Excerpt from Some Go Home by Odie Lindsey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

2

Then it was August. Sweltering, dead-grass August. She was on the couch, in a peach-colored bathrobe, third trimester. Derby had already called four times that morning; Colleen hadn't picked up, but only listened to the answering machine. He wasn't so much checking in on her as he was checking up, exercising his own anxiety. He'd been coiled extra-tight since seeing his father back in the news, as if the old man were anything more than a gust of scorched air (or as if a phone call to Colleen could protect her if he wasn't).

Instead of talking things out, Derby had doubled down on domestic regimen: check-ins, check-ons, grocery lists, chores, and reporting for daily duty at a house-flip gig in Pitchlynn.

Derby Friar, Derby Friar, his jeans forever tucked into his stiff leather ropers. Once a year, he bought a pair of tan, pull-on Red Wing work boots. He spent twelve months scuffing them, wearing them in proper . . . then bought another new pair, and started scuffing again. Every two years he bought five pairs of Levi's Shrink-to-Fit 501s. The denim so rigid, so horribly blue. He'd spend a weekend in and out of the tub, soaking and then drying the pants on his body. Derby squished as he walked about, dripping indigo all over everything. Yet twenty-four months later, precisely as the jeans got soft and worn, and damn well perfect to Colleen, he'd bag them up for the Salvation Army, and start in on five new pairs.

Good ole boy, the best ole boy. His rituals were endearing. Most times, anyway. At first glance, the only thing quirked about Derby was that he had legally switched to using his mother's maiden name. Yet even this was predictable. If Colleen's surname had been Hobbs, she would've buried that shit the instant she turned eighteen. She was particularly thankful for this decision now that Derb's dad was back on radar, and likely headed back to trial.

She'd only met her father-in-law a couple of times, when she and Derby were first married, and when a brief, symbolic effort was made to cross paths. To Colleen, Hare Hobbs seemed like any other old crank. She was lulled by his drawl and easy measure, by his keen questions about herself and her military service, and the way that, well, just the way Hare came across as sort of fragile and empathetic, versus the vile concept she'd been warned about.

Admittedly, it was the only time she'd ever met a murderer. Or, as Hare was so known to point out, an exonerated murderer.

Regardless, Derby Hobbs, son of Harold "Hare" Hobbs, was now fully and irrevocably Derby Friar: thirty-two and fit, his eyes fanned by hairline wrinkles. A man who insisted that he'd be made whole by a parcel and a small stocked pond, catfish and brim, on the outskirt of Pitchlynn, Mississippi. By a wife to adore and a thirty-year mortgage, a string of journeyman builder gigs, and most of all a brand-new family. Twins, in fact. Goodness gracious.

Colleen loved him, but she ignored his calls. She was bloated and alone in the hot little house, her muscles sore, sleep-deprived, and she didn't have any comfort to give. Hell, even the fact that they needed a landline felt confining. Water towers or not, she'd had better cell service in Iraq.

She rubbed a gob of Palmer's Cocoa Butter lotion on her stomach, an attempted arrest of the stretch marks. Knotted up her dull gold hair, then scraped at the freckles of pink polish left on her nails. On the television, a New York celebutante cooked cathead biscuits. Only, to Colleen they didn't look like cathead biscuits, a name that everyone on set only joked about. The show hosts had used no bacon drippings nor buttermilk to prepare them, let alone a cast-iron skillet. She wondered how the celebrity had even landed on TV, doing things that Colleen was more suited to do. It seemed that one simply had to show up on set, be pretty, or rich, or both, and breathe. And feeling fairly certain she could produce three of these four prereqs—show up, be pretty, breathe—Colleen meditated on her ability to parlay such qualities into future success. She swore that after the babies were born, she was gonna . . . 

Excerpted from Some Go Home: A Novel. Copyright (c) 2020 by Odie Lindsey. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.