by Erin Wright
He couldn’t help the small smile that grew around the edges of his lips. “I’m sure it depends on who you asked,” he said blandly. “I’m sure there are people in this town who’d believe that’s exactly why I was punching Dick.”
“Dick? I thought he preferred to go by Richard.” She arched a perfectly manicured eyebrow at him. He grinned boyishly at her.
“Oh, he does. Which is exactly why I call him Dick. It’s just a lot more appropriate for his personality.”
She cracked a smile of her own at that. “Well, why don’t you tell me about your relationship with Richard. We can start there.”
Wyatt settled back in his chair. “How long do we have?” he asked sarcastically.
“As long as we need,” she responded without missing a beat. “Normally, I schedule my clients in one-hour increments but I don’t have anyone else in Long Valley to see today, so I can spend the afternoon chatting with you if that’s what you’d like.”
She was purposefully pushing back at him; she knew he wouldn’t want to spend all afternoon talking to a counselor any more than he’d want to spend all afternoon taking ballroom dancing lessons.
She had a spine. He liked that.
“I married Dick’s sister, Shelly, seven years ago. I got along with Dick and his father, Mr. Schmidt, fine in the beginning but it quickly became apparent that they didn’t think I was good enough for her. Which I probably wasn’t, but truth be told, what husband is good enough for their wife?”
“So your father-in-law is Judge Schmidt?” she asked.
“Ex-father-in-law,” he corrected.
“You got a divorce?”
“No.” He heaved a sigh, and shifted in his seat uncomfortably. This was the hard part. This was the awful part. It was the one good thing about living here in Long Valley – everyone knew his story. He didn’t have to tell it over and over again. He didn’t have to face these facts that made up his shattered life. “She died. Car wreck. One year ago. My daughter was in the car with her. They both died at the scene.”
She just stared at him assessingly, nodding once to indicate she’d heard him, so he continued. “My father-in-law and brother-in-law blamed me for it.”
“Were you driving?” she asked.
“No. I was at home.”
“Then why did they blame you?”
“Because I’d asked her to go get the milk that night. I’d just gotten home – it had been a long day – and Shelly told me we were out of milk. Normally I’d go and get the milk because you don’t want to buckle in a five year old to drive to Franklin just to buy milk but I was tired and didn’t want to make the drive. I was being selfish.” He stared at the far wall, a nondescript print of a seashore hanging there, and felt his throat tighten with frustration and tears.
No, not tears. He didn’t cry.
Just frustration.
“What time was it?” the counselor asked softly.
“Time? Evening. Maybe around nine or so.”
The counselor let the silence fill the small room, expanding, pushing down on him, but he didn’t say anything and so she finally, blessedly, continued. “So when you saw your brother-in-law—”
“Ex-brother-in-law.”
“Your ex-brother-in-law at the convenience store, you decided that it was time to discuss this…with your fists?”
He nodded. It may not be politically correct to admit it, but yeah, that was exactly how it went down.
“Did he do anything to provoke this…discussion?”
“Yes!” He stopped, realizing that his voice was overwhelmingly loud for the tiny room they were in. He breathed in, trying to reign in the feelings washing over him, but the injustice of it all had been gnawing at him for weeks now. It was time for someone other than his lawyer to hear his side of things, dammit.
“He was driving drunk. He almost took out the front side of Mr. Petrol’s. He was there to buy more beer, and the cashier let him. Told me that he wasn’t about to piss off the judge’s son, not when his probation was almost up. Dick was already in his ugly-ass orange camo Jeep when I came outside to stop him from driving away. Things got out of hand pretty quickly.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops instead?”
“That’s what everyone says I should’ve done, but I say bullshit. The cops would’ve come, arrested him, and he would’ve been out by morning. His dad would’ve made sure that he got off scot-free from it. That would’ve been the end. Dick Schmidt would’ve gotten away with it. Again. I couldn’t stand the thought. This whole valley…it’s like that everywhere, for everyone. Special treatment if you know the right people, can pull the right strings.”
