by Dani Collins
“To take over from him? God, no. I don’t want to be here today. Why would I move back here for good?”
“I hear that,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, “But?” he prompted.
“Dad and I have talked before about his retiring early and it always looks like it will cause more problems than it will solve. For instance, if he leaves Roy’s, does Lyle get to keep his job?” She looked him right in the eye, like she was demanding an answer she already knew.
Sterling kept his teeth firmly clenched against saying, Not if I have anything to do with it.
Paige’s pained smile told him she knew what he was refusing to say aloud.
“If Lyle doesn’t have a job, his support payments to Brit dry up. Dad cashing out means he could pay off some of his own debts, but then what? He needs something to live on. So, honestly? My reasons for encouraging him to sell or not to sell will have nothing to do with you. That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?”
“No, I want to hear that you’ll sell.”
She smiled without teeth. “And you always get what you want, don’t you? I’ve always envied that.”
Chapter Three
I didn’t get you.
That’s what he should have said, Sterling thought, as he climbed into his rented SUV. Because he had wanted Paige back in the day. Badly. He just hadn’t let on because she had been The Wrong Girl.
And he was still feeling robbed because he didn’t have the reassurance he’d come for when he’d rearranged his schedule to make this trip. In fact, he could safely say he was doing more damage than good here. At this point, the best way to help his father get the company back would be to leave town as soon as possible.
He pulled out his phone to check messages— Oh, they had to be kidding.
His father had been home long enough to pick up his mother and they were headed to the factory. There was a security problem and they wanted him to meet them there.
Right. He sighed. So much for staying away from that black hole.
He took his time, reacquainting himself with the town in the gloom of late afternoon rain, admiring the way the clouds hung against the forested hills on the far side of the valley, and checking out the apple trees with their few unpicked fruits falling off their branches.
Eventually he caught up to his parents at the end of the short driveway onto the factory grounds. His father was locking the sliding gate and a van with a security company logo was pulling away.
“The gate wasn’t shut properly when they came by on their rounds.” Sterling’s mother, Evelyn, had her blue cardigan buttoned all the way to her neck. An invisible button twisted her lips into a pinch of importance. She held onto her looks, though. Minimal wrinkles marred her skin and if there were any gray hairs among her brunette permanent, only her hairdresser saw them. “They said it didn’t look like anyone had broken into the buildings so your father’s locking up.”
“You’re not going to check inside?” Sterling looked around the quiet yard. “Did they check everything?”
“Sometimes Lyle comes in to work when the machines are down, but I don’t see his truck. I’m sure it’s fine.”
His father was carrying more weight than he used to, edging toward unhealthy. His hands, as he tugged on the gate lock, looked shiny and pale. Old. It wasn’t just the signs of age that disturbed Sterling, though. It was the glumness hanging over him like the September sky. Not a strong advertisement for the joy to be found in running Roy Furnishings.
“I’ll check it if you want to take Mom home, Dad.”
“It’s not necessary. Your mother has supper on.”
“It’s in the slow cooker, Walt. It can wait. If Sterling is showing an interest in the factory, we should encourage him.”
Here we go, Sterling thought, while his father muttered, “It’s not clarinet lessons.”
“Take the keys,” his mother urged Sterling. Keep them.
“Fine. We’ll look around.” His father reopened the gate with a beleaguered sigh.
“You don’t look dressed for checking alarm doors, Mom. Do you want to wait in the car?”
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist visiting the factory. No, I’ll walk with you.”
She rode with him down the drive and he half-smiled as he walked to the entrance and held the door for her. “Did you sneak down here and unlock the gate yourself, so I’d have to walk through with Dad?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Sterling.”
He didn’t think it was ridiculous. She’d been known to do worse in her effort to get him back here, but leading the life he had mapped out for himself was what this trip was supposed to be about. If he helped put the company back into his father’s hands, he could quit feeling guilty about refusing to fall into the trap of family tradition and expectation.
“Did you have your things put in storage?” his mother asked, as they followed his father past the dark, empty open office with cubicles. “Or is it already en route?”
She was pretending to joke, but she wasn’t. Not hardly at all.
Nothing ever changed here. The fabric on the cubicles wore the odd strip of duct tape. The walls in the hall needed fresh paint. The floor begged for new carpet. He passed a yellowed memo that instructed how to use the fax machine.
“I’m not moving back, Mom,” Sterling said, laconic but firm as they entered the quiet factory. His voice was amplified by the large expanse of concrete floor and high, tin ceiling. The distant patter of rain was the only sound except for the scuffs of their footsteps.
His mother stopped walking so he and his father did, too. Sterling looked past the silhouettes of equipment, into the tall shadows of the building’s interior. It always smelled the same here. Cedar and pine, cool metal and fresh, Pacific Northwest air. Familiar.
Not like home, he reassured himself. Not anymore. But familiar. Nostalgic.
“How will you run the factory from North Carolina?” his mother asked.
“I don’t intend to. I told you that on the phone.”
His father jangled his keys. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here. We can go.”
