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general, although the Protestant ministers didn’t inspire the loathing in him that this guy did.
    It might have something to do with the way the guy always stared at him. Once he had tried to strike up a conversation, but Jack had warded it off with “Look, I don’t know whether you’re trying to save me or seduce me, but the answer is no either way.”
    The door to the kitchen opened and Sherry returned, no longer smiling. She put the plate of food down in front of him.
    â€œCan I get you anything else?” she asked. The perkiness was gone from her voice.
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    She tore his check out of her pad and laid it on the counter in front of him. He watched her as she went back to refilling saltshakers. She was spilling a lot more than she had been before. She glanced up and their eyes met. She quickly turned and busied herself checking coffee filters. Jack watched her with growing anxiety. A hazy suspicion was trying to form, but he pushed it away.
    Suddenly Sherry was in front of him again. She crossed her arms and sighed as if she was disgusted.
    â€œThis is so dumb.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDarlene telling me how to run my life.”
    Jack relaxed a little. This was just some tiff between a couple of waitresses. He reached for his coffee cup and Sherry dropped the bombshell.
    â€œShe thinks I shouldn’t talk to you.”
    Jack felt the muscles in his stomach contract as his dark fears were confirmed. Something in Sherry’s eyes triggered an old anger. He caught it, turned it off.
    â€œFine.” His voice was calm and quiet. “Don’t talk to me, then.”
    â€œSo is it true? What she said?”
    â€œI don’t know what she said.”
    â€œYou know. About your family.”
    â€œWhat about them?” He’d be damned if he was going to make this easy for her.
    â€œYou know.”
    He stared at her, unflinching. She looked around to make sure no one was listening, then looked back at him and spoke quietly.
    â€œShe said you had a brother who was executed.”
    It had been a while since Jack had heard those words. They went through him like a cold wind. He didn’t answer.
    â€œShe said it was a few years ago.”
    Ten. A decade. Another lifetime.
    â€œShe said it was in Alabama.”
    â€œWell, Darlene is handier than the World Book Encyclopedia , isn’t she?” His voice was calm and steady, but it was an effort.
    â€œHe musta done something terrible.”
    Jack stood up and dropped more than enough money on the counter.
    â€œYou mean she left that out? Get her to fill you in. I’m sure it’d make her day.”
    H eading back down the road, he told himself it was his own fault. He never should have let himself get drawn into that. He could hear Tallen’s voice from long ago: “Why do you talk to them? They don’t care about us. They’re just looking for gossip. We’re their entertainment.”
    No matter where they’d lived, the Landrys had always been the family in town whose name was never spoken without the word those in front of it. Actually, Will Landry’s name was usually spoken alone, in a tone that said all anyone needed to know. And most people felt sorry for Lucy, for all she’d had to endure. But the boys were those Landrys . A blight on the community. The kids everyone warned their kids to stay away from.
    Jack couldn’t even remember, really, how he and his brothers had first come to be disenfranchised youth. He remembered the earliest deeds, but not the compulsions. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that “juvenile delinquent” was an identity within their reach, and a negative identity was better than none at all. Or maybe it was because they’d inherited Lucy’s pride, and they simply couldn’t stand the way people looked at them. Maybe they’d provoked people’s ire to be spared their pity.
    This notoriety had not