by Rome, Ada
Counting on Cayne
Book One
Hallow River Series
By Ada Rome
Warning: This book contains adult language and situations. It is intended for mature audiences over the age of 18.
Copyright
Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarities to events or situations is also coincidental.
The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks and locations mentioned in this book. Trademarks and locations are not sponsored or endorsed by trademark owners.
© 2015 by Ada Rome
All Rights Reserved
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
There are only two kinds of people in this world, the kind that break apart your soul and the kind that glue it back together again. Sometimes the edges are jagged and unclean. Sometimes pieces are lost. The finished product may tilt to one side. It may let light filter through a thousand tiny pinpricks or blaze through a wide central gash. It may reveal its history in an atlas of spidery cracks across its surface like a cherished heirloom vase that has shattered and been restored more times than anyone can count.
Regardless of its size, shape, or condition, its pitted texture, dented contours, or lopsided stance, that soul belongs to you. You must claim it to survive. It also belongs to those whose devoted hands have delicately tended to your broken pieces and held them together until the seams were fixed in place. It never belongs to the one who smashed it to the earth.
I was a girl who chased dreams. As many of us do, I turned away from the comfort and familiarity of home, that place where monsters are held in check by a rugged barrier of defiant love, and into a wider world where monsters walk in plain sight. I let my dreams slip from my grasp and watched them spin into nightmares from which I thought I would never escape. I was lost and drifting.
When I packed up my broken pieces and returned to the whispering dogwood-shaded lanes of the past, I believed that I was retreating in failure and disgrace. I believed that my broken pieces would stay broken and that dreams were solely for fools. I soon realized that I was still chasing dreams. Only this time, those dreams would come true.
Chapter 1
DINER, the sign said. No cute logo or quaint homespun décor identified the squat brick building as anything other than the primary eating establishment in town.
“Welcome back to bumfuck,” I said to myself as I pulled into the gravel parking lot. My sleek sports car was conspicuous amid the collection of dusty pickups and ancient rust buckets. I adjusted my oversized sunglasses in the midsummer glare and stepped out to a chorus of cicadas. After years in New York, I had forgotten the calming peace that comes from the steady hum of nature’s creatures when they are not submerged beneath a roaring wave of traffic and shouting.
I walked through the door to a tinkle of bells and waited in the vestibule for several minutes, face to face with my reflection in a smeared gilt-framed mirror. I removed my sunglasses, smoothed the long windblown layers of my ash blonde hair, and lightly fingered the circular gold pendant that fell into the deep scoop neck of my plain black t-shirt.
Not seeing any hostess, I seated myself in an empty booth next to a bank of windows and opened a greasy laminated menu. I checked my phone – six messages – and shoved it back into my floppy black leather purse.
“You new in town?” said a cheerful voice over my left shoulder. I turned to see a waitress in a short green polyester dress with a pencil poised over a notepad and a young, pretty face. Her head was a riot of corkscrew curls in shades ranging from light caramel to deep chestnut. The buttons of her dress strained to stay closed over her ample figure and, as I looked up, I caught an unexpected peek of a lace bra in cotton candy pink through the gaping buttons.
The girl’s expression immediately brightened into one of surprised recognition.
“Holy shit!” she yelled and stepped back with her head cocked to one side as if to get a better angle. “It is you!”
“I’m sorry, do I know---” I began but was instantly cut off when she playfully poked me in the shoulder with her pencil.
“Brinley LeClare! I don’t believe it! Don’t you remember me?” She struck a teetering pose with her hands forming a half-circle in front of her chest and her feet joined at the heels in first position. I suddenly had a vivid recollection of a round-cheeked little girl in a sparkly red tutu with an uncontrollable mane of brown curly hair and a mischievous gap-toothed grin striking exactly that pose during Saturday morning dance classes at the rec center.
“Cami?” I said in near disbelief. “Cami Talbot. Oh my God.”
“One and the same,” Cami said with an ungainly curtsy that tested the coverage of her short waitress costume. She beamed a perfect smile and, noticing my eyes go to the former site of the gap, tapped her two front teeth. “Braces,” she shrugged. “No more walrus.”
Cami had once been part of a group of bubbly girls who followed my every move like paparazzi on the tail of a Hollywood celebrity. They spent Saturday mornings trying to master the arts of the plie and arabesque in the beginning dance classes that I taught to earn cash for what I lovingly referred to as my “Escape Fund.” Every dollar that I made coaxing their wrists and ankles into some semblance of balletic posture was getting me closer to my glorious launch into stardom. I was going to hug each of those dollars tight to my chest, head up the interstate toward the Big Apple, and never look back to the tiny town of Hallow River, North Carolina.
Needless to say, things didn’t quite work out as planned. Here I was back in Hallow River with nothing to show as the fruits of my escape except a semi-stolen car out in the parking lot of “Diner” and a phone buzzing with messages that I was afraid to read.
