The Long Road Home (These Valley Days, #1)

by Bethany-Kris

  More glaring were the pictures of stick people falling over ledges looking back from every direction, each with a clear intention. Gracen never went more than a couple of feet from the railing even though another fifteen or so meters of rocky ledge extended beyond where she stood.

  Gracen only wanted the rush of getting that same view she had the first time she stood at that very same spot. It was the ultimate prize for her successful trek up, and a beautiful visual of what she would be hiking back to shortly.

  She never stayed long.

  The view always looked different each time she made the hike either because of the time of day, the weather, or even the season. Her collection of photographs of the same spot over the years—she tried to make the hike once a month now, if she could—had become impressive enough that Delaney made copies and created a massive collage that now hung over their fireplace mantel.

  Gracen didn’t bother with a picture tonight. She’d only brought her phone which couldn’t take a quality shot at night to save its life. Instead, she just took a few seconds to enjoy the view and half completed her accomplishment to spend time doing something she alone loved for the sake of herself.

  No doubt, Delaney would be home by the time Gracen returned. A new week was on the horizon. She could finally get her days and life back on track. Managing the chaos wasn’t so hard with a bit of extra time for self-care. It was just making it all happen, of course.

  Sometimes, that was the hardest part.

  By the time Gracen returned to the tower and her backpack, she had to once again rifle to the bottom of yet another bag to find the usual. Her jogging lanyard holding her keys, amongst other more important things. While the sun hadn’t quite set on her way up the trail, the trek down wouldn’t be the same. The three-inch long flashlight with a keyring attachment she picked up at the gas station worked perfectly to illuminate Gracen’s path when she jogged at night.

  The flash of white light from her phone caught Gracen’s attention before she had zipped the backpack closed. She took a second to chug what was left of her water while she unlocked the device, expecting a message about an appointment for the Haus, or even a text from Delaney—had she managed to stick the party out or did she cut it short?

  Instead, she found two missed calls.

  One right after the other. Malachi wanted something. Clearly.

  The phone had been just far enough away that she hadn’t heard the ringing during her moment on the rocky ledge. He picked up on the second ring when she called his number back. Bike Boy still acted as the name for his contact in her phone, too.

  She would not be changing that.

  Not for anything.

  “Shit, I just put my helmet back on, too,” came his gruff greeting.

  Which only made Gracen laugh. “Sorry, it was only a couple of minutes since you called. Are you busy?”

  It wouldn’t take the man more than ten minutes to drive from one side of town to the other, so she didn’t mind waiting for a phone call while he did it. The trail she’d take back had good cell reception the whole way, so that wasn't a problem, either.

  Malachi’s silence stretched on.

  Gracen didn’t miss it. “No worries, you can call me—”

  “I’m at the Irving Big Stop before the Renous highway,” Malachi said. “I won’t have any service until I’m closer to the Miramichi, so I was trying to catch you before I started out.”

  Gracen blinked up at the huge tower overhead, absorbing what Malachi was trying to tell her. She just wanted to be clear. “You’re heading back?”

  Was that home for him?

  She didn’t really know, so she chose not to say.

  “Yeah,” Malachi said, the word sure and confident but his tone still came off stressed. “Before I make myself a problem here, it’s better to just head on out.”

  “Did you go to the engagement dinner?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Gracen pointed out.

  Malachi sighed on the other end of the phone. “I went, but I doubt anybody saw or knew I was there. I don’t want to give people a reason to start a problem. It could make things worse for other people as a consequence, and I can’t justify that. As it stands, I shouldn’t have come back here in the first place. I wasn’t actually ready to.”

  No wonder he was itching to get away, then. She would try not to fault him, even if she wished he could have given her a face-to-face goodbye instead of a phone call. Maybe this was easier. She’d try not to fault him for that, either.

  “Did you see your sister?” she asked.

  “I think I will at some point,” he returned.

  Gracen wondered how fragile and sticky the situation with his family truly was, but she couldn’t find the words to express that she could be a safe place for him to dump those secrets keeping him hostage. She wasn’t sure he even wanted to.

  “Anyway,” Malachi said, his voice lulling Gracen back into the conversation easily despite the clear road she saw it taking. “I was wondering ...”

  “Yeah?”

  “Could I call you? I can’t say when or if I’m even coming back to town in the near future, if I’m being honest,” he added quickly.

  “Were you ever not?”

  He chuckled, then. “No, I guess not.”

  One of the things she liked best about Malachi was that he’d been upfront with her from the start. At least, when it came to things between the two of them. There were no fronts. The guy didn’t play with her feelings. They had easy conversation and a couple of good nights together because they both knew exactly that they were getting from this.

  “And yes, okay? Call me just to talk. Anytime, Malachi.”

  So it was clear.

  Couldn’t they be friends?

  Benefits would have to wait.

  “Drive safe,” Gracen said. “I hear the Renous is bad for moose.”

  “I’ll let you know when I’ve made it safely across. How’s that?”

  Good enough for her, she told him.

