by H. P. Munro
Joining her laughter, Charlotte held out her hand to Ben and her smile grew as he gripped her finger tightly. “Can’t argue with that, can we, Ben.” Her smile faded slightly as she returned her attention to Ruth. “Was anyone badly hurt?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Ruth said, leading her further into the house. “You want a coffee? We’ve just brewed some.”
“No I’m good. I should get going.”
“You going already?” Peter asked as he entered the room, took his son from his wife and held him above his head. “You only just got here.”
“Yeah well,” Charlotte replied. “I got things to do back home.” She hugged Ruth tightly then handed the keys over. “Thank you for everything.”
“Don’t be a stranger, Charlotte. There’s still folks here that care ’bout you.”
“I won’t.”
She was almost at the door when she spun back around. “Peter, how come you’ve got Grace trucks impounded?”
Peter glanced quickly at his wife, who shrugged in response. “They failed inspection. I got the parts, but until they pay me for the work I did last time, I’m not fixing them.”
“How much do they owe you?”
Running a hand through his dark curls, Peter looked embarrassed. “Almost five thousand.”
Charlotte whistled at the figure. “How the hell did they let that happen?”
Peter shrugged but was saved any response as Ruth stepped in. “Charlotte that’s just the tip—”
“Ruth,” Peter cautioned. He looked at Charlotte. “All I know is they owe me, and I’m not doing any more work until I’m paid.”
Charlotte held up a finger. “Two seconds.”
She opened the door, jumped down the steps leading up to the porch and sprinted to the car.
Ruth and Peter watched as she spoke with her friends and then went to the trunk. After a couple minutes of rummaging around, she closed the tailgate and ran back up the steps.
“Here.” She held out a wad of cash. “There’s two thousand there. I’ll transfer the rest, and you can invoice me the cost of fixing those three trucks.” She waved the money as Peter seemed reluctant to take it. “Whatever has happened between me and my folks, that business was my daddy’s pride and joy. Plus, I don’t want you out of pocket or them having to lay people off.”
Peter placed a warning hand on his wife’s shoulder to stop her speaking. “Thank you, Charlotte.”
“Ruth has my contact details, so just let me know where to send the money.”
“We will,” Peter said, taking the cash.
Satisfied, Charlotte grinned. “Excellent. Thank you again for letting us use your mama’s home. It was lovely to stay there and still feel her presence.”
Ruth took her grumbling son back from her husband. “And that’ll be the reason no one will buy the damn thing.”
Charlotte reached out and ruffled Ben’s soft hair. “Well I always liked your mama, but when it comes to mama’s, maybe I’m not the best judge.” She looked down towards the rental car; despite her initial haste she was now reluctant to leave. “I should go. Take care.”
***
Ruth pulled the laundry out of her mother’s ancient dryer. She was grateful that Charlotte and her friends had thoughtfully stripped the beds and placed them in the washer. She paused as she heard a thud.
“You know, Mama you really have to let go. Go fly. Be free. Go towards the light. You always liked Florida. Can’t you haunt there or something? ’Cause I’d really like to sell this house.” She balanced the laundry basket onto her hip and climbed up the ancient basement steps to return to the kitchen, continuing to berate her late mother the entire way. “An’ people talking about feeling your presence here is not helping me sell.”
She used her backside to open the stubborn door the kitchen. Entering the room, she screamed and dropped the laundry basket she was carrying.
Erin spun around, her screams mixing with Ruth’s as they both stared at each other, frozen to the spot.
“What the hell, Erin!” Ruth yelled.
“You scared the crap out of me,” Erin yelled in return.
“You scared the crap out of me!” Ruth shot back, bending over to recover the laundry. “What the hell are you doing sneaking around my mama’s kitchen?”
Erin took a deep breath. “I wasn’t sneaking. I was looking for Charlotte.”
Ruth could see the apprehension almost cascade off Erin in waves. “She left early this morning.”
