Redemption Road: Jackson Falls Book 5 (Jackson Falls Series)

by Breton, Laurie

  Redemption Road:

  Jackson Falls Book 5

  Laurie Breton

  c. 2013 by Laurie Breton

  All rights reserved.

  Lyrics from “When the Roll is Called up Yonder” by James M. Black.

  This song is in the public domain.

  Thanks once again to Patti Korbet,

  critique partner extraordinaire!

  This one’s for Paul,

  who has spent the last thirty years

  putting up with a crazy writer

  who sometimes

  masquerades as a wife.

  Books in the Jackson Falls Series

  Coming Home: Jackson Falls Book 1

  Sleeping With the Enemy: Jackson Falls Book 2

  Days Like This: Jackson Falls Book 3

  The Next Little Thing: A Jackson Falls MINI: Book 4

  Redemption Road: Jackson Falls Book 5

  Also by Laurie Breton:

  Black Widow (Ellora’s Cave Publishing)

  Final Exit (MIRA)

  Mortal Sin (MIRA)

  Lethal Lies (MIRA)

  Criminal Intent (MIRA)

  Point of Departure (MIRA)

  Die Before I Wake (MIRA)

  Colleen

  January, 1993

  Jackson Falls, Maine

  She hadn’t been sure the fourteen-year-old Vega would make it this far. She'd bought it for a measly two hundred bucks the day that Irv’s kids ran her on a rail out of Palm Beach. They’d sat her down one afternoon, announced that they were contesting the will, and given her fifteen minutes to pack up what was hers before the locksmith waiting in his panel truck in the circular drive outside the mansion changed the lock on the front door.

  It wasn’t what Irv would have wanted, but she was too weary, too discouraged, to fight it. They’d eventually win, anyway. She and Irv had only been married for a year. In the eyes of his kids, that was hardly long enough to justify her stealing their inheritance, and she was certain that the right attorney could easily sway the judge to their way of thinking. It didn’t matter to them that she’d actually cared for their father, despite the twenty-five-year age difference. As far as they were concerned, she was a gold-digger, and that was all that mattered.

  So she’d left with nothing more than two suitcases of designer clothing, a few pieces of jewelry, and seventy-five bucks in her Chanel handbag. She’d sold the bag and most of the jewelry to a small secondhand shop for a price so low it was insulting, but it was enough to cover the cost of the car and the trip to Maine.

  She’d thought about stopping in Boston. Trav lived there, on a dead-end street in Chestnut Hill, and he would have let her sleep on the couch in his finished basement. But she and her brother’s wife had never seen eye to eye, and what was the point of stirring up trouble between them? So she'd given Boston a wide berth, circling around it on 495, praying she and her little Vega, which pretty much topped out at 61 mph, would survive all those crazy Boston drivers swerving around her doing ninety.

  And here she was, back in this shithole town, the one place she’d sworn she’d never return to. But she was out of money and excuses, and home was the one place where, when you had to go there, they had to take you in. On this fifty-degree January afternoon, driving through downtown in a fourteen-year-old Chevy with a mud-splattered windshield because she’d run out of washer fluid two hundred miles back, she could smell the faint sulphur odor from the paper mill downriver. There was no denying the fact that she was one hell of a long way from the moneyed fragrance of Palm Beach.

  The Vega was running on fumes, and she was down to her last twenty-dollar-bill. Colleen downshifted and wheeled into the Big Apple convenience store, where she pumped five bucks worth of fuel into her gas tank and cleaned her windshield with a fistful of snow. She’d gone to high school with the guy working the cash register. Sonny Somebody-or-other. She kept her sunglasses on and her eyes lowered as they completed their transaction, hoping he wouldn’t recognize her and want to chat. Small talk had never been her strongest suit, and what was there to talk about anyway?

  Him: What have you been up to since the last time I saw you?

  Her: Oh, nothing much, except that I just buried my sixty-year-old husband.

