the same, and the small differences only made the familiar stand out. The ache in her chest swelled until she could barely breathe, and her hands shook on the steering wheel. A piercing sense of sweetness went through her.
Home.
It was so sharp that she had to stop the car, easing it into a parking slot in front of the courthouse. Her heart was pounding wildly, and she took deep breaths to steady herself. She hadn’t expected this, hadn’t expected the tug of roots she thought had been severed a dozen years before. It shook her, it exhilarated her. She had been led here by nothing more than puzzlement, wanting to know for certain what had happened after the Devlins had been forcibly escorted out of the parish, but this burgeoning sense of belonging pushed curiosity aside.
But she didn’t belong here, she told herself. Even when she had lived here, she had never really
belonged,
only been tolerated. Whenever she had gone into any store in town, she had been watched like a hawk, because everyone knew a Devlin would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. That wasn’t acceptance.
Knowing that, however, had no effect on her heart. Her instincts, her senses, recognized this as home. The rich, colorful scents that were like nowhere else on earth, the sights that had been imprinted on her brain from birth, the subtle influences of latitude and longitude that were recognized by every cell in her body, said that this was home. She had been born here, grown up here. Her memories of Prescott were bitter, but still it pulled at her with invisible strings she hadn’t even known existed. She hadn’t wanted this. She had wanted only to satisfy her curiosity, gain a sense of closure, so she could completely let go of the past and build her future.
It hadn’t been easy, coming back. Gray Rouillard’s words still burned in her memory as if it had been yesterday he’d said them rather than twelve years before. Sometimes she went for days without thinking of him, but the pain was always there – under control, but there, a permanent companion. Coming back made the memories more immediate, and she heard his voice echoing in her mind:
You’re trash.
She drew in a deep, shaking breath, and inhaled the sweet green scent so bound up in memories of her childhood. Steadying herself, she made a more leisurely examination of the square, familiarizing herself once again with what had once been as well known as her own hand.
Some of the old businesses lining the square had been spruced up; the hardware store had a rock and cedar front now, and rustic double doors. A McDonald’s occupied the space where the Dairy Dip had been. A new bank had been built, and she’d bet money that it belonged to the Rouillards.
People walked by, glancing curiously at her as small-town people did at strangers, but no one recognized her. She hadn’t expected them to; twelve years had changed her from child into woman, and she had changed herself from helpless to capable, from poor to prosperous. In her tailored creamy business suit, with her heavy red hair tucked into a sophisticated twist and her eyes protected by sunglasses, there was nothing about her to remind people of Renee Devlin.