“Of course she did.”
Dumping the pile of bedding onto the table, Ruth fished out her phone. “I have an email address for—”
“No it’s okay. It wasn’t important.”
Ignoring her, Ruth copied Charlotte’s email address onto a text message and sent it to Erin. “If it was important enough to drag your butt around here at the ass crack of dawn, it’ll probably warrant an email.”
Ruth pushed a chair out from the table and as she took a seat she started to talk quietly. “When Bear died it affected us all in different ways.”
Erin sat down slowly.
“Alex cried a lot, which you’d expect since he was her brother.” Ruth played absently with a loose thread on one of the sheets as she remembered the death of their friend. “Then just before the funeral, she stopped. She didn’t cry at all during the service. Teddy didn’t really speak for months and every time we mentioned Bear’s name she just looked so devastated we stopped talking about him. Sully, well he stopped having sex.” She laughed at Erin’s widened eyes. “I know!
“Peter just wouldn’t talk about it at all. He flung himself into work. His dad was sick at the time so it was easy for him to hide his face in engines all day, and then there was me.” She exhaled a long breath. “I held my friends a little longer during hugs. I took a little longer to get pissed at them, and I damn well made sure they knew how much I loved them.”
She sat back in the chair and tipped her head to the side. “I know you and Charlotte were real close when we were growing up, I don’t know what happened to change that, but I do know losing a friend is just about the shittiest thing that can happen. If Bear walked in this room today, I would hold him and never let him go.
“So whatever happened between you two, maybe it’s time to leave it in the past. I know it’s possible. Jeez, Teddy and you barely spoke since your teens”—she held up a hand to stop Erin from interrupting—“and I know all of that was Teddy being an ass. She can be a pigheaded sonofa sometimes. But look at you two now. Plus, I don’t think you’d be here if you didn’t want to fix it.”
Erin looked at her thoughtfully before finally sighing. “Thank you.”
Patting her arm Ruth grinned. “No problem. Now can I ask you a question?”
Erin seemed to brace herself against whatever Ruth was about to ask, but whatever she was worried about didn’t stop her from nodding in reply.
Ruth leaned forward and stared intently into Erin’s eyes. “Can you feel my mama’s presence in this house?”
Chapter Eighteen
Charlotte’s feet pounded on the gravel track. The sun glistened off the reservoir as she did her third lap around the well-trodden path. She looked up as she ran, catching glimpses of the sun through the leaves. It had been four days since their abrupt exit from Grace Falls, and in that four days Charlotte had yet to settle back into the city she’d called home for the majority of her adult life.
Suddenly there were too many people. The traffic was too noisy. The smells too overpowering. Only when she was in this man-made oasis within the city would Charlotte’s heart stop aching. Surrounded by trees and nature she found a semblance of peace.
The rhythmic beat of her stride provided a hypnotic cadence allowing her mind to wander from its current physical location back to Grace Falls.
Today’s catalyst was an email from Peter. Her thoughts had returned to her hometown again. Yet were she to be honest with herself she would acknowledge that the receipt for the truck
repairs was only a convenient scapegoat. Her mind had never been far from the town, or Erin.
She stopped running and placed her hands onto a tree to help her balance as she stretched out her calf muscle. Soon her stretching was forgotten as her hands caressed the bark of the tree. Its roughness against her fingertips comforted her. Spurred on by a thought she refused to acknowledge, she found herself running again. This time, instead of completing her lap, she was running through the park.
Dodging past tourists, she reached the exit on 59th Street. Making her way towards Midtown her pace only slowed when she reached the crosswalks at the end of each block.
***
Molly saved the document she was working on and took a sip of her coffee, wincing at the coldness of the liquid. Making her way towards the small kitchen that served her floor, she was stunned to see a sweaty Charlotte pleading with the receptionist.
“Charlotte?”
Charlotte spun around and grinned. “Ah, thank God. Do you have a minute?”
