“I’m not talking about your language,” she said. “I’m talking about your telling me to not hit on this man sitting in front of me who’s a dead ringer for Paul Newman. Or, who’s that other fellow, the young one with the blue eyes?”
“I don’t know, Nana,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. Silas leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, smirking as he watched us go back and forth.
My grandmother waved her hand. “You know who I’m talking about,” she said. “That actor. The one who plays bongos naked in his house.”
Silas laughed out loud. “You mean Matthew McConaughey,” he said. “Well, thank you very much, Letty.”
I shook my head. “Don’t encourage her,” I warned. “The next thing you know, she’ll be telling you to stand up so she can get a better view of your ass.”
“Oh, would you like me to stand, Letty?” Silas asked, smiling and feigning standing. “I’m happy to oblige.”
“You two make me out to be some kind of lecherous old woman,” Letty said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, you are certainly no nun.”
Letty laughed. “There’s no confusing me with a nun, that’s for sure,” she said. “Now, more importantly, this Silas. Is he your boyfriend?” She turned to me, making a show of ignoring Silas.
“Nana!” I said. “He’s sitting right there.”
“Which is exactly why I asked,” she said, directing her attention to Silas. “Are you her boyfriend?”
I looked at Silas, my eyes wide, and he grinned, leaning forward in his chair. “I’d like to be, Letty,” he said. “More than that, even.”
Letty whooped and turned to me while I glared at Silas, my heart pounding in my chest. I couldn’t think of anything except the fact that I’d brought him here, to meet my grandmother, and now he was ambushing me, right here in front of her.
My head was swimming.
Letty’s voice broke through my thoughts. “I hope you heard that, girl,” she said, narrowing her eyes as she looked at me.
“I’m too old for a boyfriend,” I said, looking at him. “We’re not teenagers.”
“No,” Silas said, not breaking eye contact. “We aren’t teenagers. And you’re right about being too old for a boyfriend. We agree on that.”
My heart skipped a beat. That was sudden, his changing his mind. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed.
I was afraid I was more disappointed.
But when I looked at Silas, he seemed nonplussed. He smiled and winked at me. What the hell was he thinking?
“You know,” Letty said. “Life is too short to dick around not knowing what you want. You have to figure that shit out. Otherwise, all you’re going to have is regret.”
“Letty, I don’t need a lecture -” I began, ignoring the fact that I could feel Silas’ eyes on me.
“All of us need this lecture, from time to time,” she said. “Life is too short to not take what you want from it, and that includes having ties to people, people that matter. Drifting around is only fun for so long, or if you’ve got some place - someone- to come back to.”
I didn’t say anything, only half-listening as Letty lectured me. What the hell was I thinking, bringing Silas here? I should have known that Letty would like him way too much.
I tried to ignore the voice in the back of my head, the one that said that’s the exact reason I’d taken Silas to meet her.
“Now.” Her voice broke through my thoughts. “Now that the both of you are here. Let’s talk about this town. I asked Tempest to do some research for me.”
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SILAS
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.
Tempest looked over at me from where she sat in the passenger seat. “Are you okay with bringing me here?”
“I’m okay if you’re okay,” I said. God, I sounded like such an idiot. Letty’s question about me being Tempest’s boyfriend had thrown me off earlier.
The problem was that I didn’t want to be Tempest’s boyfriend. We were twenty-four, too old for that shit. Twenty-four was young for most people still dating and playing the field. But Tempest and I, we weren’t young twenty-four-year-olds. We’d both been through too much.
And we had too much damn history to ever date.
I couldn’t imagine taking her out to dinner and trying to get to know her.
I didn’t want to take her to dinner and the movies. I wanted to take this girl home. For good.
This girl was mine. She’d always been mine.
“Is it weird for you, coming back here?”
I shrugged. “Sort of,” I said. “Not really. I mean, I came back to my mom’s house when I got back to West Bend, for a little bit. And we came back here after the funeral and shit. I was going to poke around here a few weeks ago too.”
“But you got arrested,” Tempest said.
“Yeah, before I even had a chance to go inside,” I said. “And since then, well…”
“Well.” Tempest tucked her hair behind her ear and licked her lip. That damn lip. My cock stirred watching her, and I had to tell myself to cut that shit out.
“Yeah,” I said. “Since then I’ve been with you.” I opened the car door. “Let’s go.”
Before I put the key in the front door, I warned her. “It’s - not what you’re used to, you know. I mean, we were poor and-”
Tempest put her hand on my arm. “Silas,” she said. “You don’t have to explain anything to me about your childhood. I understand. And I’ve been to your house before.”
“Oh yeah.” I’d forgotten about that.
“Yeah,” she said. Inside the door, she looked around. “So, we’re looking for anything that might link your mom and the mining company.”
“Or Jed,” I said. “Or the Mayor. Elias said someone made a comment about her sleeping with the mayor.”
Tempest drew in a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “You start on one side of the house and I’ll start on the other?”
