The Devil You Know by Jo Goodman

Author:Jo Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2016-04-14T13:38:20+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Eden Ranch

Temptation, Colorado

Quill McKenna carefully reread the letter from his father before he placed it on the table, smoothed the creases, and slid it sideways to his wife.

“Do I want to read it?” Calico asked. “Your father has a way of riling me that makes me want to reach for my gun. How he manages it the whole way from Chicago, I will never understand.”

“Well, it’s a mixed blessing that he and Mother have no plans to leave. The trade-off is that it’s up to me to do something.”

Calico ran her finger across the Reverend McKenna’s salutation. His handwriting made her think he favored using spiders dipped in ink over a fountain pen. She did not pick up the letter, preferring to study her husband instead.

There was no question that he was troubled. There were furrows in his sun-licked hair where he had plowed it with his fingers, and his smile, the one that still dazzled her with its brilliance, was notably absent. She did not think she could tease a smile out of him now if she tried, and that made her sad and then angry, and the person who most angered her wasn’t the reverend, it was his firstborn son.

She reached for Quill’s hand and put hers in its curve. He didn’t respond to the overture until she lightly squeezed his fingers, and then he looked at her with his very fine blue-gray eyes and somehow managed to assure her that he would be all right, that everything would be all right.

Calico removed her hand, picked up the letter, and read. The gist of the request was more or less what she thought it would be. It had now been almost three months since Israel had been released from the Cook County Jail, and no one in the family had heard from him. His parents had seen him the morning of his release, given him funds for new clothes, incidentals, a train ticket, and a modest amount of pocket money for him to buy food on his journey. He had no choice but to accept what they gave him, but the reverend made a point to write that Israel had taken it most reluctantly, and here was proof, then, that his son had changed. Israel had been humbled by his incarceration, and too humiliated to permit them to escort him around to the shops while he made his purchases. They had wished him well there, prayed for him in front of the police sergeant’s desk, and stood as guardian angels might as he walked away.

It was all very affecting . . . and calculating. It was supposed to move Quill into action, which was the exact thing he was opposing.

Calico set the letter down and idly ran her fingers through her hair where a thick length of it had fallen over her shoulder like a rope of fire. Feeling Quill’s eyes on her, she looked up and smiled ruefully.

“I don’t know what to say,” she told him. “Except, perhaps, to apologize for asking you to give him a chance.

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