Ignoring the look of disgust on the receptionist’s face, Molly motioned for Charlotte to follow her. “’Course, c’mon through. I was going for coffee. Can I get you anything? Water? Respirator?”
Shaking her head, Charlotte walked beside her. “Water for now. Respirator for later.”
Molly dug a bottle of water out of the fridge and handed it to her friend, then poured herself a fresh cup of coffee. “Should I be worried that you’ve obviously run here?”
“I just needed to speak to you.”
“You know there’s this amazing thing called a phone you could have used.” Seeing a scowl form on Charlotte’s face, Molly let it drop. “Let’s go back to my office and we can talk.”
“So what’s so important that you needed to forgo modern technology?” Molly held the door of her office open for Charlotte to enter.
Before Charlotte got a chance to respond, or sit down, Molly gripped the waistband of her shorts.
“Hang on there, sweaty woman. I’m going to get something for you to sit on otherwise I’m going to be looking at your ass print all day.” She opened a drawer and pulled out her under-utilized gym bag. Locating a fresh towel in it she threw it to Charlotte. “Use that.”
Scowling, Charlotte caught the towel and tossed it onto the seat before flopping down, immediately correcting her posture when she caught Molly glaring at her. She sat perched on the seat and waited for Molly to sit down before she spoke. “I have a business I want you to look into.”
“For shits and giggles, or ’cause you wanna buy it?”
Charlotte opened her mouth to answer but stopped. She swallowed before responding. “You want the honest answer? I don’t know.”
Molly nodded thoughtfully. She picked up her pen and looked expectantly at Charlotte. “Okay, so what’s the lucky company called?”
“Grace Timber.”
With her pen poised in mid-air, Molly’s mouth gaped open. “Grace Timber? You sure?”
Nodding Charlotte took a quick swig of water. “I think things are bad. I want to know how bad.”
“Oookay, I’m going to ask you again. Are you thinking of buying?”
Charlotte sucked air through her teeth. “In the interests of the exercise let’s presume yes. Do everything you would do if I wanted to buy it. I want to know every detail you can get.”
“Is it even for sale?”
Laughing, Charlotte shook her head. “It’s my mother’s company now. I reckon the right offer would work. Provided she doesn’t know it’s from me.”
Molly set her pen down. “I’ll get right on it. Tell me what you know about it.”
“What I know is twenty years out of date. I’m only interested in the five thousand acres of hardwood and pine. The other land owned by the family I don’t care about.”
“How much more than five thousand acres can they own?”
Charlotte shifted in her seat as if uncomfortable to answer the question. “The town. They own the land the town is built on and probably a good portion of the buildings too.”
Molly let out a low whistle. “Okay, so what else?”
“We’ll need the logging and mineral rights. The lumberyard and everything that goes with it; buildings, inventory, machinery, contracts. I’m not sure what their product base is these days. There were a whole lot of new buildings and machinery I’m not familiar with.”
Quickly scribbling the list, Molly looked up when Charlotte paused. “That it?”
“The lodges. There’re hunting lodges. I don’t know how many now, but I want them and the hunting rights.”
“You want?” Molly grinned at the look of determination on her friend’s face.
Charlotte nodded once. “I want.”
***
Charlotte was barely five blocks away when she felt her phone vibrate. She pulled it from the zipped pocket at the back of her shorts. Fully expecting it to be from Molly, she held her breath as she opened her email. The loud expulsion of air when she saw Erin’s name in her inbox made other pedestrians turn to look in her direction. With trembling fingers, she selected the email. A broad smile took over her face as she read the two words in the email.
‘I’m listening.’
Quickly dialing Molly’s number, Charlotte felt her legs tremble beneath her. Her gait felt light as if gravity no longer applied to her and nothing was tethering her to the world. She growled as the call switched to Molly’s voicemail.
“Moll, you’re going to have to email or call my cell with that information when you get it. There’s somewhere I need to be.”