“Thank you for doing this.” I couldn’t put into words what I felt, why it meant something that Tempest was here with me. I knew it was a big deal, the fact that she’d taken me to meet her grandmother, despite her protests to the contrary.
She looked behind her as she headed down the hall. “I’m glad you brought me here,” she said.
***
It wasn’t more than thirty minutes later that Tempest yelled from the other side of the house. “Silas,” she said. “I found what we’re looking for.”
I followed her voice to my mother’s bedroom, where she stood holding a small book. “What is it?”
“Your mom’s journal,” she said. “I just started paging through it, looking for what was around the time of her death.”
“Luke came through here and didn’t see anything,” I said. “Where was it?”
Tempest pointed to the wall. “I took the grate off the wall, there,” she said.
“How’d you know to look there?”
Tempest shrugged. “I figured if there was anything that might link the sheriff to something hinky, he’d have probably already been here and taken something if it were hidden in a place that was obvious, like under the mattress or in a drawer. The place doesn’t look like it’s been tossed, but if he’s smart, that’s what he would have done. The grate is where I’d stash something if I needed to hide it. Or under a floorboard. Or outside, under a crawlspace. Or -”
I interrupted her. “Okay, I get the picture. Did you read it?”
She opened to a page. “Only a little bit,” she said. “Just to see if there was anything there.”
“Is there?”
She nodded. “You probably should sit down.”
***
“Well, fuck,” I said. “So, Luke and I were right. There was something going on, and Jed and his dad are both dirty. That’s no big fucking surprise.”
“Now you have answers, at least,” Tempest said. “How do you
feel about your mom?”
“You mean, reading her confession to killing my father?” I asked, shaking my head. “Pissed off.”
“I’m sorry, Silas,” she said.
“It’s not even the fact that she’s the one who killed him,” I said. “I mean, he’s been a dickhead my whole life. He beat on all of us. It’s the fact that she killed him now instead of years ago, when we were kids.”
“Back when he was terrorizing you,” Tempest said.
“Exactly,” I said. “I mean, he beat on us right in front of her, you know? You’re going to watch your kids get the shit kicked out of them, going to let that monster kick the shit out of you, and not do anything about it? But you’ll kill him over money? That’s fucked up.”
Tempest shook her head. “It’s a shit deal, Silas.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is, I guess,” I said. “I didn’t shed any tears for her before, and I feel a hell of a lot less inclined to do so now.”
“We also know what’s going on in the town,” she said. “And we have an idea of who killed her.”
“We should bring this to my brothers,” I said.
Tempest’s face looked drawn. “I don’t know if I should go with you,” she said.
I covered her hand with mine. “You think Elias hates you,” I said.
“I know he wouldn’t have been happy about what happened, Silas,” she said. “Me leaving and all. Yeah. I’d guess he hates me.”
I smiled. “And you care what he thinks?” I asked. “This Tempest who gives a shit is really endearing. This nervous Tempest is pretty cute too.”
“Shut up, Silas,” she said. “I didn’t even say I would go.”
“I have the car,” I said. “You’re going.”
***
“Where the hell have you been?” Elias asked, his voice loud. Then he looked behind me. “Who’s this? You have a girlfriend. Why didn’t you say that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Elias, this is Tempest.”
“Hi, Elias,” she said. I reached beside me, took her hand in mine. It felt cold, and I looked at her, biting her lower lip. I couldn’t help but feel happy she was nervous; it meant she cared enough to worry about what Elias thought about her.
“The Tempest?” he said. “I didn’t even fucking recognize -” He stood in the doorway, not moving or inviting us in. “What the fuck are you doing back here? And what the hell are you doing with her? This girl tore you to pieces when she left.”
Tempest’s face flushed, but she didn’t say anything.
“Elias,” I said through gritted teeth. “It’s not any of your business.”
“Screw that,” he said. “Of course it’s my fucking business. I’m your damn twin.”
“Elias Saint.” River’s voice cut through the tension, and Elias turned his head a fraction of an inch, still glaring at me. “Get out of that doorway and invite them inside.”
I glanced at Tempest and mouthed “it’s okay” while Elias turned around and walked down the hallway toward River, leaving the door open behind him.
“Come on in,” she said as Elias stormed past her. “Tempest, is it? It’s lovely to meet you. I’m thrilled to see Silas looking so happy. I’m River.”
Tempest smiled. “We watched one of your movies the other day,” she said. “Silas told me about you.”
“Good things, I hope,” River said.
“Only good things,” Tempest said.
River motioned us inside, led us to the living room. “Come in,” she said. “Ignore Elias. He’s all bluster. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”
Elias walked up behind River and put an arm around her, the gesture protective. “Hell yeah, I meant something by it,” he said.
“Elias,” River said, her tone warning.
Tempest blanched, and as skittish as she’d been about us earlier, I was afraid this would give her reason to leave.
“Shut the hell up,” I said. “My love life is none of your business, and I’m happy. So grow up. We didn’t come here to get grilled by you. We came because we found something important.” I set the journal in the middle of the coffee table. “Now. I suggest you start reading.”
