Ryan’s eyes meet mine.
There are defining moments in our lives when we question if honesty is always the best policy. Will the truth protect me? Will the truth hurt someone else? Or is the right answer the wrong answer?
Seconds pass.
And we’re still staring at each other, and I feel his eyes on mine, staring right through me, cracking the wall a little more.
“She used to be. Now, she’s a real good friend.”
“So, she is your girlfriend?” the extra-smart little boy asks.
Ryan shrugs. A smile begins. “Yeah, buddy, I guess you’re right.”
“Good, because she’s really pretty.” He smiles.
“All right, campers! Back to the gym! Bubble Jim is up next.”
The kids, with help from some of the camp leaders, pile back into the gymnasium, leaving Ryan and me alone by the truck.
I look over at Ryan after a long silence. “You’re really good with kids.” And I can’t help but say, “You would have been good with ours.”
I see the searing pain that starts just beyond his eyes, making its way down to his heart.
“Come on, Rookie!” We hear Eli calling.
We turn just in time to see Rookie barreling around the corner and straight for Ryan, who bends down and gives Rookie big love, putting his head to his fur.
“Hey, buddy.”
Rookie rubs his nose on me, and I, too, reach down and love on him.
“Big baby,” Eli says as he walks to the truck. “Really interesting to see him with kids now. The dynamic has changed. He used to be more work, work, work, and now, he’s more interested in the little humans, ever since Emily was born anyway. I think Rookie has taken on the role of protective older brother.”
“How do Larry and Rookie get along?”
Larry is Alex’s Maine Coon cat; she brought him from Belle’s Hollow.
“Two peas in a pod. I’m convinced that Larry thinks he’s a dog, too. He sleeps with Rookie on his bed. Grooms him.” Eli rolls his eyes. “It’s pathetic.”
Ryan’s still loving on Rookie. I think it’s his way of avoiding the conversation, maybe because old feelings have come up from what I said earlier.
“How are the shoulder and ribs?” Eli asks.
Ryan finally stands, sore. “Better.”
Whether he thinks he’s doing better or it’s the pain medication, I’m not sure. I guess only time will tell.
“Drinks tonight at Angler’s Tavern? I’m off at five unless something comes up.”
Terrified, I don’t look at Ryan. If I look at Ryan, it will seem more like we’re a couple seeking input on plans. Plans that we don’t have. Input that shouldn’t involve Ryan and Merit. But rather, Ryan period. Merit period.
“I’m free,” I say. Not, We’re free.
I don’t keep Ryan’s agenda. His calendar.
“I’m good, too. No plans.” Ryan follows suit.
Eli curiously eyes both of us. “All right then. You ready, Rookie?” Rookie’s licking his nether regions. Looks up at Eli. Blinks. “All right. Truck.” And Rookie bounds to the warden truck that’s parked next to Ryan’s. “About six?”
“Sounds good,” I say awkwardly.
Ryan tosses the keys in my direction. He used them when he showed the kids around the truck.
“Warden Taylor, Warden Taylor!” Blake comes running out with a handwritten note. “I want to give this to you.”
Ryan, with pain this time, barely bends over. “Hey, bud. What have you got there?”
“It’s a picture of you getting the bad guy.” Blake looks at Ryan.
“Thank you, Blake. Wow. I’ll hang this on my refrigerator, so I can see it every morning before I go to work.”
Blake smiles proudly, and then he grows shy and stares at his feet. There’s another drawing behind his back.
“Do you have something else for me?”
“Yeah.” But he’s quieter about this one. After a few seconds of silence, he pulls the other picture from behind his back. “This is for your dog.”
Ryan tilts his head to the side and takes a look. “But, buddy, I don’t have a dog.”
Blake grows uncomfortable.
I peek over Ryan’s shoulder. It’s a picture of a gray-colored dog. On the collar of the dog is written, Heeewow.
What?
“There’s a dog that follows you, Warden Taylor.” He stalls. “My mommy gets scared when I draw stuff like this.”
