* * *
Clark phoned her two days later and asked her to the big charity dance at the local community center on Saturday. She wasn’t on call for that one night, so she couldn’t refuse.
“Is this desperate or what?” he asked miserably. “It’s the only thing going on in Jacobsville for the foreseeable future, unless you want me to sign us up for the summer square-dancing workshop,” he added grumpily. “I’ll never get to see Nellie.”
“I like dancing,” she replied. “It’s okay. You can sneak out and nobody will even miss you. Then you can say you had a stomach upset.”
“You’re a genius,” he exclaimed.
No, she was just getting good at lying, she thought. She still was concerned about Boone’s perception and Clark’s headlong fling into disaster. And in the back of her mind was the thought of her father and Jock and their schemes.
* * *
Things were routine at work. She and her mother were getting along for the first time. Even Carly was kinder to Keely. And it seemed that the work she did around the house was slowly appreciated, right down to her cooking. She felt as if she had a new lease on life.
But on Saturday morning, while she was worrying over the one good dress she had that she was wearing to the dance, there was a phone call.
She answered the phone herself. Her mother was sleeping late—she and Carly had gone out on the town the night before—and she was expecting to hear from Clark. But it wasn’t Clark.
“Has your mother put the house on the market yet?”
She knew that voice. It wasn’t her father’s. It was Jock’s.
She hesitated, sick with fear.
“Answer me, damn you!”
“N-no,” she stammered. “She hasn’t…yet…”
“You tell her she’d better get moving. I know what she and your father did. He may not want to tell, but I will. You hear me, Keely?” And he slammed the phone down.
Keely wouldn’t have understood the threat even a week ago. She understood it now. She couldn’t very well go to Hayes Carson and tell him that her mother had been accessory to a homicide. There could be no protection from that quarter, especially if Hayes found out who the homicide had been. Clark couldn’t help her, either. She didn’t dare involve Boone. She sat down, sick and frightened, and wondered what in the world they were going to do.
* * *
Later, when Ella woke up, Keely had to tell her about the phone call.
Ella was hungover, but she sobered quickly. “Jock knows, then? I was afraid Brent would get high enough to tell him.”
“What can we do?” Keely asked miserably.
Ella drew in a long breath. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about this.”
“You don’t have the time!” Keely said. “What if he goes to the sheriff?”
Ella looked at her daughter and actually smiled. “Thanks,” she said huskily. “It means a lot, after the way I’ve treated you, that you’d mind if I went to jail.” She shrugged. “Maybe it would be just as well to get it out in the open, Keely. It’s been so many years…if I had a good lawyer…”
“Yes,” Keely was agreeing.
She glanced at the younger woman, so hopeful, so enthusiastic. Ella knew that no judge in Jacobs County would let her walk away from a homicide; not when the sheriff’s brother was the victim, regardless of how much time had transpired between the death and the present. Keely was young and full of dreams. Ella was long past them. But she might be able to do something to save her daughter. She might be able to spare Keely, if she had the guts to do what was necessary.
“We’ll work something out,” she assured the younger woman. “You’re going to that dance with Clark, aren’t you? He’s very nice. Maybe he’ll marry you.” Her eyes looked dreamy for a moment. “He’s a good man. He’d take care of you, and you’d have everything you wanted.”
“Clark and I are just friends,” she said.
Ella glanced at her curiously. “It’s his brother, isn’t it? I didn’t do you any favors with the lies I told him. I could call him up and tell him the truth.”
“No,” Keely said at once.