16.

Z OEY

“Holy shit! You guys have gotten a lot done since I’ve been gone,” Janis said as she walked around the corner into the high tunnel where I was working with a few of the women to finish the drip lines for the raised flower beds we’d finally finished filling.

I looked up to see that Janis’ face was still very swollen and worried that my expression would show my shock. I didn’t need to worry, though, because the other women who hadn’t seen her the day of the ant catastrophe weren’t expecting such a drastic change in her appearance.

“Yes, I know I’m fucking beautiful. If you keep your mouths hanging open like that, you’re going to catch a fly, and I hope you choke on it.”

“Shit! Sorry! I just wasn’t expecting . . .” Moe stammered.

“You look great!” Farrah lied.

“No wonder both of you ended up in the pokey. Moe, you’ve got no game face, and Farrah, you’re a shit liar,” Janis grumbled.

“You look better than you did a few hours after it happened.”

“That I can accept,” Janis said before she pulled her hair up and twisted it into a bun with the band she had on her wrist. “Put me to work. I’m going stir-crazy.”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“I’ve laid around so long that my couch has a permanent imprint of my ass in the cushion,” Janis complained. “I’m not going to go back to work until my face looks halfway normal and my skin doesn’t look like I’ve got chicken pox. There’s no sense in scaring the customers.”

“Especially since your attitude already does that,” I said without thinking.

“Why am I here again?” Janis asked.

“Because you missed me.”

“No, that wasn’t it at all.” Janis raised her sunglasses and studied my exposed skin before she narrowed her eyes, which wasn’t a stretch considering how swollen they still were. “Where the hell did your spots go?”

“Almost all of them have already faded.”

“It’s only been four days!”

“My awesomeness caused them to fade quicker,” I teased. When Janis just glared at me, I added, “And I’m obviously not allergic like you.”

“Not only are the spots gone, but you have a glow about you that wasn’t there before,” Janis said warily. She let her head drop forward before she asked, “Did you bang the Forrester?” Moe and Farrah burst out laughing, and I just smiled in answer. In a resigned voice, she said, “Of course you did.”

“Did you get a good look at him? Could you resist that?” Moe asked.

Janis rolled her eyes and said, “Easily.”

“Only because his twin is your archnemesis,” I teased.

Janis looked over my shoulder toward the open end of the tunnel and said, “Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.”

I twisted around to follow her gaze and found Corey, Zane, and Garvey walking in a line across the field nearby, each carrying a handful of wired flags like construction workers used to mark utility lines. Occasionally, one of them would stop and plant a flag in the ground before making their way forward again.

“Are they searching for treasure?” Janis asked.

“They’re looking for ant hills,” I said as I watched the men walk. I knew my brother was a handsome guy just because I’d heard that all my life, but my eyes weren’t on him at all. As a matter of fact, they weren’t on Corey either. I only had eyes for Garvey. Without thinking, I asked, “Is it just me or do his thighs look like works of art?”

“It’s not just you. The man didn’t skip leg day, that’s for sure,” Farrah agreed.

“They make that denim look downright scandalous,” Moe murmured. She sighed dramatically before she asked, “I can’t even imagine what they look like without anything covering them.”

“They’re hard. Huge. Ripply. Just . . . yum,” I answered.

“Do they flex when he . . . I bet they do,” Farrah said in barely more than a whisper. “Damn.”

“I look out there and all I see is meh, vomit, and ugh,” Janis said crankily.

“I don’t know which one is which, but obviously, you need your eyes checked,” Moe told her as she turned around and sat on her butt in the grass, not even trying to disguise the fact that she was watching the men. “Good lord, they should be on a calendar.”

Janis perked up at that idea and said, “That would make a great fundraiser.”

“Wouldn’t it?” I asked. “Could we get some of the guys to pose for a calendar?”

“I’ve stored up so much blackmail on almost every guy we know that I could get them to rob a bank with water guns if I wanted to,” Janis said.

“I’m surprised you haven’t tried that yet.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Janis admitted.

“I have a suggestion,” Farrah said cheerfully.

“What’s that?” Janis asked.

“Can you make them rob the bank naked and let me know when it’s going to happen so I can be in the lobby?”

