by T. S. Joyce
Trent was beloved by the community, and there looked to be more than a hundred people here. The gravel path was uneven as she walked it in her towering heels. Gravestones in a meadow and an occasional pine, and the entire place felt haunted or watched, or perhaps both. And now Trent would be here, his gravestone standing sentinel in the valley before Hells Canyon Wilderness.
Her gaze cut through the crowd and landed on the polished black coffin, suspended above a hole in the ground. Her friend was in there, and suddenly she was bombarded with endless summer memories. Root beer floats at the Cress house, lemonade evenings on the porch at Momma’s. Endless treks through the woods around the Seven Devils Mountains. Trent laughing and cutting up, stomping out the serious tones that came with the childhood insecurities of adolescence. She’d left Bron because she had to, but Trent hadn’t deserved her silence. The pain slicing through her right now—the guilt—that was on her.
She’d stopped at the edge of the crowd, overburdened and overwhelmed with memories of a home she hadn’t allowed herself to think of in so long. Of the friends she’d left behind when her heart had been broken. Of the tragedy of Trent’s passing before she got the chance to tell him how much his years of friendship had meant to her growing up.
The preacher spoke up, talking of Trent’s honesty and giving heart—things she already knew, because she had no doubt that Trent as a man was just as caring as Trent the boy. His baritone voice faded to a background hum as she stared wide-eyed at the dark hole under the coffin, waiting to swallow Trent up.
She swallowed hard and bit her bottom lip to hide the emotion that had set it to trembling. A movement pulled her gaze, and she looked up. Bron stood beside Reese, the same and utterly different from her memories of him.
He wasn’t the lanky eighteen year old boy she’d left six years ago. Now, he was taller and filled out the black suit he wore until the mass of his arms strained against the fabric. His head was canted as he stared at the coffin, offering her his profile, and the planes of his angled jaw had been shaved smooth. She could see every muscle twitch, every clench of his jaw. His skin was the color of pale cream, and his nut brown hair was cut short on the sides, and stylishly longer on top.
Time had been good to him.
Her breath hitched at her heart’s galloping reaction to him. It wasn’t because he was still the most handsome creature she’d ever seen, even after all this time. It was the hollow heartbreak he carried in his gaze that he couldn’t seem to tear away from his brother’s coffin.
She was sad down to her marrow, but Bron had lost the last of his family.
His eyes were cast downward, but even from this angle, they didn’t look like the eyes she remembered. Certainly not the same color. When he visited her dreams and memories, they were the icy green she’d grown to love during their childhood. But now…now they looked so light, she couldn’t decipher any color at all.
Blinking hard, she squinted. It had to be a trick of the eyes. Perhaps the strange lighting from the oncoming storm reflected oddly against the coffin. A tiny shiver of wrongness trilled up her spine.
The preacher sounded like he was wrapping up, inviting them all to celebrate Trent’s life at Bron’s house, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his odd-looking gaze.
His nostrils flared and every muscle in his body seemed to tense, straining against his suit even more. In one smooth motion, he pulled a pair of sunglasses from his pocket and slid them over his eyes. Then slowly, he tilted his chin up until he looked directly at her.
His jaw clenched as he stared at her, unmoving, and the trembling in her hands came back in full force. Clamping her fingers together, she tried to remember how to breathe. He looked so angry, an expression she’d rarely ever seen on him in the years she’d known him. He wouldn’t be the same man now though, and from the way he leaned down to whisper something to Reese without ever actually taking his furious gaze from Samantha, she was pretty sure she was an unwelcome guest here.
She hadn’t intended to make this harder on him. Her trip here was only to pay her last respects to Trent, and to be here for Reese like she’d said she needed. When Bron finally looked away to the preacher, who’d apparently asked him a question, she swayed as if she’d been physically held by his gaze, and released when he diverted his attention. How could a man have so much power over her still?
