I slouched against the leather cushion, letting the vibration of the potholed road ease out some of the apprehension wound in my chest. My arm swung out the window; my thumb drummed against the steering wheel. To the vehicles passing by, I’m sure I looked the picture of relaxation: the way my sunglasses shaded my eyes from the glare reflected through the bug-splattered windshield, the music thumping out a hypnotizing beat with too much bass, the breezy rush that ruffled my hair, grown too long with neglect.
Yeah, I looked calm and collected. Not a care in the world.
Couldn’t be further from the truth.
I drove past the house one time. Then another. And another. The last swing down the street, I was forced to stop at my destination. The woman watering her plants four doors down—wearing a pink fluffy robe and leopard print slippers—she also wore the look of a person well acquainted with calling the police when a suspicious fellow happened upon her neighborhood. And I definitely looked suspicious. Gone was that carefree dude coasting down the highway. I was all shifty eyes, clammy hands, sweat laden brow.
Hiding out in the driveway wasn’t an option with Nosey Neighbor eyeing me, so I engaged the truck in park and hopped out from the cab, not without flicking a friendly wave to the woman in her robe.
“Evening!” I hollered, then, two at a time, I bounded the steps to the porch, ready to knock when the door fell open before I had the opportunity.
“Heath! We’ve been expecting you.”
They looked like most parents did. Good ones, actually. He was easily six and a half feet, and burly to boot. The handlebar mustache, flecked with gray, was a nice frame around his genial and authentic smile, and the way he kept his hand pressed to his wife’s back did something to my stomach that felt like a memory. Warm and natural.
She was darling, a half-pint with a ruddy stain on the apples of her cheeks. Her blouse was the kind that all women her age wore: billowy to hide her rounded midsection, but dressed up with the glitz of a sparkly necklace she’d likely had for years but only pulled out for an occasion like tonight.
I liked them both instantly.
“Boone.” I nodded toward the man. “Sharon.” Rather than accept the hand I offered, she threw her arms around my waist and pulled me into the foyer, the act camouflaged in a hug.
“Oh, Heath. I can’t tell you how glad we are to finally meet you.” She gave my biceps the type of squeeze an aunt gives, the one that’s just a little too hard to be comfortable but loving all the same.
“This is where we say things like, ‘We’ve heard a lot about you,’” Boone interjected, popping his head around his wife to address me. “And you tease, ‘All good things, I hope.’ To which we answer, ‘Of course! Of course!’”
“So we’ll just skip over all of that?” I asked with a friendly elbow to Boone’s side.
“Yup. No shooting the shit for us. Tell it like it is.”
“I like your style.”
“Give the boy a break, Boone. He hasn’t been in the house thirty seconds and you’re already laying down the law.”
“Only because you wouldn’t let me get it printed on the wall. Told you it would make things easier.” He swiped his hand in the air in an arc as though reading a sign. “Rule number one: no bullshit. Rule number two: see rule number one.” He turned to me again. “You see, we’re simple people around here, Heath. Not much to remember.”
The quick snap of Sharon’s dishrag against her husband’s backside made me jolt. I hadn’t even noticed it there, draped over her shoulder.
“Leave the boy alone! I swear he’ll want out of this family before he ever even joins it!”
Boone pulled straight as a pencil. I did pretty much the same, but it didn’t feel quite as substantial a posture since Boone easily had six inches on me.
Rubbing the back of his neck with a paw of a hand, his mustache twitched up on the right. “How about we crack open a few cold ones before this little lady gets herself into even more trouble, running her mouth like that.”
“Oh, I’ll run you right out that door, Thomas Boone Quinn.”
“Woman, go fetch us our beers!”
Boone tipped the neck of the amber bottle toward me. “Another?”
I waved him off. “Nah, I’m good with the one. Thanks.”
I didn’t want the haze of alcohol to cloud the words I needed to say. To slur my ability to get the job done.
“So you’re a teacher, I hear?” He leaned back against the white Adirondack chair and crossed his legs at the ankles, his hefty boots making a thud. “High school?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been at Whitney for five years now. Senior Honors English.”
This was shit-shooting, but I’d take it. I’d been stalling from the moment Boone walked me through their impressive home and into the backyard. We both knew the reason I was here so I couldn’t understand my hesitation in saying what needed to be said. But my upper lip beaded with sweat and my knuckles were white against the arm of the chair.
I almost excused myself to hide out in the bathroom, but that was a cowardly move.
I released the death grip on the armrest and ran my hands down the thighs of my pants.
“Sir, I have a question I’d like to ask you.”
“The answer’s yes, Heath.” Boone studied something at the far end of the yard. A bird rustling in the tree or a squirrel chase. His head leaned forward as his eyes squinted. I followed his gaze until, out of my periphery, I saw it suddenly swing my direction. “The fact that you would even find it necessary to ask our permission is a testament to the kind of man you are.” Wrapping his lips around the bottle, he pulled in a long, hearty swallow of dark beer and then released a satisfied sigh. “Mallory is our daughter, maybe not by blood, but she’s our daughter all the same. When our son married her, she became family. Forever.”
