Crazy on You Read Free

other things to worry about, and ten minutes later, she hit the opener clipped to her visor, drove past the basketball hoop planted next to the driveway, and continued into her garage. She was sure Pippen was next door, peering out the front window, and would be home before she set down her tote and purse.
    As predicted—“Mom,” he called out as he burst through the back door. “Grandma said she’s coming over with her extra spaghetti.” He tossed his backpack onto the kitchen table. “Hide.”
    Crap. She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “Hi, Ma,” she said as soon as her mother picked up. “Pippen said you were bringing over spaghetti. I wish I’d known because I got some takeout from Chicken Lickin’.”
    “Oh, darn it. I know how much you love my spaghetti.” Lily didn’t know where she got that idea. “Did I tell you about your new neighbor?”
    Lily rolled her eyes and unbuttoned her coat. The house on her left had been for sale for over a year. It had just sold a few weeks ago, and she wondered what had taken Louella so long to introduce herself and get the lowdown.
    “It’s a single fella with a cat named Pinky.”
    A man with a cat? Named Pinky? “Is he gay?”
    “Didn’t appear to be, but you remember Milton Farley.”
    “No.” She didn’t care either, but there was no stopping Louella when she had a story to tell.
    “He lived over on Ponderosa and was married to Brenda Jean. They had those skinny little kids with runny noses. A few—”
    Lily put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered to her son, who’d wrapped his arms around her waist, “I’m going to hell for lying to your grandma for you.”
    Pippen lifted his face from the front of her shirt. He grinned and showed a mouthful of braces with blue bands. Sometimes he looked so much like his daddy it broke her heart. Golden hair, brown eyes, and long sweeping lashes. “I love you, Mama,” he said, warming her heart. She would gladly go to hell for Pip. Walk through fire, kill, steal, and lie to her mother for her son. He was going to grow up strong and healthy and go to Texas A&M.
    Phillip “Pippen” Darlington was going to be somebody. Somebody better than his parents.
    While her mother prattled on about Milton Farley and his hidden boyfriends in Odessa, Lily bent and kissed the top of her son’s head. She scratched his back through his Texas A&M sweatshirt and felt him shiver. Ronnie Darlington was a rat bastard for sure, but he’d given her a wonderful little boy. She hadn’t always been the best mother, but she thanked God she’d never messed up so bad that she’d messed up her son’s life.
    “ . . . and you just know he was tricking everyone with his . . .”
    Lily closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of Pippen’s hair. She’d made sure that her son didn’t go to school and have to hear stories about his weird mama. She knew what that was like. And she’d worked hard to make damn sure she never embarrassed him, and that he never had to hear other kids calling his mama Crazy Lily Darlington.

 
    C HAPTER T WO
     
    F ingers of gray crept across Lovett, Texas, as Officer Tucker Matthews pulled his Toyota Tundra into the garage and cut the engine. Full dawn was still half an hour to the east and the temperature hovered just above freezing.
    He grabbed his small duffle and the service Glock from the seat next to him. He’d just started his third week with the Potter County Sheriff’s Office and was pulling his second twelve-hour night shift. He moved into the kitchen and set the duffle and pistol on the counter. Pinky meowed from the vicinity of the cat condo in the living room, then ran into the kitchen to greet him.
    “Hang on, Pinkster,” he said and shrugged out of his brown service coat. He hung it on a hook beside the back door, then moved to the refrigerator. The veterinarian had told him milk wasn’t good for Pinky, but she loved it. He poured some two-percent