Marilee realized that most of William’s deprecation was caused by jealousy. He would have loved to have been as macho as Wes. Truth be known, he hadn’t outgrown his adolescent envy of his popular classmate. Being valedictorian didn’t have near the cachet of being captain of the football team. Not where they lived anyway.
But she also knew that what he said about Wes, while possibly exaggerated, was basically true. She was on the high school faculty with Wes Hamer. He did strut down the corridors of the school as though he owned them. He seemed to think that proprietorship was his due as athletic director. He gloried in the title and all the celebrity and privileges it implied.
“Did you know that he has seduced his own students?”
“That’s gossip,” Marilee argued softly. “Started, I believe, by the wishful-thinking girls themselves.”
William shook his head as though saddened by her naïveté. “You’re so innocent about the ways of the world, Marilee. Delude yourself about Wes Hamer if you must. But as your older brother, who’s looking out for your best interest, I recommend that you find yourself another hero.”
Taking his coffee and newspaper with him, he went into the living room. Not unlike their father, William had a routine. He expected dinner to be ready each evening when he got home from the drugstore. Following dinner, he read the newspaper while she cleaned up the kitchen and did any other housekeeping chores that needed doing. By the time she was ready to settle down in the living room to grade homework papers, he was retiring to his bedroom to watch TV until he went to bed.
They shared a house but rarely a room.
Without fail, she asked him about his day, but he seldom asked about hers, as though her work was insignificant.
He expressed his thoughts, feelings, and opinions freely, but when she shared hers, they were dismissed or disparaged.
He could go out in the evening without having to account for his time or tell her where he was going. If she went out, she had to notify him ahead of time, tell him where she was going and when he could expect her return.
After the second local woman’s disappearance, he’d become particularly vigilant about her comings and goings. Cynically, she wondered if he was truly that concerned for her safety or if he just enjoyed exercising authority over her.
She performed the mundane duties of a wife but didn’t have the status of one. She was an old maid, doing for her brother because she didn’t have another man to do for. No doubt that was how people regarded her, with pitying shakes of their heads and a murmured “Bless her heart.”
William had a life. So did she. His.
Until recently, when everything had been sweetly, marvelously changed.
CHAPTER
8
TENSION AROUND THE HAMERS’ KITCHEN dining table was as thick as the blood-rare T-bone Wes was knifing into.
He cut off a chunk of the meat, dunked it in the puddle of ketchup on his plate, and put it in his mouth. “You told me those application forms had already been mailed,” he said, talking around the bite. “I go into your room this evening, and there they are, the lot of them, scattered across your desk like birdcage liners. So on top of shirking your responsibility, you lied to me. More than once.”
Scott was slouched in his chair, his eyes downcast. With the tines of his fork, he was making disinterested stabs at his serving of mashed potatoes. “I was studying for semester exams, Dad. Then we spent that week at Grandpa’s house over Christmas. Ever since school started again, I’ve been busy.”
Wes washed down the steak with a swallow of beer. “Busy with everything except your future.”
“No.”
“Wes.”
He shot a look at his wife. “Keep out of this, Dora. This is between Scott and me.”
“I’ll start filling out the forms tonight.” Scott pushed back his chair and laid his napkin beside his plate.
“I’ll start on them tonight.” Wes jabbed his knife toward Scott’s plate. “You finish your supper.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat it anyway. You need the protein.”
Scott replaced his napkin in his lap and, with attitude, forked the steak and sawed his knife through it.
“During the holidays, I let you get by with eating junk,” Wes said. “From now until spring training is over, I’m going to monitor your diet. No more desserts.”
“I made an apple pie for tonight,” Dora said.