  “Have a beautiful night, blue eyes,” he said before they ended the call, “and for what it’s worth?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You were the best part of me being back here.”

  *

  Gracen replayed Malachi’s parting words on repeat for her entire jog home. After that, even. Delaney was home when she arrived, and while Gracen engaged her friend in conversation through their nightly routine, her mind stayed with the man on his way to Miramichi.

  There was no way to deny it. She missed him—for absolutely no reason at all—already, and he was barely even gone.

  As expected, Delaney’s night was less than stellar. So the girls enjoyed wine and binged a season of their latest favorite television series, closed out the world and the noise, and made the best of the rest of the evening.

  While she might regret the late time in the morning, it was well after twelve-thirty before Gracen slid under her duvet’s cover. She’d been almost asleep, lounging in that blissful barely aware state before slumber, when the beep of her phone had her wide awake.

  Just long enough to see the message from Malachi.

  Just got into service. Talk soon.

  Gracen had no trouble falling into a quick, deep sleep after that. The person she missed was hours and hours away, but her heart still felt like it was in a good place. Shouldn’t that count for something?

  Barely a couple of hours after Gracen closed her eyes, the wail of a siren pulled her back into consciousness. Lights flashed behind their window shades as Delaney and Gracen stumbled out of their rooms with oversized housecoats hiding their nightclothes.

  It didn’t take them long to find the reason for the sirens.

  The noise.

  The fire.

  By the time the girls stumbled out of their house and into the front street where cops and firefighters were already waiting to usher them across to the river boardwalk, a crowd had also started to gather.
Checkered & Cheese lit up the night sky—engulfed from the blown out front windows to the high apartment overhead.

  “What happened?” Delaney asked the closest familiar face in the crowd.

  It just so happened to be Malachi’s friend.

  Nader.

  The guy worked a lot, as far as Gracen knew. He spent more time away at work-provided lodging during the week, and on occasional weekends. The old muscle car that still had a long way to go to reach its former glory was his money pit, according to Malachi. She was reminded of that while staring at Nader’s horrified expression reflecting the destructive blaze.

  “Are you okay?” Gracen asked him.

  Nader shook his head, but she could see his unsteadiness clearly. “I don’t know.”

  He could have been answering Gracen’s question. Or Delaney’s. Chances were, she thought, while watching the two fire trucks push back against the flames, it might have been his way of answering both.

  Delaney grabbed Gracen and pulled her close when the windows of the top apartment above the pizza joint blew out.

  “Did everybody get out?” Gracen dared to ask.

  Nader couldn’t tear his gaze away from the fire. “I really don’t know.”

  Chapter 15

  June gave way for July the same way it always did in the valley town with beautiful days and hot nights. More people walked on the boardwalk in the mornings and evenings. The water saw far more activity from boaters from up and down river. Prom and graduation week kept the Haus and its owners busier than any other time of the year, but nobody complained.

  With back-to-back appointments and wedding schedules being added to their bookings, it didn’t look like summer planned to let up where work was concerned. Gracen was grateful for the non-stop pace—except for her Tuesdays and Sundays spent with Mimi at the manor, no exceptions—because it kept her mind off thinking about things that were out of her control.

  “Weird, huh?” Delaney asked, slipping in beside Gracen at the Haus’s front windows.

  She hadn’t even noticed her friend’s approach until Delaney spoke. Not even gripping the broom she’d been using to sweep the entrance tighter could help Gracen shake off the way she’d zoned out as the sky darkened outside.

  “What’s weird?” she asked Delaney.

  Her friend nodded at the view provided by the windows, but her gaze was on something across the river. “Checkered’s. It’s still weird to look across and see ... well, that.”

  The hole in the backdrop of the other side of town couldn’t be missed. For the first few days the hole had been black, charred, and still smoldering. Delaney even asked if they could close the Haus that first Monday and Tuesday just because the three women constantly found themselves at the front windows staring across the river at what used to be.

  More than a few times over the last month, Gracen watched as people rolled through town and slowed down to survey the damage to the familiar pizza joint. For most, the place had been standing longer than they were alive so to see it gone—entirely—was enough to make people pay attention.

  Gracen and Delaney ate supper at their kitchen table together nightly while the machines came in next door to pull down what remained standing of the business and its apartments. The two barely exchanged a few words as the public safety hazard, deemed as much by the powers that be in town, crumbled before being hauled away by dump trucks.

  Not even the garage where she spent that first night laughing and talking so easily with Malachi had survived the blaze. All that remained was the lot of land where the building once stood on the street over from their house. Two weeks after the crew came in to demolish and remove the remnants of the blaze, another team from a fencing company upriver spent the day installing a chain link fence around the property line.

  Apparently, the owner donated the land to the town. There’d been too much damage, and the insurance payout was better kept in their pocket than bothering with a rebuild of the old structure, according to the owners. Delaney had a chance to speak with the man’s daughter when she came in for a fill on her color the week after the fateful fire—it didn’t seem like Checkered & Cheese would be back.

