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

by Bethany-Kris

  Delaney rearranged her workstation, before asking quietly, “Did he call?”

  The he in question was obvious.

  Malachi.

  Gracen glanced down at the phone in her hand. She’d kept it close most of the day. Not that doing so was anything out of her ordinary, but she found her gaze searching for it more often than not while she worked.

  Waiting.

  For a call ...

  A text.

  Anything.

  “No,” Gracen said, not able to hide the disappointing dip in her tone. “He hasn’t.”

  “Yet,” Delaney added.

  Gracen frowned.

  She had to consider the fact that Malachi had left her place very early in the morning. At the latest, he’d arrived home in Miramichi around noon. That was if he took breaks on the road, too; so she gave him grace. Now, closing in on the evening hours, the lack of calls or messages felt almost pointed.

  Purposeful.

  “You could call him,” Delaney suggested.

  “And ask him if he’s a liar?” Gracen returned.

  What would be the point?

  Gracen already had the answer.

  Her friend’s unimpressed expression stared back at her in the reflection of the mirror. “I think we both know it’s probably a lot more complicated than that.”

  Not really.

  Gracen simplified shit down.

  “Even if what I have to give to somebody isn’t a lot, I’m willing to give all of it,” Gracen said. “I’m not going to feel bad about expecting someone else to do the same for me, Delaney.”

  It all mattered.

  Every good and bad part.

  The thing was, to do that, a person had to stop running from what used to be to build something meaningful in the present. Gracen couldn’t say Malachi was ready to do that—after all, he’d gotten terribly good at staying away.

  Delaney glanced down at her workstation. “Yeah, I guess ...”

  Thinking the conversation was over, Gracen pushed out of the swivel chair to find the broom and get to work. The sooner they finished, the quicker she could sleep away this horrible day. She disappeared into the backrooms and re-emerged with the broom and dustpan in just enough time to see Delaney hang up her phone.

  It would have been a terribly short phone call.

  Less than twenty seconds.

  “Who was that?” Gracen asked.

  Delaney stuffed the phone in her back pocket. “Bexley.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “I need to take her something.”

  Gracen leaned on the handle of the broom, using it as support for her tired body. “I thought you were staying clear of her?”

  The whole damn family, really.

  Delaney shrugged. “Yeah, that’s the story.”

  “And if your uncle shows up here to threaten you again?” Gracen questioned.

  “That won’t happen. He’d have to know we were talking to begin with—the point is that he doesn’t, you know?”

  “Not really. To be fair, you’re not exactly sharing.”

  A lot like Malachi.

  Gracen didn’t point that out.

  Delaney faced Gracen, fretting with her nails and the thin gold rings on her fingers as she said, “Alora isn’t the only person trying to leave the church, okay?”

  Jesus.

  Bexley was coming into her adulthood, too, and so it made sense if she had a desire to leave. Unlike her friend, however, a marriage as a way out might not be a viable option.

  “I filled out her applications for nursing school,” Delaney explained, “and mailed them back when we were still meeting up for the wedding stuff. I found her acceptance in the mailbox when I checked it this morning.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s—”

  “It should be great, yeah,” her friend interjected with the obvious, “but it won’t make a difference if she can’t get away from those people and out of this town. This was my little way of helping her see a new path. That she’s got options.”

  Nothing good came easy.

  Wasn’t that how the saying went?

  “Let me know if I can help,” Gracen said. “We’re not going to let anyone from that church, or your family, push you around anymore.”

  Delaney smiled, as timid as it was. “I’m not scared of them.”

  Maybe she really wasn’t afraid. Or perhaps Delaney was just as scared as she had always been of the people she’d left behind—rightfully so, too, but didn’t want to admit it. Either way, there came a point, though, when fear just wasn’t enough to hold someone back from doing what needed done. That, more than anything, Gracen understood.

  Fear had kept her going for a long time, too.

  Chapter 32

  The math didn’t work.

  Malachi couldn’t make it work no matter how many times he went back over the receipts for the small drywall project. He spent too many minutes staring at the numbers he already knew wouldn’t add up because he’d tried.

  Fifteen times.

  “Chip,” Malachi called down the portable office building.

  A grunt answered back.

  A shuffle of papers, too.

  “Chip!”

  “What, ya fuck?” Chip barked back.

  Malachi laughed off the insult—it wasn’t anything unusual for Chip when he walked onto a project. His boss switch flipped on, and nothing else mattered but getting the job done. If that meant him yelling at the guys through it, and being a total asshole in the meantime, so be it.

  “Come here for a minute,” Malachi said. “I need you to look at something for me.”

  Again, he opted not to add out loud.

  This wasn’t the first job—not even the sixth—for the year that had fucked up bookkeeping in one way or another. Chip liked to brush it off. The accountant would figure it out and put everything where it needed to be, apparently, but Malachi still felt like he had to keep bringing it to Chip’s attention, nonetheless.

  Several thousands of dollars worth of supplies were missing from every other job despite the fact that they apparently paid for it.

