Great. Absolutely goddamn great. Just what I need today. I feel that old familiar fire welling at me, anger both at the unfairness of it all and at being swindled, for daring to believe that there might be some good left in the world – or at least, that some of it might still reside in a place like The Grove.
‘Listen, you –’ I begin, but she cuts me off.
‘Unless you want to make something of it?’ Her cigarette hand has slipped inside the front door, held up at just about shoulder level. I don’t know for certain – can’t know for certain – but the odds seem pretty good that she’s got her fingers wrapped around the stock of a hunting rifle, just waiting for me to press the issue and try my luck. Of course, she might be bluffing, but I’m not going to risk it over as paltry a sum as ten dollars. Stupider arguments have put people in the hospital before. You never can tell.
I grit my teeth and set off walking down the street. I make it three trailers away before she calls me back.
‘Hey,’ she yells. ‘Hey, wait.’
‘What?’ Like I’m going to give her another chance to get one over on me. Fool me once, as the saying goes.
‘Hold up, hold up,’ she says. ‘Maybe I got something for you after all. What did you say your guy’s name was?’
‘Hale.’
‘Last name, dummy.’
‘Oh. Fischer.’
She thinks for a second. ‘There was a Jim Fischer here when I moved in a couple of years back. Real mean motherfucker. Hell of a reputation. Total asshole.’
That does sound sort of familiar. Not that I ever met him, of course, but I have a vague recollection of Hale’s dad being called Jim – and I saw the evidence of just what a piece of work he could be. ‘Where did he live?’
She points a finger south, down the cracked asphalt road. ‘End of the line,’ she says. ‘You won’t miss it.’
‘Thanks.’ It’s not a lot, but it’s something. What are the odds of there being two Fischers in a place like this? Slim, I’d wager. At least, I hope so.
I start walking, but she calls after me. ‘You’re shit out of luck, though,’ she says.
I stop in my tracks. ‘Why’s that?’
‘Jim Fischer died… what, last summer? Summer before? The place has been empty ever since. Ain’t nobody set foot in it for months. Whoever you’re looking for, he don’t live here now.’
If she says anything else, I don’t hear it.
~~~
Hale’s Dad died?
Well, no… not necessarily. It’s still possible that there’s a mistake. The woman who sent me down here didn’t exactly seem like the most reliable of sources. Maybe she was mistaken and she’d got Hale’s dad confused with someone else; it didn’t seem like a particularly neighbourly sort of place. Or maybe she was just screwing with me. Getting my hopes up. Playing one last trick on the townie who she’d so-easily fleeced for beer money.
Or she could have been telling the truth. That was still possible, right? Hale’s dad, the hateful, abusive monster that he was all those years ago – and the reason Hale left – might really have kicked the bucket. But if he did – especially if it happened more than a year ago – then what the hell is Hale doing back in town? Why now?
I’m still thinking it over when I find the trailer the woman was talking about. You won’t miss it, she had warned me, and I can see what she meant. The other places on the strip are dirty but seem lived-in. This one looks as though it’s been thoroughly abandoned. Paint is peeling off the metal siding, the grass outside – at least, that which has managed to grow in the parched soil – is long and unkempt, poking out of the ground in misshapen clumps. No one’s been here in quite some time, I’d wager.
And yet there are some signs of life. Most notable, there’s a motorbike parked outside that doesn’t fit with the rest of the surrounding area. A few of the other trailers have vehicles in front of them, it’s true, but they’re rust-buckets to a fault: a smattering of ancient trucks just waiting to give up the ghost. The bike is all shiny chrome, glinting in the sunlight. It’s used, sure, but it’s in the kind of repair you only ever see on vehicles that are well-loved and cared for.
Maybe Hale’s a mechanic, I think to myself. That would explain it. He always did have a way with his hands – but I’ve never met a mechanic who’d drop any real amount of money on a fancy Italian leather wallet. No matter how I slice it, none of it makes sense. First the wallet, then the bike. Hale’s possessions have a sheen of money on them that’s impossible to ignore.
It’s hard to say that about the trailer itself. None of the ramshackle buildings I’ve walked past seem to be in particularly good shape, but the Fischer trailer is in the worst state of disrepair of the lot. The window closest to me is a spider web of almost-shards, cracked but not quite broken, as if someone tried to throw a rock through the glass and chickened out at the last minute. From what I knew of Jim Fischer, I couldn’t blame them.
Other than that, there’s no sign of life inside.
So this is where Hale grew up, I think. It’s hard to imagine an upbringing more different to my cosy childhood. For the first time in years, I feel sorry for him. I knew how hard it was with his father, with his absent mother, with the constant weight of where he was from bearing down on him – and yet I couldn’t know, not really. I couldn’t have any idea. He might as well have been born on Mars for all I could really understand what it was like.
I walk to the door and hesitate for a moment. What if it’s not his place? What if he’s not here? What if someone else answers?
But I’ve come this far, and I have to know.
My knocks ring out like gunshots, and for a moment afterwards there’s silence, followed by creaks from the foundations as someone moves about inside the trailer. There’s a familiar silhouette against the glass of the door, a shadow I couldn’t fail to recognise in a million years, and then the twist of a door handle.
And then…
And then there he is again, standing in front of me. He blinks once against the light, as though he’s checking to make sure what he’s seeing is really real.