“Have you thought about moving away from here?”
“Away?” he echoed dumbly. “And go where? My farm is here.”
“I’m pretty sure that there are farms elsewhere,” she said with a quirk of her lips.
“But my family is here. I’ve never lived anywhere else. I couldn’t leave Long Valley.” He felt panic welling up inside of him at the idea, and he was surprised by the strength of it. He’d spent most of his life hating Long Valley, hating the good ol’ boys club that was so prevalent in the area, but when faced with the idea of leaving it, he was terrified. This was his home. His great-great-grandparents helped settle the area. He couldn’t leave it.
“Okay, so if you don’t want to sell and move elsewhere, what can you do to make your time here in Long Valley more pleasant? If you won’t change your circumstances, how will you change your outlook on those circumstances?”
That stopped him in his tracks. “Change his outlook”? That too had never occurred to him.
He was beginning to realize that there were many things that hadn’t occurred to him, and he wasn’t particularly sure he appreciated that insight.
Chapter 6
Abby
Chloe stirred her coffee and looked at Abby over the rim of it as she took a sip. “So, what’s been happening in your world? Anything exciting?”
“I wouldn’t call it exciting,” Abby said with a grumpy sigh, “but Wyatt Miller has been happening.”
“Oh, I heard about that! Is it true that he beat up Richard Schmidt in the parking lot of Mr. Petrol’s?”
“Yes.” Abby knew she wasn’t strictly supposed to gossip about the jail inmates, but she couldn’t help herself. She had to talk to someone about it, and the other choice was her dad, and that so wasn’t happening. Chloe was her closest friend, and thus by default, was immune from the rules about what she was and wasn’t allowed to be told. The best friend version of “spousal privilege.”
“Soooo…how has he been as an inmate?” Chloe asked inquisitively. “He’s never been the most outgoing of guys the few times that he’s come into the restaurant.” Chloe worked as a waitress at Betty’s Diner, the breakfast and lunch diner across the street from the courthouse. She’d worked there since she moved to Sawyer eight years earlier.
“Oh man, I’m sure he was downright joyful when he came to the restaurant compared to now. He’s…not the most cheerful of men.”
Which really was too bad. All of the Miller boys were handsome, but there was something…something undefinable about Wyatt that made her heart go into overdrive every time she was around him.
Which she’d admit out loud about the same time that she set her hair on fire.
She looked down and fiddled with her napkin. Was there no way to control her damn hormones? She was a grown adult, not a lovestruck teenager. She knew that Wyatt was a good idea, just like shooting herself in the foot was a good idea.
Now she just needed to tell the butterflies in her stomach that.
“Oh my God, you like him.” Chloe stared at her, wide-eyed with shock. “You like Wyatt Miller!” she hissed, leaning across the wobbly table.
“I do not!” Abby hissed back in true seventh-grader fashion, but she couldn’t help herself. It would not exactly be a bonus to her career if this rumor were to get out. Sawyer was a small town, and i
t didn’t take much to start a rumor. Usually nothing more than a glance that lasted two seconds too long and people were suddenly getting married.
Or at least the gossip made it sound like that.
“Okay, so Ms. I Don’t Like Wyatt Miller, what color are his eyes?”
“Dark blue,” she ground out. Obviously. Who wouldn’t notice his eyes? It wasn’t like she had to pay special attention to him in order to notice his eyes. They were bright and captivating and she’d have to be blind not to notice that they reminded her of stormy clouds hanging over the mountains, promising rain and thunder and lightning.
It didn’t mean anything at all to notice that.
“Interesting. And what doesn’t he like to eat?”
“Well,” Abby said defensively, not really wanting to answer but not sure how to get out of it, “he has an almost vitriol hatred of tomatoes. Not ketchup or salsa, just raw tomatoes. I’ve been meaning to tell you that I think you should leave them off his sandwiches when you make them at the restaurant. He’s pretty good about eating the sandwiches, other than the tomatoes of course, and he eats most kinds of chips, but he’s not real fond of the Sun Chips—”
“Listen to yourself!” Chloe practically howled with pleasure. “I told you, I told you, I told you!”
