“Hey, listen, if you need any help with anything at the house, let us know,” Loyal offered. “Old times and all,” he added awkwardly as she stared at him, silent, unsure what to say.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” she settled on, starting to turn away.
“Merry Christmas, anyway,” he said.
“Yeah, uh, you, too,” she mumbled, anxious to get back to her list, but as she turned the corner of the aisle, Lydia felt as if she were caught in A Christmas Carol, facing the ghost of Christmas past.
“Ginny,” she said on a sharp intake of breath, facing the one person she had hoped to avoid.
“Lydia,” the woman in the wheelchair, facing her in front of the display of Christmas candy, said, looking apprehensive and just as surprised as Lydia was.
“I heard you were back,” Ginny said.
Lydia felt as if her throat was closing, and all she wanted to do was throw her basket and run, but she managed to nod.
“I need to take care of Mom’s place,” she said stiffly, looking away, her eyes landing on the Christmas candy but not really seeing it.
“You’re selling?”
“Um, yeah,” she said, looking back at the rubber tires of the chair, and Ginny’s pink boots, planted on the foot holders. Ginny had always loved everything pink. Lydia had once, too.
“I, um,” Lydia stuttered, looking for words, and saw the ice slide over her former friend’s gaze as someone else walked up to join them. A man unloaded some things into a cart, and shifted to face Ginny with a smile.
“I think that’s it, darlin’,” he said affectionately, and then turned a smile in Lydia’s direction. “Hi, there.”
Lydia nodded, taking in the guy’s handsome face, and his business-casual dress. A wool coat, nice leather boots. A businessman, not a ranch worker.
“And you are?” he asked.
“This is Lydia Hamilton, my best friend from high school,” Ginny said bitterly, her eyes pinning Lydia to the spot. “Lydia, this is my husband, Charles.”
Husband. Lydia had known that, her mother had told her that Ginny had gotten married somewhere along the line. But she remained speechless.
“Why are you bothering my wife?” her husband asked, his smile fading. “Why are you even here? You leave us alone,” he warned darkly, sending Lydia another look as he put a hand on Ginny’s shoulder.
Lydia opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She met Ginny’s eyes, wishing there was something that could be said, but clearly her friend didn’t want to hear any of it, and Lydia couldn’t blame her. The resentment and accusation in her eyes and tone were all that Lydia could expect.
“Take care of yourself, Lydia. It is what you do best,” Ginny said coldly, spinning her chair and following her husband to the register.
Lydia’s knees were shaking, and it was all she could do to stand up. Abandoning her basket of items, she made her way to the door and out, needing air. Needing to escape.
Her mother had told her she should confront her past. That Ginny had moved on with her life—which was clear—and that Lydia needed to make peace with it, too. But that was clearly impossible.
Lydia knew her mother was wrong; she didn’t expect forgiveness. It wasn’t even possible. She deserved their rebuff, and worse. She had been wrong to avoid them, however. Maybe allowing them to say what they’d said was only fair. She’d never given Ginny that chance before.
Everyone thought Lydia was so cool, so brave. She was the most cowardly person she knew, she thought miserably. Leaning into the car, her face fell into her hands, the cold air helping her to settle down a bit.
“Hey, what’s going on—are you okay?”
Lydia jumped at the sound of Ely’s voice. In her shock and upset, she had completely forgotten about him.
“Um, I just have a really bad headache,” she said.
“You’re white as a sheet. Get in the car,” he said, opening the door and ushering her in before he went around to the other side to climb in. He turned the heat on full blast and took her freezing hands between his, warming him.
“Are you sick? Or did something else happen?” he asked, his gaze severe and concerned all at once.
Lydia couldn’t talk about it, least of all with him. What would Ely think, or Tessa, or anyone, if they knew what she’d done? Maybe they deserved to know, too, but she couldn’t do it. Not now.
“The headache just got to me. That’s all,” she hedged, and could see in his face that he wasn’t buying it, but he nodded.
