The Sweethearts’ Knitting Club Read Online Free

that she recognized. Patsy Cross’s ruby red Crown Victoria packed with carpooling members of the knitting club.
    Crap!
    At best she had only a two-minute head start. Flynn gunned the engine and zoomed to the end of the road. She slammed the Ranger into park, tumbled out, sprinted up the back steps, and banged in through the screen door.

C HAPTER T WO
    Beau Trainer voted boy most likely to be brought home for Thanksgiving dinner
    —Twilight High, 1999
    For as long as he could remember, Beau Trainer had struggled to overcome the image of his larger-than-life father. Clinton Trainer was a throwback to the lawless days of the Wild West when men were men—drinking, whoring, gambling, smoking, fighting, shooting off guns for sport—and the women put up with it because they were scared not to. His father called every boy Bubba and every girl Sissy-babe. He had a picture of a hula dancer with oversized bosoms tattooed on his forearm, and until his stroke he’d always kept a whiskey flask tucked into the top of his cowboy boot.
    The Trainers hailed from a long line of lawmen, dating back to some of the first Texas Rangers. And when Clinton married Kathryn Loving and her family’s cattle money and used her wealth andhis boldness to get elected sheriff of Hood County, his place in Twilight history was cinched. No one dared cross Clinton Trainer except Kathryn, and that was only because she held the purse strings.
    When Beau was eight years old his father took him behind the woodshed, pulled a cigar from his pocket, bit off the end, and spit it into the field. “Let’s see how tough you are, little man,” Clinton had grunted. “Smoke this.”
    He remembered being simultaneously repulsed and seduced. He’d brought the cigar to his lips. Clinton fired a match with his hoary thumbnail. “Now suck,” he commanded.
    Beau sucked. Acrid smoke filled his lungs. It tasted like wet, moldy leaves set on fire. He’d coughed and tried to hand the cigar back to Clinton. “I don’t like it.”
    “Keep smoking,” Clinton growled with that don’t-give-me-no-shit look on his face.
    Knees trembling, tears burning at the backs of his eyes, Beau took another hit. The second time was worse than the first. “I can’t do it,” he’d whimpered.
    “Again.”
    “Daddy, don’t make me.”
    “You want me to take off this belt?” Clinton settled his thumbs on his belt buckle. “’Cause I will.”
    He couldn’t hold the tears back any longer as he took another horrible drag off the vile cigar and promptly vomited in the sand.
    “Pussy.” Clinton curled his nose in disgust and walked away.
    When he was ten, Clinton took him deer hunting. When it came down to pulling the trigger and annihilating the defenseless animal, Beau had shot wide, missing on purpose.
    “Pussy.” Clinton reached out and slapped him across the face.
    When he was twelve, Clinton took him to the Horny Toad Tavern and told Earl Pringle to serve Beau a whiskey.
    “I can’t do that, Sheriff,” Earl had said, looking nervously at Clinton’s badge, no doubt wondering if it was a test.
    “Then give me a whiskey.”
    Earl served him and Clinton pushed the glass to Beau. “Knock it back in one swallow, kid.”
    Beau tried, he really did. Honestly, all he wanted was to please his father, but it turned out like the cigar. Vomit on the floor.
    “Pussy.” Clinton grunted and finished off the whiskey Beau hadn’t been able to down.
    Then when he was fourteen…Beau closed his eyes against the memory of the whorehouse and the naked woman who’d touched him. All he heard ringing in his ears were his father’s parting words as he slammed the door behind him. “Pussy for a pussy.”
    It was at that moment Beau realized that no matter what he did he could never impress or please his father. He also realized something else. His father was morally bankrupt and he wasn’t a man worth emulating. And Beau recognized that from then on, he was going to have to father himself.