Caged(29)

"As a neutral party, I'll ask you all to refrain from bickering. Keep your past petty grievances private. Hold it together for your grandmother's memory."

Jennifer placed her hand on the reverend's arm. "Of course we will. We loved Grams. We'd never disrespect her. It's just easy to fall into those old habits. Isn't it, Molly?"

Easier for some of us-namely you. "Reverend, why are you here?"

He sent Molly an apologetic look. "With all you've been through . . . I'm sorry to say that you'll have to stay elsewhere. Torch Robbins, your grandmother's attorney, has documentation requiring the house be locked up until the will is read."

Now she had to shell out money to stay at a motel? Fantastic. Molly looked at the notebook the reverend held. "I assume you have the official documentation?"

"Molly! What is wrong with you?" Brandi pushed into Molly's personal space. "We have no reason to question what the reverend tells us."

"You've been living in the big city too long," Jennifer retorted. "We trust our friends and neighbors around here."

"Which is good and well, but we all know break-ins occur as soon as word gets around there's been a death and a house sits empty." Not to mention she wouldn't put it past her cousins to keep her out of the way so they could go through the house, picking the items of value.

Reverend Somers smiled at her. "Of course you're entitled to see the paperwork." He opened his notebook and handed her the first loose sheet of paper. "Erma had this drawn up last year."

Molly scrutinized the text. For once Grams had made a sound decision, although she hated that Grams was planning ahead for her own death. "It appears to be in order. Thank you."

"We're not a bunch of rubes, Molly," Brandi said snottily.

"Neither am I." She looked to the reverend. "You've been entrusted to lock up?"

"Yes."

When her cousins asked a question, Molly fled outside.

It hardly seemed fair the day was so beautiful when she was so filled with sadness. It should be gloomy, cold, and rainy. Rather than wait for more attacks from her cousins, Molly wandered to the end of the lane-Grams's term for the dirt track that connected to the main road.

Early summer in Nebraska meant the scents of dirt and diesel. The air hung heavy with humidity. Bugs buzzed around her feet and head. Birds chirping and the occasional croak of a frog drifted up from the ditches. When she reached the tractor-shaped mailbox, she tipped her head back, letting the watery sunlight heat her face.

A sharp pang jabbed her heart.

Erma Calloway had come to this farm a blushing bride of nineteen. After Grandpa Pete died, Grams had sold off what land she could and rented out the rest. As a widow with no skills outside of being a farmwife, she'd needed the income. Now they had to pack up sixty years' worth of stuff accumulated over a happy, well-lived life.

Mostly happy. One child had given her joy; the other, trouble. Molly's mother, Pauline, had skipped town with the carnival the day after she graduated from high school. Almost twenty years passed before Pauline had returned, unmarried, with a two-year-old and addiction problems. Molly's memories of her mom were of stale cigarette smoke and the sour scent of booze. Within a month of being back on the farm, her mother had bought the farm-she was killed by a train at an unmarked railroad crossing in the middle of the night. During her teen years, Molly suspected her mom had parked her car on that railroad track on purpose. But Molly's grandmother insisted it was an accident-not suicide.



       
         
       
        

But the truth was, as she grew up, Molly understood why her mother might've done it. Life on the farm wasn't Norman Rockwell idyllic. Neither was living in small-town Nebraska, where everyone knew everyone, their dirty laundry, family secrets, and shame. Where your relatives judged you, shunned you, hated you, and made your life hell.

Growing up, her cousins Jennifer and Brandi had been the bane of her existence. Being the quiet, shy type, she'd suffered their insults and attacks in silence. The one time she'd complained about their excessive meanness, her grandmother had snapped that they were her family-the only family she'd ever have-and she'd better be grateful that she wasn't living in foster care. Then she'd told Molly to find a way to deal with it. So she had. She'd become invisible.

In high school her outstanding grades had earned her a full-ride scholarship to University of Nebraska at Lincoln. She'd chosen business accounting-a smart, safe, employable major.

Following college graduation, Molly had returned home for a temporary visit while waiting to see where she'd been accepted to grad school. It had shocked and dismayed her when she'd overheard Grams asking Uncle Bob to find a position for her in his insurance business. One, because nothing could ever make her stay in her hometown permanently. Two, because both Jennifer and Brandi worked there-if sleeping off hangovers in the conference room was considered working. The rest of her life played out before her as a nightmare.