“I think some of Amber’s resentment is because Oliver is showing interest in me.” Carrie felt heat creep up her neck. “Amber thinks I have a hard time speaking up for myself, so she pushes Oliver away because she thinks I don’t know how to let him down easy.” And maybe she didn’t.
After the date, Amber had given her one piece of advice: “Dump Oliver. Now.” Not wholly unexpected, but not all that helpful either. “If Greg didn’t exist, would you have let Oliver kiss you?”
When Carrie couldn’t respond with a yes, Amber had taken that as confirmation that Carrie needed to end things immediately.
“But I think it’s more than that,” Braden went on. “Amber truly hates patrolmen—any government workers, actually. Everyone does. And yet, I can’t see any other way out of this.”
“But what you’re suggesting…” A chill ran down her arms. “You need to talk to Oliver.”
He hung his head. “I know. I want to. I can’t stand Amber hating me anymore, but I’m scared of her reaction when she finds out how serious I am. What if I go to training and don’t come back like Greg? But I also can’t handle living like this forever.”
The mention of Greg upped her desperation. “That’s why we’re reaching out to other clans, to find other options.”
“Yeah? And how’s that going?”
“Not good, but it’s still something. With time,”—a lot of time, she added silently—“we might get enough income to buy a house or two.”
“A house or two? For thirty people to split?” He gave her an incredulous look.
“You really need to talk to Oliver,” she said, because she trusted Oliver to steer Braden clear of this madness. “He’s coming over for dinner Saturday. You can talk to him then.”
“I hope I can wait that long. Every time I see Amber, it kills me. I know it might sound stupid to you, Carrie, but I love her. I think we could have a happy life together, maybe, but when I picture her living here, starving like we are, scared like we are, or worse, pregnant and dead like Jenna, I just…” His countenance fell. “Amber deserves better. We all do.”
“Yes, but at what cost?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
Carrie couldn’t help but think that a guy like Braden, someone with a stable head on his shoulders, would be good for her head-in-the-clouds sister. “How about I send Oliver to your house first on Saturday. Then Amber won’t know—”
She stopped, hearing some shouting from around the pond. Braden heard it also and turned. She couldn’t see anything from their secluded spot, but someone was calling her name.
“Sounds like Amber is looking for me,” she said, standing and brushing off. “I better go.”
Braden caught her arm. “Wait. You won’t tell her, will you?”
“No.” She smiled. “Let me know how it goes with Oliver.”
Carrie quickly made her way back around the pond. Braden lagged behind, but when Amber’s shouting turned frantic, both of them broke into a sprint.
Something was wrong.
Amber spotted Carrie and met her by the muddy shoreline, out of breath. “Carrie, where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for—” Her dark eyes went past Carrie and narrowed suddenly. “What’s he doing here? Wait. You guys were together?”
Braden stopped dead in his tracks.
“Doesn’t matter,” Carrie said. “What’s wrong?”
Amber glared at Braden.
“Amber,” Carrie said, grabbing her arm. “What happened?”
Amber finally remembered herself, and her face tightened with that same look of urgency. “It’s Greg.”
Carrie’s heart screamed with terror. No! She clutched her stomach. “What about him?”
“He’s back.” The tiniest smile lit Amber’s features. “Greg is back.”
Carrie stopped breathing. “What?”
“He’s back, but he’s hurt.”
“Wait. What? How bad?” Carrie struggled to keep up, but already Amber’s gaze had wandered back to Braden who also stood, anxious for news of Greg.
Her dark eyes filled. “Why were you two alone behind the—”
Carrie grabbed her shoulders. “Amber! What’s wrong with Greg?”
“I don’t know. I tried to find you everywhere, and now I know why I couldn’t. Sorry to have…” A few tears fell down her olive skin. “…interrupted your time together.”
Carrie couldn’t deal with this right now. “Where is Greg?”
“May’s,” Amber said, wiping her cheeks. “Everyone is going there to find out what happened.”
