Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set (Books 1-8) - Charlaine Harris [908]
“I’d like me a cheeseburger with fries,” Jason said. No surprise there.
“What about you, Crystal?” I asked, trying to sound friendly. After all, this was my sister-in-law.
“Oh, I don’t have enough money to eat,” she said.
I had no idea what to say. I looked at Jason inquiringly, and he gave me a shrug. This shrug said (to his sister), “I’ve done something stupid and wrong but I’m not going to back down, because I’m a stubborn shit.”
“Crystal, I’ll be glad to stand you lunch,” I said very quietly. “What would you like?”
She glared at her husband. “I’d like the same, Sookie.”
I wrote her order down on a separate slip and strode to the hatch to turn them in. I had been ready to get angry, and Jason had lit a match and thrown it on my temper. The whole story was clear in their heads, and as I came to understand what was going on, I was sick of both of them.
Crystal and Jason had settled into Jason’s house, but almost every day Crystal rode out to Hotshot, her comfort zone, where she didn’t have to pretend anything. She was used to being surrounded by her kin, and she especially missed her sister and her sister’s babies. Tanya Grissom was renting a room from Crystal’s sister, the room Crystal had lived in until she married Jason. Crystal and Tanya had become instant buddies. Since Tanya’s favorite occupation was shopping, Crystal had gone along for the ride several times. In fact, she’d spent all the money Jason had given her for household expenses. She’d done this two pay-checks in a row, despite multiple scenes and promises.
Now Jason refused to give her any more money. He was doing all the grocery shopping and picking up any dry cleaning, paying every bill himself. He’d told Crystal if she wanted any money of her own, she had to get a job. The unskilled and pregnant Crystal had not succeeded in finding one, so she didn’t have a dime.
Jason was trying to make a point, but by humiliating his wife in public he was making the wrong point entirely. What an idiot my brother could be.
What I could do about this situation? Well . . . nothing. They had to work it out themselves. I was looking at two stunted people who’d never grown up, and I wasn’t optimistic about their chances.
With a deep twinge of unease, I remembered their unusual wedding vows; at least, they’d seemed odd to me, though I supposed they were the Hotshot norm. As Jason’s closest living relative, I’d had to promise to take the punishment if Jason misbehaved, just as her uncle Calvin had promised the same on Crystal’s behalf. I’d been pretty damn rash to make that promise.
When I carried their plates to their table, I saw that the two were in the jaw-clenching, looking-anywhere-but-at-each-other stage of quarreling. I put the plates down carefully, got them a bottle of Heinz ketchup, and skedaddled. I’d interfered enough by buying Crystal lunch.
There was a person involved in this I could approach, and I promised myself then and there that I would. All my anger and unhappiness focused on Tanya Grissom. I really wanted to do something awful to that woman. What the hell was she hanging around for, sniffing around Sam? What was her goal in drawing Crystal into this spending spiral? (And I didn’t think for a second it was by chance that Tanya’s newest big buddy was my sister-in-law.) Was Tanya trying to irritate me to death? It was like having a horsefly buzzing around and lighting occasionally . . . but never quite close enough to swat. While I went about my job on autopilot, I pondered what I could do to get her out of my orbit. For the first time in my life, I wondered if I could forcibly pin another person down to read her mind. It wouldn’t be so easy, since Tanya was a wereanimal, but I would find out what was driving her. And I had the conviction that information would save me a lot of heartache . . . a lot.
While I plotted and schemed and fumed, Crystal and Jason silently ate