Love and Sorrow (Small Town Secrets Book 5)

by Jade C. Jamison

  Shit. “Right. Then how about we go right after school?”

  “Okay.”

  As my son plowed back into his scrambled eggs, I headed to the bathroom to shower, wondering how and why I was allowing my life to just fall apart. I was going through the motions but forgetting everything important. Last night, midterms. Today, Halloween costumes. It was like I was a stranger looking in at my life, watching as I self-destructed—but I couldn’t get my own attention long enough to fucking fix anything.

  Later that morning, I was in a frenzy cleaning the house when my mother called, asking how things were going.

  When I realized I hadn’t told my parents shit, I responded too honestly. “Bad, mom. Really bad.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I sunk into the couch. “I’ve been so caught up in everything here, I completely forgot to tell you guys.”

  “Tell us what?”

  “What’s happening with Sarah.” Suddenly, it felt like we were suspended in time—as if I could sense that my mother was holding her breath. But I couldn’t force the words out until the silence grew so loud, I couldn’t think. “Mom, she was sexually abused.”

  “God in heaven.”

  “It gets worse.” Sitting up straighter, I took a deep breath. “It was her teacher in school last year.”

  “Is he going to go to jail?”

  “I don’t know, mom. We talked with Child Protection on Wednesday, and apparently they filed a police report. There will be a trial somewhere down the road from what I’ve been told, but I have no idea what to expect.” I wasn’t about to tell her about what my research had turned up.

  “Oh, honey. I feel so powerless...”

  “That’s pretty much how I’ve been feeling. My little girl.” I stood up and headed toward the back door. “Now we know that’s what was behind the depression, the outbursts, the negativity.” Stepping outside, I slung on a jacket before cradling my cell phone between my shoulder and ear as I removed a cigarette from a pack. “But the therapy seems to be helping. She’s starting to act a little like her old self already. It’s like telling us is helping her let go of it. I don’t know. I can’t question it, though. It’s working. It’s helping her.”

  And I didn’t have to say another fucking word about my own goddamn head.

  “Do you think she’d be okay with us for a few days?”

  After taking a drag on the cigarette, I took a step from the shadowy patio into the sunlight. “I don’t see why not. She’s stayed with you plenty since this all started happening, so I think it would be fine. Why? What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, your father and I know how busy you’ve been. We thought—if you wanted us to—that we could take the kids over the weekend. Take them trick-or-treating here. Give you a little break.”

  “Mike’s got Devon this weekend. But you could take Sarah.”

  “That might be even better. Give her a little special attention, just her. Especially—”

  “Mom, don’t make it a big deal, okay? I think it would be all right to tell her you know, but don’t press the issue. If she wants to talk about it, fine, but don’t ask her any questions.”

  “No, of course not. That’s fine. Actually, I don’t think I want the details.”

  “You’re right. You don’t. Sarah could barely tell me everything.” I took another drag off the cigarette. “She feels embarrassed and humiliated. And I know how I’d feel if it was me.”

  “I promise. We won’t talk about it unless she wants to.”

  “Thanks, mom.” Exhaling more smoke, I asked, “So when did you want to get her?”

  “How about tonight?”

  “Sure. She’ll be at the babysitter’s. Do you know where Noreen lives?”

  So that was that. Suddenly, I had a weekend alone. After I bought costumes for both kids because now Sarah had a reason and their bags were packed, I was off to work.

  When I got home that night, though, I sipped more of my whiskey and made some plans. I had no fucking idea how to get a gun, but I suspected I’d either want to start with a fake ID or I’d need to figure out how to buy something like that illegally. Because I’d essentially been a law-abiding citizen my whole life, I wasn’t sure how to go about breaking it.

  But, God, I wanted to.

  Unfortunately, all my planning and drinking gave me a bit of a hangover for classes the next morning. If it wasn’t for Tylenol and sipping water, I would have bombed more midterms.

  When I went home, I called in sick for my shift at work that evening and then took a nap on the couch.

  Until my cell phone rang.

