“Dad, I’m paying my bills.” Cody felt guilty that she’d wasted her father’s money in the past.
“For which we’re grateful,” Betty replied. “But let’s get to the bottom of this. Your father and I aren’t perfect parents. We thought by sharing riding with you that we were together, a family together, but we missed emotional clues. You’ve both told us that you drank because everyoneelse was drinking. I’m taking the words ‘everyone else’ with a grain of salt. However, we were young once. We remember the pressure to fit in, to be part of a group. I even understand the drugs. It can’t be that much different from drinking. Someone says, ‘Here, this will make you feel good,’ and you do it. What I can’t understand is Dean Offendahl’s allegations. Jennifer, you’ve locked your door and cried in your room for over forty-eight hours. I assume there’s no liquid left in your system.” A wry smile crossed her full lips. “So let’s get this out and over with. Why?”
“I won’t go to bed with him anymore.”
“She’s right.” Cody backed her.
“You shouldn’t have gone to bed with him in the first place.” Bobby smacked the arm of his chair.
Betty shot him a dirty look.“That won’t help.” She returned her gaze to Jennifer. “Let’s use the defense ‘diminished judgment.’ I believe that. I even understand sleeping with a boy in high school. It happens.”
“Did you?” Jennifer hoped her mother had, of course.
“No.”
“I did.” Cody smiled at Jennifer. “Not my best move.”
“I want to know what Fontaine Buruss had to do with this.” Bobby kept calm although if Fontaine were alive he’d kill him.
Cody spoke first, partly to spare Jennifer and partly to give her time to organize her thoughts.“I needed money so I offered to ride Keepsake, the new horse Fontaine was trying. He’d come around the barn when I was working the horse and hey, he was sexy.” Noting the raised eyebrows of her father, she murmured, “Dad, he was.”
“He was.” Betty corroborated her daughter’s judgment.
“We did drugs. He’d give me extra money if I’d braid, a lot extra, really. He bought me new breeches, a saddle. Big stuff. I liked him but I didn’t love him and after a while I realized I was just another bird. Flying in and out. I also realized I was pretty messed up and I missed Doug. Dad, I know you aren’t crazy about Doug—”
Bobby cut in.“He’s a fine young man. My concerns were social and I was wrong. I was wrong and I’m sorry.”
Her father’s repentance touched Cody. She wasn’t accustomed to Bobby admitting error. “It’s okay, Dad. We’ll put that behind us, too.”
“Didn’t you think about Sorrel?” Betty asked.
“No. Mom, when you’re doing drugs you don’t think about anybody but yourself. Besides, he’d cheated on her so many times I didn’t see that one more affair was going to break her heart. He made the marriage vow; I didn’t.” She held out her palms upturned. “But I was wrong. I’m telling you what I thought at the time. People can rationalize anything, can’t they?”
“World War Two proved that beyond a doubt.” Bobby put his fingertips together. “What happened when you left Fontaine? Or did you leave Fontaine?”
“Nothing.” Cody shrugged. “It wasn’t a blowup. It’s not like we were in love or even that emotional. We had fun. That’s the best way to describe it. I had Jennifer drop me at the bar—” She thought a moment. “Maybe that second Saturday in October, I think. Anyway, Doug was there and I wanted him back. If he’d have me. Maybe I needed Fontaine to really love Doug. God, it’s messy.” She sighed. “I needed help. I still need help. I think I’ll be going to AA and NA meetings and drug recovery meetings for the rest of my life. I don’t think I can do it alone and”—shewanted to make her parents feel better—“you can only do so much. It takes a drunk to understand a drunk.”
“Then how did Jennifer get into this mess with Fontaine?” Betty was more worried than she let on.
“I’d go over to the barn to help Cody.” Jennifer sat up. “He’d be around, laughing, joking. He’d let me work Gunpowder. What a neat horse. He’d let me snort a line or two.”
“But how did Dean Offendahl know this? I’m missing something.” Betty bore down.
“I’d collect money from Dean and some of the others and buy coke from Fontaine. He had good coke. I didn’t take Dean over there.”
“But you told him who was selling you the drugs?” Bobby rested his chin on his fingertips.
“Bragging, in passing—how did you tell him?” Betty pressed.
“Kind of, uh—threw it off.”
“Why is he saying you slept with Fontaine?”
“Mom, he’s making that up. He’s trying to get people’s attention off of him. He thinks this is going to hurt me.”
Clearly Dean’s stories about Jennifer sleeping with Fontaine are what truly upset the young woman. It’s one thing to sleep with a boy your own age but at seventeen to sleep with a man of Fontaine’s years, that grossed out her classmates.
“I guess it did. You’ve been in your room for two days,” her mother curtly replied.
“It’s pretty rad.” Cody defended Jennifer.
“Radical? I think it’s close to the mark. I’m still taking the ‘diminished judgment’ tack and if Jennifer was over there at Fontaine’s stable, the coke was pure or good or whatever it is, she gets high, he gets high, it’s not an impossible thought no matter how disgusting it is to me.And not so much that I’m disgusted with you, Jennifer, although I’m not proud. I’m disgusted with Fontaine. He took advantage of you, both of you.” Betty’s eyes blazed.
“I’m over twenty-one,” Cody flatly said. “I knew what I was doing.”
“I don’t think you did but I think he knewexactlywhat he was doing. Getting beautiful girls ripshit—isn’t that the word, ripshit—and then taking you to bed. Goddammit, I wish I’d shot him, the sorry son of a bitch!” Bobby jumped up from his chair, pacing in front of the fireplace. “But the fact remains that he is dead. And I expect Sheriff Sidell will cruise around to us soon enough.”
“Why?” Jennifer thought this was strange.
“Because either of you could have killed him in a rage—from a sheriff’s point of view. You do drugs, you leave him or maybe he leaves you. Who knows how that will fall out. You’re angry on two counts: He dumped you and no more drugs.”
“That’s not true!” Jennifer shouted.
“I didn’t say it was.” Her father coolly studied her. “But I’m trying to see this with a sheriff’s eyes. Right now neither of you looks too good.”
“Jennifer wouldn’t kill anybody,” Cody passionately replied. “You know that. She made a mistake.”
“Did you know?” Betty’s heart was pounding inside and she didn’t know why. She was more afraid than when she’d fetched Doug from the bear.
“Not until the end.” Cody lowered her voice. “I just never thought Fontaine would do something like that.”
“You went to bed with him. Presumably you knew what kind of man he was.” Bobby’s sympathy was running thin.
“I’m older than Jennifer. Going to bed with an underage girl is statutory rape, isn’t it? I never thought he’d do something like that.”
“He knew he was safe.” Bobby grabbed the mantelpiece. “He knew neither one of you would ever tell because he was your candy man. He could do whatever he wanted and he did.”
“Dad, he was never ugly. He was fun.” Jennifer thought she was relieving her father’s distress. “He wasn’t a mean kind of guy.”
“Let’s set motivation aside.” Betty returned to her original question to Cody. “What did you do when you knew, and how did you know about Jennifer and Fontaine?”
“At first I half suspected but like I said, I couldn’t believe he’d do something like that. When Jennifer skipped school that one day and came to me, I asked her. She said yes.”