Page 50 of Trailer Trash

“But there’s a good chance J.R. never knew the truth until the end.”

“Had your mother ever taken off like that before? And why did she leave you behind?”

“The second one’s easy: I attracted too much attention from Momma’s boyfriends.” Somehow Kate had known about that too. Only, she hadn’t gotten it entirely right—Momma may have let one of them sleep with me, but she’d absolved her guilt by telling him I had to technically be a virgin when he was done.

While I was taking my haunted hayride down memory lane, Jed had been piecing together my last words to him.

“Your mother got rid of you because she was jealous of the attention her boyfriends were giving you?” he asked in disbelief.

“I didn’t say she was jealous,” I backtracked.

“You didn’t have to.”

“She did me a favor in the end, but it goes to show that there could be any number of reasons why she took off. For all we know, someone turned her in for pimping her twelve-year-old daughter to her boyfriend for drugs.”

Jed remained still so long that if he hadn’t been driving, I would have wondered if he’d fallen asleep. But one look at him proved he was alert—and angry enough to wring someone’s neck.

A good two or three minutes later, he said, “You may be right about why she ran, but the J.R. explanation would still make more sense. If she was worried about getting turned in for yourmolestation”—he spat out the word—“I would think she’d keep you around to make sure you stayed quiet. If she was running from J.R., she’d have run far and wide. Ditching you would have made it easier for her to hide. She’d know that the first place J.R. would look for you would be your granny’s farm. Which means he probably knew you were there, and he had Skeeter watching you.”

But it also meant she had literally thrown me to the wolves. She must have known J.R. would be tempted todestroyany potential claims to his money. That was the sole reason she’d run twenty-five years ago. To save her skin.

I let that settle in, waiting for the familiar pinprick in my heart, but maybe my heart had been hurt too many times. Maybe there wasn’t enough of me left to feel.

That thought was quickly dashed when I considered that Skeeter Malcolm might have been stalking me. “But Skeeter hasn’t worked for J.R. for the past five years,” I objected, wanting him to tell me it wasn’t possible after all.

“I guarantee you that he was watching you when you came to Fenton County the first time.” Jed looked like he was about to rip someone’s head off. “You were a kid.”

“You don’t know that he was watchin’ me, Jed.”

He kept his eyes on the road. “I do.” He paused. “He may not have known why he was watching, but he did it anyway and reported it to Simmons. And when all of this shit came to pass this past winter, he never said one fucking word to anyone.”

“Jed. It’s okay.”

“The hell it is.” He swallowed, and I could see a war waging on his face. “I’m done.”

I shook my head as I tried to grasp what he was saying. “You’re gonna quit?”

“He already fired me, Neely Kate. I told you that.”

“But you know he’ll change his mind and call you back.”

“Maybe I don’t want to go back.” He turned to look at me. “Maybe this is the last straw.”

“Because ofme?”

“Seems like a pretty damned good reason to me.”

“But—”

“I’m not letting anyone hurt you, Neely Kate. Not while I’m around.” His voice was hard when he added, “And that includes Skeeter Malcolm.”

Chapter 15

We decidedto get lunch and come up with a plan for the rest of the day. Zelda didn’t have a solid address for Stella, but she knew the name of the apartment complex. We picked a place with Wi-Fi and Jed brought in his computer bag. He set up his laptop on his side of the booth and began to search for Shenandoah Apartments, leaving me with plenty of time to think.

I wasn’t sure how to handle what Jed was going through. He and Skeeter went back a long way, so I understood why he felt betrayed, but I had no idea how to comfort him.

“Jed, I think we should talk about it.”

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