Cami shot a sly glance toward the manager bustling in a shirt and tie around the front counter and plopped comfortably into the other side of my booth, one elbow resting on the seatback and an eager grin animating her face.
“Gosh, how long has it been? Ten years? It must be. Time flies, doesn’t it? I was in elementary school when I took those dance lessons and now I’m in college. I mean, just taking classes at the community college, but still.” She had a chatterbox’s way of releasing long strings of sentences without pausing for breath.
“It’s been exactly ten years.” I felt my accent sliding into the comfortable drawl and twang that I had spent the past decade trying to dam up behind a wall of sharp consonants and stunted vowels.
“You must be lighting up Broadway by now! We all worshipped you back then, you know. Have you traveled the world? Starred in a thousand different shows? I looked you up a few times but I couldn’t find you anywhere. I figured maybe you used a stage name.”
“Something like that,” I responded. The truth was that I hadn’t danced in a long time. With each passing year, I fe
lt my body loosen and slip as taut muscles weakened and calories took up permanent residence. The alteration probably seemed more dramatic on the inside than it appeared to outsiders. I was surprised when Cami immediately recognized me as the updated version of my eighteen-year-old self.
She was blinking expectantly, waiting for me to elaborate, but I swiftly changed the subject to stave off further questions.
“So, is there a good auto shop in town?”
The car engine had been making strange rattling sounds ever since I crossed the Mason-Dixon Line earlier in the morning. That glossy little roadster was made more for show than for durability, rather like the man who’d purchased it a year ago and no doubt discovered its absence from a Manhattan garage within the past twelve hours.
Cami clomped her lips shut and drew back in her seat with the abrupt change of topic, but her eyes lit with delight and another perfect grin beamed across her face, this one with a hint of mischief in the upturned corners of her mouth.
“My brother Cayne runs the auto shop over on Primrose.” She flattened her palms on the tabletop and leaned forward, her dress buttons grazing the table’s edge. “You remember Cayne, right?”
My mind called up an image of a gangly kid a couple of years my junior with a forehead of acne and owlish plastic glasses. Cayne Talbot was a mechanic? He seemed slated for life as an accountant or insurance broker in scratchy button-down shirts, pens leaking into his pocket protector, and a sensible hatchback carrying him to and from some gray strip mall office.
I remembered Cayne skulking awkwardly around the boundaries of the dance studio, waiting for classes to finish so he could drag his vivacious little sister home. He would sneak glances at the front of the room where I lifted and spun in a pale pink leotard. I once stopped to say hello. He nearly choked on a gulp of soda in his stunned attempt to respond. I patted his bony back while his face turned scarlet and his eyes pricked with tears. He finally loped away in total embarrassment. I stared after him with a mixture of disbelief and pity. After that, he waited for Cami in the parking lot. Funny the moments that get stuck in your head.
Cami jotted something in her notepad.
“Here is the address for the shop, but I’m sure you remember your way around,” she said, ripping out the page and handing it to me.
“Cami!” a voice bellowed from the direction of the kitchen. “Orders are up!” Cami widened her eyes comically and slid out of the booth. She turned and started to head toward the counter, where four heaping plates of food awaited delivery to hungry customers, but suddenly spun back on her heel.
“Shit! I got so caught up in reminiscing that I forgot to take your order!”
“Just a grilled cheese and fries, please,” I said after quickly perusing the limited menu options. I neatly folded the address for Talbot Auto Body and pressed the pleat between my index finger and thumb. “Thank you for this,” I said, dropping the folded paper into the deep cavern of my purse.
“You got it.” She tapped her pencil on the notepad and wedged it behind her ear. “And it’s no problem at all. I’m sure Cayne will be glad to see you,” she said with a wink. “One thing, though. Be prepared to fight through a crowd of admirers. Cayne attracts a following. I bring a can of mace to scare off the women who flock around him like crows. I think they smash their engines with hammers just so they can watch him lean over the fender.”
“Cayne? Are you serious?” I was unable to keep the shock from my voice and hoped that I didn’t sound rude. He was her brother, after all. But how on earth had Cayne Talbot become one of Hallow River’s most sought-after bachelors? I checked myself. She never said he was a bachelor.
Cami giggled and shook her nest of parti-colored curls.
“Things change, Brinley LeClare.”
I certainly could not argue with that.
Chapter 2
While I was very curious to get a glimpse of the transformed Cayne Talbot, I had another more important errand to accomplish first. I suppose it was less of an errand than a reckoning.
I bid farewell to Cami, but not before she excitedly took down my cell number and promised to text me for a girls’ night out before I left town. I declined to inform her that my stay in Hallow River would likely be a lot longer than temporary, so there was no rush on scheduling our evening of candy-flavored drinks and gossipy chit-chat.
I pulled out of the diner parking lot and wound through a maze of curving streets so familiar that muscle memory alone could have guided me to my destination.