  It was starting to fuck with Malachi’s head because if there was anything Chip loved—money topped the list. Profits were getting flushed down the toilet with every incorrect invoice that came out of the hardware store Chip exclusively used.

  Because he had a friend there. Of course. A guy that liked to make deals, as Chip would say, but Malachi couldn’t find where that shit added up at all. To him, it just looked like they kept getting bent over and fucked without lube

  “Today would be nice,” Malachi hollered across the modular office.

  It shouldn’t take the man five minutes to exit his office from the other side of the twenty-foot long modular building. It moved from job to job on the back of a transport driven by Chip’s nephew, so Malachi had become comfortable inside it over the years.

  Chip moaned and groaned something about not wanting to move his ass. Malachi went back to the rough books they’d been keeping. As the head of the crew, he kept track of things from one job to the next, on top of supervising the guys throughout projects. They could do most contractor work—from taking a home build through framing to finishing and more commercial work.

  Like their current job.

  The old firehall had been purchased to renovate into a call center. One of many new call centers that had popped up in the province over the past handful of years. Malachi didn’t see the appeal in dealing with customers day in and day out while sitting in a makeshift cubicle next to fifty other people doing the exact same thing. However, he could turn the open spaces with framing and drywall into a converted office building.

  Just as soon as Chip let him know that cheque came through.

  Chip lumbered his way to the far end of the modular where Malachi kept a small desk in the corner of the open space. He also had the only window on his end—Chip had a larger one on his side for a good view when he faced it toward the job.
/>   Never failed.

  In Dickies overalls—similar to Malachi’s—and buttoned up plaid rolled at the sleeves to his elbows, Chip lifted his reading glasses to his dark hair and rubbed at his eyes. Blinking a few times, he barely scanned the invoices Malachi had laid out on the table in a neat little row.

  “What made you pick up on it this time?” Chip asked.

  Not the question Malachi expected. It sounded like Chip already had knowledge of the fumbled invoices and books.

  “You knew the numbers for this job weren’t good?”

  “What do I have to tell you to get you to stop asking questions?” Chip asked Malachi instead of answering the obvious. “The company credit card in your wallet will get you the load of drywall you need, won’t it?”

  “What?”

  Chip didn’t blink. “I thought the question was simple.”

  “I mean—”

  “Take the rest of the day if you need,” Chip interjected, waving back at the opened door of the office leading to the parking lot outside. “Start the job tomorrow or the next day. You’ve got the cards and accounts to get the supplies.”

  Yes, and whatever else they came up short on with this goddamn job. Just like the last one ... and the one a time or two before that. The credit card and accounts open across the Miramichi for Malachi to use didn’t fix the main problem, though.

  “Why am I the only one who gets bothered whenever I find where Sam’s fucked you out of money? Again, man,” Malachi pointed out.

  Just for good measure.

  “Ferguson is—”

  “Taking you for a ride, Chip.”

  Chip sighed, his frustration writing heavy lines over his features as he scowled down at the invoices. “Where are the truck records?”

  Malachi slapped a hand against his thigh. “I don’t know! Why the hell would that even matter?”

  “If the weight logged in the truck matches the invoice, maybe we need to start looking somewhere else for the problem,” Chip suggested.

  Malachi couldn’t get that to make sense, either.

  The two truckers—who owned their eighteen-wheelers and contracted them out to Chip’s company when needed—they used were required by law to keep log books regarding their loads and hauls. Everything from the weight of the contents in the truck to the length of the trip, and hours awake at the wheel, had to be recorded. If the trucks were a certain year, they came equipped with a digital log book, but theirs were not that new.

  Chip’s driver’s, including his nephew who did most of the hauls from job site to job site, kept paper logs.

  In the trucks.

  “I can’t exactly go get the log book out of Natty’s truck, can I?” Malachi asked regarding Chip’s nephew who had hauled the load of drywall to the site that morning because the order had finally come in. “He’s dropped his load for the day and is heading across the Renous for a load he’s hauling for somebody else.”

  It’d be a good ten hours or more before they’d see the twenty-two-year-old back on the Miramichi.

  Chip didn’t seem concerned.

  Barely even phased.

  “Let it go,” his boss said, almost indulgently.

  Malachi didn’t think he could.

  “Chip—”

  “Malachi, I need you to listen,” Chip interrupted, his tone dipping sharply enough that Malachi took notice. “Right now, listen more than you talk.”

  “All I’m hearing is bullshit, man.”

  Chip shook his head and pointed down at the invoices. “No, you’re asking too many questions.”

  Using that statement a second time made it impossible for Malachi to ignore. He crossed his arms over his chest and full on faced Chip who matched his defensive posture right down to the head tilting back and chin popping up. Hyperaware that the man had a handful of inches of height and fifty pounds of muscle on Malachi’s leaner form did nothing to urge him to back down.

  “You want to tell me what that means?” Malachi asked.

  “No,” Chip returned shortly, “I want you to stop asking questions.”

  “Since when am I not allowed to bring up a problem with you? That’s not how this is gonna play—”

  “You’re a good guy,” his boss jumped in before Malachi could adequately express how uncomfortable the conversation had turned, “and I like you, but things here can be a lot better when you do your job, supervise the crew, and don’t ask questions in between.”