I laughed and said, “When the two of you finally decide to start dating, the men you choose are going to need medical attention.”

“I’ve got too much on my plate to even consider dating right now,” Farrah told me. “By the time I get my life in order, I’ll probably be too old to enjoy it.”

“Relationships complicate things almost as much as one-night stands,” Moe agreed.

“I’m not sure it could get more complicated than what I’ve got going on with Garvey right now,” I admitted.

“What’s complicated? He’s the old Garvey, and he’s back to prove it so you can fall in love with him again before you ride off into the sunset together.”

I turned around and stared at Janis for a few seconds before I asked, “Did you go without oxygen for too long?”

“What?”

“I’m the one that bumped my head, Janis. You’ve got no excuse for a personality change this late in the game unless you had a partial lobotomy or someone has performed an exorcism in the last forty-eight hours.”

“What did I say that was so out of character?”

“You talked about love and forever in the same sentence, and you weren’t referring to coffee or tattoos.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I know that we haven’t really known each other for very long, not nearly as long as you two have, but I’ve noticed that unless it’s anger or disdain, you tend to bottle your feelings,” Farrah pointed out.

“I don’t bottle my feelings. The pharmacy does.” I barked out a laugh with Moe and Farrah, but Janis didn’t look amused. “I like a good happily-ever-after as much as the next girl and . . .”

“In high school, you did a report on Romeo and Juliet that led to the English teacher asking your parents to have you committed.”

“That’s not a fucking love story!”

“But you think Fight Club is.”

“It is! The narrator wouldn’t have done any of that stuff if he hadn’t met Marla Singer!”

“I’m not having this argument with you again,” I said as I turned around to get back to work. “You’re delulu, and everyone knows it.”

“Delulu?” Farrah asked.

“Delusional and crazy.”

“You really think she’s crazy?” Moe asked.

“Crazy, vengeful, and diabolical with occasional bouts of sanity and good deeds.”

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Janis said cheerfully. “Why risk it?”

“See?”

“That doesn’t mean she’s crazy,” Farrah argued.

“I’ll prove it to you. What would you do if you found out you were going to die tomorrow?”

“I’d tell the people I love how much they mean to me and then make sure everything was in order so that no one had to take care of anything in their grief.”

“Moe, what would you do?”

“I’d rob a bank and then pass out the money to people who need it.”

“Okay, that’s a little out there but nice and helpful. Now for the crazy part. Janis, what would you do?”

“I’d create one of those chain emails saying that if you don’t forward this to ten people in the next five minutes, the person who sent this to you will have horrible luck. Then I’d send it to ten people I can’t stand so they’d spend the rest of their lives thinking that it’s their fault that I died.”

“See what I mean?” I asked.

Moe and Farrah looked stunned as Janis asked, “What? It might get them to be nicer to people, at least for a while.”

“Yep. She’s nuts,” Moe said before she looked down at the tackle box full of irrigation parts and selected one. “Although, I do think that’s a genius idea.”

“It’s diabolical but sort of helpful, don’t you think? Maybe that email would make those people change their lives for the better.”

“I’m not doing it out of the kindness of my heart,” Janis scoffed. “You’re missing the point.”

“See?Delulu.”

“I think it’s funny that you can remember words like that but other ones just fall out of your head sometimes.”

“I don’t get it either. And it’s always the most random words, and then I feel like a dumbass when I realize what it is I’m trying to say.”

“That happens to everyone,” Moe said.

“I’m finally here!” Lulu Marks, another of our sisters from the club, said as she rushed around the corner.

“If you weren’t late, we’d wonder what was wrong with you,” Janis told her.

“Put me to work, and then tell me what you’re talking about,” Lulu said as she pulled a pair of gloves out of her pocket and walked toward Moe. Moe handed her the measuring tape and pointed out what she needed to do as I looked down at the section I was working on to finish it up. Finally, Lulu said, “Okay, what did I miss?”

“Zozo doesn’t have her spots anymore, she keeps forgetting random words, and she slept with Garvey.”

“Technically, we haven’t slept much,” I said, just to get Janis riled up again.