I can’t pull a thought together right now. I’m almost certain Ryan feels the same, if not even more overwhelmed.
“When I drew a picture of my dad behind my mommy one day, she started to cry.”
Ryan touches Blake’s shoulder. “What color was your dad in the drawing, Blake?”
“Gray.”
“Yeah?”
Blake nods.
Ryan’s quiet for a moment before he speaks. Ryan has never talked about Hero with me since his dad backed over him when we were teenagers. “Hero was my dog when I was a kid. I got him when I was your age. He went to heaven, just like your dad did.”
Blake nods again. “Gray people are in heaven. That’s what my mom told my grandma anyway.”
“Yeah.” Ryan touches the boy’s shoulder again. “I think you and I both can use a hug right about now.”
The boy, with ease, slides into Ryan’s arms.
Tears start to form in my eyes. I think Ryan needs this. I think Blake needs this. Maybe things happen in the exact time that they’re supposed to happen.
Maybe.
“Thank you,” Ryan tells Blake. “And I have something for you. Stay put.” Ryan opens the passenger door and grabs a plastic badge from the glove compartment where he keeps ten on hand at any given time because he loves kids.
Blake’s eyes light up. “Thanks, Warden Taylor.” Then, he turns to me. “Thanks, Bug.”
My heart comes to a speeding halt.
What? What did he just call me?
Ryan looks at me, his face about the shade of white that I probably am. He looks back at Blake. “What did you call her, bud?”
Blake looks past me—or through me. I’m not sure which. “The woman behind you, she said to call you Bug.” He stops. “She’s a gray person, too.”
My mother.
Knees weak, I just need a minute. Everything inside me wants to turn and look, but I know Blake can see things, hear things, that most people can’t. A metallic taste in my mouth spreads, like a warm liquid.
I swallow.
To a child, it’s so innocent. It’s as simple as, I see something. Here it is. It’s gray. Sometimes, what I see talks. That’s it.
There’s no overthinking it.
But, for adults, we tend to mash it up. Make it messy. Make it weird. Scary maybe. Through a child’s eyes, it’s uncomplicated. They say or draw what they see.
What Blake sees and hears isn’t complicated. It’s fact, it’s concrete, it’s evidence, and he just has the sensitivity and the openness to see it.
So, I don’t scare him. I don’t feed him the bullshit messiness that adults create around things like this. But I do bend down, take his little hand in mine, and thank him. I don’t allow him to see the shock that’s making my body vibrate. I allow him to see the gift he’s given Ryan and me today.
“Thank you, Blake. You made my heart so happy.”
Eighteen
Ryan
Granite Harbor, Maine
Present Day
Mer and I get in the truck. Shut the door. Sit. Wait for a moment to gain clarity of what just happened.
Still in my hands are the pictures Blake handed me. Hero in gray. The dog that made my life bearable. The times he protected me as I tried to sleep, waiting for Dubbs to come into my room, drunk. The cigarette burns happened when Hero was stuck outside.
I laugh out loud.
Merit looks over at me. Watching me.
She catches on. Giggles at first, but then starts laughing until she’s crying.
I let her cry. She needs to. She’s crying for me. I know. I think, too, she’s probably in shock. Neither of us expected Blake to draw the ghost of my dead dog. We also didn’t anticipate Blake to talk about Rebecca, her mom.
“What the hell just happened?” she asks, more rhetorically.
I shake my head, knowing the heaviness of the situation, yet my brain can’t quite comprehend the reality of it all.
“Do you need to do anything in town?” Merit asks.
“We could grab something to eat? Take it down by the harbor? Like old times.”
Merit’s eyes search the road. The harbor is a spot that means a lot to both of us. It’s where we spent time as kids, trying to catch a break. Put life on pause.
Merit slowly nods. “Harbor, yeah.”
“Grab sandwiches at Granite Harbor Grocery?” I suggest.
“Yeah.”
It’s just after eleven thirty a.m. As we drive down Main Street, it’s not too busy in town yet. Though the tourists are starting to gather on both sides of Main.