“Dad.” Sterling appreciated that small towns like Liebe Falls were relaxed and had low crime rates, but they’d called him here on the pretense of a security concern. The least they could do was play it out. “I’ll make sure all the doors are locked. It will just take a minute.”
“You’re spending too much time in cities, son.”
Sterling shook his head and started toward the nearest door.
“Never mind. I’ll do it,” his father said gruffly, and walked over to rattle the bar. It held.
Sterling watched him, trying to figure out why his father was so reluctant to do something so basic. Plain old age?
“You’re not saying anything. Are you thinking about it?” his mother asked.
“I have my own company to run, Mom.”
She made an exasperated noise. “What company? Where?”
His father was making his way around the inside perimeter, but Sterling wasn’t sure he’d checked the last door he’d passed. Sterling steered his mother in that direction. “You know. Patty and I run a consulting firm.”
“You don’t make anything.”
“Just money.”
“You run around telling people what to do. You can do that here. It’s your heritage, you know.”
“Telling people what to do?”
“Honestly, Sterling.”
Sterling smiled. It didn’t hold, though. This company had been his father’s heritage until Grady Fogarty had bought in. Sterling still felt responsible for that and it had nothing to do with Paige. She had said she wasn’t nursing any ill-will so he ought to be able to leave, confident his father would own the company, but he wasn’t confident. He was worried.
“Your father needs you, Sterling. He can’t run the company while running for Mayor.”
Sterling frowned at his father as he came through the darkened space behin
d a stack of lumber. “Since when are you running for Mayor?”
“That’s just an idea your mother has.”
“He’d had enough of working with Grady. I suggested it.”
“If Grady retires, I’ll be needed here,” his father pointed out.
“Not if Sterling comes back.”
“Sterling’s not coming back.” His father wound behind the planer to check another door.
Strange. His father used to want him here almost as badly as his mother did. He missed another door, too. Sterling went to check it himself.
“The Liebe Falls Business Association has offered their support,” his mother said, keeping pace and reaching for Sterling’s arm as she stepped over an oil stain.
“Heavily influenced by the wives of the LFBA, of course,” his father added, his big voice bouncing around the hollow space.
“Walt, you put food on half the tables in this town. Don’t downplay how important that makes you to people.”
His father tucked in his chin and shot off to the next door.
“It embarrasses him,” she confided, keeping her hand curled through Sterling’s bent elbow. “He’s never had the self-assurance you have, but I think it would be good for him. Of course, you’ll need to mind your behavior. No more performances like today. What on earth were you doing, going to that house with those women?”
“Stress tests on Roy collectibles.”
“That’s not funny.” She released him. “You could have ruined everything, chasing that girl again.”
“I wasn’t chasing her. I was asking about her plans.” Why did he feel like he was lying? Maybe because he’d dragged them both through an ugly chapter in the past for nothing. “Do you want the company back, Dad?”
“Hell, yes,” his father said, heading toward the man-door beside the bigger rolling door of the shipping bay.
“We want it for you, Sterling,” his mother said.
“I want it for myself,” his father corrected. “Worst thing I ever did was let Grady Fogarty buy in.”
“And you’re not to blame yourself for that, Sterling.”
“I don’t, Mom. I was eleven.” A lifetime of being exposed to emotional blackmail had given him a strong ability to detect and deflect it. But deep down, he did blame himself. It wasn’t just the mess he’d made of things with Paige. If he hadn’t scuffled with her brother in the sandlot seven years before that, their fathers might never have wound up in business together.
Lyle might not have held a grudge and used his sister to settle it.
Is that what had happened? Maybe Paige had been her brother’s innocent pawn. They turned it into me wanting to lose my cherry to you.
She wants it to be you.
Fuck he hated Lyle Fogarty. Probably more than his father hated Grady.
“No, it wasn’t your fault.” His father sounded angry as he moved to the final door. Blaming himself, maybe, for being quick-talked, because there was something extra in the thrust he gave that door, making it clang and echo.
“It wasn’t anyone’s fault,” his mother said, her pitch an octave higher. “Grady Fogarty could sell you the water from your own tap. He made it seem like such a good idea, but the minute we accepted his investment check, we realized what a mistake it was to let the company fall out of family hands. So if you could stay in town to help your father get it back, Sterling, it would mean a lot to him.”
“That’s what I came back to do, Mom, but—”
“So you do want to work here.”
He mentally counted the days until he would leave on Sunday. They were going to pass like kidney stones.
“Stop badgering him,” his father said. “He’s not ready. I’m not ready.”
Sterling wasn’t sure if he was being supported or insulted. He pulled up socks on companies a hundred times the size of this one.
“He can still help with the negotiation,” his mother said.
“I can handle my own negotiations, Evelyn. And it’s better if I do.” His father sent a look that made her avert her face.
“I’m just saying, Sterling makes his living at this sort of thing. Take advantage of the education you paid for.”
And the double edge on that comment wasn’t meant to remind Sterling of his obligations at all.
“I don’t need any help,” his father said, “Now, let’s go home. I’m hungry.”