  Not much time had passed since I’d drifted off, and I felt groggy and disoriented when I answered the phone, my voice scratchy.

  I knew it was Justin, but his words didn’t make sense to me at first. “Hey, I got that thing you wanted.”

  “Thing? What thing?”

  His voice was so low, it was hard to hear. “You know. That thing you wanted me to get you.”

  Suddenly, it was like a light bulb turned on inside my head—and I noticed my headache had eased off. “Oh. You mean the gun?”

  “Fuck, Randi. Don’t say that shit on the phone.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Sorry. I just woke up. I’m not thinking straight.”

  “So you want to come get it? I want it outta here.”

  “Um, yeah. I’ll be right over.” That meant I needed to wake my ass up. So after I hung up, I went to the bathroom and pulled my hair back in a ponytail. Then I splashed a little cool water on my face. Finally, I felt like I could eat something without throwing up, so I grabbed a handful of potato chips before slinging my purse on my shoulder and heading out the door.

  After arriving at Justin’s apartment building, though, I walked up the steps to his place and realized the headache wasn’t entirely gone—but at least it had eased off enough that I hadn’t noticed it till now. When I got to his door, I knocked and he answered almost immediately.

  “Follow me.” He took me to his bedroom, and he pulled a box off the shelf at the top of his closet. After setting it on the bed, he lifted the lid to show me a small black handgun. Although I’d seen plenty of guns before, thanks to my father, recognizing one was the extent of my knowledge. I knew they had different names and manufacturers and more, but it was all lost on me. When I picked it up, turning it over in my hands, Justin asked, “Have you ever used one before?” Swallowing, I shook my head. “Woman, what the hell am I gonna do with you? How about I find a flamethrower to go with it?”

  “Come on, Justin. How hard can it be?”

  The look he gave me spoke volumes. “It’s not hard, but I’m not gonna give it to you without teaching you how to use it.”

  “Fine. Then teach me.”

  “Not here. We gotta go to the woods or somethin’.”

  “Like where?”

  “There’s some national forest land a few miles out of town. We can go there. When do you wanna do this?”

  “Now.” That was pretty bossy, and the way Justin raised his eyebrows communicated as much. “Unless you don’t have time right now.”

  “I guess that’ll work.” Then, as if the gun would explode in my hands, Justin took it from me, placing it back in the box. After we walked into the living room, Justin grabbed his keys off the coffee table. “I’ll drive.”

  We rode in silence, and, with Justin’s permission, I smoked a cigarette with the window down enough to pull the smoke out of the truck. Half an hour later, I said, “I thought you said this place was a few miles out of town.”

  Justin flashed me one of his most charming grins. “Well, give or take—as the crow flies. We’re almost there. Keep your panties on.”

  While I refrained from rolling my eyes, I couldn’t help feeling impatient. We’d been on a bumpy dirt road for the last ten minutes in a forested area. At last, though, Justin slowed his truck at a small clearing before pulling into the area.

  He grabbed the box as
we got out. Although it was even cooler here than in town, being here helped me feel a little refreshed. I took a deep breath of crisp mountain air, heavy with the scent of pine and zipped up my jacket to keep me warmer. Meanwhile, Justin reached in the bed of his truck and started ripping up a cardboard box. He asked, “Got a pen?”

  “Uh, yeah. Just a sec.” I got back in the truck and dug through my purse until I found one, and then I took it to Justin, curious what he wanted it for. He’d already torn a piece of cardboard that was about two-by-two feet. When I handed him the pen, he scribbled a head-sized circle on top, then drew an approximation of shoulders and the top of what would be a person’s chest area. He kept retracing the lines to make them bolder, but it was still light compared to if he’d used a marker. “I guess I shoulda thought about this before.” Then he walked a few feet away and propped it up against a tree on the edge of the clearing. “Not the greatest, but it’ll do.”