“Okay. Did you get your groceries?”
“No.” Her eyes burned and she cursed, not wanting to cry in front of anyone, especially Ely. Biting down, she swallowed hard, and took a breath, straightening her spine. Looking up, she watched as Ginny and her husband left the store and made their way to their truck.
“This store didn’t have what we needed,” she fibbed. “Maybe if we try the one in Billings? They have the larger places to shop.”
Ely nodded. “Sure. We can do that, but are you sure you feel well enough?”
“I’m fine. Really. Just tired, and a headache, but I’ll be okay. Let’s go?” she said, anxious to escape.
Nodding, he put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. Lydia focused out the window, getting a hold on herself, trying to focus away from the nauseous feeling that hadn’t quite passed. She was running away again, and she knew it. But what did confronting anything do—it just made everyone unhappy.
She would see Ginny’s unhappy face in front of her for the rest of her life, and maybe that was as it should be. The only solution was to wrap things up here and leave as soon as she could, after Christmas, as her mother’s will provided. Then she could go back home and try to bury it all in the past, for good.
* * *
ELY WAS ABLE TO get his truck out of the snowbank the next day, and was in the sheriff’s office, waiting to see the man himself. It was the one thing he was unable to do the day before when Lydia had come into town with him, though he still hadn’t been able to get that out of his mind.
On the way to the city and back, she had been quiet, pale, and not entirely like herself. He knew it was more than a simple headache that had set her off. When he’d found her by the car, she had been shattered—he had actually been afraid for her until she seemed to calm down.
She didn’t say another word about it during their entire drive and had gone to bed after they finished putting away the supplies. Ely had a feeling she had a scare of some sort, and he wasn’t going to just sit by and do nothing.
A group of sullen teenage boys slouched on the bench in the corner, looking like they didn’t care about anything, but their clenched fingers, tapping feet and sidelong glances betrayed their worry. Ely caught the eye of one who looked like the youngest of the four and leaned forward.
“What ya in for?” he said with a conspiratorial wink.
The kid started to say something when the older boy next to him elbowed him in the ribs.
“Shut up, doofus. He’s trying to get you to confess.”
Ely’s eyebrows rose. “Confess? Nah, I’m just making conversation,” he said.
The older boy snorted in disbelief, crossing his arms over his middle.
“But if I had to guess,” Ely continued. “I’d say you were caught—during school hours—smoking something down behind someone’s barn, yeah?” They reeked of pot, whether they realized it or not.
“We weren’t behind a barn, we were—”
Another elbow to the ribs got the two boys into a small scuffle, and Ely had to hide a smile. They thought they were so tough.
The door to Sheriff Granger’s office opened, and he emerged, walking over to the boys. They didn’t quite meet his eyes as he towered over them, a big man, not too much older than Ely.
“I just got off the phone with each of your parents. They’ll be down to get you soon, and in exchange for not charging you and locking you up for the weekend, they agreed that you all shou
ld spend the next week cleaning out Mr. Mason’s barn.”
All four heads snapped up. “Are you kidding?” the older one said. “That place is a dump. It’ll take forever.”
“That’s right. Added to that, you’ll be in school, and I’ll be making spot phone calls to make sure you are. If any of you do this again, you won’t get a second chance, got it? I’ll put you in the tank, and if we don’t have room for you here, since it can get a little crowded over Christmas, we’ll send you over to Powell, you got it?”
“You can’t do that,” the belligerent older boy asserted, standing. “We’re minors, and it was just some weed,” he said, and then frowned as he realized what he’d just confessed aloud.
“Good going, Rog,” the kid next to him taunted.
The sheriff leaned in close. “You want to make a bet on what I can do, Roger? Push your luck, and you’ll see how far I’m willing to go to make sure you aren’t bringing that kind of trouble into this town, to these kids,” the sheriff said in his best Dirty Harry–type voice, which Ely thought he pulled off pretty well.
The boy sneered, but backed down, sitting back on the bench.