“I’ll just get that door.” Sterling pointed. “You missed it.”
His father stopped him with an impatient look. “I’ll do it,” he muttered, and grumbled about wild goose chases as he strode to the back wall of the factory. “All of them have held. We didn’t need to do this.”
“He feels threatened,” Sterling’s mother said. “He’s not ready to admit how badly you’re needed here.”
“That’s because I’m not,” Sterling said, as his father pushed the last door open.
~ * ~
The receptionist at Liebe Falls Legal Services kept her ear pressed to the telephone as she nodded and waved Paige toward the back offices.
Paige smiled, relieved. All that held her together this morning was static cling and her crap day was only beginning. Thank God it was Friday.
She used the photocopier and helped herself to coffee from the staff room, then brushed her knuckles beneath the ‘Britta Beck, Notary Public’ nameplate as she nudged open the half-closed door. “Got a minute?”
Britta glanced up. She’d had her afro trimmed close, died bright red, and straightened sometime in the last few weeks. Paige was having trouble getting past the feeling she was talking to a stranger.
“Zack told me you stayed at the house last night, but he didn’t say anything about you having a black eye. What the hell?”
“Yeah, that was an accident.” Paige brushed at the tender spot on her cheek as she closed the door and took a seat. “Rosie fell into me. She was drunk.” She shrugged.
“That’s why you didn’t go back to Seattle? To babysit a drunk? Sweetie...”
“I know, I know. But that’s only part of it,” Paige said on a heavy sigh. “I swear, this town is like the mafia. Every time I think I’m out, it sucks me back in. But Rosie is a mess. I had to stay with her. She lost her job, so that’s super cool.”
“Oh, Paige.” Britta braced her elbow on her desk and pressed her forehead into her hand.
“And she’s having nightmares about Dad. Wakes up crying. It’s awful, Brit. I feel so bad for her.”
“Fair enough,” Britta said, lifting her face and using a voice full of patient reproach as she clasped her hands together and leaned onto her forearms. “But she’s an adult. You don’t have to fix her life for her.”
“She doesn’t have anyone else. That’s why she hooked up with Dad.”
“So he would take care of her? Look around, Paige. You’re the one doing it. Seriously, forget the intervention for the addicts in your life. Let’s take a look at what you’re addicted to. You can’t take responsibility for all of your dad’s women. It’s a full-time job and needs clerical support on the side. Look after yourself.”
“I’m trying to, but Dad—”
“You are not! You look like hell.”
“Gee, thanks. Here I was this morning, saying to myself, ‘I’ll go see Britta. She’ll make me feel better.’ And look how good I feel.”
Her best friend gave her a you know I’m right look. “You want to feel better? Go home to Seattle, crawl into bed, and don’t come back for a month.”
“I’m never gone longer than two weeks.”
“My point, exactly.”
“You and Anthony,” Paige muttered, reminding herself that it took two to destroy a marriage and she had definitely done her part. “He hounds me daily, you know, to give up the apartment. Says I’m never in it anyway. So I will go back today, if only to keep him from being right, but I have a meeting at the factory in fifteen minutes—”
Britta rolled here eyes.
“Oh, don’t be like that. Something
happened at the hospital yesterday—”
“Yeah! Sterling Roy showed up.” Britta pointed like it was a final clue in a murder mystery. “And you took him home with you! What’s up with that?”
“I didn’t take him home! Seriously, who said that? What is it with this town?” She gave her brow a rub with two fingers, not having slept as she had tried to process what he’d said yesterday about believing all this time that she had set him up.
How? Why?
It was true there was no love lost between him and Lyle. They’d been the same age and very well matched through school, if complete opposites in their attitudes toward life. Where Sterling was the original Good Guy, Lyle was the ultimate Bad Boy. Lyle was every bit as smart as Sterling, but had blown off more classes and tests than he’d shown up for. Same went for athletics. In the early years, they’d been neck and neck in every race, but where Sterling had stuck it out and won all the blue ribbons, Lyle had walked away from any talent he’d shown, too cool for school.
Sterling had had all the advantages and Lyle had had what she, Paige, had had: nothing.
But for all their brother-sister bickering, she and Lyle were tight. He might have teased her about her crush, but he wouldn’t have used her to bait Sterling.
Would he?
“Sterling was just helping me get Rosie home,” she muttered, realizing Britta was waiting for an explanation.
“That’s it?”
Paige settled back on her chair, low on her spine, warming both hands around her coffee mug.
“He wanted to put the past behind us and convince me to—” She stopped, unwilling to reveal the injuries that had been reopened yesterday. It was all so pointless. She hadn’t even thought of Sterling, not really, for years. But there he’d been, in her bedroom, compelling as ever, eyeing her up in the mirror and forcing her to confront what she’d worked so hard to put behind her.
He’d made her face how much humiliation and anger and confusion was still stockpiled inside her. Then he’d revealed that he thought she was some kind of mastermind conspiracy plotter. It had hurt to be accused—blamed—after all this time for something that still made her heart ache.
She noticed Britta gazing at her with a quirked pout, her head tilted in empathy.