My chin twitched and I bit my lip, hard.
“So I guess I just need to warn you.”
“Warn me, sir?”
“Warn you that, whether you like it or not, we’re a packaged deal.” Boone cracked the top off another longneck. “You get her, you get us.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder and nodded toward the house. “Even the crazy one in the kitchen.”
I flopped back in my chair and let my head fall against the planks and smiled as I said, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Heath
That couldn’t have gone any better.
I was still on cloud nine when I hopped into my truck. Finding my phone, I cranked the music to max volume, and I used the dashboard, the steering wheel, and the brake pedal all as the instruments for my drum solo. My head bobbed to the beat, banging with the percussion. I drove for miles, a stupid grin on my face, my body buzzing.
That came to a sudden and unfortunate halt when the sirens—which, for a moment, I thought accompanied the current track playing from my phone—broke up my personal rock concert.
I reached across the cab to crank down my window. “Officer,” I greeted, then was thrown by the face that came into view. “Officer Douglas?”
“Mr. McBride.”
My registration was current. My insurance renewed. The paper he’d flung into my backseat last time was not a ticket, but instead a note that said, “It was nice to finally meet you,” which—although a little weird—did not require payment or a court appearance.
Sure, I’d been enjoying my music more loudly than necessary, but I wasn’t breaking any laws here. So I wasn’t nervous this time. I was on the brink of being pissed, and it took a lot to get me there.
“Sir, I’m not sure what I’m being pulled over for, but—”
“Would you mind stepping out of the vehicle?”
Okay. Now I was nervous. I would never survive jail. I barely made it through my shave at the barbershop without passing out. The types of improvised weapons and shivs that I’d seen on cable TV prison shows made me crap my pants in fear. Jail time was not an option.
Obediently, I popped open my door and followed Officer
Douglas to his cruiser. His thick boots left loud and intimidating stomps and my heart matched in time and sound. He walked to the shoulder of the road, then slouched against his car, his ankles crossed, arms tightly folded over his chest. Even under his black sunglasses, I could see the intense squint of his eyes.
“Heath, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“That there’s a warrant out for my arrest?”
The officer’s head cocked. “Should I have any reason to believe there’s a warrant out for you?”
I laughed, but it was tight and forced and full of apprehension. “No. No, sir. I was only kidding.”
Officer Douglas released a gruff sigh. “Heath, Officer Quinn was my best friend. Not just on the force, but in life.”
I wish I could say that relinquished all my pent-up nerves, but in reality, his statement only multiplied them.
“We grew up together in Kentucky. Transferred to California at the same time. We were just kids when we both graduated from the academy and started our first year with the unit.”
He was going somewhere with this, so I didn’t interject.
“I was there for the accident, Heath.”
“Mallory’s?”
“Yeah. And I was there for all the months that followed.” With his hand, he slid his glasses to his forehead. Blew out a hot breath. “You have to understand that Dylan had just come out of a really bad breakup. He’d planned to marry the girl and she just up and left for Europe. Some foreign exchange program. Met a guy while over there and eloped. Dylan was shattered. More depressed than I’d ever seen him. It was hell for him.”
I scraped my hand through my hair. “I’m not sure what any of this has to do with me.”
“I deleted your texts, Heath.”
My mouth gaped open. “What?”
“We retrieved Mallory’s phone from the accident,” he said. “I saw the way Dylan looked at her. It was the first time his spark returned. He felt like he could be her hero, and that did something to him. Gave him purpose again. And I finally had my best friend back.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“I read everything you wrote to Mallory.” Police officers weren’t usually the ones doing the confessing. The shock still hadn’t fallen from my face. “How you would always love her. How sorry you were. How it wasn’t over.”
My hands twisted in my pockets and I gave Officer Douglas a wary glance.
“I blocked your number, Heath.” His voice was stilted. “I had a high school friend of mine hack into her e-mail account and delete everything you sent her, too. She never saw any of it.”
Had I not known any better, I would’ve thought Boone slipped something stronger into my drink. My skull pounded. I planted my feet wide and ground my teeth. “Why are you telling me this now?”
His nostrils flared, head whipping back and forth in a twitch. “I wasn’t just close with Dylan. When they started dating, Mallory became a friend, too. I care about her, Heath. Watching her survive Dylan’s death was awful. She was so alone. But then I pulled you over that day,” he continued. “I finally put a face to the name. And it reminded me that someone else had shared his feelings for her, too.”
Two minutes earlier I’d wanted to deck the guy. But there was sincerity in his tone—at the very least, vulnerability. He didn’t need to share this with me. I could appreciate the humility it took to finally let the truth out.
“You were Mallory’s chance at happiness again. Maybe you were supposed to be her happiness all along.”
“She was happy with Dylan,” I defended, feeling the strange need to interject.
“Yeah, she was. But we all know he’d made his mistakes. Things didn’t work out in Europe for his ex and one weekend when Mallory was back home visiting in Kentucky, he flew her out to stay with him. Mallory found out and, Mallory being Mallory, took him back. Forgave everything.”
Mallory being Mallory.
