Firefly Nights

“Watley. Miss Kitty Watley.” She stared intently at her son, warning him not to reveal the truth about her name. “This is Adam.”

“Where are you from?”

“Florida, most recently.”

“You come all the way from Florida to attend the opening of our Value-Rite, Miss Watley?”

“No, of course not. My son and I were just passing through. We’re on our way to Charlotte, but our truck broke down, and that’s not all. We got lost. We’ve been robbed...”

“Sounds like a hard-luck case, all right,” the sheriff said. “But how do you figure this justifies what your boy just did?”

Kitty felt her hopes for a sympathetic solution to this current disaster deflate like an old inner tube. “I’m not sure,” she admitted, and looked at Adam.

He rubbed a dirty finger under his nose and stood ramrod straight. “You wouldn’t let your mother starve, would you, Sheriff?” Poking the same finger in Kitty’s direction, he added, “Look at how skinny she is. I was just trying to fetch a few dollars to keep her from fainting. You were close to fainting from hunger, weren’t you, Mom?”

“Oh, Adam...”

The sheriff placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder and nudged him toward the patrol car. “Let’s go down to the station and see what charges will have to be filed.”

Adam jerked away. “Charges! You got to be kidding.” He gawked at Kitty. “Did you hear that, Mom? Are you happy now? He’s gonna put me in jail for trying to save us from starvation.” The look on his face was pure desperation when he said, “Cripes, Mom, it’s time to use your cell phone and call Grandpa!”

Kitty looked away from the pleading in her son’s eyes and spoke to the sheriff. “He’s not going to jail, is he? You wouldn’t put a boy in jail.”

“No, ma’am, but we do have the juvenile intervention center over at the Spooner County seat, and that’s a strong possibility, especially with your boy’s attitude.”

“I have a right to a lawyer,” Adam protested. “If you lock me up anywhere, my grandpa will sue you for every cent—”

“Adam, for heaven’s sake, be quiet,” Kitty said. “Even Grandpa can’t sue somebody because you broke the law.”

“I’d take your mama’s advice, son,” the sheriff said, leading them to his car. “I think now’s the time to be quiet.”

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_64c19703-171d-57d3-bfdd-edb28b988de2)

ADAM AND KITTY rode in the back of the patrol car to the downtown area of Sorrel Gap, North Carolina. The police station was a redbrick building on a shady two-lane street of similar structures designed to capture a historic feel.

Sheriff Oakes’s office was sparsely furnished with three desks, a few filing cabinets and a gun rack. There was one other person in the office, a plump, fiftysomething woman. She stood up when they came in and appraised the prisoners with a disapproving eye. “These the folks who stole from the Value-Rite, Virgil?” she asked.

“Yep. This is Kitty Watley and her son, Adam. Folks, this is my wife, Wanda Oakes.”

“How do you do,” Kitty said, attempting a smile. Good manners couldn’t hurt.

The woman nodded, disturbing tight gray curls in a nest on her head. “I knew something like this would happen,” she said to her husband. “Once the Value-Rite opened, we’d have a crime wave, and you and I would end up working most Sundays.” She handed a piece of paper to the sheriff. “Quint called from the store. He said the boy stole fifteen hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of merchandise. Only a cordless mouse for $69.97 wasn’t damaged.”

Kitty stared at her son in disbelief. “A cordless mouse? We didn’t even bring your computer.”

“That’s a serious crime, son,” Sheriff Oakes said.

“Look, I can get the money,” Adam said. “If you’d just let me make my one phone call...”

“No, Adam,” Kitty said. “You’re not calling anyone.”

The office phone rang and Wanda picked it up. “It’s Tommy,” she said, handing the phone to her husband.

He listened, mumbled a brief response and hung up. “That was my deputy, Miss Watley, calling from where you left your truck. He traced the temporary tag to a dealer and says the vehicle is registered in your name. Your story checks out.”

Thank goodness the car dealership had accepted her old driver’s license as proof of identity. Of course when a person paid cash for a junker, not many questions were asked.

“Look, Sheriff,” Adam said. “My mom and me—we’re stinkin’ ri—”

Kitty clamped a hand over his mouth. “Not now, Adam.”

Sheriff Oakes asked for Kitty’s driver’s license. She could honestly say it was in her stolen wallet. “Run a check on her name anyway,” Oakes said to his wife. “See if there are any warrants in Florida.”

“There aren’t,” Kitty said.

Oakes did a quick head-to-toe appraisal of Adam. “And no rap sheet on the boy?”

“Of course not,” Kitty said, though the words not yet came to her mind. “Adam was just trying to help me.”

“Seems like he only made things worse,” Oakes said.

“Sheriff, what can we do? What I told you about my money being stolen is true. I can’t pay for that merchandise. But I’d be glad to work off the debt. I’ll do anything you say that will make up for what my son did today.”

The sheriff rubbed a thumb over his upper lip. “Well, Miss Watley, that’s mighty generous of you, but you weren’t the one who stole that stuff.”

She felt color rise to her cheeks. She was doing exactly what her father had always done. She was making excuses and offering solutions for her son’s behavior. Maybe now was the time to show Adam that he had to be responsible for his mistakes. They’d come to a symbolic crossroads in the town of Sorrel Gap, and, as desperate as they were, Kitty decided it was time her son took the proper path.

“You’re right, Sheriff,” she said. “It was Adam who stole that merchandise. And I’ll make sure he does whatever you think is appropriate punishment for his crime.” She paused when another pain knotted her stomach. This time she analyzed it as a symptom of parental guilt. She wasn’t blameless in all this. She was Adam’s mother, and her complacent acceptance of Owen’s dominance all these years made her responsible by default for what Adam did. She looked at Sheriff Oakes and said, “But I’m still his mother, and I’ll do my part to make up for what happened.”

Adam gulped. “What are you saying, Mom?”

“You’re not going to get out of this so easily, Adam.” She waited for Oakes’s reaction. “What do you think, Sheriff? We’ll do whatever you say.”

“Kitty,” he began with an almost fatherly patience, “I hate to see a boy head down a road of crime. I surely do, but this being Sunday, I suppose I’ll have to remand him over to juvenile until tomorrow when he can appear before the county court judge...”

Kitty’s empty stomach plunged, and she fought a wave of nausea. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but certainly not this. Not a detention facility. Maybe she could call Bette, ask her for more money. But fifteen hundred dollars plus the fine, and truck repairs...

And then Wanda Oakes called her husband over to speak privately. But in a compact office, privacy wasn’t an option, and Kitty heard most of what she said.

“Virgil, Campbell comes home from the hospital today,” Wanda whispered.

“I know.”

“I’ve asked everyone in those hills to look after him. Even offered a small salary. Nobody has time what with planting going on now. Plus, it’s not like your nephew’s tried to fit in with us since coming home. Folks may admire what he did in Iraq, but he’s changed.”

“It’s the accident, Wanda,” the sheriff argued. “He’s had a hard time.”

“I think it’s more than that. Every time I ask him what happened over there in Raleigh, he says he doesn’t want to talk about it. If you ask me, he’s been in the city too long.”