by Brenda Novak
“What’re we having?” he asked.
“How about French toast? You like French toast.”
He clapped his hands. “Yay! My favorite! Do you like French toast?” he asked Dawson.
“Sure, French toast sounds delicious to me,” Dawson replied and hoped Sadie would put on something a little less revealing while she cooked—almost as much as he hoped she wouldn’t.
* * *
Sadie peeled off the T-shirt and the shorts she’d worn to bed and tossed them in the pile to be washed. She was going to take a quick shower, but removing her clothes while Dawson was in the house felt rather...erotic, especially after what she’d imagined last night. She could hear his voice as he talked to Jayden, which made him sound very close...
Something had changed between them, she decided. The attraction that’d flared last night wasn’t gone. He’d grown aware of her in a sexual way—and she liked the attention.
“You gotta be smart,” she reminded herself with a stern glance in the mirror. Then she pushed those feelings of excitement to the side, doing her best to ignore them, so she could get ready and wouldn’t be late. She hated to make Dawson stay until she and Jayden could get out the door, but what had seemed so innocent last night—having him stay for a few hours because she needed the company—felt entirely different now that she’d spent hours dreaming about feeling his naked body against hers.
“Ready, Mom?” Jayden hung on the doorknob with one hand while fighting to keep the bag they took to and from Petra’s each day on his shoulder with the other.
She straightened the apron that was part of her uniform for Lolita’s. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
Dawson was watching the news when they came through the living room. He hadn’t been able to shave, so he had a dark shadow of beard growth on his chin. That together with his wrinkled clothes made him look a little unkempt, but Sadie liked him that way. He looked good sitting there on her couch in those faded jeans and that Tennessee Williams T-shirt. She’d found him attractive from the start, but his sex appeal seemed to be growing fast, which worried her. They’d be spending a lot of time out at the farm alone—and she’d only be spending more time with him once she was finished working at the diner.
“Have a great shift,” he said.
“Will you be here when we come home?” Jayden asked.
He chuckled as he shook his head. “No. You’ll have your couch back.”
“You can use it. We can share,” he said, repeating what Sadie had told him earlier. To her ear, Jayden sounded a little disappointed, which surprised her.
“Thanks, but I should be okay at my place. I’ll be careful not to drop by when I’m so tired.”
Jayden hitched the bag higher on his little shoulder. “Maybe I can come see those things you grow sometime.”
“I’ve already told your mother she can bring you whenever she wants.”
Jayden immediately turned to her. “Can I go today?”
He had been at Petra’s so much recently. Sadie knew he missed being with her. And some of her previous fears seemed unfounded—given that Dawson could’ve murdered them both in their sleep last night and hadn’t so much as given them a threatening look. But she was still worried about Sly’s reaction. Ironically, she was far more frightened of her ex than her new employer.
“Can I, Mommy? Please?” Jayden begged.
If Jayden came only for this afternoon, would Sly have to know?
He could too easily find out, she decided. He’d been keeping such a close eye on her—had always kept a close eye on her, but more so now that she was working for Dawson.
“I’ll think about it while I’m at the diner.” She was so tired of letting Sly dictate what she could and couldn’t do, but she had to be careful or he’d sue her for custody.
She took the bag from him and they walked out to find Maude Clevenger spraying off the stepping-stones in the yard.
“Mornin’!” Maude called and turned off her sprayer in anticipation of their usual chat.
Sadie breathed a sigh of relief that she’d asked Dawson to stay inside until after she left. Maude would go in for breakfast in a few minutes. Then no one should be paying any attention to what went on at her place.
“Morning,” she responded and smiled as Maude approached.
“I’ve got something to show you,” her landlady told Jayden, eyes sparkling with excitement.
He hurried over. “What is it?”
“Only the biggest snail I’ve ever seen,” she replied.
“A snail? Where?”
Sadie put the bag in the back of the El Camino and followed her son to a table where Maude had put the snail in a large plastic bowl. While they oohed and aahed, Sadie pulled her phone from her purse and texted Dawson. My landlady is outside, all right. But she should go in after we leave. Can you keep an eye out for her and make sure she’s gone before you come out?
You got it, came his response.
When she had Jayden in his safety seat and was backing out of the drive, Sadie sighed in relief. She thought she’d pulled off keeping Dawson’s presence a secret. Jayden had been so excited by the snail he hadn’t mentioned the fact that they’d had a visitor, and with as quickly as his mind moved on to whatever was happening at the moment, she couldn’t imagine he’d pipe up with that later—not unless something jogged his memory. With any luck, that wouldn’t happen. She should be in the clear.
But then she caught a glimpse of a black-and-white sedan turning at the corner and realized that Sly had probably been behind the wheel. He’d just driven past her house. Again.
She searched for where Dawson had parked his truck and nearly gasped when she spotted it not far from where the patrol car had turned. There it was, plain as day!
Had Sly recognized it?
He had to have. Like her car, that truck was distinctive...