Her forgiveness—the grace she offered others for the very least of offenses to something on this horrible scale—was what I loved about her. Was what challenged me to become a better person. Daily.
“Heath—I’m so sorry for everything I did. Honestly. I thought I was doing right by my friend, but I can’t shake the feeling that I intervened where fate should have led the way.”
I pressed my lips flat and my arms tensed. I shook out my hands and said with more reluctance than I’d hoped to convey, “It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“No.” My voice was tight. “No, it is. You didn’t know me. You didn’t know what Mallory and I had. All you saw was the potential for happiness for your buddy and hey, how can I fault you for that?”
“Because it was a shitty thing to do.”
I barked out a laugh. “You’re right. It was a shitty thing to do. That I won’t argue with. But it would’ve been even shittier if you’d never told me. And for that, I have to thank you.”
Officer Douglas smiled. “I wish I could give you a lifetime’s worth of exemptions from parking tickets, but—being illegal and all—I can’t.”
“You weren’t above illegal activity in the past.” I winked with a grin.
“Ouch.”
“Hey, man. Only pointing out the obvious.” I dropped a hand to his shoulder. “But seriously, thank you for coming clean. It means a lot.”
“Thank you for always being so good to Mallory. It’s nice to see her have her spark back, too.”
I swiveled to walk back to my truck but said, “And it’s my plan to make sure she never loses it again.”
“Good plan.” Officer Douglas tipped his chin to me. He hollered my direction. “I’ll be sure to stay out of the way this time.”
“That’s a good plan, too. And no offense, but I’d be perfectly happy if I never saw you again, Officer Douglas. You and those flashing lights of yours.”
“Absolutely none taken.”
The interruption to my drive home set me back about twenty minutes, but I was a staunch believer that everything happened for a reason. Even Officer Douglas’s shenanigans twelve years ago. Whatever the motive, he felt he was doing the right thing, and who was to say that I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing, had I been in his shoes? All right, I wouldn’t’ve done the same thing, but that was not the point. I figured the grief and deceit he’d harbored the last decade was punishment enough, and I wasn’t about to lay it on even thicker. He deserved to move on, too.
I hopped right back onto my cloud nine and enjoyed the view, but not for long.
Pulled over on the shoulder up about a quarter of a mile ahead was a gray sedan, its hazard lights ticking out a distress warning.
With my left hand, I turned my blinker on and coasted the truck up to the back of the vehicle, slowing against the dirt on the side of the road. I stepped out of the cab and called out to the driver who was exiting her car at the same time. She appeared young—probably a college student—and pressed herself against the vehicle as a semi rolled past in the slow lane next to her.
“Everything okay?”
“Flat tire!” she yelled over the roar of cars. “Mr. McBride? Is that you?”
“Brittany Carson?” When I got closer, I recognized her as one of my students from my very first year of teaching. “How the heck are you?”
“Well …” She glanced to the offending tire, its air completely gone. “I could be better.”
“Know if you have a spare?”
Brittany walked around to the trunk. “I think so. I’ve never had to use it, but my dad said there was one when I called him.”
“He on his way over?”
She shook her head. “No, he’s at work, but I’m sure I can figure it out.”
“Let’s see if we can figure it out together. For starters, the tire’s probably going to be under the vehicle. The jack is most likely in the trunk. Let’s pop it open and see what we’re working with.”
Brittany’s face when slack with relief. “Thank you so much,
Mr. McBride. I had no idea what I was doing and this isn’t exactly the safest spot to pull over. I don’t know why it’s flat. I don’t think I ran over anything.”
I located the jack and dropped it to the ground. “Probably a nail or something, but we’ll take a look. I hate to say it, but I’m glad I just got pulled over, otherwise I wouldn’t have been driving down the road at this time of night to find you.”
“You got pulled over?” she asked. “That totally sucks.”
“It wasn’t so bad. It was actually really great, to be honest.” Brittany gave me a look like maybe I’d just fallen from a tree, but I shrugged it off. I grabbed a crowbar from the toolbox in the trunk and rapped it against my palm. “Let’s see what we can do about turning your evening around, too.”
Mallory
The cruiser drove up to the house at 8:36 p.m.
I fell apart at 8:37.
“I can take you down there.”
I sat on the edge of the leather armchair, elbows digging sharply into the fleshy part of my knees.
“Mallory?”
My body rocked forward and back, forward and back.
“Mallory.”
I’d avoided looking at him by cradling my face in my palms, but the tears and the snot and the sweat made them slick against my cheeks. My hands slipped with each rocking motion.
“Mallory—I need to know what you want to do.”
“I don’t know what I want to do.” I flinched at the hand he placed on my back—at the flimsy offer of comfort that drew my shoulders to my ears. “I’m sorry, Scott. I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
He was still in his highway patrolman’s uniform but had fidgeted loose the top button on his shirt. “I can drive you there. Or I can stay with Corbin if you want to drive yourself.”
“I can’t drive.” I couldn’t see two inches in front of me. The room swam in my vision. “I can’t drive right now.”
“Is there someone you’d like me to call?”
I croaked out a laugh. “How awful is it that the only person I want to call right now is Heath?”
Where We Left Off Page 20