“Can I come, too?” Braden asked.
Without answering, Amber’s chin lifted and she started up the hill. Carrie didn’t answer either.
Greg was back.
She flew up the hill past both of them.
forty-two
MAY’S HOUSE WAS CROWDED with people thronging Greg. Carrie tried to press in to see him, but she couldn’t see. Couldn’t see! But she heard him trying to keep up with the questions being hurled at him.
“When are you going back?”
“Is training finished early?”
“How did you get hurt?
At that last one, she jumped to see over the heads. Tall Terrell Dixon finally shifted, and she caught her first glimpse. Greg looked scraggly with his brown beard and shaggy hair. His clothes were filthy and rumpled, and his coloring wasn’t quite right. But that wasn’t what caused her stomach to drop. One side of his face was scraped and bruised, and he was cradling his left arm close to his chest. She wanted to fling herself at him, but he was too far, too many people, and like everyone else, she had a million questions. He already couldn’t keep up.
Then she heard him say something that caused the entire room to fall silent.
“Where are Mom and Richard?” Greg asked.
People looked around. Carrie’s stomach dropped. Greg searched the room, too, and spotted Carrie by the door. His face brightened, and he smiled broadly at her.
Limping, he pushed his way through the group and stopped in front of her. His eyes roamed over her face at the same time she searched every inch of him. He leaned heavily on one foot, and beyond the bruises, one eye was swollen. He wasn’t wearing a uniform and was in his old UNC t-shirt. He had bulked up through the arms, shoulders, and neck, casting a thousand more questions in her mind. She could hardly believe he stood in front of her, alive.
“You’re here,” he said, sounding almost surprised.
Her eyes filled with hot tears of gratitude. “You’re back.”
“Back for good.”
“For good?” she whispered, hardly daring to hope.
He smiled again. “Yeah.”
May clapped her hands. “Did you hear that, CJ? Gregory is home for good!”
A cheer went up in the room, but Carrie barely noticed. Greg had locked eyes with her. Those green eyes, so steady and warm. That face, so perfect and haunted. That smile only for her.
Greg was back.
His arms opened, and Carrie fell into him, throwing her arms up around his neck.
“Ow!” He jerked back. “Ow, sorry. Ow,” he said, cradling his arm. “A little tender.”
Carrie backed up. “What happened? How did you get hurt? Is something broken?” It suddenly occurred to her that he’d been beaten, but the thought was so horrid, so sickening she couldn’t digest it.
“Long story. I should probably wait to tell my mom and Richard at the same time.” He craned his neck to search the room again. “Where are they? They weren’t home.”
His mom.
Carrie’s insides twisted into a ball of dread. Greg never got Oliver’s note.
He didn’t know.
Greg turned back to her, smile fading. “Why isn’t anybody answering?”
May covered her face and started crying. CJ looked down at the floor. No one else seemed willing to break the news, leaving it up to Carrie. But her throat constricted and burned. Even simple bre
aths seemed suddenly difficult.
She swallowed twice. “I don’t know where Richard is, but your mom…she…” Her eyes filled and her nose began to run. “She…”
Greg’s battered face turned white. “No. Please no.”
“Didn’t you get the note?” Carrie whispered. “Oliver tried to get you word. Didn’t they tell you?”
Greg backed up, shaking his head over and over. He limped backed until he ran into the wall. Carrie felt every beat of her heart, breaking all over again for Mariah. For Greg.
When his eyes lifted to her again, it took him a moment to speak, and then he only spoke one word. “When?”
Before she could answer, Richard burst through the back door. “Greg’s back!” Richard said excitedly. “Where is he?”
But Greg hadn’t looked away from Carrie. His face twisted with agony. “When?”
As Richard pushed into the living room, Terrell grabbed his arm and whispered something. Richard’s head whipped up, staring at Greg in dismay. Still, Greg’s gaze stayed fixed on Carrie, waiting, desperate.
Carrie pressed her fingers to her trembling lips and forced the words. “The night you left.”