“Yeah, shut up, Rog, before you get us into more trouble,” the younger one said, earning a punch in the arm.
“Cut it out,” Sheriff Granger barked, and the boys went quiet and still. “You’ll report to Mr. Mason directly after school. I’ll have a deputy stop by and make sure you’re there. Your parents will pick you up when you’re done and bring you home. Got it? You won’t be finished with the job until I go to inspect that barn and say you’re done.”
The boys nodded glumly.
“Think about it the next time you decide to skip school to do something illegal,” the sheriff said. He proceeded to tell the receptionist something and then turned to Ely.
“Can I help you? Stella says you’ve been waiting to see me?”
Ely stood, put his hand out. “I’d appreciate a few minutes, if you have the time.”
“Sure. Now that I’ve got the Wild Bunch here all settled,” he said, sliding a look at the boys again as he led Ely into his office.
“My brothers and I got into trouble quite a bit at about that age, too. Never drugs, but other stuff we were too stupid to avoid. Compared to what our father made us do, those guys got off easy.”
Sheriff Granger laughed. “I don’t know about that. Hank Mason is kind of the town eccentric—one of those TV shows might call him a hoarder of sorts. That barn is a fire hazard. Hank finally agreed to have it cleaned out, so this works out well on all sides. I don’t even want to think about the crap those kids are going to have to dig through,” the sheriff said with a grin. “I should probably get them hazmat suits.”
Ely laughed. “I bet they’ll learn their lesson, then.”
“The young ones, yeah. The older one, Roger, he’s had some problems since his parents split up. He’s heading down a bad path, and we’re just trying to keep him from taking his younger friends down with him.”
Ely nodded. “Nice thing about a town like this is that you can give them that kind of attention.”
There were so many kids in the city that went unnoticed, and ended up lost for good. Jonas had been a cop for several years, and some of the stories he told from those days painted a sad, dark picture of the inner city.
“Don’t kid yourself. We try, but the problems get more serious here all the time. Meth labs, illegals, domestic violence. It’s a small town, but we have the same challenges some of the cities have, and fewer people to cover them. Anyway...you are?”
“Ely Berringer. I’m in town for a few days, visiting a friend. Lydia Hamilton.”
“Right. I heard Lydia was back in town, but our paths haven’t crossed yet.”
“You know her?”
“She was friends with my younger sister Ginny when we were growing up. Always wondered what happened to her after she took off. Sorry to hear about her mama, though,” the sheriff offered. “Faye was a great lady. A cornerstone of the town.”
Ely recognized the name, Ginny, from the yearbook he’d seen. “Lydia has been having some trouble since she’s come back to town. She didn’t want to make a fuss over it—she seems to think it’s nothing, but I’m concerned.”
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed as he sat back in his chair.
“What kind of trouble, exactly?”
“Small stuff around the ranch, so I’ve heard—messages left, broken fences. Two guys were harassing her at the bar night before last. But later that same night, someone was in her house. Luckily, she had a gun, and one of her ranch hands and I were close by. Drove the guy off.”
The sheriff straightened, grabbed a pen. “An intruder? Why didn’t she call us?”
“She did. Your deputy told her there wasn’t anything they could do, and so she didn’t see the point in calling back.”
The men took each other in for a few seconds, sizing each other up.
“I wasn’t informed. She must not have filed a formal report, or I would have seen it. Was she hurt?” Granger asked.
Ely shook his head. “They vandalized her kitchen, broke some stuff. It shook her up. I found this in the snow by the house the next day,” he said, taking the vial out of his pocket.
Granger scrutinized it in his hand. “This could be anything.”
“It looks like vials I’ve seen used for drugs.”
Granger’s eyebrows shot up. “You have a lot of experience in that area?”
“I’ve seen my share when I was in Afghanistan, and on the streets. My brother was a cop for a while.”
