Bluegrass Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  “You…weren’t there the night they killed Ash. That wasn’t you.” Her voice sounded a million miles away. She said it as though she needed him to confirm it.

  “No, but I could have been, so what’s the difference? One’s as bad as the other. We don’t belong together. Now you know why.”

  “The man in front of me couldn’t have done that.” She sounded as if she were trying to reconcile things in her head. To make sense of something he already knew would never make sense, especially not to her.

  “Yeah, well, I clean up pretty good, don’t I? But that kind of slate won’t wipe clean, Emily. Don’t even try.”

  He could hear her pacing a few steps behind him. “I…I don’t know what in the world to make of this.” The footsteps stopped, and he knew she was right behind him. “How could you keep this from me? Until now?”

  “Because I’m a coward, Emily. You need me to spell it out for you any further?”

  An unbelievably long silence hung in the air. He couldn’t bring himself to turn and look at her. He couldn’t look her in the eye—not now, probably not ever. He’d thought he’d known how bad it would hurt, but he was wrong. It hurt so much worse.

  “You don’t even see it, do you?” she said softly.

  “See what? What is there to see?”

  “You’re acting just like they do, showing me how bad you are so I’ll go away. You’ve saved up the one thing sure to ruin us, sure to send me running. And you bring it out now. I got too close, didn’t I?”

  He made the mistake of turning to argue with her. The hard edge in her eyes—those soft, warm eyes that had done him in—stunned him to silence.

  “Well, congratulations,” she went on, her voice rising. “You’re really bad. You’re worse than I thought. It’s really awful.” She began pacing again, gesturing wildly with her hands. “So what happens now? Does the Earth open up and swallow you whole? Do I run off screaming? Is that why you did this on the side of the road? To make sure I ran?”

  Why was she dragging it out like this? “You and I—we can’t work—don’t you get that?” Gil bellowed in frustration. “None of this goes away, ever. It’s not like I just need a good confession to be a better man.”

  They stood there, in the cold at the side of the road, for an excruciating length of time. He wanted to tell her to go away but he couldn’t make the words come out.

  “I’m not gonna say it’s okay.” She leaned against her car, looking drained. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what to do.”

  “There isn’t really anything to do, is there?” Gil felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his chest. Another gaping silence. He kept his eyes on the gravel by the side of the road, dying to get out of there, helpless to leave.

  “How old were you? When it happened.”

  Come on, Lord, have mercy, make her stop. I’m dying here. “Old enough to know better.”

  “How old, Gil?” She was fighting tears.

  “Sixteen.” Like that made any difference.

  Twice she took a breath as if to say something, but never did. Then, without even so much as looking at him, she got into her car and left.

  Gil punched the fender of his truck hard enough to bruise his hand. He picked up a stone that had fallen off the gatepost and threw it so hard it sailed yards into the pasture on the other side of the road.

  He’d thought his heart had already broken, that the quick, sharp snap back in the high-school auditorium was the final blow.

  The long, slow crush he felt as he pulled the truck up the drive was infinitely worse.

  Chapter Twenty

  Even though she felt like normal life was beyond her grasp, Emily flipped the sign to Open Saturday morning and pulled up the shades at West of Paris. How on earth was she supposed to function today? How does anyone play helpful shopkeeper when her heart’s been twisted into knots?

  The new locks were actually rather pretty—Janet had done a fine job. A brass plate around the knobs even hid the spot where Mark had tried to pry open the door. The table with the broken leg was splinted with some duct tape and paint stirrers Janet had brought over and covered with a tablecloth that ran to the floor so no one could tell.

  But Emily knew.

  The linens were all neatly back in their stacks, and the scratches in the floor from the broken glass were almost impossible to see. Short of the missing cash register, any casual customer would probably have no idea anything was wrong.

  Tidying up West of Paris was the easy fix.

  Emily had absolutely no idea what to do about Gil. How to face him. She’d thought she had prepared herself for whatever dark patches his past held. But she hadn’t been at all prepared for something so personally painful. She was supposed to be getting past that. She’d just given a speech that was supposed to prove she was getting past that. Past the years of detesting whoever it was that had stood by and watched Ash die. Now, it was as though it had all happened yesterday—the wounds reopened instantly.

  She’d been a wreck when she came back from the farm. Her emotions warred within her all night. She barely slept. Despite her horror at his admission, the depth of her feelings for him hadn’t disappeared. She couldn’t understand how those feelings could exist along with the shock at his crime. When he’d said “accessory to felony,” she’d never thought it could mean “accessory to murder.” Somehow, her brain wouldn’t allow her even to consider the possibility.

  It all seemed too impossibly cruel.

  She sorted distractedly through a delivery of greeting cards, trying to do something productive. What was this tangle of feelings? There was wonder, she thought as she put the children’s birthday cards into their assigned slots on the display. Her heart had reopened itself to wondrously new yet surprisingly familiar feelings. There was sadness—mourning, even, for lost innocence—which was silly, for who comes into love innocent at her age? Who doesn’t bring the past’s wounds into a second love?

