His Uncle's Obsession: After I Seduced Him novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: Saturday Night

Daddy's porch light was on when I pulled in at eleven that night.

He was sitting under it in his garage jacket.

"That's Reba Tackett's truck," he said.

"I'm borrowing it."

"Huh." He held the screen door open. "There's ham in the icebox."

He didn't ask.

He never asked.

He just sat across the kitchen table from me while I ate, and when I started crying into the ham, he slid the paper towels over and looked out the window till I was done.

I stayed five weeks.

I ran the #4 from his kitchen table every Sunday, on the laptop and the phone, the way I had at Daytona.

Fourteenth at Atlanta.

Ninth the week after.

A blown tire the week after that.

Eleventh. Seventh.

The boot lady's boots rode on the hood, and every week the TV cut to the gray car with the tape on the roof and said my name.

I talked to Sutton every race day about the car.

Only the car.

Every night at ten his text came through.

Goodnight, crew chief.

I never answered.

I read it every time.

Daddy's garage sat behind the house, a block building with two bays and a coffee can full of bolts nobody had sorted since 1994.

I worked in it all week.

Daddy sat on a stool and pretended he wasn't supervising.

"Take your pill," I said every morning at eight.

"Took it."

"You're holding it."

He swallowed it and made a face.

On the second Saturday in March, I asked him what he thought of Tillery men.

He put down his wrench.

"Old man Tillery was the meanest man I ever raced against, and the fairest," he said. "Never cheated a day. His older boy, Crews's daddy, was a good man married to a woman who wasn't. And the young one gave up everything the minute somebody asked him to."

"That's the problem."

"Is it?" He picked the wrench back up. "Your mama would've said that's the part worth keeping. She'd also have said he needs somebody to teach him to say no."

The Cup cars had the weekend off before Martinsville, the last Saturday in March.

Daddy and I went to the Hickory track that night like we'd done my whole life.

He wrenched for two late models in the pits.

I sat on the pit wall eating a hot dog with everything on it.

Halfway through the heat races, a big black pickup with a camper on the back rolled in through the pit gate.

The whole infield turned to look.

Sutton Tillery got out.

He walked straight across the pits to Daddy.

"Sir," he said. "I'd like to borrow a car."

Daddy looked at him a long time.

Then he pointed at the #11 late model he'd built for a customer who'd broken his wrist.

"Don't you put it in the wall."

Sutton started dead last.

Twenty-four cars on a little short track with the whole town in the stands.

He passed them two and three at a time.

He won by half a straightaway.

In victory lane, the track announcer handed him the microphone, the old crackling one that had been on the stand since I was a girl.

He didn't wave.

He looked at the grandstand, and then he looked at me on the pit wall.

"My name's Sutton Tillery," he said, and his voice came out of every speaker in the place. "I own forty-nine percent of Tillery Racing, and I didn't tell her."

The crowd went quiet.

"I kept the peace in my family for nine years. I kept it while they fired the best engineer in North Carolina and put her name on a part she refused to build."

He looked straight at me.

"I should have told her what I own the first night. I didn't. I'm telling all of you so I can't ever take it back."

He took a breath that the speakers caught.

"I'm done keeping the peace with my family at her expense. That's all."

He handed the mic back to the announcer.

Nobody clapped.

Then Daddy did, from the pits, slow and loud.

Then the whole grandstand.

I walked across the infield.

He met me halfway.

"You can't keep things from me," I said.

"I know."

"Not to make anybody comfortable."

"I know." He held out his hand, the one with the burn scar. "Where I'm parked is behind the haulers. You can say no."

I took his hand.

The camper was smaller than I remembered.

Sutton hit his head on the ceiling the second he climbed up behind me.

"Shit."

I laughed before I knew I was going to.

The sound came out wrong, half a sob, and I pressed my palm flat against his chest to steady myself.

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