“The house has been empty and sometimes folks will scan the obits looking for places to loot. As for this, I can try it for prints and contents, but I wouldn’t expect much. It could have been on the ground for who knows how long,” the sheriff countered.
“I don’t think it was kids or thieves in the house. They didn’t take anything, and why not do it before the house was occupied? Lydia said someone here might be bearing some sort of grudge, and if so, how far they might be willing to go to deliver that message.”
“Lydia tell you that? That someone has a grudge?”
“Just my gut.”
“You’re in law enforcement?” the sheriff asked.
“I was in the Marines, and I work as private security with a firm back in Philly. I came out here to check on Lydia, as a friend.”
“So you were the guy who phoned in the complaint about the two guys harassing a woman last night near Hailey’s?”
Ely nodded. “Saw it all myself if you need a witness.”
“I took care of it,” Granger said succinctly, clearly closing off that thread in their discussion. “Lydia left a long time ago—under bad circumstances, that was true—but I don’t think anyone would hold that against her now.”
“What bad circumstances?” Ely asked, noting that the sheriff had completely ignored his question about the two cowboys.
Granger grimaced. “Water under the bridge. It’s up to her to tell you, if she wants to. I can go by the house, talk to her, get a statement and look around the place. Other than that, there’s not a lot I can do.”
Ely frowned. Lydia wouldn’t be happy if Granger came by, and even more so if she knew Ely had sent him in her direction.
“I don’t think she’ll tell you anything more than she told me. I just wanted you to have a head’s-up, in case anything else happens. Or in case there’s anything I should know, maybe.”
Granger stood. “Okay, then.”
Wow, closed book, Ely thought.
“Do you know the guy who works on the ranch? Kyle?”
“Kyle Jones? I don’t know much. He’s worked the ranch for a little less than a year, keeps to himself. Never gave me any reason to deal with him,” Sheriff Granger said with a shrug.
Ely stood, knowing when not to push the issue. “Well, then, thank you for your time.”
“Happy to oblige,” Granger said, shaking his hand and picking up the phon
e as Ely went out the door. “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.”
The sheriff was a nice enough guy, but Ely thought he wasn’t being completely forthright, and he’d detected some sort of change in his demeanor when Granger spoke about Lydia’s past. Taking out his cell as he got into the truck and turned the heat on, he waited until his brother Jonas picked up on the other end.
“Ely? What’s up?” Jonas asked, sounding distracted.
“You got a minute?”
“Just. Have the FBI on the other line.”
“Listen, when you get a chance, can you do a background check on a guy named Kyle Jones, probably in his late thirties. Drives a Ford Ranger, here’s the license number,” Ely said, rattling it off.
“Looking for anything in particular?”
“Anything...off. Criminal record, that kind of thing. Maybe his job and bank records. Also...” Ely paused, wondering if he really wanted to have Jonas look into Ginny Granger’s past. And Lydia’s.
“What?”
“Never mind,” he said, not wanting to go there, not yet.
“Okay, I gotta go. I’ll let you know what I find.”
“Thanks.”
They hung up, and Ely pulled out of the space and scanned the dark clouds hanging to the north. They were a ways off, and he was hungry. For more than dinner, he realized with a frown, Lydia’s soft scent haunting him. Whatever was happening, he wasn’t going anywhere until she left, and he knew she was safe. For that reason and others, he was looking forward to getting back to the ranch, maybe more than he should be.
6
LYDIA WAS SITTING in the middle of about one million items she’d pulled out of the downstairs drawers, closets and storage areas, where she had been working since that afternoon. She was hoping to sort through it all for what she wanted to keep—very little—and what would go to Goodwill or be thrown out. It was impossible. So many things just needed to go, but she felt guilty getting rid of them. It was like throwing her family history away.
The worst part of it had been finding a stash of Christmas gifts—for her, wrapped and hidden away in the closet. Her mom mailed Lydia gifts every year. Although Lydia always told her it wasn’t necessary. She must have wrapped these just before she’d gotten sick.
Hers for the Holidays Page 7