Lulu ignored me and said, “I was talking to my mom about Garvey coming home, and she said that he beat out my father for being the dumbest man on the planet.”

“What does Garvey have to do with your dad?” Janis asked.

Lulu cut the length of drip tape she’d just measured and handed it over for Moe to attach before she looked up and said, “My dad did the same thing to my mom when he went to prison, but he didn’t take it quite so far.”

“He did?” Janis and I asked at the same time.

“Yeah. There are a couple of boxes of the journals my mom wrote while he was inside because he refused to accept her letters or let her visit him in prison.”

“Why?” Janis asked.

“He thought she’d be better off making a life without him, and she wouldn’t do that if she was waiting for him,” Lulu explained.

“I don’t think that was Garvey’s reasoning, but it is similar.”

“What the hell was Garvey’s reason for cutting off contact with everyone?” Janis asked.

“Guilt.” When we all looked over at Farrah, she shrugged and said, “He’d rather face a future alone than risk letting everyone down again.”

“How do you know that?” Lulu asked. When Farrah just gave her a bored look, Lulu laughed and said, “I totally forgot you might have experience in that area.”

“I’m currently dealing with my own version of that right now,” Farrah explained.

Moe laughed softly before she said, “So am I.”

“Your dad didn’t talk to your mom the whole time he was gone?” I asked.

“Yeah. I don’t know all the details, but my dad was working for my mom’s father, and my grandfather was into some really heinous shit. Mom found out and turned him in, and since my dad wasn’t involved in the worst of it, he went down with him but didn’t get nearly as much time.”

“Wow. I had no idea,” Janis said.

“Neither did I.”

“My mom waited on him for years, and they got back together soon after he got out,” Lulu explained.

“Garvey didn’t come straight home. I don’t know if he ever would have if we hadn’t seen him in Tenillo,” I admitted. “That worries me.”

“Surely he would have eventually,” Lulu said hopefully.

“I don’t know how his mom and dad didn’t track him down and drag him back.”

“Janis is right. How could they just let him go like that?” Lulu asked.

“At some point, even parents hit a point where they know that there’s nothing they can do but leave it in their kid’s hands to fix or fuck up,” Moe explained. “It sounds like that scenario fits.”

“He was off the rails,” I said sadly.

“By the time he went to prison, it was like he wasn’t even the guy we knew,” Janis admitted.

“What’s he like now? Is he the same guy he was before?”

“No,” I answered without thinking. “He’s serious and more focused than he was back then. That could have something to do with age, but I think it has more to do with experience.”

“You’re probably right.”

“He seems wiser than his years now,” I told the women. “It’s like we knew the kid and now we’ve got to get to know the adult.”

“That sounds about right,” Moe said.

“Obviously, prison changes a person, but it’s how they use that . . .”

There was a loud boom that seemed to shake the ground beneath our feet, and before we even had a chance to react, there was another one and then another. I could hear my brother cackling with laughter right before Garvey yelled, “Fire in the hole!” and there was another explosion.

“What in the fuck?” Janis yelled as we all scrambled to stand up and rush toward the end of the tunnel so we could look out over the field.

The field was covered in chunks of dirt and smoldering grass, and I watched in shock as Garvey and my brother rushed around stomping out the flames while Corey laughed as he held up his phone to record their antics from his seat in the golf cart.

Suddenly, there was another explosion and clods of dirt flew at least ten feet in the air before they rained down on the two men who were howling with laughter.

“Holy shit!” Farrah exclaimed in a shocked whisper. “What’s wrong with them?”

“The Forrester is strong in that one,” Lulu mumbled just before there was another explosion mere feet from where Garvey was standing.

He jumped and then started cackling again as he stomped another tuft of grass that landed near his foot while soil rained down on his head.

I couldn’t answer Farrah’s question or even agree with Lulu. I was too stunned to speak as I stood there with my mouth agape in shock.

Apparently, Janis didn’t have that problem, and she bumped my shoulder with hers before she said, “Looks like he’s all grown up and much wiser than he used to be, doesn’t it?”

“I’m gonna kill ‘em.”