“We could walk Main. We have some time to kill. We could wander aimlessly, like we used to as kids. With no agenda. No breaks. And time on our hands.” Really, all I want is just time with her. Trying to bring back old memories maybe. Make her remember all the good times we had together.
She pulls into a spot near the post office.
“I’ll run into Rick’s and change real quick.” I pause as a sharp pain shoots through my abdomen, knowing the pain medication is wearing off.
You’ve got to have pain in life, Ryan. That’s the only way to know you’re still alive.
“I’ll go with you.” Merit meets me at the sidewalk.
“Excuse me, can you point us in the direction of the harbor?” a woman in a large-brimmed straw hat with a white nose lathered in sunscreen asks.
Her husband, in a matching hat with hands stuck deep in his pockets, stands behind her, staring at our old buildings. “Beauty-full place you got here.” He whistles through his teeth.
“The harbor runs parallel to Main Street. You can take a left down any of the side streets, and that will get you to the harbor.” I motion with my hands.
“Thank you, Officer.”
“You’re welcome.”
They cross the street and head down to the harbor.
We walk into Rick’s, and I make my way to the counter as Merit peruses.
“Warden Young,” Rick says. “What brings you in today?”
“I just need to use your back room to change.”
“Absolutely. Come on back. Reminds me of when you guys were kids. But you’re older. Taller. Much bigger now. I can remember when you had no front teeth and that dog always followed you around.”
“Hi, Rick.” I hear Merit say from behind me. “Do you still have double-sided tape?”
Rick is a talker. He’d talk your ear off all goddamn afternoon if you let him.
“Well, Merit Young, it is so good to see you back in Granite Harbor.” Rick walks out from behind the counter to meet Merit. Rick is a walking encyclopedia of weird facts. Don’t get him started on double-sided tape.
I smirk as I look back at Merit, watching Rick talk about the bonds of double-sided tape. Where it was invented and why it was invented. Quickly, she looks back at me, and I wink.
I mime the words, Thank you, and head to the back room.
On my way out, Boom, the office cat, is lying on the old staircase that leads up to Rick’s living quarters above the pharmacy. Boom must be about ten years old. His broken meow sounds just like it did we found him.
Boom lost his right eye when he was a kitten. I was brand-new to the warden service and found him in a gutter just south of town on my way out of town. He’d already been missing his eye, but it was fairly fresh, so I put him in the truck with me. I had to run into the pharmacy to pick up a few things and brought the little guy in with me. I’d planned to take him to the Granite Harbor Veterinary Clinic afterward, but Rick seemed to take a liking to the little kitten and decided to take him.
I give Boom a quick rubdown on his perch. “Good to see you, old friend.”
With a broken meow, he yawns, stretching out his paw.
“And that’s why double-sided tape should be kept in every home.” I hear Rick say.
Merit’s eyes are glazed over. “You’re right; I’ll buy some.”
Rick turns.
Merit’s eyes grow big as she stares at me. You owe me big, she mouths.
I smile and nod. She meets me at the counter and throws down the double-sided tape, and Rick’s assistant rings her up.
“Come again soon, you two,” Rick calls from behind the counter.
We wave.
“Will do, Rick,” I say.
Merit throws a little bag with double-sided tape in the truck as I hang my uniform in the cab part of the truck.
The sidewalks are quickly beginning to fill up as we make our way across the street to Granite Harbor Grocery.
“I’ve got it, Hulk.” Merit beats me to the door. “What are you staring at?” Merit’s head is next to mine.
“Isn’t that the guy who was with Dubbs on the porch the other day?”
Merit squints. Watches the man. “That’s him. I remember the scar on his cheek. What the hell is he doing back in Granite Harbor again? There’s no way he’s from here.”
“I don’t know, but we need to stop by Dubbs’s house before we leave.” Something tells me this situation isn’t fucking right. I take a quick picture with my phone. Though grainy, it warrants a Google search later.