  Meadowbrook Road was a quagmire. It always was at this time of year. The town maintained the unpaved road, or so they claimed, but between January thaw and mid-April, it mostly consisted of deep, muddy ruts and frost heaves. Easily navigable in a four-wheel-drive vehicle. Not so much in a Chevy Vega with summer tires that had spent its entire pathetic life in southern Florida and was skittish as a newborn colt on these snowy Maine roads.

  John Anderson was singing Straight Tequila Night on the dashboard radio when she passed the old Abercrombie place, perched atop a small hill. She’d heard, through the grapevine, that her sister had lived in the Gothic Revival farmhouse for a time before selling it to their nephew Billy when Casey and her second husband had built a new home on Ridge Road. Colleen had never met her sister’s new husband, although he’d been a huge part of Casey’s life for nearly two decades, and she was mildly curious. The late, great Danny Fiore would be a hard act to follow. The irony of it struck her: She’d always been jealous of her older sister, had always coveted whatever Casey had that she didn’t. It was really true that you had to be careful what you wished for. She and Casey had never had much in common. She’d certainly never expected that when they finally did share something, it would be the mantle of widowhood.

  She took McKellar’s Hill at a snail’s pace, let out a sigh of relief when she reached the bottom and saw the river ahead of her, its frozen surface dark in spots, slushy from the thaw. Another quarter-mile, and then, on her right, she saw a broad expanse of snowy fields with broken, yellowed corn stalks poking up here and there through the pitted snow. Beyond that, wooden fence posts marked the pasture where Dad’s Holsteins grazed. In the distance loomed the weathered nineteenth-century barn where hay was stored, flanked by the low-roofed addition, circa 1952, that housed the milking parlor and the cattle stalls. Two blue Harvestore silos stood sentinel, and as she drew closer, the old farmhouse hove into view, smoke rising from its chimney, its clapboards in need of a fresh coat of paint.

  She passed the mailbox, clicked her blinker, and turned in at the sign that read MEADOWBROOK FARM - REGISTERED HOLSTEINS. A cluster of chickens scattered as she came to a stop beside the ominously tilted utility pole at the center of the yard, directly behind the red Farmall tractor her father had owned since the beginning of time. For a moment, she just sat there gazing across a muddy, slushy barnyard, the steering wheel vibrating beneath her hands and dread filling every crevice of her heart. Dad didn’t know she was coming. She hadn’t been able to muster the courage to call for fear that he’d hang up on her. Or worse, tell her not to bother. She hadn’t been the favored child to begin with; she could only imagine how far she’d fallen from grace since the day she walked away from Jesse and her nine-year-old son.

  But if there was one thing she’d learned in the past decade, it was that running only got you so far. Sooner or later, everybody had to face the music. So she shut off her ignition. The Vega sputtered and died. She opened her door, swung around, and planted her Ferragamos flat on the muddy ground.

  And for the first time in nearly a decade, Colleen Bradley Lindstrom Davis Berkowitz stood on Maine soil. She took a hard, deep breath, one that drew in the scent of mud season overlaid with the sharp tang of wood smoke and the faint aroma of cow manure. Then she shut the door and marched resolutely toward the house.

  The black sheep of the
Bradley clan had returned to the fold.

  Harley

  He’d been trying to coax her out from under the barn for the past six days, ever since he’d first seen her there, wet and muddy and shivering. No tags. No collar. But that was standard procedure here in rural Maine, where taking unwanted dogs “for a ride in the country” and dumping them off had been elevated to the level of Olympic sport. She had an injured paw, specks of blood mixed in with the mud, and the one time he’d seen her running across the yard, chasing after one of his Rhode Island Reds, he couldn’t help noticing the way she favored that left front foot.

  He had to be the worst kind of fool, caring so much about a butt-ugly, mud-splattered, gimp-legged, chicken-chasing mutt. But the first time he’d looked into those velvety chocolate eyes that pleaded Love me! he was a goner. So he’d been out here every day, crouched in the mud at a prudent distance, while the dog, with one apprehensive eye watching his every move, wolfed down the expensive canned dog food he’d brought her. She still didn’t trust him enough to come within touching distance. Somebody, probably the same somebody who’d dropped her off, had taught her not to trust.

