Peach Maloney (aka an accidental felon with a family problem)

If reincarnation is real, I hope I come back as a rhinoceros.

Nobody fucks with a rhinoceros. You get to eat as much as you want and nobody calls you fat because if they do, you’ll sit on them and squash the fuck out of them. Plus, if you get lucky and live in a zoo, it’s all swimming and sunning all day long, and if you have delinquent relatives, well, you also have a horn to shove up their asses.

Also?

Rhinoceroses don’t have court.

They don’t fit in police cruisers or handcuffs.

And hundred-year-old good ol’ boy judges can’t sit on their benches and order them to get married.

“B-but—” I sputter before Julie Templeton, my attorney, clamps a shut up hand around my arm.

“Your Honor,” she says over my protests to the supposedly honorable Judge Thurgood Augustus Masterson the Third, of the Birmingham Mastersons just in case you care about that sort of thing, “this morning’s incident proves Miss Maloney has the maternal instincts to go along with the financial and emotional means necessary to raise a child by herself. The theory of a two-parent family—”

“Is necessary for the well-being of this child,” the judge interrupts.

“Papaya Maloney is being passed from relative to relative—”

“Getting raised by a village,” he drawls. “Knowing she has someone to go to if one of her support system ends up in jail.”

I start to rise again, but Julie once again pushes me back. “Your Honor, it’s a shame when a teenager in need of some consistency is denied the possibility of a steady home because of a good deed that took a wrong turn.”

The judge pulls off his glasses and peers at me. He’s ninety if he’s a day, with a liver spot in the shape of Abraham Lincoln’s profile on his head, wrinkles eating his cheeks, and his black robes making him appear halfway to his own funeral.

He also judged the Grits Fest 5k Color Run last weekend and was the deciding vote that gave first prize in the best body paint contest to a group of frat monkeys from his alma mater rather than to a local Goat’s Tit family that had everyone down to the toddler running in matching glitter tie-dye T-shirts with unicorn horns glued to their foreheads.

For that alone, I’ll never forgive him.

That family was adorable.

But denying me custody of Papaya?

The man can rot in hell. I know where she’s going if she doesn’t get some stability and supervision.

“Miss Maloney, you work well past supper every night, this isn’t your first brush with the law, and you don’t even know where young Papaya is right now. If you want full-time custody of your sister, you need a husband.” He bangs his gavel and rises.

“So help me, Peach, I will muffle you with my hands if I need to,” my attorney breathes in my ear. “He won’t give you custody if he’s holding you in contempt of court.”

That’s the problem with living in a small town.

Everybody knows your business, and all those pesky details about proper and procedure get lost.

Technically, my house is halfway between Goat’s Tit and Huntsville, where I work, but it happens to fall five hundred feet on the wrong side of the county line, so battling for custody in Huntsville isn’t happening.

What should’ve been an easy process—Papaya’s daddy signed everything he needed to, giving me permission to adopt my half-sister when our mama passed on a few months ago—is turning into a never-ending circus of me perpetually trying to prove that I’ll be a better guardian than the parent who doesn’t want her.

The judge leaves the courtroom, and I drop back to the wooden chair. Outside, magnolia leaves are rustling in the wind, and a late afternoon storm is brewing.

We’ve all missed the annual grits cook-off, which is the only thing in Goat’s Tit worthwhile—aside from Papaya and Gracie, of course. And most of the residents who aren’t Judge Masterson or one of his relatives.

Every town has one, right?

Ours just happens to sit on a bench and lord his rule over the rest of us.

But unfortunately, I’m beginning to think His Honorable Liverspot is right.

While I don’t agree that having a husband should ever be grounds for being a parent, I do work too many hours to do this single parent gig.

And a kid with the mischief and motivation and brains of Papaya shouldn’t be spending her spare time outside school within a quarter mile of airplanes retrofitted to handle simulating zero gravity, which is exactly where I spend my working hours.

I co-own Weightless, a flight adventure company, with my very best friend in the entire world. Our planes take regular you-and-me kind of people on a crazy fun ride where we simulate zero gravity and let our passengers feel like they’re riding in space. Like they’re astronauts without having to leave the earth’s atmosphere.

We’ve expanded operations this last year after taking on a silent investor, and I’ve spent most of my time securing government contracts and research grants and doing all the paperwork and networking and hiring necessary to get us to a point that we now have four planes we operate, manned by six flight crews. Until I realized Papaya was running loose all over Casper County since our mama died, I was working fourteen-hour days. The last few months, I’ve still been mostly pulling ten-hour days.

On the days I can work.

Which means we’re starting to fall behind on securing new contracts to keep our jets occupied.

I drop my head to the wobbly table. “He’s right,” I mutter to Julie. “I can’t do this myself.”

“You won’t be by yourself. You have Goat’s Tit behind you.”

I’m not a native Goat’s Titter. Titter? Tittian? Whatever. The point is, I grew up in Saintsville, which is basically Goat’s Tit’s biggest high school rival, and even though high school was mumble mumble years ago, there’s history between the two towns that means I’m still regarded suspiciously by some.

Not that I was popular in Saintsville.

Far from it. Because when Petal Masterson—yes, Judge Liverspot’s granddaughter—made it her personal mission to make sure the entire world knew I was from trash, all I’d ever amount to was trash, and that I’d die trash, I started to think that might be all I was, even though the only difference between us was that she came from money and I came from an accident.

My mama had me when she was sixteen, and neither she nor my sperm donor was old enough to handle the responsibility of parenthood. Meemaw raised me. We were never sure exactly where my mama was throughout the state. I was almost old enough to vote before Papaya came along, and I didn’t even know I had a sister for a few years.

Papaya’s who I would’ve been if I hadn’t had Meemaw. And even then, I gave Meemaw some heart attacks in my teen years.

And possibly also gave Goat’s Tit—and Judge Liverspot—some reason to not trust me. I was guilty of a lot, from toilet papering to cow tipping, though that grow a dick stunt that left giant foam penises floating in the county pool one Fourth of July was not my fault, and one day, I’ll get Petal Masterson to fess up.

Not that it’ll change my fate today.

I dig my phone out of my purse and double check my messages.

Nothing since Joey reported Manning’s guards had found Papaya and were holding her at Gracie’s place until I could get there.

No updates on Weightless or how work was today or how many reporters and investigators she’s had to talk to.

Not that she’d tell me. Joey’s big on protecting her own.

But she can’t protect me from this.

I committed a federal felony against an aircraft today, and burned down an orchard to boot. Got a court date all set for that too.

One spur-of-the-moment decision trying to save my little sister turned me from respectable business owner to a liability to the company I’ve poured all my blood, sweat, and tears into for the last five years.

Because of course it has.

I’m a kid from a backwoods trailer park still trying to prove to people like Judge Liverspot that I can make something of myself.

But every time I get three steps ahead, my roots catch up to me.