A mass of anger, residual hurt, and guilt enveloped her, and she pursed her lips as she debated fleeing. The coffin was being lowered though, and a small line was forming to throw a handful of earth into Trent’s grave. She couldn’t leave without saying her last goodbye.
The first pit-pat of rain sounded as she scooped dirt and prayed his soul was safe as she released her hold on it. It fanned across the dark wood of the coffin below, and when she looked up, Reese was watching her.
“Hey you,” Samantha greeted softly as she approached.
Reese didn’t say a word, only pulled her in close and hugged her until her spine cracked. Reese was a lot stronger than she remembered. It wasn’t until her friend’s shoulders shook that Samantha realized Reese was crying, and with a sigh of helplessness, she hugged her tighter. She’d promised herself she would be strong at Trent’s funeral, but the first of the tears she’d been holding back slipped down her cheek as Reese sagged against her.
Thank God she’d thought to don the sunglasses, because when she angled her face, Bron stood a short distance away under a towering fir tree with his hands in his pockets. And once again, he was watching her with that disapproving glare. She turned away from him and snuggled her face into Reese’s soft honey-blonde hair. He could glower all he wanted. Samantha would be gone soon, but for now, she was going to melt into her friend’s touch and offer comfort where she could.
“I want to ride with you,” Reese whispered.
“Oh, I don’t think I’m going to the reception. I can’t…” She couldn’t be in the house Bron shared with his wife, but how could she possibly say those words out loud and maintain that she was over the man? “My time here will have to be short.”
“I can’t ride in the car with Bron again and I don’t want to be near anyone else right now.”
Samantha frowned. “Was Bron mean to you on the way here?”
“No. It’s more than that.” Reese eased back, and her crystal blue eyes searched Samantha’s face. “He’s just not good to be around right now.”
Samantha slid a glance to Bron, who hadn’t moved, and back to Reese. “Okay, how about if I give you a ride and drop you off at the reception?”
“Okay.” Reese wiped the moisture from her eyes with a damp looking Kleenex and leaned under Samantha’s shoulder as she led her from the cemetery.
The others had dispersed, and when Samantha looked back to the fir tree, Bron had disappeared. Car engines blazed to life on the road and Samantha led Reese to her Jetta. Inside, she waited until Reese was buckled up, then nudged into line with the other funeral goers.
“Were you and Trent still together?” she asked as the soft hum of classical music floated out through the speakers.
Reese was frowning at the stereo dials as she pulled onto East First Street, the main drag in Joseph, behind the red sedan in front of them. “Kind of. I don’t know, honestly.” She heaved a sigh and stared out the window. “He never wanted to talk about settling down or what we were. I think he was scared or maybe he just didn’t see me like that. We were together, but not as serious as I would’ve liked. I wanted a family with him.” Her face crumpled and she shook her head like she was trying to stave off her emotions.
Reese had been in love with him since they were fourteen. A quick tally of the years that had flown by, and Reese had been with Trent for a decade. And she’d just lost the love of her life. Samantha’s heart ached for her, and she wished she could take her pain away.
Leaning forward over the steering wheel, Samantha studied the shops as they passed by. Some of them had changed owners over the years, but most were the same.
Dress shop, courthouse, diner, furniture store, bookstore and a small mom-and-pop grocery store that was probably still run by Mr. and Mrs. Belleview.
Samantha had moved on and straightened out her life, but this tiny town had remained almost exactly the same. What a strange feeling to be in a place so similar to her memories. By all accounts, it should look different, but perhaps that was the way of small towns. Her moving away hadn’t changed anything in the make-up of Joseph. She was only a blip on the radar—a person passing through.
“I can’t believe you still listen to elevator music,” Reese murmured.
A wave of rain splashed across the windshield, and Samantha turned on the wipers. “Not elevator music. Classical music. And it seems fitting today.”
Her phone chirped and Samantha pulled it from the cup holder. “Hello?”
“You have a call from the Benton County Penitentiary. Will you accept the charges?”