  But she wanted to. He could see it in her eyes, in the tentative wag of her tail. She sensed that he was friend instead of foe. If he waited it out long enough, he’d win her over.

  He’d already given her a name. It was a stupid thing to do, naming a homeless wild creature that, for all he knew, was the canine equivalent of Club Med for fleas and ticks. He hadn’t planned to do it. But her long, matted coat was ginger colored, and it reminded him of the classic Ginger vs. Mary Ann debate he and his brother Earl had spent countless hours locked in when they were kids. While Earl had always picked the perky girl-next-door Mary Ann, Harley had inevitably gone for the sultry, glamorous Ginger. As a kid, it had been harmless fun. As an adult, it had gotten him into trouble more than once. Earl had found his real-life Mary Ann and married her. They had four kids now, a nice house in suburban Atlanta, golf club memberships, a golden retriever.

  Harley, on the other hand, had found more than his share of real-life, high-maintenance Gingers, and where had that gotten him? Up to his ass in cold January mud, sitting under a rotting barn that was likely to fall on top of him any minute, waiting for a dumbass dog to realize her standard of living would improve immensely if she’d just come into the house.

  But old dreams die hard.

  He’d named the dog Ginger.

  It was time to end this little pas de deux the two of them were involved in. Sliding deeper into the mud and gloom, Harley pulled out his secret weapon, a big chunk of roast beef left over from last night’s supper. Unwrapping wrinkled foil, he said, “Come here, sweetheart,” and held out the piece of meat. “There’s another one like this in the fridge. If you play your cards right, it’ll have your name written on it.”

  The dog looked at him with dark, mournful eyes. Gave a single swipe of her matted tail and took a tentative step toward him. “That’s right,” he coaxed. “You know you can trust me.”

  She looked at him, at the piece of beef, back at him, and he watched as she calculated the risk.

  “Tell you what,” he said in a conversational tone. “I’ll set it right here.” He dropped the meat to the muddy ground beside him and turned away from it, toward the narrow strip of daylight that marked his pathway back to civilization. Crossed his arms over his knees. And waited.

  It took a few minutes before she decided to take a chance. From the corner of his eye, he watched her, belly flat against the mud, crawling stealthily toward the beef. While he pretended indifference, she reached the tasty morsel, nosed it delicately, then scarfed it down as though she hadn’t eaten in a month.

  Judging by her prominent ribs, that probably wasn’t far from the truth.

  Harley continued to sit, unmoving except for the rise and fall of his breathing. It might have been five minutes, might have been twenty, before he felt a cool, wet nose nudge his hand. She sniffed him thoroughly, licked the lingering taste of beef from his fingers. Then, with a long, heartfelt sigh, she rested her muzzle against his thigh and closed her eyes.

  “Gotcha,” he said softly.

  Colleen

  The kitchen resembled a war zone. Shoes flung in a mismatched tumble near the door, last night’s dinner dishes stacked haphazardly in the sink, a jumble of paperwork scattered across the table. Random clutter took up counter space: an untidy stack of mail, an assortment of socket wrenches, a carburetor. For an instant, she thought she’d walked into the wrong house. Concern gradually replaced confusion. She couldn’t imagine her meticulously neat stepmother living in this kind of chaos. Had something happened to Millie? Was she sick? Or worse, was Dad living here alone?

  “Dad?” she called out. “Millie?”

  Silence.

  Colleen stepped out of her muddy shoes and walked through the living room to the front hall. “Millie!” she shouted up the stairwell. “Dad!”

  Still nothing.

  Her gaze landed on the bare wall beside the staircase, where the Bradley kids’ high school graduation photos had always hung: Bill, the oldest, at the top, followed by the others, in order of age: Travis, Casey, and finally, Colleen. When she’d last been home, eight years ago, those photos had still been hanging here. What the hell was going on?