***
An hour later, the room was silent, the discord between Elias and Tempest forgotten. “So, Jed was the one who killed her, then,” Elias said, his jaw set.
“It looks like it,” I said.
“Explain this like I know nothing,” River said. “We know that your mother killed your father.”
“The reasoning for that is laid out earlier on in the journal,” I said. “The mine in the back yard behind the house had been abandoned for years after my father lost the permit to blast there.”
“Because Silas blew it up fucking around,” Elias said.
“Yes, because I blew it up fucking around,” I said. “Anyway, to make a long story short, my father found something back there on the property, dicking around doing who knows what. He brought it down to the geology teacher at the high school, where he was still working as a janitor. The geology teacher got interested because it was europium and it might be worth a bunch if someone wanted to start digging.”
“And that’s when he told your mother he had a plan to make them rich,” River said.
“Yes, and reading between the lines it looks like the geology teacher went behind his back, talked to the Mayor, and -”
“I didn’t see anything in there about out mother and the Mayor,” Elias said.
Tempest looked at me. “It’s in there,” she said. “It’s a little earlier in the journal. She and Jed Easton senior had been hooking up for a while. It sounded like he was sweet on her.”
Elias grunted. “He’s married,” he said. “Boy she sure could pick quality men.”
“I don’t think she was as quite as enchanted with him,” I said. “Anyway, the asshole got drunk and told our mother they were going to be rich. She didn’t believe him at first, but then she talked to the Mayor.”
“Who would have already known,” River said. “Because of the geology teacher. Why didn’t the teacher just go direct to the mining company?”
“It looks like a lot of it is on private land,” Tempest said. “My grandmother got an offer on her place, outside of West Bend, but she said there have been other offers, mostly on places in town.”
“I don’t get it,” River said. “What would that matter? The mining company just buys the property and mines for it, right?”
“Well, first of all, they’re trying to get it for a song,” I said. “Without the residents knowing exactly what they’re sitting on. That’s the most important part.”
“And you can’t just set up a mine in town,” Elias said, turning toward River.
“Oh, right,” River said. “It’d have to be zoned for mining or whatever, right?”
“Exactly,” Elias said.
“So that’s where the Mayor comes in,” River said.
I nodded. “The Mayor and Jed would be able to grease the wheels,” I said.
“So if your mother was in on it, why would Jed kill her?” River asked.
“She laid it right out in the journal,” I said. “She was greedy. She didn’t just want to sell the land. She thought she should get a kickback from Jed and the Mayor. So she threatened the Mayor. He thought he could reason with her, but she said she was going to blow everything wide open - the affair, the fact that Jed and the Mayor were dirty, the mining company scamming the town residents out of a fair price on the land, the whole thing.”
“We’re assuming Jed killed her, though,” River said. “We don’t know that.”
“You’re right,” I said. “The journal only implies it. It doesn’t outright say. It just talks about the fact that Jed went to see her and threatened her.”
“Jed or his father,” Tempest said. “It was one of them.”
“So the question is,” River said. “What we do with what we know?”
“That’s definitely the question,” Elias said. “An
d I don’t know the answer.”
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
TEMPEST
“Are you okay?” Silas was silent the whole drive home, only speaking once we were back at his apartment.
“It’s been a long day,” I said. I was feeling pensive, mentally fatigued from all of the stuff that had happened over the course of the day. Holing up here with Silas, playing house and pretending like the real world didn’t exist was one thing; having the real world intrude and beat reality over both of ours heads was another thing entirely.
“Elias had no call to be talking like that,” Silas said.
“Actually, he’s right,” I said. “He hates me and with good reason.” I crossed my arms, leaned against the kitchen counter.
“He hates you for what you did to me,” Silas said. “It was a long time ago and he has no reason to be a dick about it now.” He stood in front of me, ran his finger down my arm, but I didn’t move.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “What the hell are we doing here, Silas?”
Silas exhaled heavily. “Tempest,” he said. “Don’t let whatever my brother said fuck things up now. The past is past.”
Except when it’s not.
“The past is never really past, Silas,” I said. I’d been staying here, playing pretend house with Silas, but I was just deluding myself into thinking there was a possibility I might leave things behind.
“I never stopped loving you, Tempest,” Silas said. He put his finger under my chin, tilted my head up to his and kissed me on the lips.
“You hated me, back then,” I protested.
“But I didn’t stop loving you,” he said. “And I know you feel the same way about me.”
Silas’ cell phone buzzed loudly in his pocket and he groaned. “Perfect fucking timing,” he said. “Ignore that.”
“You should take it,” I said. “It’s probably Elias.”
“No,” he insisted. “Ignore it.”
It buzzed twice more and Silas cursed under his breath. “Fine,” he said. “But you and I aren’t finished with this damn conversation.”
I sank back against the counter, hearing bits and pieces of the conversation as he walked into the living room. Something about a fight. Silas sounded agitated, but when he returned, he smiled.
Luke: A West Bend Saints Romance Page 54