  Emily removed the leftover Valentine’s Day cards from the display. Did she love Gil? Could she love Gil, knowing what she knew now? Could she ever think of him as different from the bystander at Ash’s murder? Nothing she felt made any sense—she only knew she felt off-kilter and confused.

  There was a sliver of thankfulness, she thought as she placed the thank-you cards in their spaces. Part of her believed she’d never feel for any man again. She had convinced herself that what she had with Ash was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

  The cards that captured her mood, sadly enough, were the get-well-soon ones. She did feel ill. Wounded, broken and unwell. But this didn’t feel as if it was going to get well anytime soon.

  What have You sent me, Father? I thought my heart had died along with Ash, and You give it to a damaged man who risks his money and reputation on criminals? Someone with a past so hurtful to me? I can’t live with that. Surely You know I’d want anything but this. How could You bring that speech into my life and then do this? Fool me into believing I could finally forgive and then show me how I can’t? I can’t trust Your plan for my life when You do this to me.

  The truth of that thought cut her so sharply she sank to the floor amid the boxes and wrapping. I’ve never trusted Your plan for my life, have I? Not since Ash. I pretend to have faith, but only as long as it’s comfortable.

  Why?

  The answer was awful. Because I think Your plan for me failed.

  O Lord, it’s true: I think You failed me. People of faith can’t really believe that, can they? Emily leaned back against the counter and stared into space, stunned by the discovery of her own mistrust. Looking back on the years since the murder, though, Emily could clearly see she’d rarely trusted God at all. She’d never let Him guide her, only presented Him with requests. Submitted her solutions for approval. What did she do every morning? Hand God a to-do list in the guise of praying over it. Tell Him what she wanted. Had she ever once even asked Him what His plan was for her life? Listened instead of petitioned?

&
nbsp; Never.

  “I’ve spent my whole life telling You what to do,” she whispered to the air, as if she needed to hear it aloud to grasp the enormity of it.

  Was it so surprising that God brought her to a place where she had no idea what to do next? Where no option made sense? Where she didn’t have one of her famous solutions?

  To a place where she had no choice but to hush and listen?

  There, on the floor, Emily Montague sought God.

  For real. Maybe for the first time in her life.

  My life is Yours. It’s always been Yours, but I snatched it back when Ash died. And I’ve made a mess of it.

  These sins felt too large for her own faith, too huge for the theology she had. Truth didn’t feel like truth anymore. She felt as though she’d just stared down the limits of her faith and found herself beyond what she could handle. Here, now, she could barely be sure she had the faith to hope things would sort themselves out.

  I’ve never really laid it all at Your feet, have I? I’ve never, not once, prayed “Thy will be done.” So I’ll start now. This whole mess—all I am, all I’ve done, all I’m up against—it’s all Yours. All Gil is, all he’s done, all he means to me—they’re all Yours, too. Have Your will in this. Teach me to listen. I’m not sure I know how.

  “Thy will be done.” She said it over and over as she sat on the floor of her shop, hoping it would sink in.

  Nothing on the farm seemed willing to cooperate. Nobody was allowed off the grounds, not even for church. As hard as it was to skip worship, Gil felt a little distance was the safest thing for everybody. He tried to read a few Bible passages aloud in front of the fireplace Sunday morning, but no one paid attention. Unsettled by Mark’s transgressions and bored by being on lockdown, the guys bickered constantly all weekend. A tractor broke, his computer froze twice and he was so distracted he deleted twelve files instead of backing them up. He wasn’t hungry, the corrections department was breathing down his neck and he couldn’t sleep.

  By Sunday night, Gil was so frustrated and miserable. He walked into the living room after midnight to light a fire because he couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  He stopped in the doorway, frozen by the sight of Steven sitting on the floor in front of a single lit log in the fireplace.

  And an open Bible.

  “Don’t take this away, God,” Steven was saying quietly. “Mark screwed up somethin’ fierce, and we’re gonna lose Homestretch. I know I’ve been a jerk and all, but Gil keeps tellin’ us You know what to do with jerks so I reckon You can fix this. You gotta fix this. I…um…well, I need this place. I can’t go back. So I’m begging You, don’t let a jerk like Mark and take Homestretch down. And don’t let Gil give up—You and I both know he wants to. Just don’t let him, okay?”

  Gil stood still, stunned by what he heard.

  Steven. The last guy on earth he’d think to come round.

  What had he said to Emily? Just when I think I finally found the batch that can’t be turned around, one guy turns. That’ll start the rest of them, and it works out.

  Gil left the room as silently as he’d entered it, leaving Steven to get acquainted with the God, who’d been waiting for him for years.

  Alone in his room, Gil stared into the night sky for hours. Then, just before dawn, he drove to Emily’s house.

  Just to look at it. Because he needed to.

  Emily was getting a bit annoyed. Her epiphany should have solved something. Given her at least a decent night’s sleep or dawned a new day with more clarity.

  It didn’t. Nor did church. Sunday was a blur, and Sunday night had lagged on just as sleepless as the night before. She’d woken Monday still trapped inside a blizzard of emotions. Half of her was so weary she wanted to throw her arms around Gil and tell him nothing was beyond God’s mercy and it would work out. But the other half was raw enough to walk away from him, from his complicated past and all his costly risks, and pretend they’d never gotten close.