Abby sat back, her face turning a brilliant red under Chloe’s watchful gaze. “He’s…a little on the handsome side,” she finally allowed, “but nothing more than that. My father would have a heart attack if I dated Wyatt Miller. Lordy, can you imagine?”
“I’d pay money to see your dad be told that. I think they’d need a spatula to scrape him off the ceiling.” Chloe grinned at her and Abby rolled her eyes. Chloe liked needling people just a little bit, which was exactly why they were best friends. But even Abby couldn’t imagine telling her father that she was dating Wyatt.
“The whole fistfight in the parking lot…Well, Wyatt was trying to stop Richard from driving drunk, and after what happened to his wife and child, can you really fault him for it?”
“That’s true,” Chloe mused, “but you have to admit that Wyatt tends to solve problems with his fists rather than his head. This isn’t the first time he’s beaten someone up.” She shot Abby a pointed look and Abby grimaced.
“Yeah, I know. Dammit, I wish his personality matched his looks. He’s a damn good-looking guy. He’s so handsome, and yet, so negative.”
She thought back to the last few days. That wasn’t strictly true.
Ever since his visit with the counselor, he’d been a little different. She wasn’t going to say cheerful because she wasn’t sure if Wyatt was capable of cheerfulness, but not quite so sullen and pissed off. He said please and thank you. He said hello when she walked by. When he’d run out of Louis L’Amour books in the county jail library, she’d stopped by the Friends of the Library building in town and bought a grocery sack full of paperback westerns for him, telling herself that she wasn’t treating him any differently than she’d treat another inmate.
Normally, they just didn’t house long-term inmates, so they didn’t have the problem of running out of reading material for them. She’d go buy westerns for any inmate that they had longer than a week or two.
Any inmate at all.
“I wish you could see the look on your face right now,” Chloe said with a huge grin. “I’m not sure if you’re trying to fool yourself or not, but you sure aren’t fooling me. Wyatt is damn easy on the eyes, and I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed that. You can’t tell me otherwise.”
Abby shrugged. “Doesn’t matter one way or the other. After New Year’s, he’s going up to Ada County to be heard by a judge there. Hopefully they’ll look at the extenuating circumstances, and the fact that Wyatt’s been locked up for weeks and weeks previous to his hearing in Boise, and they’ll let him go home. It’s too late for him to finish his harvest; either his brothers stepped up to the plate and did it for him, or he’s screwed financially. But either way, he’ll be out of my hair soon enough.”
“I’m gonna wash that man right out of my hair,” Chloe sang softly, grinning teasingly, “and send him on his way.”
“Exactly.”
And she ignored the pang that shot through her at the thought. That was indigestion, and nothing more.
Chapter 7
Wyatt
“Miller, the phone is for you.” Officer Morland worked his way down the cell block towards Wyatt’s cell. Wyatt froze, numbly setting down the worn paperback western Abby had brought him, and just stared at the cop. He hadn’t seen his brothers since the morning five weeks ago when he’d told them to go away.
But who else could it be? It wasn’t like friends would be calling the jail just to chat and catch up on old times.
Maybe his lawyer?
Morland opened up the cell door, letting Wyatt past him before following him up to the phone banks. “You have 10 minutes,” he said, not unkindly, before heading back up front.
With a steadying breath, Wyatt picked up the phone. “He–hello?” he said, hating the waver in his voice.
“Hey Wy, it’s Declan.”
Oh. Good.
If Wyatt had to pick a person in the world to call him, it would’ve been Declan. It was kind of shocking how nice it was to hear his brother’s voice, actually. Wyatt closed his eyes against the unwelcome prickle in his eyes. When in the hell had he become such a softy?
Being locked up sure was messing with his mind. He had to get out of here before he turned into a blubbering fool.
“Hey. How are things?” he got out, a little more gruffly than he’d intended.