  “What do you think they’re going to use it for?” Gracen asked.

  Delaney shrugged under her loose summer dress—her favorite attire, but only good during the warmer months. “Maybe a community garden?”

  Gracen scoffed at that. “What? Who did you hear that from, now?”

  That was news to her. Even the local paper had no inkling about the future use of Checkered’s old lot according to their coverage of the fire. The Valley Tribune was also the first place to confirm what everybody had witnessed the night when Checkereds burned.

  It was an arson.

  Nothing about the fire was accidental.

  Delaney grinned wider while Gracen waited for her to squeal on the source of her gossip. “No one told me, but that’s what I’d use it for.”

  Of course.

  She wasn’t surprised.

  “And knowing the neighbors and community,” Gracen said, “you’d probably be the only one over in it doing all the weed pulling and picking, too.”

  “I think I could get more than just me involved.”

  Oh, probably.

  “A community garden wouldn’t be so bad,” Gracen told Delaney.

  It just wasn’t her thing, personally. Gracen might find a lot of peace and enjoyment in the outdoors, but not necessarily when her fingernails were caked in dirt. Mimi had kept a small garden of tomatoes, radish, and carrots—usually with some string beans thrown in for good measure, too—every summer, but she never could convince Gracen to do more than pick fresh veggies off the vines.

  “I know, right? Or a playground,” Delaney added. “We don’t have one of those on this side of the river. That might be nice, too. For all the kids, you know?”

  Gracen hadn’t considered the playground idea, either. Frankly, she tried not to think about the pizza joint or the fire more than she already had to, otherwise, the what ifs and unanswered questions would eat at Gracen for days. Another one of those things she couldn’t control.

  “Aren’t you worried, though?”

  Delaney’s dark brows shot high at Gracen’s question. “Worried about what?”

  “That if there’s a playground right beside our house—”

  “Kids in town aren’t that loud,” Delaney interjected.

  Gracen rolled her eyes. “Actually, I was thinking more like ... you’d want one.”

  Delaney was exactly the type. Her commitment-phobe nature didn’t stop her from getting baby fever every time the two found another invitation for somebody’s shower shoved in their mailbox. Whenever it happened—if it did—for Delaney, she’d make a great mom.

  Rolling in her lips in consideration, Delaney hummed a sound before swinging away from the view of the window. “Yeah, maybe not.”

  Gracen wasn’t like Delaney.

  She couldn’t turn away.

  “I wish they’d put something there,” Gracen muttered. “Whatever it is, you know? I can’t stand looking at it like it is.”

  Every single day, too.

  In the morning, the girls woke up to it. The sight of the empty lot with its charred ground and new black fencing was the last thing on Gracen’s mind at night, too. She just couldn’t seem to move past it for some reason.

  “They need to do something with it,” she repeated. “Anything.”

  Delaney sighed across the salon. Her voice reached back to Gracen like an echo; a confirmation of what everyone in their valley town was thinking when they had to look upon the new hole in their once-picturesque landscape. “Yeah, I know. And soon.”

  *

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  Gracen couldn’t stop the smile forming at Malachi’s greeting. It wasn’t new, but when she told him she didn’t mind the first time he used it, he’d been calling her beautiful every time he said hello. “Hey, yourself. Is the job running on t
ime this week?”

  Malachi groaned on the other end of the phone. “We mostly caught up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And then the overnight shift had an accident on the job site last night, so shit’s closed down until the health and safety people come in to make a call.”

  Yikes.

  Construction didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun.

  “Whatever, my cheque is paid,” Malachi added after a moment. “How was your week?”

  “Busy.”

  “Oh?”

  “And boring,” she tacked on just for good measure, “without a certain bike driving up and down the town half the day, I mean.”

  Malachi laughed a rumbly sound. “I barely even took the bike out when I was there, come on.”

  “You took to out enough.”

  Fair was fair, after all.

  Their last phone call had gone much the same way, only the shoe was on the other foot. She had let him rant about his boss—who was also a friend—and the crew of guys he worked with until he relaxed enough to mention he missed her. And she’d be something far better to do with his time than work.

  She’d agreed.

  “What are you up to on this beautiful Saturday night?” he asked, the mumble of his words making her think he was getting ready for sleep.

  “You don’t know the weather here. Just because it’s nice on your side of the province doesn’t mean it’s sunshine and rainbows every day here.”

  In fact, they had a few days of rain since he left. Although, the weather was nothing she couldn’t handle, and sometimes, it made for a good jog up the mountain. Gracen had even started taking to sending pictures from her treks to the water tower to Malachi when she’d captured a particular shot she was proud of overlooking the valley.

  “First of all,” he returned, “I check the weather everyday for there.”

  Gracen couldn’t contain the surprise. “You do?”

  “I wonder what you’re jogging or hiking in when we chat, you know?”

  Her smile was back.

  In a fucking instant, too.

  “Did you have a second point?” she asked. “You said first of all, so ...”