  Malachi hated the moments in his life when things became so unbearably, painfully clear that he felt like an idiot. This was one of those times.

  What scheme could Chip be running?

  It couldn’t be insurance fraud. Chip paid into insurance for his business and employees, but claims were far and few between, and had nothing to do with missing supplies and messed up numbers. It was unlikely that the missing supplies would be sold for profit, so Malachi didn’t give that route much consideration, either.

  The fact Malachi had become more aware over the past couple of years of numbers not matching up gave him an easy timeline in his head to go back to. He tried to find a common similarity between each event, and only came up with one thing.

  Chip’s nephew.

  Natan—better known as Natty to the guys in Chip’s crew—hauled every load that came to Malachi’s mind where something had come up short. Better yet, the guy’s trips across the rural highway known as the Renous happened every time, too. What reason would the hardware store—and Chip—have to show the weight and expense of freight on a truck that didn’t exist?

  Unless there was something on the truck.

  But what?

  “The numbers work out in the end,” Chip added, spinning on the heels of his boots as he seemed to take Malachi’s quietness as his willingness to end the conversation. “Shit gets damaged, excess is written off. Whatever. It’s not an issue.”

  If only Malachi could leave it at that—his moral compass wouldn’t let him do it, though. When everything added up, from log books to invoices, to say there was something there ... what was it? Where it was didn’t seem all that important to Malachi anymore.

  He had questions.

  No doubt, that would be a problem for Chip.

  At Chip’s back, Malachi asked, “What’s he hauling on the truck?”

  His boss paused in his steps.

  Even his shoulders tensed.

  Malachi hit the nail right on the head. “That’s what it is, huh? Isn’t he always hauling into Montgomery Mountain for those fucking trips?”

  “Malachi, if I wasn’t already clear—”

  “No, we’re not gonna do that right now.” It pissed Malachi off more that he handed this man respect, friendship, and trust, but Chip couldn’t give it back when push came to shove. “At least tell me what kind of shit you’re letting me walk through working for you, Chip.”

  After everything, Malachi felt owed that much. At the very least. He’d worked hard to keep his ass out of trouble and repair the damage he’d done to his reputation in his youth. Being young and dumb wasn’t a good enough excuse for him after a certain point in his life—no part of him wanted to be the punk that got the pointed finger first whenever something happened like he had to be the default cause.

  That time was long over.

  “I guess you’ve not had time to consider it,” Chip said, glancing over his shoulder to stare Malachi down, “but the fact that I know exactly what kind of man you are is the reason why you have to ask me about any of it at all. Consider it the best I can do—you know nothing, and no one can, or will, say anything different at the end of the day. Isn’t that what matters?”

  No.

  Not at all.

  “I know something, Chip.” He shrugged. “I know something now.”

  Maybe the details weren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things. Just knowing something underhanded was happening around him drew a big line in the sand for Malachi. The suggestion of impropriety was more than enough. Stand
for something or fall for everything, right?

  For a second, Chip’s gaze softened, but just as fast, his stony mask fell back into place, and he continued walking toward his private office. “I guess that leaves you with a choice, huh?”

  “What, turn a blind eye?”

  That wouldn’t work for Malachi.

  Chip opened his hands wide, never once turning around. “Or quit.” Standing in the doorway of his office, he shot a glance Malachi’s way; his expression remained indifferent. “I won’t hold it against you. I wouldn’t have hired you if I didn’t like who you are at your core, Malachi.” He pointed at his chest. “Inside, that shit shines, you know?”

  Right.

  The good guy.

  Chip then disappeared into his office, and the door slammed behind him. Malachi considered, briefly, following the man to finish giving him a piece of his mind. Or to quit. Both, likely. He’d not fully decided. The hum of the phone in his pocket stopped him from pulling the trigger.

  For the moment ...

  Malachi didn’t expect to see the name that popped up on the phone’s screen. It stopped him straight up.

  Blue Eyes.

  Two weeks of no contact—except for a couple of texts where Gracen asked him not to call or message until she reached out to him first—put him on unsteady ground to see his pet name for her light up the phone.

  He’d asked why, but a part of him knew it had something to do with his meet up with Sonny before he’d jetted out of the valley town in the wee hours of the morning. His inkling on the problem came from Sonny, himself, who sent along his own message to say Gracen had approached him with questions.

  Did you lie to me? It was all she had asked. The truth seemed too complicated to explain over a text, so his silence had to be an answer instead. She didn’t text back after that, which he thought was her right to do.

  Malachi picked up the call with shaking hands on the third ring. “Hey, Gracen.”

  Her voice on the other end was a balm to his overworked nerves even if it wasn’t the greatest time for a call.

  “Hey,” she said back. “Do you have a minute to talk?”

  Chapter 33

  “Okay, great,” Gracen said, still pacing the kitchen in the same fashion as when she’d started the phone call with Malachi, “so I’ll see you in a couple of weeks?”