Hanging up the call and ignoring the incredulous looks of those around her, Charlotte skipped an entire block, before opting to run as fast as her legs would take her back to her apartment. She’d things to arrange and no time to waste.
Chapter Nineteen
“Why am I wearing these boots?” Erin winced as she inspected her feet, unsure whether her toes were even still alive.
Teddy huffed as she rifled through the assortment of clothing Erin had brought with her. “Because, as I’ve explained countless times, those boots have a one hundred percent record. They are a force of inexplicable power. The wearer of these boots never fails to score when wearing them, and since tonight the entire town is giving up the bar so you can get your gay on, you can’t let them down by not at least getting a little action.”
Erin stood up and started to walk up and down Teddy’s bedroom. “They’re chaffing my heels,” she complained.
“Hang on, I’ve got blister pads somewhere.”
Watching Teddy disappear, Erin continued to pace back and forth in an attempt to break in the boots, which were a size too small, and to burn off the excess energy that had had her on edge ever since she’d sent Charlotte an email that morning.
“Here.” Teddy threw a pack in her direction before continuing her inspection of Erin’s clothes.
Erin had just enough reaction time to catch them. “Thanks a…” She halted as she looked at the pack in more detail. “These are panty liners!”
Teddy looked up from her task. “I can’t find the blister pads, so I improvised.”
“Seriously! Teddy, you’re killing me. If, and it’s a really big if, I manage to meet someone I like and things get a little sexy, how quickly do you think it will take for the mood to disappear when she spots panty liners on my feet?” Erin shook the packet as she spoke.
Teddy held a top up and looked thoughtfully at Erin before shaking her head and returning it to the pile. “Let’s be honest here. We both know you’re not going to get to the boot removing stage with anyone tonight. You’ll be fine.”
“Never take up motivational speaking.” Erin huffed as she sat down on the bed and attempted to remove the boots.
Teddy watched her struggle for a moment before sighing and getting up to help her. “I wasn’t doubting your abilities. I’m just saying you’re not that kind of girl.”
Erin grimaced as Teddy gripped the boot and tried to wrest
le it from her aching foot. “Hey, I’ve been a whore before.” She stopped as Teddy snorted. “Okay, maybe that’s not something to be proud about. I’m just saying how can I be confident when I know I’ve got a feminine hygiene product on my feet.”
Staggering backward as the boot gave up its hold of Erin, Teddy blew out her cheeks. “Okay you have a point. We’ll nix the boots, but you can’t wear anything you brought over. I’ll loan you something.”
Despite sensing she’d been played somehow, Erin reluctantly agreed. She regretted it almost instantly when Teddy clapped her hands together and set out to find something inappropriate for her to wear, leaving her to struggle with the remaining boot.
***
Erin didn’t know whether to be relieved or shocked that the bar was full. There was barely a seat to be had. Women were dancing to the music from the jukebox, the area around the pool table was crowded, and if Sully’s shit-eating grin was any indication, the bar was doing well.
“So you were saying you were looking for a bit more adventure?”
Smiling at the woman that had been chatting with her, Erin took a long sip of the drink she’d been bought. “I guess I’ve been leading a quiet life for a time. Maybe it’s time for a change.”
The woman shot Erin a sultry look while she ran teasing fingertips up her arm. “Maybe that’s something I can help with?”
Gulping, Erin took a moment to compose herself. “What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I like to entertain—”
“Alright, I’ve heard enough!”
Erin turned and glared at Teddy, who was sitting behind her at the bar. “What are you doing here?” she said through gritted teeth.
“Saving your ass,” Teddy hissed back. Jerking her head at Erin’s companion, she raised her voice so those around them could hear. “I’m guessing you’re here trawling for some poor sucker to help you put on a show for your husband. Well, it ain’t happening. So take your indecent proposal act somewhere else.”
The woman scowled at Teddy, grabbed her purse and giving the bar one final scan, flounced out.
