Tossing the towel aside, Starr whirled back to the window and snatched up her peeler. Slammer, she thought the word again, with relish, as she grabbed the next carrot and began scraping away. Fresh out of the slammer…
She made short work of the carrot and the next one, too. In no time the carrots were all done. She started in on a big potato. Beyond the window, Beau and the unknown cowboy were unloading the last of the fencing materials.
And okay, if you wanted to be strictly factual about it, Beau had gone to the state honor farm and not the penitentiary when he did his time. He’d gotten that break because both Tess and Zach, Starr’s dad, had spoken up for him at the trial. Starr only called it the slammer secretly, to herself. Yeah, it was mean-spirited of her—but she figured she had a right to be a little bit mean-spirited where Beau Tisdale was concerned.
Her father had done a lot for Beau, standing up for him in court like that, after what Beau did. And then, when Beau got out, her dad had been the one who set him up with the job at the Hart place.
Ferociously, Starr scraped away potato skin, baring the naked white meat beneath.
And this wasn’t the first time in the past few years that she’d seen Beau around the Rising Sun. She gouged at one of the stubborn eyes that dotted the otherwise smooth-peeled surface. Oh, yeah, she’d seen him and her dad together, out leaning on the horse pasture fence, side by side. And more than once, she’d spotted Beau riding in with the hands after a long day’s work poisoning weeds or scattering bulls or doing God knew what all.
Yeah, okay. In a lot of ways, ranching was a community endeavor. Folks from different ranches worked together to get the tough stuff done. But this was more than that. When she was home for Easter, she’d even seen her dad patting Beau on the back. A friendly gesture. Like they were good pals or something….
Tess and her dad were fine people. They would always do what they could to help the disadvantaged. Starr was proud of them for that, and she had no problem with them making it so Beau didn’t have to do hard time. She could even accept her dad’s finding him a job, giving him a new start.
But her dad making friends with him? That was one step too far.
“You’re going to mangle that poor potato until there’s not a thing left of it.”
Starr froze in midgouge. She’d been so absorbed in her fury at Beau, she hadn’t even heard her stepmother approach.
“Starr…” Tess’s soft voice soothed and reproached at the same time. Starr gritted her teeth and went on gouging eyes—until Tess’s slim, work-roughened hand came around and settled over her own. “Come on, give me that potato….”
Outside, Beau and the other hand were getting back into the cab. Doors slammed, one and then the other.
“Starr…”
“Fine. Take it.” She slapped the potato into Tess’s hand and threw the peeler in the sink. Outside, the dirty green pickup drove off. Flipping on the tap, she swiftly rinsed her hands and grabbed for the towel again. “I could use a break, anyway.”
She tossed the towel on the counter and marched out of there, ignoring the way Ethan sat chewing on his toy truck, staring at her with wide, bewildered eyes and Edna pursed up her mouth and shook her head over her beans—and Tess just stood there, looking worried, the peeled, gouged potato still cradled in her hand.
About five minutes later, Starr heard a careful tap on her door. “Starr?” Tess’s voice.
By then, Starr was beginning to feel just a little bit ashamed. No matter how angry it got her to see Beau Tisdale making himself at home on the Rising Sun, she shouldn’t have gone off like that. She wasn’t the sulky, messed-up kid she’d once been. Now, besides being someone you could count on and a straight-A student, she took pride in being the kind of person who never descended to throwing fits, or flying off the handle when something bugged her.
“May I come in?” Tess asked from the other side of the door.
“Yeah,” Starr said grudgingly. “Okay, come on.”
Tess slipped around the door and closed it behind her by leaning back against it, one hand still on the knob. “You okay?”
Starr let a good thirty seconds elapse before answering. She spent the time tugging at the hem of her shorts and pretending to study the swirling blue-and-purple pattern on her bedspread. Tess had sewn the spread for her—along with the dark blue curtains—when Starr was sixteen and came back to live at the Rising Sun.
“Yeah,” Starr gave out, at last. “I’m okay.”
Cautiously, Tess approached the bed. Starr signaled her willingness to talk by sliding over and making a space for her. Tess took the space, settling into it so gently that the mattress hardly shifted.
After that, for a minute or two, they just sat there, neither seeming to know quite where to begin.
Tess broke the silence. “Those curtains…” She nudged Starr and indicated the curtains she had made three years before. “I was hanging them when I looked down into the rear yard and saw you and Beau going into the barn….”
“God.” Starr dropped her head back and groaned at the ceiling. “Do you have to remind me of that day—let alone of that guy?”
Tess wrapped an arm around her shoulder and gave an encouraging squeeze. “Well, yes. I think I do. I think maybe this is something we’ve waited a little too long to talk about.”
Hurt welled up, making her throat feel too tight. She jerked out of the comforting circle of Tess’s arm and hitched a leg up on the bed, facing her stepmother more fully. “I just don’t get it, you know? Dad’s like…his friend now. How can Dad do that, after what Beau Tisdale did to me?”
“Oh, honey…” Tess reached out again.
Starr ducked away. “Uh-uh. Don’t try to make it all better. It’s not all better. You were there. You were the one who caught us together. And you were there later, too, in the yard, after Dad told him to go. You saw how he threw my heart down on the ground and stomped on it with his worn-out old boot.”
“Starr—”
Starr threw up both hands. “Don’t…make any excuses for him.”
“But I—”
“Uh-uh. No.” They stared at each other, and then Starr allowed, “Okay. I know it wasn’t really his fault, that thing with his awful brothers making him sit point for them while they rustled our cattle. I know he turned it around there at the end, went against his brothers and helped you take them in. I can understand, I really can, why you and Dad stood up for him at court over that. And why Dad set him up with old man Hart. But the other…what happened the day before you and Dad caught Beau and his brothers out by the Farley breaks. What happened…with Beau and me…” The old hurt felt so new and fresh at that moment, it closed off her throat and stole the rest of the words right out of her mouth. She hung her head and blinked back tears—stupid, pointless tears, for a man who didn’t deserve them.
Light as warm breeze, Tess’s hand stroked her hair. Starr lifted her head. “Tess, I trusted him—and three years ago, you know how I was. I didn’t trust anyone then. But I did trust Beau. And he took my trust and threw it back in my face.”
Tess spoke softly. “Honey, I think there was more to it than that. I think it’s time you started to look at what happened through the eyes of a woman, because you are becoming a woman now, and a fine one. You are no longer that same hurt, confused girl you were then.”
“What are you talking about? You were there. You saw. He did it right out in the yard, with you and Dad and probably Edna and any ranch hand who bothered to look out his trailer window watching while it happened.”
“Starr—”
“No!”