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“No proof of what?” Dad asks as he comes up behind us.
“Oh… hi, Daddy.” I say spinning around and giving him a hug.
He pulls back and looks me directly in the eyes. “Proof of what?” he asks with an unsettled expression.
“Proof that I committed insider trading,” Trey says in a very bold move. “Her boss hated my dad almost as much as you did. He has always been trying to nail dad for doing something wrong and since he’s gone he has now diverted his attention to me.”
“And?” Ray shrugs his shoulders wanting more details.
“And… he has nothing. I haven’t committed any crime, I might have had access to inside information but I never acted upon it. There was no stock transaction, so there is no proof of any criminal wrongdoing.” Trey says, completely blowing my mind.
“He has no proof,” I reiterate, giving Dad a shrug of my shoulders.
“Okay, wow. I wasn’t expecting anything quite that heavy.” Ray shakes his head and looks in the back of the car. “Don’t you have any bags?”
“Oh, I got a room at a nice little bed and breakfast in Lynchburg. I didn’t want to be in the way,” he explains.
“Peggy’s?” Ray asks, looking back toward me.
“Yeah, he tried to give her a hundred dollar tip,” I inform him with a sly grin.
“I’m sure you got that right back,” he says with a laugh. “She’s old school.”
“That’s what Mandy told me,” Trey replies. “Something about southern hospitality.”
“She’ll take good care of you.” Ray gives him a slap on the shoulder. “But one tip… even though she’s a good woman she is nosey as hell, so if you hear anyone out in the hallway make sure you keep your voice down. She gossips like no other.”
“Okay, that’s good to know.” Trey turns and cringes in my direction, obviously thinking that we may have dodged a bullet earlier.
Trey
Mandy and Ray have the menu all figured out by the time Darla shows up with her two kids. Maggie’s sister is bringing two salads, her sister-in-law is making sweet potato pie and Mandy is in charge of the corn bread.
“I’m going to show you how to smoke pork the Tennessee way,” Ray says, guiding me toward a large refrigerator in the garage. “We’re going to do a Boston Butt over hickory coals. We’ll start it this afternoon and it will be done about noon tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I reply, not really understanding much of what he is telling me. I have had my share of gastronomic experiences around the world, but real smoked barbeque is not one of them. I’ve had pulled pork sandwiches a few times, but nothing memorable.
“We’ll load it up with dry rub first. Don’t tell anyone, but I prefer a good Kansas City rub,” he whispers while covering the huge slab of meat with it.
“I promise,” I say, trying not to laugh out loud.
“Thank you for not saying anything to Amanda about our conversation the other day,” he says while carefully rubbing every part of the pork butt. “I’m not sure I could’ve faced her today.”
I stand frozen for a few seconds not knowing exactly how I should respond to his statement. When he looks up, I decide just to tell him. “Maggie apparently told her about everything last night. They had a long talk about all of that stuff.”
“What?” he blurts out with a look of shock on his face. “I was wondering why it got so damn quiet every time I came around. Son of a bitch!” He drags his hands across the front of his pants leaving behind a trail of dry rub.
“Maggie told her not to be mad at you. That she was okay with the way things had been,” I explain, reiterating what Mandy had told me on the phone the night before.
“So Maggie knew about everything? That’s just great,” he says, sliding the pork into the barbeque pit. “Now I feel like a total ass.” He closes the lid and wipes his brow with his forearm.
“Actually I think we are all better off knowing the truth. At least now Mandy and I both understand why Dad acted the way he did. Before this, Mandy thought he had just run you out of business out of sheer greed and I thought he was just an asshole,” I tell him very bluntly. “I honestly wish Mom would have leveled with me a long time ago. Things could have turned out much different between Dad and I.”
Ray looks at me with a pained expression caused by years of torment. “If we had it all to do over again, we would probably do a lot of things differently. I wanted to marry your mother before you were even born, but Darla was just a little baby. Maggie and I had a fight one night and she made it clear that if we split up, she would move back here and I would be dead to both of them. I couldn’t stand the thought of not being part of her life. ” A tear pops out of one eye and he quickly wipes it away. “I don’t regret raising the girls, but I have regretted everything else every single goddamn day for the last twenty years.” He opens the lid and stokes the coals in a long moment of silence.