Greg stopped moving. Stopped blinking. Yet even in his stillness, she watched the transformation within him: from shock, to disbelief, to rage.
“We think she had some internal bleeding from her fall in town,” she said quickly. “I’m so sorry, Greg. So, so sorry.”
“From her fall,” Greg repeated, nostrils flaring.
Hot tears flowed down Carrie’s cheeks.
Every muscle, from his neck to his fists, went stiff. “I’ll kill him. I swear I will kill him.”
David Jamansky.
Richard jumped forward. “Alright, people. Let’s give Greg some space. We’ll catch up with him later. Maybe we can have a clan dinner tonight. Let’s go,” he said, urging them for the door. “We’ll catch up later.”
Following Richard’s cue, Carrie helped herd everyone out May’s front door. The last thing she wanted was to leave. She was desperate to know what had happened to Greg, but he needed time to come to grips with losing his mom. Still, she hung by the door, waiting for some sign from him.
May, CJ, and Richard gathered around him as he leaned against the wall. His fists were still clenched. The muscles in his neck were still taut. And he hadn’t looked up from the floor.
A few more tears slid down Carrie’s cheeks as she quietly slipped outside.
* * * * *
Greg couldn’t sleep. His emotions swung wildly from overwhelming grief to boiling rage. He kept reliving that day in the township office, wondering how he could have done things differently. Wondering how much pain his mom had been in when she died. Wondering why he hadn’t gone back with Oliver to drive her home, to make sure she was okay. But most of all, wondering how to get revenge.
He could have been there when she died.
He should have been there.
And it wasn’t for David Jamansky, he would have been.
As the dark night hours passed, his training kicked in, and he dreamed up a dozen ways to get rid of the local patrol chief. He tried to push the thoughts from his mind, knowing they were wrong, evil, and dangerous. But at the same time, he figured it was only fair and just. Jamansky killed his mom—indirectly maybe, but still. Justice said he deserved to die.
An eye for an eye.
The darkness gnawed at Greg from the inside out.
Tossing and turning, his nightmares were back with a vengeance. Anytime he was awake, his injuries kept him miserable. His thigh ached something fierce, the cuts and bruises on his face itched, but his shoulder killed the worst. It still felt dislocated even though he’d tried to pop it into place multiple times.
Greg was grateful Richard had sent everybody home when he had, but he hadn’t realized Carrie left with the others until she was gone. Maybe it was for the best. He didn’t want her to see him like this. He needed to get his feet under him again, literally.
At least she was still in the clan.
When he told Richard and his grandparents that he wasn’t up for a clan dinner, he had expected his grandma to protest. She hadn’t. Instead, the four of them walked to the small neighborhood cemetery so Greg could see for himself. His grandma cried the entire time, but the three men had stood in silence around his mom’s unadorned grave, giving Greg a chance to get used to the idea that his mom wasn’t coming back. No goodbyes. Just…gone.
“She said to tell you she was sorry,” Richard had said.
Of course his mom would apologize for dying. Just thinking about it made his fury rage all over again. But Richard also said she’d been anxious to see Kendra.
Lying on his dark bedroom floor, Greg tried to picture that happy reunion, mother and daughter together and free. He’d never given religion much thought until people started dying on him. Now he clung to the possibility of a happy, painless afterlife.
Up and down, forward and back, in and out of disturbing dreams, he relived it all, tripping over the same details. Kendra’s death. His mom’s. Training. Isabel. Jamansky. Carrie. Raleigh. Jeff and Jenna.
His whole life felt like one giant mistake.
Several times, he got up to walk the empty floors of his dark house. His grandma had invited him to sleep at their place so he wouldn’t have to be alone. Even Richard offered his house, but Greg needed time to sort through things before he did something dangerously stupid. David Jamansky didn’t deserve to be a man of position, least of all chief of the precinct. As of two days ago, Greg outranked him. Jamansky was just a snake, a pesky, puffed-up nuisance Greg could dispose of with—
Stop! he told himself. His mom would box his ears for such thoughts. He could even hear the lecture.