  The most excruciating thing of all was that she knew she could do neither.

  She couldn’t go back to him until she’d settled the matter of his record completely in her heart. She owed him that much. But even if God somehow managed to settle that issue, was that everything? What if more secrets lurked in his past? Could she handle it?

  She looked up from her kitchen table and gazed out her windows, seeking the comfort from the sunrise.

  He was there.

  Gil was there, standing alone across the street. Oblivious to the weather, hands stuffed into his jean pockets, he stared at her house.

  He looked as miserable as she felt.

  She stared at him for a moment, kidding herself that he couldn’t see into the kitchen and see her. Even with a great distance between them, their eyes locked. It was a full minute, maybe more, before she walked slowly to the front door and opened it.

  Gil crossed the street, barely taking his eyes off her, and walked up to the gate. He came no farther, though, standing on the sidewalk, leaving her with her arms wrapped around her bathrobe, feeling the cold February air surrounding her in the doorway.

  It was awful, standing there aching for a solution or the right thing to say and coming up empty.

  “How are you?” His voice was low and unsteady.

  The question was so ridiculous that it made the corner of her mouth turn up in a half smile. “Terrible.”

  “Me, too.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a sore moment, before he looked down at the sidewalk. “I’d make it different if I could,” Gil said finally. “But I can’t.”

  “No.” Emily could barely gulp the word out, her voice was so tight. It’d be so simple to pull him into the warmth of her kitchen, to tell a half-truth and say it’d all be okay, that she’d get over it. But it wasn’t simple, she wasn’t sure she’d get over it, and she wasn’t sure it’d be okay. After a long moment she found the right question to ask. “Are you sorry?” It seemed a foolish, almost insulting question, but she needed to hear his answer. Maybe those words would be a place to start.

  He didn’t need to ask “about what.” He didn’t even need to speak an answer, actually. The pain and resignation in his eyes went miles beyond anything words could hold. “You’ve no idea,” he said so quietly she barely heard him.

  “I want it all to be okay,” she said, her voice suddenly catching at the hopelessness of it all, “but…”

  “But…” He wasn’t cuing her to finish.

  Not everything comes out in the wash. It was an odd thought, but then again it made a peculiar sense for the moment. Some stains set in.

  Emily thought of her grandmother’s old aprons, hung with reverence along one wall of her kitchen. They were thin and soft with age, but she kept them hanging there. She would trace her fingers around the stains after her grandmother died. She knew the stains—what they were, how they got there, the love and labor that made them. Those aprons wouldn’t have been the same if the stains had come out.

  But it wasn’t the same thing.

  She couldn’t pretend it was the same thing.

  He gave her one last look—a look that felt far too much like goodbye—before he turned and walked toward his truck. The emptiness of the sky after he left made Emily sit down and cry until she had no tears left.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Emily struggled through her day at the shop, dimly aware of what she was doing. She put on the smiling face her customers expected, but mostly she played Edith Piaf and sat staring off into space for minutes at a time. She stared at the shiny new keys Janet had given her for the new locks, thinking they looked odd and unfamiliar on her keychain. Things were different now.

  A few people mentioned how well she’d done at Character Day. She accepted their compliments, but it was bittersweet. She knew she’d done a good thing—an important thing—but it was hard to feel good about it. There had been such an aftermath. It felt almost like the months after Ash’s death, when her only goal ha
d been to endure the day, not enjoy it.

  Sandy came in around closing time, and Emily came unhinged on the spot. They’d talked it through on Friday, but as tired as she was, it all came out all over again. Sandy just held her hand and listened, again. Sandy was always good at that. And when Emily finally calmed down and caught her breath, Sandy walked to the back of the store to put the kettle on for tea.

  “I know everybody thinks it’s the break-in, and it is, in a way, but it’s mostly Gil,” Emily said, trying not to sound downright devastated.

  “I’m sorry you’re so miserable. I was sort of hopin’ you’d get an easy romance for your second time around. Then again, you always did like doing things the hard way. A man who’s convinced himself he’s unlovable is a mighty hard man to love.” She stirred sugar into her tea and sat down at the little window table. “Do you love him?”

  Sandy hadn’t asked her that before. “I don’t know. I thought maybe I was starting to. But now I don’t know.”

  “Do you think he is the same kind of man as the one who wouldn’t help Ash?”

  “He was.”

  “I didn’t ask you who you thought he was. I asked you who you think he is.”

  Emily leaned her head back against the wall. “I don’t know who he is anymore. It’s been days, Sandy, and I still don’t know what to do, or how to fix this, or even if it can be fixed at all. I can’t think of anything to solve this.” She turned her head to catch Sandy’s eyes. “Maybe that’s what God had in mind all along.”

  “Well, I figured God was gonna have to go a long way to get your attention on that, but I didn’t think He’d have to take it quite this far. So you’re finally askin’ God what to do instead of tellin’ him what you’re gonna do?”