Who We Were & Who We Are Now

Part 16

In the two weeks Forrest stays in the hospital, the ATU took the stills. They used the brothers being down and out to their advantage and blew them up while they were unattended. You weren't really sure what that they meant for the family but you kept your head down and worked yourself to exhaustion almost every night to run the station alone for almost two weeks.

Junior was out of the hospital first, insisting he go home and tend to things there. The girl he'd been courting had been with him when you left, and she seemed like a nice enough girl. You tell him you'll get a phone installed in the house when you can to keep in touch, and just like last time you drop by anyway. Jack gets out next, staying at the station for a bit, enjoying getting taken care of by you, you suppose. His girl, Bertha wasn't allowed near him because of her daddy so he wasn't so keen on being the third wheel at the old house. After a week he goes back, but you send him back with plenty of food to hold him over for a few days. You'd go visit Forrest at night, even if he said not to because you needed your rest and he would be just fine and he'd be home soon. But he never fought you on eating the food you'd bring him, so you think he really didn't mind. Howard was around, but he stayed drunk. He'd mumble about Rakes, appear and disappear without warning, and you just let him work it out on his own.

So on the night before Forrest comes back home, you're alone and it's no big surprise. You're cleaning up, worrying over nothing because you'd taken good care of the place in his absence. You'd washed his sheets, cleaned his room, had soup ready to simmer for him for his meals and the books were caught up. Before you're going to retire for the night, you're in the back pantry taking inventory of the canning left from last winter, seeing what you needed to put in the garden for the incoming spring.
You're finishing jotting down your list and ideas, back turned to the door as you hear it click open. You expect Howard, or Jack or, basically anyone except whose currently walking towards you. You can smell his perfume tickle your nostrils, the grease slicking back his hair causing it to glint in the light from the moon through the windows.

"Looks like you're left all alone now ." he says in his cold deadpan tone.

"What the hell are you doin' here?" your brow low and hard, your jaw clenched.

"I've come here to tie up some loose ends... Miss Tawny. That's what the boys call you isn't it?"

"Everyone calls me that. They have since I was little."

"I've heard other names people have called you." he says with insinuation and raised brows.

"If you think the news of people insulting me behind my back is something I'm not aware of then you are more stupid than I thought." you say flatly, holding your ground.

"If you are not in denial then I do not understand how a woman could lower herself to do what you do."

"And what is it you think I do?" you purse your lips and narrow your eyes with an attitude towards him.

"The same thing I heard your mother did." he gives a light shrug and your nostrils flare. "I suppose there's a predisposition to being a whore." he stares you down and you don't give him an inch. "Although she wasn't under the control of criminals, getting passed around in some... incestuous nature like you. She just made her way around all the rest of the town didn't she?"

"It's none of your concern what me or my mama have done. She was a survivor, just like I am. Just like the Bondurants are and you'll be smart to such your damn mouth about her." You'd gotten in fights over rumors about your mama in school. After your father died, you don't know how she kept food on the table, you never asked. But it was rumored she was sleeping with men in town. Whether it was true or not didn't matter to you or anyone else it seemed because her supposed ill doings had followed you to this very day. You heard the whispers, you knew what people of a certain faux righteousness said about you living at the station. You didn't care what people you knew you your whole life thought about you, so why would you care about what a piece of shit like Rakes thought.