Shit. Samantha took a hard right behind the red sedan. She wanted to talk to anyone but her father today. Anyone else on planet earth would do. “No.”
“Samantha, your life is in danger,” Dad said over the static.
Oh, this should be rich. More psychobabble from that murdering asshole. “Fine,” she gritted out. “Make this quick.” She refused to call him Dad out loud. That was part of his punishment, because prison wasn’t enough.
“I know where you are,” he said low.
“Yeah, and where is that?”
“You’re back in Joseph and you need to leave. Now.”
The car in front of her hit the brakes and she slowed. “Listen, you sick sonofabitch. I don’t know how you know where I am, but back the fuck off. I told you, I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I don’t know how you’ve missed that message. Stop calling me.”
“Sam, they’ll kill you.”
“Don’t call me that.” Only friends and loved ones were allowed to call her by her nickname. He was neither.
“Please listen to—”
She hung up the phone before he could say more and dropped it back into the cup holder like it was on fire. Talking to him always gave her a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. He’d ruined her life.
“Do you ever go visit him?” Reese asked in a careful tone.
Inhaling a long, steadying breath, Samantha shook her head. “Momma made me once, before she passed. Guilted me into it by saying she wanted her family all together one last time. He calls every few months but that’s all the contact I have with him.”
“Why did he say someone is going to kill you here, Sam?”
“You heard that?” Maybe her phone volume had been turned up louder than she’d realized. “I don’t know. He says lots of scary things. I think he’s trying to make me live in fear like he does. Why do you ask?”
“Because of Trent.”
“What about Trent?” Samantha asked, daring a look at Reese’s pale face.
“Because he was murdered.”
Chapter Two
“Murdered?” Samantha blurted out. She wished she could swallow the words back down. They seemed to make Reese pale even more, and Samantha’s mind instantly rejected the reasons for Trent being in the ground right now.
“He was…” Reese’s voice cracked and she cleared it. In a ragged whisper, she said, “He was burned alive.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God!” Samantha yelled as ready tears streamed down her face. She didn’t want to imagine it, but horrible visions of Trent screaming and burning filled her mind until it was hard to see the road ahead of her. “Who did this to him?” Her voice was shrill and filled with horror, but so what? Trent was dead because evil, true evil, existed in the world.
“We don’t know.”
“What do you mean? The police haven’t figured out who did this? You guys don’t have any ideas?”
“We have a few we suspect, but it’s all speculation right now. None of the…well, none of us ever saw this coming. Maybe we should’ve.”
What did that even mean? How could anyone see something so horrible coming?
No wonder Bron had seemed so furious with her at the funeral. His dad was dead because of her, and now she’d showed up at his brother’s funeral to churn up all of the old hurt. She needed to get out of this town as fast as her Jetta could carry her. Her being here was only making it worse on everyone. Her included.
Her mind spun on and on as they passed the road that led to the old Cress house. Bron must live somewhere farther up the mountain now, because the procession didn’t even slow when they passed West Alder Street.
Up a winding road they went until the car in front took a left onto a washed-out muddy road. A quarter of a mile more and a log cabin jutted up from the fertile mountain soil. It was all dark stained cedar walls and green shingles on the roof, and the house looked like it was a part of this place instead of some structure man had forced onto it. A long circular drive accommodated half of the cars, and the last half parked in a meadow nearby.
Samantha didn’t bother to cut the engine. With a small, heartbroken smile, she squeezed Reese’s hand in farewell.
“You came all this way and I want you in there with me,” Reese said. “It was always the four of us against the world and now we’re down one. I need you and Bron, Sam. Don’t go. Not yet.”
“He hates me.” Samantha’s voice came out a wisp of air because her throat was closing up. “I can’t go in that house.”
“He doesn’t hate you. Bron doesn’t know what to feel anymore. Or maybe he doesn’t know how to feel, I don’t know. Please, Sam. For me. I can’t stand the thought of seeing everyone’s pitying stares, or hearing how sorry they are I lost him.”
