by Marie Force
“You’re confusing me.”
“When you left for school and said you wouldn’t be back, we didn’t believe you. Dad gave you until Thanksgiving. I said Christmas.”
“You must’ve been disappointed when you were wrong.”
“No. We were amazed, Brian. You don’t often see that kind of strength in someone so young.”
“It didn’t feel like strength. It felt like cowardice.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I was wrong to leave her the way I did, to walk away from her at the lowest point in her life. Leaving was easy. Staying would’ve been the courageous thing.”
Mary Ann was incredulous. “How can you say that? Leaving took everything you had and then some. Your courage was awe-inspiring.”
“Really, Mom,” Brian said with disdain. “That’s kind of overstating it a bit, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. You didn’t let losing Sam and the others derail you. If that’s not courage, I don’t know what is. You didn’t let what happened ruin your life.”
“Didn’t it, though?”
Her eyebrows knitted with confusion.
“My life is my job. When Saul forced me to take a vacation, I panicked. Fortunately, my mom was up for hanging out with me for a week. I have no idea what I’ll do with next week.”
“Brian,” she said, her eyes bright with tears.
“I’ve been satisfied with living the way I do for a long time. Why should I suddenly be so dissatisfied?”
“You’ve had your share of disappointments.”
“You mean Beth and Jane?”
“To start with.”
“They didn’t disappoint me. By the time Beth told me she’d met someone else, I was relieved.”
“She was so sweet. I wish you could’ve made it work with her.”
“I didn’t love her. I married her because I liked hanging out with her. She deserved more than that, and she found it with Joe. I’m glad for her.”
“I know you didn’t love Jane,” Mary Ann said with distaste.
“Jane and I had an understanding. We had the same job, the same crazy hours, the same kind of ambition, and we were both tired of being alone all the time.”
“You would’ve been better off alone. There wasn’t an ounce of warmth in that woman.”
“I didn’t marry her for her warmth,” Brian said with a lascivious grin.
“Ugh, don’t say any more.” Mary Ann groaned. “So if you had an ‘understanding,’ what went wrong? Not that I was heartbroken when you two broke up, but I’ve wondered what happened.”
“She changed the rules by wanting more.”
“And that didn’t disappoint you?”
“Not like you think it did. If you aren’t in love, what does it matter?” He paused and then added, “You know what she said to me before she left?”
“I have a feeling I’m not going to like this…”
“She said being with me was like biting into an Easter bunny, and instead of finding rich chocolate, you discover the bunny’s hollow and the chocolate’s fake.”
“That’s outrageous!” Mary Ann huffed. “You’re a kind, wonderful man who was far too good for the likes of her.”
“She was right, Mom.” He looked out at the ocean for several minutes. “Do you know that since I left home, I’ve never told anyone, and I mean anyone, about what happened on May 19, 1995? Not Beth, not Jane, not anyone.”
Startled, Mary Ann stared at him. “What do you say about Sam?”
“That he died in a car accident.”
“Oh, Brian,” she said with a sigh. “No wonder you’re so homesick. It’s all catching up to you.” For a long while they were quiet as they watched the sky turn to vivid pinks and oranges. Finally she said, “You know, sometimes you have to go back before you can go forward.”
“I’m beginning to think you might be right.”
Chapter 8
Good Golly Miss Molly’s was rocking and rolling for a Monday morning. The coffee shop was right out of the 1950s with its black-and-white-checkered floor, chrome stools, and tables topped in red, yellow, and black Formica and tiny jukeboxes. With two waitresses out with the stomach flu, Carly had twice as many tables as usual.
Looking as fresh in her yellow uniform dress as the bright spring day outside, Carly brought a full pot of coffee around, stopping at a table where three guys she had known since elementary school gathered on most weekday mornings if they were working in town. Tony Russo, Luke McInnis, and Tommy Spellman worked for Tony’s father’s construction company and always sat in Carly’s section.
“Crazy morning, Carly,” Tommy commented as she refilled their coffee cups.
She rolled her eyes in agreement and moved on to the next table. Returning the pot to the warmer, she pulled her pad from her pocket and approached a table where an older couple was studying the menu. An unwritten rule in the shop made it so Carly never waited on people she didn’t know, but since they were shorthanded today, she had no choice.
With a friendly smile, she positioned her pen over her pad, ready to take the couple’s order.
The man looked up at her with a scowl. “Are you gonna just stand there, girl?” he asked gruffly.
Carly tapped her pen against her pad, hoping to spur the man into giving his order and shutting his mouth.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Her heart began to beat hard. This didn’t happen very often. She pointed to her throat.
“What kind of place hires a girl who don’t talk?” he asked his wife in a booming voice.
Carly often encountered people who assumed because she couldn’t talk, she couldn’t hear, either.
“That’s enough, Paul,” the wife said sharply. To Carly, she said, “I’ll have a blueberry muffin and a coffee, please.”
Carly sent her a grateful smile.
“Are you mocking me, girl?”
Rigid with shock, Carly felt heat creep into her cheeks.
“Paul!”