“5972 Poplar Road,” the old-fashioned metal mailbox declared in red paint-chipped script. Anxiety rose in a bubble up the back of my throat as I eased up to the curb in front of a spike-tipped iron gate.
This was the house where I had spent the first eighteen years of my life, but it would always be the exclusive domain of my Aunt Luella. Others came and went, leaving height marks and fingerprints on the doorjambs. Aunt Luella, or “Lu” for those of us who knew her well, was the tough spirit that kept the weathered shingles from flying out into the atmosphere, the rain-split porch boards from collapsing, and the soot-blackened chimney standing straight and firm. Without her, the house would probably fold into a heap of dust and rusty nails.
Among all the worries that had occupied my mind since my tires hit the highway just before sunrise, this encounter loomed large. I hadn’t spoken to Aunt Lu in almost two years. At that point, the reality of my life was locked behind a mask of lies and evasions. I didn’t hide the truth out of any desire to be cunning, but simply out of shame.
I looked up at the gabled roof and the banks of shuttered windows and took one tentative step toward the chest-high gate that separated the sidewalk from a garden of weeds and tangled vines. A cobblestone path, visible here and there amid the jumble of vegetation, ran all the way to the porch. I hesitated and felt my phone buzz within my purse – more messages that would have to wait.
As I reached forward and lifted the gate latch with a metallic scrape, the front door swung open. Aunt Lu emerged from the house. She stood with hands on her hips, elbows locked outward at her sides. I froze with my fingers gripping the gate spokes. We stared at each other in silence for what felt like ten minutes but was probably less than one.
“Welcome home,” she pronounced in a flat matter-of-fact monotone.
I heaved the gate toward me, stepped inside, and let it clang shut with a resounding thwack. I gazed up at Aunt Lu, my heels lifting slightly from the ground. This was my natural posture during times of stress, poised on my toes and ready to bolt at the first sign of danger.
“Hi, Aunt Lu.” My voice sounded unnaturally chipper.
She remained as still as a stone pillar. With her commanding stance, she resembled a resolute Southern matron boldly facing down a horde of rampaging Yankee soldiers. She wore a cotton dress with a light blue background and a smattering of bright purple lilies. Her hair, midway in transition from ash blonde to gray, was pulled into a bun that sat severely on the crown of her head. On her feet, she wore what appeared to be an oversized pair of men’s brown moccasin slippers.
“Battleax” was a word townspeople often used to describe Aunt Lu while I was growing up. Most did not realize that she hid a warm maternal nature beneath her stern exterior. I could never picture her without multiple children happily scurrying around her ankles. Even now, a tow-headed toddler in denim overalls darted from between her tree trunk legs and thumped down onto the top porch step, rolling a fire engine back and forth and making spit-sprinkled “zoom” noises.
Her house was, in fact, a dumping ground for other people’s children. This one probably belonged to my cousin Garnet. Last I heard, Aunt Lu’s eldest daughter was living in Nashville with a scraggly drifter who claimed to be a musician but was really just a drug addict of very limited guitar-playing abilities.
Once upon a time, I too was a discarded child who landed unexpectedly in Aunt Lu’s lap when I had nowhere else to go.
Luella LeClare was the older sist
er of my mother, Charity LeClare. The sisters must have made for an odd pairing around the streets of Hallow River. Lu, solid and unyielding, provided a stark contrast to the delicate and wayward Charity. Memories of my mother were cloudy and tinged with the ethereal quality of dreams, but I knew from photographs that she was a wispy pale blonde with a perpetually faraway gaze. She never looked straight into the camera, but off to the side or into the middle distance as she leaned provocatively on a Mustang passenger door in a crop top and acid wash cutoffs or balanced on her thin hip a baby that looked too substantial to have been birthed by her willowy body. I recalled that she sang lullabies in a pleasing soprano.
The sisters were left to fend for themselves in the ramshackle house on Poplar Road after their parents died. Lu was five years older and already working as an aid at a local nursing home when eighteen-year-old Charity became pregnant as a result of a brief romance with a meathead jock from the neighboring town of Pine Hill. He picked her up where she worked at the drive-in burger stand, took her on a few dates, planted a seed in her unresisting womb, and then hightailed it out of the picture. Legend has it that Lu drove to Pine Hill in the dead of night with a shotgun when Charity’s swelling belly could no longer hide her growing secret, and that she threatened to shoot my father’s balls off if he didn’t give her $5,000 by the following noon. He somehow scrounged together the money. That was the last the sisters ever saw of him.
Once I was born, Lu supported the three of us on her meager salary from the nursing home, occasionally supplemented by my mother’s short-lived stints as a receptionist or clothing store clerk. I sometimes heard their whispered arguments about money as I tiptoed down the creaking wooden stairs at night. My clothes were always castoffs from the church donation bin. The snootier families in town cut me a wide berth, refusing to invite me to their children’s preschool birthday parties.
