Page 7 of Double Bucked

The words stretch and bend in front of me, but I can’t make sense of them at all at all. “How?”

“He was killed. Shot in his sleep. We’re still putting the pieces together. I’m so sorry.”

I can hear my own breath, the shake in it. James hits a perfect streak, much to the chagrin of our friends, who grumble after him as he throws the croquet mallet over his shoulder and strides on his long legs back toward me.

“Miss Preacher?” the deputy asks when I’ve been silent too long.

When James’s eyes meet mine, he furrows his eyebrows questioningly. He can tell something is off.

I hang up the phone. I stuff it in my clutch, then push the clutch into James’s hands. “Hold this.”

He does.

I stomp through the thistle toward our friends. “I need this.” I tear the mallet out of Addy’s hands. Addy, shocked, releases her grip and stumbles backward. I step in front of James’s ball. I coil my muscles, swing the mallet back, and with a fierce shout, I hit the ball with as much force as I can muster.

It goes out of orbit. I watch the satisfying arc it makes through the air before rolling down the hill.

Accomplished, I drop the mallet. I trudge through the thistle and back to James.

“Pack your things,” I tell him. “We’re going home.”

“Paris?”

“Kentucky.”

3

JAMES

Nina Simone plays in my ears as Claire and I step off the plane. We’ve taken a small, connecting jet from New York to Kentucky, and the door opens like a wing on the runway. The cold, recycled air is blown away with a balmy gust of autumn. My first observation: Kentucky smells like sunflowers.

A man waits for us with the name PREACHER printed out on a laminated poster. Claire walks past him, her heels clicking like machine gun fire across the freshly polished airport floors. She dons her dark sunglasses and instructs him to take us straight to the morgue. The driver piles our suitcases in the trunk, and I hold on to my messenger bag.

I watch through the tinted car windows as the tarmac gives way to rolling, green hills, decrepit farmhouses, and worn-down men sitting on worn-down porches, with worn-down dogs on worn-down chains that bark at us as we pass.

A white, painted sign with curly letters says WELCOME TO BELLEFLOWER, KENTUCKY.

The driver—a stout man with a black cap—keeps adjusting his eyes from the road to the rearview mirror. His name tag says HARDING.

The car lurches over a pothole. I grip the handle above the window.

“Have you ever been to Kentucky, sir?” Harding asks.

“No,” I tell him. This is the sixth lie I’ve told in the last twenty-four hours.

“You should come in the summer seasons. Wildflowers open up. Real pretty.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Claire says nothing. She has a dark camisole pulled over a black dress. She wears large, gradient sunglasses. Her eyes are the color of an oncoming storm, and today, they are as impenetrable as rain clouds.

The wheels click as we roll over the train tracks, and the landscape does a sudden shift. We enter a small, charming town with freshly paved roads and storefronts washed with pastels: soft pinks and welcoming blues. Mothers pushing strollers packed with designer bags. Storeowners stuff their window displays with flower decor. My eyes catch on a stalled parade float with large, brightly colored sculpted flowers attached to it. Decorative horses are frozen mid-leap on the front of the float.

Harding catches my gaze in the rearview mirror.

“You hear about the Belleflower Festival?” Harding asks.

“No.”

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