From behind Carly, Luke McInnis said, “Is there a problem here?”
“Mind your own damned business,” the man snapped at Luke.
As she realized the shop had fallen silent and all eyes were on her, Carly’s embarrassment kicked into overdrive.
Luke leaned down from his considerable height until he was an inch from the man’s face. “No one talks to Carly like that, do you hear me?”
Molly Hanson, the grandmotherly woman who owned the shop, eased Carly aside. “I think you folks had better be moving along,” she said in a bright singsong voice. Her eyes, however, were hard and unyielding.
“Well,” the man huffed. “I don’t know what kind of business you’re running here—”
“The kind where you’re not welcome.”
The wife got up, grabbed her purse and, with an apologetic glance at Carly, walked out the door. Her husband pushed past Molly and Luke on his way to the door.
After they were gone, Molly patted Carly’s shoulder and went back to work behind the counter.
“Are you all right?” Luke asked Carly. His dark hair was mussed from the ball cap he had worn earlier, his blue eyes filled with concern.
Carly nodded. The other customers had gone back to their meals, and the conversation level returned to normal.
“Are you sure?” Luke asked.
Carly forced a smile and nodded again. When he began to walk away, she reached out to squeeze his arm.
He looked down at her hand and then up at her eyes. “You’re welcome.”
Carly’s shift ended at two. Still trying to shake off the ugly incident from earlier, she left Miss Molly’s and walked slowly along Main Street, nodding hello to the people who greeted her. Flower boxes full of colorful, fragrant blooms sat outside the wide variety of shops that faced the town common. She climbed the stairs to her second-floor apartment over Carson’s. On the small deck at the top of the stairs, she noticed her impatiens needed water.
Inside he
r eclectically furnished apartment, she peeled off the yellow dress, dropped it into the hamper, and stretched out the aches and pains that came from spending eight hours on her feet. Now that she was thirty-three, the aches and pains were more pronounced and longer lasting than they used to be. She tugged her long hair free of the ponytail she had worn to work, ran a brush through the riot of curls, and tamed them into a new ponytail. Her sofa beckoned, but Carly resisted, changing into denim shorts and an old T-shirt. She watered her geraniums and impatiens, plucked a few blooms from another of her ceramic pots, and took them inside to find a vase.
Grabbing her tote bag of gardening tools and a bottle of water from the refrigerator, she set off down the stairs. As much as she would love a nap, she couldn’t resist the warm spring day. She’d had lots of time to be lazy in April when day after day of rain had kept her inside on too many afternoons.
She wound her way through downtown and took a right onto Tucker Road. It had taken her three years and multiple attempts to return to the accident site. When she had finally worked up the nerve to walk around that last bend in the road, she’d been appalled to find the site overgrown with weeds that all but obscured the six crosses bearing the faded names of her friends. That first time, she had also been surprised to find no sign of the fire and vegetation almost completely masking the place where her friends’ lives had come to such a horrifying end.
The white paint had been chipping from crosses covered with slimy moss. Over the next month, Carly had made multiple trips to the site, once carrying paint and brushes, another time bringing clippers and a trash bag.
Today she was pleased that the wildflowers she’d planted before the April rains had exploded into colorful blooms. She pulled the weeds from around the crosses and trimmed back the snapdragons and cosmos so they wouldn’t block the view of the crosses from the road.
Maintaining this place had been therapeutic for Carly. She saw it as something she could do for the friends she had lost, a way to honor their memories. Only when she was here did she allow herself to dwell on the events of that long-ago spring. She wondered what they would all be doing if they had lived. Would Toby still be in the Navy? Would Pete have ever honored the promise he had made to his parents to return from his travels and go to college? Would Jenny work at the fancy new hair salon that had opened downtown last year? Or would she have her own salon by now?
Carly wondered if she and Michelle might have raised their children together, the way their mothers had raised them. She suspected Sam would’ve followed his father into the police department and Sarah might’ve been a doctor. Envisioning how their lives might be today was a source of comfort to Carly since it allowed her to briefly entertain the fantasy that they were out there living their lives somewhere. She didn’t spend a lot of time wondering how her own life would have turned out, because she knew. She’d be married to Brian, and they would have at least three children by now.
All over town last week and especially at Miss Molly’s, people had been abuzz about his big win. Carly had recorded his interview on TV and replayed it again and again. She had seen photos of him in the newspaper over the years, but it had been so startling to hear the new deeper timbre of his voice. He had matured into rugged good looks that reminded her of his father as a younger man.
She was so proud of Brian. He’d done exactly what he had set out to do and was obviously an amazing attorney. She wasn’t surprised he had chosen to be a prosecutor. It was just like him to want to help people, and public service was in his genes, after all.
When she finished pulling the weeds and collected a few pieces of trash, Carly stepped back to take a critical look at her work. She wished she could tell them all how much she loved and missed them, but she suspected they knew. She liked to picture them together in heaven, doing the same things they’d always done, going on like nothing had ever happened. She knew what it felt like to be alone, so imagining her friends still had each other took the edge off her sadness.