  Uneasy, she returned to the kitchen and coolly surveyed the devastation. Then, with a sigh—and in spite of her black sheep status—she did what any good daughter would do: She rolled up her sleeves and tackled the dirty dishes.

  She was nearly finished when the kitchen door burst open, letting in a blast of cool air. Colleen turned from the sink, expecting to see a familiar face. Considering how the day had gone so far, she should have known better. The man who swept through the open door wore overalls, a yellow slicker, barn boots, and a John Deere cap. In his arms, he carried the shaggiest, ugliest, stupidest-looking dog she’d ever seen. At least, she thought it was a dog. It was hard to tell, since both of them, man and dog, were encased from stem to stern in thick, gooey mud. They looked utterly ridiculous. Like swamp creatures.

  She covered her mouth, but a snicker bubbled past her cupped hand and through her slender fingers anyway.

  The stranger eyed her coolly. Although it was difficult to tell his age behind the coating of mud—he might have been anywhere between thirty and fifty—his eyes were a piercing blue. “I don’t know who you are,” he said in a soft voice that, if she wasn't mistaken, carried a hint of Georgia, “but when you’re done laughing, I’d be much obliged if you’d fill the bathtub for me. Right through that door over there.”

  She was tempted to tell him that she knew precisely where the bathroom was, that she’d grown up in this house, but something held her back. Maybe it was those blue eyes. Or maybe it was his unsettling familiarity with her childhood home. He was undoubtedly another of Dad’s strays. As far back as she could remember, her father had taken great pleasure in hiring the most down-and-out farmhands he could find. Homeless, destitute, recovering alcoholics, ex-cons—you name it, and Will Bradley was sure to have hired one at some point in time. It gave him a sense of satisfaction, this ability to help the disenfranchised pull themselves—and, apparently, their dogs—up out of the mire.

  The laughter threatened to return. She coughed to mask it, and ushered man and dog into the bathroom, where she knelt, turned on the taps and adjusted the water temperature. He knelt beside her with the muddy dog in his arms and slowly, carefully, lowered the animal into the warm water. The poor dog looked terrified, but she maintained an odd sort of canine dignity.

  “Good girl,” he said tenderly. “We're gonna get you all fixed up like new.” To Colleen, he said, “Washcloth and shampoo, if you don't mind.”

  She scurried to gather the items he requested, then stood by and played the role of bathing assistant. The bath took two people, one dog, several changes of water, half a bottle of shampoo, and pretty much every clean washcloth and towel in the house. But when the
y were done, the dog was clean. Still ugly, but at least presentable.

  “It’s a start,” he said, leaning back on his heels. “Tomorrow, we’ll make a run into town so the vet can get a look at that foot. While we’re there, maybe I can sweet-talk him into giving her a flea bath and a clipping.”

  “Your dog?” she asked.

  “It seems so.” At her quizzical expression, he added, “She’s a stray. Filthy and half-starved. But those days are over.”

  “Looks like she’s one lucky dog, then.”

  Those blue eyes studied her with a discomfiting intensity. “I appreciate your help,” he said, “but I still have no idea who you are or why you were standing barefoot in my kitchen, washing my dishes.”

  His kitchen? If he thought this was his house, the man was clearly delusional. If he was delusional, then for all she knew, he could be a homeless person. Or a serial killer. Serial killers weren’t easy to differentiate from the general population; they undoubtedly owned dogs, and sent cards to their moms on Mother’s Day. Colleen took an involuntary step backward and said, “It isn’t your kitchen. It’s my dad’s kitchen. Who the hell are you?”

  Suddenly, and without warning, he grinned. “You’re the other one, aren’t you?”

  She took another step back and said warily, “The other what?”

  “You’re the other Bradley girl. Will’s younger daughter. The wanderer.”

  Colleen raised her chin. “I am. And now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d appreciate you telling me where my dad is.”

  “Well…” He raised his John Deere cap and attempted to wipe a smudge of mud from his face. It didn’t work. “Last I heard, Myrtle Beach.”

  “Myrtle Beach?”