We take our sandwiches and walk down to the harbor. We take our seat next to our tree, just down a ways from the main traffic of the harbor.
“So,” I start, “you rehabilitate river otters.”
Merit finishes her bite as I take another.
“Did you know you wanted to do this straight out of college? That’s a pretty specific job.”
She shrugs. “I knew I wanted to work with marine life. River otters just fell in my lap.”
“Like what you do?” I set my sandwich down and take a drink of water.
“Pays the bills. I’ve been at the aquarium for so long; it’s what I know.”
I nod. “And you feel comfortable in that?”
Merit takes a bite.
On one hand, she’s always been a creature of habit. As if I have room to talk. Lived in Granite Harbor. Only moved to Hallowell because I have to live in the district I patrol. Never leaving Maine unless it’s absolutely necessary.
But Merit moved from coast to coast.
“What’s California like? It’s not really palm trees, movie stars, and beaches, right?”
“Southern California is similar to that. I’m not sure about movie stars though.” She laughs. “I live in the middle of the state. It’s on the coast, like here, but the beaches are sandy. Doesn’t get as warm in the summer as Granite Harbor. We get the fog. People are different. Not as friendly as they are here.” She shrugs. “Could be because we know everyone. I don’t know what an outsider’s perception would be of our people, but I suppose”—Merit looks at our now-packed streets—“we must be doing something right.”
Merit watches a family moving down the harbor, collecting shells, a dog in tow. She looks away as she takes another bite of her sandwich, pushing a strand of her fallen hair from her face.
“What?” She takes her napkin and wipes her face with her long, slender fingers.
I remember what those feel like. Her nails against my chest, my back.
“Nothing,” I say, trying to push the thoughts from my head.
“Do I have something on my face?”
“No.”
“Why are you staring at me like I have a deformity?”
“Well, you do. It starts right here.” I reach over, take my finger, and slide it across her jawline. I watch her entire body change in slow motion.
Her body tenses.
Her breathing hitches.
And sh
e freezes.
“H-how’s my jaw a deformity?” she asks.
When I get this reaction, I know it’s my fingers that do this to her.
Just as I’m about to tell her how her perfect jawline, her bone structure, is a deformity, Lydia walks up.
“Hey, Merit! I heard you were back in town.”
Merit stands to hug Lydia.
When Lydia first moved to town, we slept together. Went on a few dates. My way of trying to rid myself of Merit.
“Hey, asshole.” Lydia turns to me.
I almost choke on my water.
“I’m kidding, Ryan.” She tosses a hand at me.
I deserve that. I am an asshole. She’s not kidding.
Lydia bought a bookstore in town about three years ago, which was about the time I heard some guy had asked Merit to marry him. Eli had casually mentioned it in conversation one day.
I was angry.
Hostile.
Fucking pissed.
Jealous.
I’d have slept with anyone if that meant I could chase Merit from my thoughts. None of that worked. Not a fucking thing. Lydia and I especially didn’t work. But we both knew that.
I watch as they exchange words, sentences in conversation, one I have no business being in. I turn my attention to the harbor and listen to the seals.
It’s amazing how quick our town fills up every summer. We double in population but not size, making it hard to accommodate extra bodies.
“You, too.” I hear Merit say.
“Bye, Ryan.”
“Lydia.” I nod.
“Guess she doesn’t like you?” Merit asks.
I want to tell her. I want to tell her I slept with Lydia. I want to tell her what a whore I turned into after she left. But she knows. Telling her would only cause her more hurt. She left her job in California to come help take care of me. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t care. We’ve got too much history together. By telling her that I slept with someone who didn’t matter, how would that make her feel better? By telling her, I’d only be trying to clear my own conscience. So, I decide not to tell her. What would I say anyway?
Oh, Lydia? I let her suck my dick a few times. She’s a great blow. But nothing like you, Merit. Never. Nobody has ever reached the level that you and I had.
Violet Ugly: A Contemporary Romance Novel (The Granite Harbor Series Book 2) Page 12