  Finally, he took the gun out of the box and stood next to me. “The most important thing is aim. If your aim is bad, then it doesn’t really matter if you know how to shoot.” Although I nodded, I kept my mouth shut as Justin turned the gun in his hand. “This little knob right here is called the safety. If you have it here, the gun won’t fire. You have to move it like this,” he said, pushing the little black knob down, “to turn it off.” When I simply nodded, he continued. “This is a semi-automatic. All you have to do is aim the gun and squeeze the trigger to make it work.” Then he took a smaller box out of the bigger box that had held the gun. “Here’s your ammo.” After turning the gun, he popped open what looked like a small metal box. “This is your magazine.”

  “Magazine?”

  “Yep. That’s how you load it.” Like a pro, he took some bullets out of the box to show me how to place them in the magazine. Then he tossed the ammunition box back in the larger one. “Once that’s done, you pop it back in—but it’s not ready to go yet.” As he slid the upper part of the gun back and released it, it moved back into place. “You have to pull that part to load the first bullet. After that, each one will move into the chamber automatically, ready to fire.”

  “Okay. I think I got it.”

  He turned the gun up in front of him and then pointed to the top. “See these little metal things sticking up here on the front and back? Those are your sights. So you hold it up, like this.” The gun was in one of his hands, cradled by the other. “You line up this one in between the two at the front. See?” Moving closer, I stood on my tiptoes so that my head pressed against his shoulder as he shifted to face the cardboard target he’d created. “When you’re ready, you just pull back on the trigger. Want me to show you?”

  “Yeah.”

  I stood back as Justin squeezed the trigger. The noise coming out of the gun was far louder than I’d expected. As my ears started ringing, my eyes scoured the target and found that his bullet had made a hole in the center of the cardboard. He asked, “You ready to try?”

  “Yeah.” The first thing I noticed after he handed the gun to me was how much heavier it felt now than when I’d held it in his apartment. “So I pull on this thing?”

  “No. Only the first time.” Before I even brought my hands up to aim, Justin moved so that he could wrap his arms around me, and he placed his hands over mine, showing me how to hold the gun. As I drew in a deep breath, I wondered how, after all this time, I still felt weak in his arms, but I exhaled with the intent of focusing. Justin moved then, examining my posture, and adjusted my left hand a bit. “Okay, now line up your sights.” Because my arms weren’t fully extended, my elbows were slightly bent, and I moved the gun up a little higher so I could see the sights right in front. When I closed my right eye, I squinted the left and lined up the sights. Finally, I looked beyond them to the cardboard against the tree and pulled my right index finger back. The trigger was more resistant than I’d expected, but I pulled it, instantly feeling the force of the bullet leaving the gun—but there was no delay when it hit the target. I managed to hit the top right edge of the circle, so I figured that was good for my first shot. Justin said, “Try it a few more times.” As I fired three bullets in succession, each one was more accurate than the last, until I hit the inside of the circle twice.

  The last time I hit dead center.

  “You got good aim, Rascal.”

  But while that might have been true, how could I expect to actually shoot a person after all the rigamarole of getting set up? Breathing a sigh of relief, I allowed my arms to drop, still holding the gun in one hand. “Good.”

  “You wanna practice more?”

  “I want a cigarette.” After handing it to Justin, I walked back to the truck and lit a cigarette before rejoining him. He was already taking the remaining bullets out of the magazine, placing them back in the ammunition box. Then he set the gun in the larger box before folding the lid down as if it was a treasure chest.

  As he walked over to the cardboard target, he said, “Give me one, too, wouldja?” I fetched the pack and lighter again, handing them to him after he threw the target in the back of the truck. He lit a cigarette and puffed on it. “Sure you’ve never shot a gun before?”

  “Never. I think about the closest I’ve ever been was playing with squirt guns as a kid.”

  “This ain’t no toy, Rascal. Be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.” We smoked in silence for a bit, leaning against the truck as if we had nothing but time. Finally, I asked, “Hypothetically speaking, if I had to use this on a person, where would I aim?”

  His eyes shifted to mine, but I couldn’t read him. “To kill or just disable?”

  I blew out a lungful of smoke, hoping my face was like granite. “To kill.”