A single crystalline tear fled to Reese’s cheek and Samantha sighed and closed her eyes, defeated. “Okay.”
She wanted so badly to see Bron again. At the same time, she wanted to run away and never lay eyes on him, never let her heart remember what it had been missing all this time. The contrast made her stomach ache. Unsteadily, she walked across the meadow beside Reese.
She couldn’t breathe as she crossed the threshold with the other funeral attendees. Now, she could’ve blamed it on the too tight dress trying to squeeze her lungs from her body, but more accurately, it was Bron’s fault.
The man stood, holding the door open and seeming much larger than he actually was in the small entryway. The air felt heavier the second she walked in, and when she moved past him with an apologetic smile, the fine hairs rose on the back of her neck. Something about him made her not want to have him at her back, so she angled her body and waited for Reese to finish greeting some of her friends.
Bron was still wearing sunglasses, but his head followed her in a steady arch as she drew up to the dining room table. Ignoring the hole he was likely boring into her back with his gaze, she picked up a picture of Trent and Bron when they were kids, holding handfuls of worms and covered in mud. Trent’s smile was so big and bright, and Bron was gazing down at his little brother with such pride. Stacks of pictures and frames were scattered all across the table and she busied herself with studying each one as Reese talked to a trio of woman across the room.
Some of the photographs had been taken before she left. She was even in a couple. Most of them were from the years she’d lost though, and she watched Trent grow from a boy to a man in those shots. He’d grown up a handsome man with the same dark hair she remembered, and dark eyes so different from his brother’s, but his smile was the same goofy grin he’d always carried. She smiled despite her grief at how happy he’d seemed. Maybe her father hadn’t ruined his life as thoroughly as she’d thought all these years. It didn’t diminish the guilt she carried, but it loosened something subtle inside of her.
As the dining room grew more crowded with people she didn’t know, or perhaps just didn’t remember from her time here as a child, she stepped into a long hallway lined with more picture frames. These didn’t have Trent in them though. They had somber photos of Bron and his wife Meredith or
Marian. Something that started with an M. Samantha hadn’t paid too close attention when he’d been dumping her for someone she’d never met, and who he didn’t even seem to know very well.
The woman was pretty with olive toned skin and dark hair. Her eyes were green and in each picture, she had an attractive smile across her full lips. The more Samantha searched the photos though, the more she realized the smile never reached the woman’s eyes. And Bron was serious and somber in every last one.
“What are you doing here?” Bron asked from right behind her. He was so close, his breath tickled her ear and sent a trill of something dangerous through her.
Spinning, she stuttered, “I—I was trying to escape the crowd.”
“Not in the hallway, Samantha. What are you doing in Joseph?”
She couldn’t read him with his eyes covered. “I’m not talking to you until you take of the sunglasses.”
A muscle twitched once in his jaw and he slowly removed the shades. His eye color was lighter than she remembered, but not as creepy as she’d imagined at the funeral. Thank God.
Maybe she was as crazy as her old man.
“I’m sorry about Trent,” she whispered.
His shoulders tensed and his eyes blazed. His voice came out gravely and strange sounding when he said, “I asked you a question.”
“I’m here for the funeral, obviously. Reese asked me to come.”
Jerking his head, Bron glared at Reese’s back and shifted his gaze back to Samantha. “When will you be leaving?”
Anger burned its way through her chest. “Whenever I feel like it. I’m not here to cause you trouble, Bron. You’re married, I get it. I’ve moved on, too. I came because one of my oldest friends asked me to. Trent was my friend, and I should be able to come pay my respects to him without you shitting yourself. I’m sorry you lost your brother. Doesn’t give you a right to be a dick, Bron.”
She sidled around him and he gripped her wrist and spun her. “You left.”
“Of course I left,” she whispered, daring to let him see the anger and hurt in her gaze. “You broke me.”
