Truth or Beard(27)

I let my hands drop and gave her a little smile. “You went to school with Billy and Cletus, sandwiched between the two, right? Billy a grade above, Cletus a grade behind?”

She nodded and said quietly, “Yes, but I know Jethro best. He and Ben were best friends.”

I could feel my smile turn sad before I could stop it, and regretted the unintentional pity that must’ve shown in my eyes. Claire looked away and cleared her throat, looking equal parts resigned and impatient.

“Ben used to joke that he didn’t have the patience to learn the Winston boys’ names, so he called all of Jethro’s brothers Jethro Jr.” Claire addressed this to her feet and paired it with a small laugh.

I smirked at Ben’s pragmatism as I studied my friend, how her face had fallen even though she tried to smile.

Claire had no family to speak of…actually, by that I mean her daddy was the club president of the local motorcycle gang, the Iron Order. As well, her momma was his old lady. But together or separate, those two were the definition of dysfunctional. As far as I knew, Claire had no contact with her parents or siblings.

I assumed she was still living in Green Valley because she wanted to stay near her husband’s family. She accompanied them to church every Sunday, and her house was within a block of theirs.

She’d been a local beauty growing up—she even had those awesome high cheekbones that magazines talk about, with the little hollow above the jaw—but she had sad eyes. Add to her stunning good looks the most laid-back, kind, generous, and all-around talented person I’d ever met. For example, she had the most beautiful singing voice and should have been in Nashville singing, or in New York or Milan living the life of a muse or a model or a concert pianist.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

I’d been in the thespians my sophomore through senior year of high school and was therefore labeled as one of those drama kids—for my school, that basically meant weird and funny. Plus, I was universally acknowledged as the county math whiz, having led our school’s team to math bowl victory three times.

I didn’t marry my childhood sweetheart because I didn’t have one, though I kissed lots of boys because I liked kissing boys. Kissing boys also had the delightful byproduct of aggravating my father and overprotective brother. Essentially, I’d left home for college an antsy, angsty, but well-mannered good girl. So, a typical teenager.

But upon my return to Green Valley High School (just a short four years later), same school with the same social order and subsets, I’d now become a new stereotype.

I was the hot math teacher.

I’d never thought of myself as the hot anything. Don’t get me wrong, I had a perfectly fine self-image. But I guess in comparison to Mr. Tranten—the previous and now recently retired math teacher—the fact I had boobs and was under eighty-five meant I might as well have been Charlize Theron.

“Well, come on,” Claire finally said. “Come home with me and you can tell me all about it, I just need wine first.”

“I can’t.” I glanced at the wall clock at the front of the room. “I have to wait for my brother to pick me up. My beast of a truck is still parked at the community center with ‘catastrophic engine failure.’ He’s driving me home.”

Claire’s eyes darted back to mine; she studied my face with a question in her expression. “Uh… No, it’s not.”

“What?”

“The beast, your truck. It’s not at the community center. It was towed.”

Panic seized my chest and my hands balled into fists. “No, it couldn’t. Could it?” I’d talked to Mr. McClure about keeping the truck at the center until I could afford the towing and repair costs; he’d assured me it was no trouble.

“Calm down.” She lifted her hands and walked farther into the classroom.

“I can’t afford impound costs. Why would they tow it? Your father-in-law said it was fine.”

“It’s not at the impound, Jess. I saw it this morning in the parking lot of the Winston Brothers Auto Shop. It’s not at the impound. Calm yourself.”

I flinched at this news, blinked furiously. “What…why would they do that?”

Claire chuckled, and I didn’t miss the amusement or the wicked glint in her eye when she responded, “Probably has something to do with that circumcised penis.”

***

I was going to get tipsy. I needed at least two glasses of wine. But first, I was going to find out what in the name of tarnation was going on.

I called my brother and left a message telling him I would be out with Claire. I did not tell him Claire was driving me over to the Winston Brothers Auto Shop. Jackson and the Winston boys did not get along, mostly because everyone knew Jethro Winston—the oldest—used to steal cars and neither my daddy nor my brother had ever been able to make the charges stick.