“Why aren’t we going, Mommy?”
Jayden was so used to her backing out of their drive as fast as was safely possible, rushing to get him to Petra’s so she wouldn’t be late for work, that he’d noticed the hesitation. They were sitting in the street, her foot on the brake as she gaped at Dawson’s truck. She was trying to convince herself that what she’d seen a moment earlier was merely her imagination—fear getting the best of her—and not her ex-husband’s cruiser.
“We’re going.” She gave the El Camino some gas, but instead of heading straight to Petra’s, she rounded the corner and headed toward the center of town. She wanted to know if that was Sly...
“Can I go to the farm?” her son asked.
Her heart was still pumping erratically, knocking against her chest and making it difficult to concentrate. “What’d you say, honey?”
“Can I go to the farm today?”
“I told you I’d think about it at the diner. I’m not at the diner yet.”
“Why can’t I know now?”
She reached California Street—the main thoroughfare in Silver Springs—and looked both ways, searching for any sign of a patrol car, but saw nothing. “I’ll call you on my break and let you know.”
“I can’t wait that long. I want to go to the farm!” he pleaded. “You’ll be there, won’t you?”
She decided to stop by the store while she was heading in the wrong direction. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
“Then why can’t I come? Dawson said I could!”
She wanted to say, “Because your father would use it against me.” But she refused to undermine Jayden’s relationship with Sly. They struggled to get along as it was. “Today might not be the best day, that’s all. There will be plenty of other opportunities.”
Because he wasn’t happy with her answer, he continued to beg her both before and after she stopped to get him and Petra’s kids some fruit snacks for later, but Sadie he
ld fast. If Sly had recognized Dawson’s truck, there’d be a confrontation, and she didn’t want Jayden to have any part of that.
She was still feeling nervous after she’d dropped him off and was pulling into the diner—but a text she received from Dawson brought her a bit of relief.
All is well. Your landlady turned her back to put away the hose, and I slipped right past her. Houdini couldn’t have escaped more cleanly.
She smiled at the image he’d created of himself sneaking away. He made her feel good—from when he stood up to Sly at the door to when he helped her down from the roof to when he tried to fire her, for her own good, and couldn’t quite succeed because he had too soft of a heart. He wasn’t what other people thought he was. He was the best-kept secret in town.
But she couldn’t get too excited. Sly would somehow wreck what she had going, if he could.
10
Since Dawson had been released from jail, he’d thought only of getting the farm up and running and bringing Angela home, where she belonged. He owed it to his parents. They’d essentially saved his life when they adopted him, gave him a good home and provided a solid education. More than anything, they’d given him love, which was what had finally made him whole—or as whole as he was going to get. He didn’t even like to think about what’d come before. But ever since last night, whenever he let his mind wander, he didn’t dwell on how many more plants he could put in if he cultivated another five acres, or how he might respond if he received a difficult question from the state representative who was coming in five days to see if he’d be able to provide a stable environment for Angela.
He thought about Sadie.
“Damn it, stop!” he growled at himself. There was no one around to hear him; he could do and say what he wanted. But no amount of censure seemed to change the pattern of his thoughts, not since last night. He’d had to put his sexuality on a shelf, had to focus on other things to survive. Now that the danger was past, and he was left to pick up the pieces, however, that all-too-human part of him was reasserting itself with a vengeance. Those gorgeous legs and what he might’ve found had he lifted that T-shirt she’d been wearing remained center stage in his mind, which affected other parts of his body, as well.
He should’ve hired someone else. A man.
Except he couldn’t hire a man to help bathe his sister...
As the sun moved higher in the sky, he found himself glancing toward the drive more and more frequently. He kept asking himself why it mattered to him what time Sadie arrived. She was going in to clean. It wasn’t as if they’d have much interaction. But he was looking forward to seeing her in spite of all that.
Shortly after noon, a car arrived, but it wasn’t Sadie. Although he couldn’t be sure, since he was standing at such a distance, Dawson was fairly certain it was Aiyana’s oldest two sons parking in his drive. He’d met them when he attended school at New Horizons Boys Ranch and had been friends with them ever since. Like Aiyana, they’d stood by him despite the doubt and suspicion he’d faced almost everywhere else, but he hadn’t spent any time with them since he’d been home. He’d been too focused on what he had to accomplish, too busy to even return their calls.
“I guess we have to drop by unannounced to get to speak to you,” Elijah said as they met halfway between the field where Dawson had been working and the drive where the Turners had parked.
“Sorry,” Dawson said. “It’s nothing personal.”
Elijah exchanged a knowing glance with Gavin. “We don’t doubt that. You’ve been through hell. I’m not sure I’d be particularly friendly after a year in jail, either.”
“Exactly,” Gavin chimed in.
“I figured you’d come around when you were ready—didn’t want to push,” Elijah continued. “But you know my mother.”
She’d tried to call him. He’d been meaning to get in touch... “Aiyana sent you?”
Elijah lifted a bucket. “With cleaning supplies.”