“Pretty good! Working together with Stetson and Jorge, we got your sugar beets harvested and shipped off, so that’s taken care of for the year. A real good harvest, actually. Your bookkeeper will go over the payments with you, but you should be able to easily make your yearly payment to the bank with the way prices have been looking lately.”
“Thank you,” Wyatt broke in. He wasn’t used to thanking people, but his harvest was something that had been weighing on his mind. He’d thought about inquiring after it through his lawyer, but his pride hadn’t allowed him. To find out that his brothers had come through for him in the end…well, even he could manage to rustle up a “thank you” for the occasion.
“Sure, sure. Listen, Christmas is coming up soon – I thought I should stop by and see how you’re doing. Chat a little.”
“Oh yeah?” Wyatt said, taken off guard by the offer. He hadn’t had a single visitor since they’d locked him up, unless he counted his lawyer or his counselor. Which Wyatt most definitely did not. “That’d be good. I’ll be here, so just…stop by whenever you want.” As if I have a choice. The unspoken truth hung in the air.
“Great, I’ll be by this afternoon.”
“Okay, uhh…I’ll see you then.” It felt weird to be making plans to hang out with his younger brother, but a good weird way. A break from Larry McMurtry, the western author he’d moved on to after finishing every Louis L’Amour he could lay his hands on, sounded damn fine right about then.
Declan hung up, but Wyatt held the phone against his cheek a little longer, unwilling to lose that connection just yet. Along with the welcome news of the harvest and his impending visit, Declan also mentioned the unmentionable: Christmas.
Wyatt was going to be spending Christmas in jail, after already missing Thanksgiving, which had to be just about the most depressing thought he’d ever contemplated.
Which is why he hadn’t contemplated it until now. In fact, he’d done a damn good job of ignoring that fact up to this point, quite on purpose, thankyouverymuch.
But as always, Declan was thoughtful enough to realize that he’d be alone on Christmas, and wanted to spend some time with him beforehand. Christmas was only four days away, and no doubt, Declan would be spending Christmas Day at the Miller farm with Stetson and his new wife, Jennifer. That was where the Miller brothers always gathered to celebrate the holidays.
Except for this
year.
“You done?” Morland asked, popping his head through the door and peering at Wyatt.
“Yeah, I’m done,” Wyatt said, hanging the phone back in its cradle.
He followed the guard back to his cell, the door swinging back into place with a squeak. Wyatt climbed back onto his bunk bed and stacked his hands behind his head, staring up at the water-stained ceiling again. It’d been nice to hear his brother’s voice, and it was nice to think about seeing him that afternoon. He was surprised to realize that the anger and hurt he’d felt when Declan and Stetson had left him that day in his cell, not bailing him out like he’d wanted, wasn’t nearly as sharp or painful as it’d been before.
Was he forgiving his brother? He rather thought he was, and was surprised by the fact. He’d have to tell Rhonda when she came on Wednesday.
Of course, then she’d just ask what was going on with the sheriff, and had he forgiven him yet? Wyatt felt his chest tighten at the thought. There was one son-of-a-bitch he was never going to forgive. The man hadn’t bothered asking him for the truth all those years ago; had just listened to the rumors swirling around town and had judged him guilty. If the sheriff was going to be the judge, jury, and executioner without even bothering to listen to the defendant, then why should Wyatt forgive him?
It had happened so long ago – his wife and daughter were still alive. His dad was, too. Wyatt had been so damn frustrated with his dad and Stetson at that point. Years of arguing with them on how best to run a farm, and the two of them didn’t listen to a word he had to say. Finally, he’d had an opportunity to buy his own place and get out from underneath the thumb of his father, and he’d jumped on it like a dying man on a glass of water.
It wasn’t his fault that it was the sheriff’s farm that he was buying. It wasn’t his fault that the sheriff had had a couple of bad water years and hadn’t been able to make his payments to the bank. It wasn’t his fault that the sheriff had had his farm repo’d and put up on the auction block.