  His jaw clenched before he spoke. “You wanna aim for the forehead or the chest. Anywhere else is iffy.” Tossing the cigarette into the dirt, he crushed it underneath his boot. “It’s a bad idea, Rascal.”

  “Justin, you don’t know what I’m going to do. You’re just assuming.”

  “I think I got a pretty good idea.” I, too, dropped my cigarette butt on the ground and slowly moved my shoe back and forth on top of it. Suddenly, Justin’s hands were cupping my face. “Don’t do it, Randi.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Then his lips were on mine, and I kissed him back forcefully. In that moment, I had no idea what I could or couldn’t do. When our lips parted, I kept my eyes closed. I breathed, “I’m not going to do anything.”

  When he finally spoke, his voice was as quiet as mine had been. “Do you want me to do it for you?”

  “Justin, I’m not going to do anything. Okay? I just want to…forget it.”

  His arms tightened around me. “So you’re not mad at me anymore?”

  I couldn’t help the small smile that formed on my lips. “How could I ever stay mad at you?”

  “If you hadn’t gotten your way, I wonder.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Might be true, though.” And then, as if nothing had happened, he picked the box up and opened the driver’s side of the truck, setting it on the floor in the middle. “You ready to go?”

  “Yeah.”

  Once he’d started driving back the way we came, I asked, “How much do I owe you?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You sure?”

  He didn’t say anything. Instead, he kept his eyes glued to the road and drove like he had somewhere to be.

  As long as the trip had taken to get there, it seemed to take even longer to get back to Winchester. And even though Justin turned the heater on in the truck, the cold in my bones had settled in.

  Would I ever feel warm again?

  Chapter Twenty-four

  By the time we arrived back in Winchester, it was like I was on autopilot. No longer thinking or feeling, I simply went through the motions. After I left Justin’s apartment, I drove home as twilight was descending on our town.

  Somehow, I’d shut my brain off. I wasn’t thinking co
nsciously, and maybe that had made it easier to lie to Justin.

  And even myself.

  Once I got home, I walked through the dark house to my bedroom, the box still wedged underneath my arm. Then, in my bedroom, I flipped the light switch and sat on the bed. After loading the magazine as Justin had shown me, I removed my clothes and searched in the closet until I found a turtleneck and jeans, both black. Fishing around the floor in the back of the closet, I discovered an old pair of black sneakers I never wore anymore but hadn’t ever justified discarding. After dressing, I went to the kitchen and heated up a can of soup, sipping it—but the feeling of ice was still deep inside my body.

  I needed a drink—but the whiskey bottle rested in the trashcan, as empty as I felt.

  That meant that what I was about to do I’d do stone cold sober. I went in the utility room and smoked a cigarette as I summoned my courage. Then I put my jacket on, wedging the loaded gun in my purse before walking out the door.

  In the van, I turned up the radio, hoping it would drown out my thoughts. It was dark outside now, and the shadows helped me feel stronger, hidden by the night. Already, kids in costume roamed the sidewalks and crossed the streets, making the drive to the other side of town slow. Maybe doing this on Halloween was a bad idea, considering there were crowds of kids everywhere. The neighborhood I drove to was no different—except for one thing.

  Fewer streetlights.

  And that wasn’t a bad thing at all. Slowly, I drove around until I found the particular street I’d been searching for. Thanks to multiple illuminated porch lights, it was easy to find the address I’d been looking for, but I kept driving, planning to park farther away. Then, for several minutes, I sat in the car and smoked, once again trying to conjure up the courage I would need. Moments later, as I walked down the sidewalk, I passed a group of three children dressed as a ghost, a pirate, and a football player.

  This part of town wasn’t as busy with kids as mine had been.

  As I approached the house, I noted that it was nice—not too big but larger and nicer than mine. The small walk up to the door was edged with small stones and what was probably a well-manicured lawn in the summer. As I got closer, I took in every detail—the porch light replaced with an orange bulb, luminaries with jack-o-lantern faces decorating the path to the door, and even a large spotlight in the yard highlighting a “witch” who had flown and crashed into the maple tree.