Small Town Justice(14)
He huffed derisively. “Not on your life, Mom. Where that meddlesome woman goes, trouble follows. And so do I.”
“Okay. Then meet us at the motel,” Marsha said, looping her bent arm through Jamie’s. Her smile widened. “Since you’re so worried, I’ll take Kyle home to play with Otis and you can give Jamie Lynn a ride to the house later, when she’s ready.”
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Shane shrugged. “All right. We’ll do it your way this time,” he told Marsha. “Just don’t forget who and what we’re dealing with. Somebody has it in for Ms. Henderson—Nolan—but good, and they don’t seem to have given up. Whenever you’re with her, you can become collateral damage.”
Hesitating, Jamie Lynn tugged on Marsha’s arm. “Wait. This is a bad idea all the way around. Shane’s right about people being after me. I don’t want to do anything to put your family in jeopardy.”
Marsha turned and clasped Jamie’s free hand in both of hers. “Honey, I was married to Sam Colton for almost twenty years. During that time he received threats of all kinds. If I was ever worried about some good old boys heaving bricks through my windows, or some such nonsense, I got over it long ago.”
“This could be a lot worse than a brick,” Jamie Lynn warned.
“Nothing can ever be worse than losing my Sam,” Marsha insisted. “When it’s my time to go, it’s my time. No human intervention can change that.”
“You believe in fate?”
The older woman was shaking her head. Her eyes were so kind they tugged at Jamie’s conscience even more.
“No. What I believe is that God loves me and has been looking after me since I was a child and first met Jesus.” Her grip tightened. “What about you? What do you believe?”
“That I have to be responsible for my own life because nobody else is,” Jamie said before thinking it through. When she saw pity in Marsha’s expression, she wished she’d chosen her words with more care.
Instead of commenting, however, Marsha merely turned and led her toward a newer white sedan. A click of a key fob unlocked the doors remotely and made the lights flash.
Jamie circled, passed her little dog across to Marsha, then sat sideways on the edge of the passenger seat and bent forward over the curbside to shake loose glass out of her hair.
Satisfied she’d done all she could, she swung her legs in, pulled Ulysses onto her lap and slammed the door. She desperately wanted to explain what she’d meant when she’d said that nobody else cared what became of her, but the right words failed to materialize. Aunt Tessie cared, yes. As for anyone else, who knew? Certainly not Jamie Lynn.
* * *
By the time Shane located Kyle and made suitable excuses to the gang of church ladies who had gathered to bemoan the fact that he’d passed his child off so easily, Marsha’s car had left the square. Since he already knew where she was headed and how close the cozy motel was to the middle of Serenity, he wasn’t worried about safety. The idiots who had taken a potshot at Jamie Lynn were bound to know better than to try anything else right away, particularly with the square swarming with cops.
He smiled, realizing that the Serenity version of a swarm of police was far different from a city show of force. Nevertheless, there were enough cops present to ensure that whoever had been targeting the Henderson/Nolan woman would be long gone. Good ole boys might be wild and rowdy but they weren’t stupid. They were, for the most part, endowed with the innate savvy of natural hunters and fishermen, particularly since that kind of outdoor activity was such a big part of their upbringing.
Even he could shoot well, Shane reminded himself. His dad had seen to that long ago. With Sam’s careful instruction had come safety lessons, too. Guns didn’t worry Shane except for Kyle’s presence in the home, so he kept the firearms separate from the ammo and locked each component in a different cabinet.
It occurred to him that perhaps he should ask his mother about his dad’s old service revolver. As long as there was a threat of violence, it would do his mom well to know where the weapon was and how to properly load it.
Kyle spotted his grandmother first. She was standing in front of the motel office as they came to a stop.
“Memaw!”
“That’s right, buddy. You’re going home with her and I’m coming later. Okay?”
“I wanna go see the doggie again.”
Shane heaved a sigh. “You will. He’s coming to Memaw and Otis’s for supper tonight.”
“Hooray!”
Yeah, big whoop, Shane thought as he unfastened his son’s safety belt and helped him out.