“I raised you better than this,” she would have said, shaking a finger in his face. “What’s done is done. I’m happy now, so it’s your turn. You’ve been given a second chance at life, so fight for happiness. Fight and win.”
Greg wandered to his window. He stared out into the black night at the two-story house across the street. In the three minutes he’d seen Carrie, he should have asked if she was married—or at least asked Richard. But strangely, Greg no longer cared. He was back, and Carrie still lived in Logan Pond. That was enough for him.
Walking back from the cemetery, Richard had told Greg all about Carrie’s newest plan. Even now, even with the flood of grief, it made Greg smile. Her idea bypassed the flower shop, mayor, and corrupt government entirely to create a trading system for illegals. It was brilliant. According to Richard, they didn’t have any clans on board yet, but Greg couldn’t wait to jump in. Assuming Carrie wanted him to. Assuming she wasn’t married.
Why hadn’t he asked Richard?
After a minute, he squinted out the window. A dark shape moved on the Ashworth’s front porch. Carrie. The sky in the east was barely starting to lighten. Carrie was a morning person, but even this was early.
It looked like she was tying her shoes on her cement steps. Then she stood, looked around, and walked down her sidewalk. Greg grinned, thinking she was headed for his house, but when she reached the street, she turned.
He didn’t know where she was going, or why she was leaving before dawn, but he grabbed his shoes and hurried downstairs.
forty-three
GREG NEARLY MISSED CARRIE, but then he spotted her dark shape heading down the street and into the woods beyond. He probably shouldn’t have followed her like a creep, but curiosity won out. She never checked over her shoulder to see if somebody followed her, which meant she had no business being in the dark woods alone. She wore her blue blouse, so she was planning to meet somebody special. That only confused him more.
When he was about to call her name, he heard her humming softly, a sad, lonely melody. The sound of her voice and the way her hand trailed over the long grasses enchanted him, so he kept following her.
It wasn’t until the first rays of day turned her hair gold, that he realized wher
e she was headed:
The Ferris Clan.
Why was she going there so early on today of all days? Richard said they planned to contact Ferris next, but why did that take priority over everything else this morning, especially Greg? She’d left his grandparents’ house last night with everybody else. Surely this morning she’d want to talk to him, to see him. Wouldn’t she?
He stopped.
Maybe this was her way of avoiding him. Maybe things had progressed with Oliver in the last six weeks, and she’d finally made her choice—which explained why she was wandering alone. If she had her green card, Mrs. Oliver Simmons, she wouldn’t worry about being arrested.
His jaw tightened. He’d come back too late.
Too late for everything!
Something inside him snapped. He refused to lose another person to some government scumbag. Not that Oliver was a scumbag, but in that moment, he felt like one for stealing Carrie. Not that he’d stolen her either since Greg had encouraged it, but none of that mattered.
Greg made his move.
Silently, he sped up through the long grasses, practically dragging his bad leg.
When he was within ten feet, he called, “What’s the weather?”
Carrie screamed and whirled around. “Greg!” Her hand went over her heart. “What are you doing here?”
He grinned. He couldn’t help it. He’d always loved sneaking up on her, a bad habit he didn’t plan to break.
“I was gonna ask you the same thing,” he said. “What are you doin’ sneaking off so early all by your lonesome?”
She cocked her head, throwing her thick, golden waves over her shoulder. She studied his face—or more accurately, his lack of a beard. He’d shaved the whole blasted thing off last night. Best thing he’d done so far.
Besides following her.
At the same time she studied him, he drank in the sight of her. He’d always loved her in her mom’s blue blouse, the way it brought out her eyes. And with the first rays of day, her hair practically glowed. It was lighter than when he’d left, and her skin had sprouted a few more freckles. Summer had been good to her. Real good. The morning sun framed her whole being in light. He wanted to snatch her up and never let go.
Citizens of Logan Pond Box Set Page 72