As she was getting ready to walk away, one last piece of paper poking out of the wildflowers caught her eye. She reached down to pick up a white scrap with vivid red words that said, “WHORES AND ASSHOLES.” Shocked and repulsed, she quickly pushed the paper into the trash bag. Who would leave such a thing here, of all places?
A ripple of fear went through her when she suddenly had the overwhelming feeling she was being watched. Looking left and then right, she saw no one anywhere in sight. Telling herself she was being ridiculous, Carly gathered up her gardening tools, grabbed the garbage bag, and set off down Tucker Road. Adrenaline had her walking faster than usual, until she finally broke into a jog on the way to her parents’ house.
To get to South Road, she had to pass Brian’s parents’ house. Seven hundred and eighty-six steps later, she stood at the front gate to the house where she had grown up. Anytime Carly made that walk, she remembered the night she and Brian had counted the steps between their two houses. Filled with nostalgia that was less sad than it used to be, she used her key in the front door.
Even though the windows were open, the house was musty, since her parents had left for Europe a week earlier. They would be gone another three weeks, and while Carly was thrilled they were finally retired and able to enjoy themselves, she missed them. Her mother was the only person in Carly’s life—other than her nieces and nephews—who could communicate effortlessly with her without the need for words.
Carly watered her mother’s plants and added some junk mail to the garbage bag she had brought with her. She unlocked the deadbolt on the back door and took the bag to the trashcan in the yard. Lifting the rubber lid, she gasped when she found another note sitting on top of the bag already in the can. This one said, “WHORE” in the same vivid red ink as the note from the accident site. Carly dropped the lid and the bag she was holding and ran into the house. She flipped the deadbolt on the door. Her hands shaking, she reached for the phone and dialed 911.
“911, please state your emergency.”
Carly was paralyzed with fear and furious that when she tried to speak nothing came out.
“911, please state your emergency.” Carly didn’t answer, so the operator said, “Please stay on the line. I’m dispatching the police to 22 South Road. If you’re able to answer the door, please press the pound key.”
Carly did as the operator asked.
“Hang on just a minute. Police are on their way.”
She could hear the sirens, and taking the portable phone with her, she went to the front window to watch for them. Two cruisers pulled up to the curb. Carly opened the front door to Deputy Chief Matt Collins and a patrolman.
“Carly?” Matt said. “What’s wrong?”
Carly led them to the kitchen where her parents kept a small dry-erase board for her use. She quickly told the officers about the notes she had found and the sensation she’d had earlier that she was being watched. As she finished writing, she looked up to find a somber expression on Matt’s face.
He called for crime scene backup and asked Carly to show him the notes.
The house and yard were soon overrun with police. Chief Westbury arrived ten minutes after Matt called in the initial report. Something about the grave way the police handled the collection of evidence frightened Carly and led her to suspect this wasn’t the first they had seen of these notes.
“What’s going on?” she wrote to Chief Westbury.
“We’re not sure. Are you all right, Carly? You’re ghostly pale.”
“I’m okay. Rattled but okay.”
He sat next to her on the sofa while his officers continued their work. “You didn’t see anyone at the accident site?”
She shook her head. “I just felt like I was being watched.”
“That hasn’t happened before?” It was no secret in town that Carly maintained the memorial at the crash site.
“No.” They sat in silence for several minutes before she took a deep breath and wrote, “You must be so proud of him.”
>
Michael studied her words for a long moment before he glanced up at her. “Yes,” he said almost in a whisper. “Very.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she wrote, “How is he?” She had never once asked that question of either of Brian’s parents in all the years since he left home.
“He’s good. He works too hard, but he just spent a week with Mary Ann in Florida. They had a great time.”
Carly nodded and resisted the overwhelming urge to ask more.
“You know,” Michael said tentatively, “I’m sure he’d love to hear from you if you wanted to write him a letter or something. I’d be happy to give you his address.”
Sending him a sad smile, she shook her head. “It’s better this way.”
“Carly—”
Matt Collins came into the room. “Chief, we found a partial footprint on the path from the side yard gate to the trashcans.”
Michael’s eyes lit up. “Let me see.” He squeezed Carly’s hand and got up to follow his deputy outside.
The police spent another two hours scouring every inch of the yard without discovering anything else. The crime scene officers left to do a perfunctory investigation at the accident site, which had been compromised by the work Carly had done there earlier. But Michael instructed them to check anyway.
After they left, he came into the house through the back door. They had taken a sample of Carly’s fingerprints to rule out hers on the note she had picked from the wildflowers on Tucker Road.
“Do you have a number where I can reach your parents?”
“A call from you will terrify them,” she wrote. “I’ll ask Caren to call them, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course. That’s fine. It’s getting dark. Where are you headed from here?”
“Just to Caren’s.” Her sister’s house was less than a mile from their parents’ home.
“I’ll walk you.”
“That’s not necessary,” Carly protested.
“I said I’ll walk you.” His face was set in a stern expression that made her smile.
“Thank you.” Carly hated to admit she was grateful for his insistence. If someone was in fact watching her, it wouldn’t hurt to have the chief of police serving as her escort.
