Page 84 of Snow in Texas

“Y’all are making me nervous,” Catcher said, craning to look over his shoulder.

“Just find the guy,” Gringo said, smacking him in the back of the head.

“Shit. Okay, yeah…”

It didn’t take long to find him. The relentless stretches of nothing were broken by the approach of a hoodie-wearing man who camped out by the fence and smoked for a couple hours in the middle of last night.

“Can’t tell anything about him,” Cowboy said. He made a sound like he wanted to spit, then thought better of it.

Jenny hugged herself a little harder. “He was staking the place out.”

“Or waiting on someone,” Talis put in.

Neither option was fun to contemplate.

Thirty-One

Colin

“You need to bum a smoke?”

“No. I’ve got some.” Colin pulled his pack from his pocket and dropped into the offered patio chair. It was cold out here, the grass already shiny with frost in the security light, but he figured smoking in the house around the kids was a no-no. And he figured Ava wouldn’t be shy about explaining that to him.

Mercy lit one up and took his own seat, blowing smoke up into the clear, black sky.

“Y’all’ve got a big yard,” Colin said. “Plenty of room for when the kids get bigger.”

“Decent grass in it, too.”

“Bermuda?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’ll be good in the summertime.”

“That’s what I figure.”

“This is weird, isn’t it?” Colin asked.

Mercy shrugged. “Little bit.” Colin could hear the man breathing, the quiet expansion of massive lungs. “Seen your mom lately?”

His dinner rolled over in his belly. Mom. She’d told him about Remy – Remy the elder, and not the baby in the bathtub inside – a few months before. She’d set a plate of hot biscuits down in the center of her contact-paper-covered kitchen table and waited until his mouth was full before she covered her face with her hands.

“God…Colin…” she’d gasped. “I shoulda told you a long time ago. I shoulda! But I never did say it out loud. Larry had to know – all he had to do was look at you – but I thought, if I said, if I told you, he’d leave me.”

The biscuit had lodged in his throat and he’d choked for a bit to find his voice. “Told me what?”

“Larry wasn’t your daddy,” she’d admitted through gapped fingers, crying. “Remy was. Remy Lécuyer.”

There had always been a photo of Larry and Remy in the hallway outside the bathroom. He’d gone to it, Evie calling after him, trying to tell him the sordid story. He’d squinted at the grainy photo, his own ghostly reflection lurking in the glass.

Larry O’Donnell had been Irish, pale, broad-nosed and narrow-shouldered.

Remy had been tall, strong, dark, French features and Cherokee coloring, hair blue-black in the sunlight of the picture. That nose – that French aristocrat nose.

Colin’s nose.

“I haven’t talked to her since she told me,” he said before he could catch himself. This wasn’t the person he wanted to admit things to – his brother, of all people.

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