◆◆◆

GARVEY

“What in the hell are you doing?” Zoey yelled from the opening of the high tunnel where she’d been working with the other women.

I was about to answer her when another explosion happened about twenty feet from where the ladies were standing. Lulu, Janis, and Zoey jumped at the sound but didn’t cower like the other women which meant they were still standing there when soil rained down on their heads, peppering them with clods of dirt, including one clump of grass that just happened to be smoldering.

“Well, shit,” I heard Zane grumble.

“We didn’t think this through at all, did we?”

“We?” Zane yelled. “It was your fucking idea!”

“It was either this or learn how to melt aluminum to make statues,” I told him as I watched Zoey seethe as she stomped out a patch of grass. “This seemed like a safer idea.”

“We fucked up when we didn’t take Zoey into consideration. Every time I see that look on her face, someone, usually me, ends up in pain.”

“Shit.”

“Just so you know, she bites when she’s this mad.” My brother burst out laughing as he walked up and stood beside Zane. Finally, Zane asked, “That was the last one, wasn’t it?”

“Should be,” I said with uncertainty as I scanned the field looking for the red flags we’d set out to track where we wanted the explosions to occur.

“It should be?” Zane asked with raised eyebrows.

“We’re good. I counted,” Corey assured us.

“Here she comes,” Zane warned as Zoey started striding toward us with a murderous expression.

“I know I should get out of here so I don’t have to testify at her murder trial, but it’s like a wreck I just can’t look away from,” Corey said under his breath.

“What in the fuck are you doing?” Zoey yelled.

“It wasn’t my idea!”

Zoey glared at her brother before she turned the look on my brother who was shaking with laughter. When her glare landed on me, I winced and said, “I think we killed the ants.”

“You think?With what?Dynamite?”

“No. I couldn’t find any of that but . . .”

“You looked?”

“Not too hard. Let me tell you how I . . .”

“All I want to know is what the fuck is now poisoning the soil where I’d planned to plant flowers!”

“Nothing poisonous! I swear!”

“How in the hell did you create explosions like that without using . . . No! I don’t want to fucking know. I just . . .” Zoey scratched her head and then growled when dirt showered down over her face. She finally lost it and screamed, “Are you out of your fucking mind, Forrester?”

“He didn’t tell me that there’d be fire involved!”

“Who didn’t?”

I snapped my mouth shut, not willing to give away my source, especially since he was just a child. Obviously, he was a genius but still too young to go up against Zoey, especially when she was in a biting mood.

“You know he got the idea from another Forrester,” Janis said cheerfully. “All the males in that family share a brain.”

“And my cousin’s kid is the one in charge of it,” Zoey fumed with narrowed eyes. “Did you take advice from a child, Garvey?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Are you lying to me, Garvey Forrester?”

I scoffed before I avoided her question and asked, “Why would I lie about something like that? Besides, what kind of kid would know how to blow shit up?”

“That was too far,” Corey whispered.

“Everyone knows that Griffin isn’t really a child, Zozo,” Janis said helpfully. She ruined it by finishing with, “He’s an evil genius in training.”

“I’ll deal with that when I’m calmer,” Zoey said before she took a few steps closer to us. “Right now, you’re going to tell me how you’re going to get rid of all the fucking . . .” Zoey clenched her jaw, took a deep breath, and was able to speak with a calmer voice. “How are you going to level out the ground and get rid of all the craters in this field, Garvey?”

“We’re going to put out some stuff called diatomaceous earth to get rid of the ants that survived, and then, in three days, we’ll borrow your uncle’s tractor and till it all up before we put down the weed barrier and set the pathways between the rows,” I answered carefully, hoping that the thought of getting some of the larger tasks off her list might calm her anger.

Zoey stared into my eyes for a few long seconds before she said, “And that is the only reason I’m going to let you live. However, I absolutely forbid you from seeking advice from our little cousin about anything ever again. Are we clear, Forrester?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said sarcastically before I clicked my heels together and gave her a mock salute.

“You’ve really got a plan to fix this?” I nodded, and Zoey sighed, then let her head fall forward until her chin was resting on her chest. She looked back up and grinned before she said, “Show me how you did that so I can blow some shit up too!”