Dawson removed his cap and wiped the sweat from his brow. “She expects you to clean?”
“Just the...you know, the bedroom.”
Realization dawned. “The murder scene.”
“She asked us if we’d mind,” Gavin chimed in. “And we don’t.”
“Better us than you,” Elijah added. “She told us you were preserving it for some forensics expert, so we purposely held off to give you time. But if that’s happened already, we’d like to take care of the washing up for you.”
Gavin, who had a darker complexion and a smaller build, with tattoos covering both arms, propped his hands on his lean hips. “Has the forensics dude been here?”
Dawson nodded. “Guy by the name of Ed Shuler came out the day after I was released.”
Elijah spat in the dirt. “Good. He find anything that might be helpful?”
“Don’t know yet. He took all kinds of samples—fiber samples, wall swabs, drain swabs, blood samples, fabric samples and who knows what else. But he told me it could take months to process everything.”
Elijah frowned. “That’s disheartening.”
“Like everything else that’s happened this year,” he said.
“So now all you can do is wait?” Gavin chimed in.
Dawson shoved his hands into his pockets. “That’s about the sum of it.”
“But you’re done with the room, right?” Elijah asked. “Have you cleaned it yet?”
“Not yet.” Dawson knew it needed to be done—and before he brought Angela home. No one in his or her right mind would let him take custody of his sister with their parents’ blood still spattered all over the walls. But every time he decided to get scrubbing, he couldn’t quite bring himself to follow through. He hadn’t even been able to make himself go inside the room yet. The day he got home, he’d been physically ill, nauseous, as he climbed the stairs. That was why he’d locked their door—and tried to put what was behind it out of his mind. Even when he let Ed Shuler inside, he hadn’t gone in with him. He’d used some flimsy excuse that he had to take care of something else to get as far away as possible.
“So we can do that for you now?” Gavin pressed.
He almost said yes. He sure as hell didn’t want to do it himself. But washing up smacked too much of moving on, and moving on made him feel disloyal. “No. I’m not ready.”
“Not ready,” Elijah repeated.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
Elijah arched one eyebrow. “My mother’s afraid you’ll let what happened consume your life. On the chance you refused to let us clean, she told me to tell you that your parents loved you and would want what was best for you, and that might be letting go. She says she’d feel that way about us, if she were in your parents’ situation.”
“The killer took a year from you,” Gavin concurred. “Don’t let him take any more.”
“I’m going to catch the bastard,” Dawson said. “I have to. I won’t be able to live with myself if I don’t.”
Gavin let his breath go in a long, audible exhale. “What does that mean?”
“It means I have to do this my own way. I’ll clean the room when I’m ready.”
“I wish you’d let us take care of it for you,” Elijah said. “But...I don’t want to make things worse for you. I’ll tell my mother that she’ll have to come out here and talk to you herself if she feels that strongly about it.”
“Tell her I appreciate the support she’s given me. The same goes for you. A person in my situation...having someone in your corner makes a big difference.”
“We know you better than everyone else,” Elijah said.
Gavin kicked a pebble in the dirt. “I feel terrible. If only I’d been home when you came by after shoving that hitchhiker out of your truck, I could’ve corroborated some of your story.”
“I could’ve gone back
to the bar to see you, but I didn’t want to drink anything else, didn’t want to get sucked back into that scene for any length of time. I was just wasting fifteen or twenty minutes until I could go home and get some rest. I had to work the next morning.”
“And you didn’t want to let your parents down by being unable to do that.”
He chuckled without mirth. “That’s the irony.”
The sound of a motor caused them to turn. Sadie had arrived. She parked to one side so the Turners could still get around her and climbed out carrying a small, white sack.
“Hey.” Elijah obviously recognized her and seemed startled to see her.
She glanced from one brother to the other. “Hi.”
“Sadie works for me now,” Dawson explained to avoid any misunderstanding. “She’ll be taking care of Angela, once we get the house cleaned up and I can bring my sister home.”
“You quit the diner?” Gavin asked her.
“I’m still there, but only for another week or so. This job will give me more hours. I needed to get something that paid a bit more.”
Elijah nodded. “I see.”
Dawson dug the house key out of his pocket. His parents had never locked the house during the day. They’d rarely bothered to lock it even at night. When they were murdered, the house had been left wide-open, and Dawson knew it was because they figured he’d lock up after he got home. They’d felt safe. But after what he’d been through, he wasn’t about to allow anyone, including the vandals who’d come after, the chance to get inside his home ever again. “Here you are. You can go inside and get started,” he told her.
“Okay. See you in a minute.” She offered them all a self-conscious smile before leaving.
“Sadie, Dawson?” Elijah whispered once she was out of earshot. “What about Sly?”
“What about him?” Dawson asked.
“He’s super possessive, for one. I can’t imagine he’ll be okay with having her out here—with you—even if you weren’t—” he paused, grappling for words until he ended with “—public enemy number one right now.”