‘Carrie?’ he asks, and for a moment I expect him to pinch himself.
I know how he feels. It’s easy to forget just how ridiculous this all is – that he only re-entered my life a few short hours ago, and then only for twenty minutes or so. How can I expect it to make sense? How can I expect to be able to put any of what I want to say into words?
‘You left this,’ I say meekly, holding the square of leather out to him. ‘In the diner. Earlier.’
He doesn’t move for it immediately; in fact, he looks at it with the same suspicion I’d expect him to have if I offered him a poisonous snake. It’s not until he pats his jeans pockets and finds them empty that he reaches out a hand. ‘How did you know I was here?’ he asks as he takes it from me.
‘I called at the guesthouse in town. They didn’t have you listed as being checked in, so…’
Well, where else would he be? Eden isn’t a big enough town to have more than one place to stay; hell, it’s barely big enough to keep our one guesthouse (it feels a little grandiose to call it a hotel, given that it only has four rooms) in business. I’d spent most of the car ride ignoring the little voice in my head that pointed out how easy it would have been for him to find a motel somewhere on the road, or in the next town over, or to be sleeping in a car, or staying with friends, or…
Or, or, or. So many options. So many chances to be wrong.
And yet I hadn’t. My hunch had paid off. Here he was.
‘Oh,’ he says. My answer seems to satisfy him. ‘Well, thanks. You didn’t have to come all the way out here to give it back to me, though.’
‘I didn’t,’ I say. ‘I mean, that’s not why I came.’
Whatever I might have tried to tell myself, that’s the truth. If Hale hadn’t left his wallet there, I still would have found some excuse to see him again. I could have convinced myself t
hat it was all in the past, that I’m happier not knowing, but there’s no way I would have been able to convince anyone else. Even Pete saw it, and he had no idea who Hale is. I couldn’t let the last time I saw Hale, walking away from me with that hangdog look on his face and those words ringing in my ears, really be the last time I saw him.
‘So why did you?’
This all seemed so much easier when I was rehearsing it in the car on the way over. Now, the words are thick in my throat and my tongue feels two or three sizes too big for my mouth. I’ve never felt so ill at ease around Hale before; then again, I’ve never not been able to lean in and kiss him before. Or touch him. Or run my fingers through his hair, or feel his arms around me…
God, what I wouldn’t give to go back to those days, back when I could tell him anything.
‘Carrie?’ he asks. ‘Why did you come out here?’
He’s not going to drop it, but that’s OK; if I don’t say it now, I never will. Something will come up, some distraction, some blessed relief and I’ll take the easy exit – and then what? Hale will leave, and I’ll spend the rest of my life not knowing.
I can’t stand the thought of that. I think it would kill me, deep down – chipping a little bit of me away every day, until I was nothing but a small pile of gravel and regret.
‘So here’s the thing,’ I say. My voice trembles; I can’t stop it, but I power through. ‘You owe me.’
He shifts uncomfortably, spinning the wallet in his fingers. ‘I told you, I’d pay for the s–’
‘It’s not about the soup.’ I can feel my hands balling up into tiny little fists at my sides, a white-hot anger burning its way from my gut out to the furthest reaches of my body. ‘You know exactly what it’s about. You come back here after ten years – ten goddamn years, Hale – and you come into my diner and you act like nothing’s happened, and you don’t tell me anything about anything, and then you have the nerve to think this is about a bowl of fucking soup?’
I yell the last word, the punctuation to a crescendo that can’t fail to catch the attention of people in the surrounding trailers no matter how many public arguments The Grove might have; I can almost hear the curtains twitching behind me as people look to see who the new guy with the fancy bike might be, and why he’s brought a crazy townie along with him. Suddenly, I realise what it’s like to be on the other side of it all: for me to be the person who doesn’t belong, the refugee from Away.
I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit.
Hale steps towards me, and up close I remember just how big he always was. He stands almost eight inches taller than me, but it’s more than that. There’s a strength to him, a raw, animalistic sort of power. He’s like an idling engine, a spring coiled and primed to release at any moment. If I were a man, and someone the size of Hale stepped up to me, I can imagine being scared – and yet I’m not, at all. To other people, he had a reputation for being a scrapper, and yet to me Hale was always a safe place, a gentle giant, the harbour in the storm.
His size doesn’t scare me – it never has – but it does help to cool my anger. He has an aura of security about him, somehow.
‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Hey. Calm down.’ He places his hands on my shoulders gently, like he’s trying to placate a tantruming child. There’s comfort in the soft squeeze of his fingers, the calming weight of his touch. Then, of course, I remember that it’s the first physical contact I’ve had with him in a decade, and why that is, and the anger bubbles up in me again even more than before.
‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘I do owe you. An explanation, and an apology. Probably more than one. I’m sorry, Carrie. Not for leaving – I’m not sorry for that – but for how I left, and what I did after. I won’t say I didn’t have my reasons, but…’ He trails off, runs a hand through his hair, recomposes his thoughts. ‘But I guess one of them was just me being a coward – and for that, I really am sorry. More than anything.’
I don’t need to turn around to be sure that the neighbours are still watching, but Hale doesn’t look away. His eyes are focused on me, willing me to believe him.
And I do. That’s the real kicker. It doesn’t make up for ten years of absence, but just hearing him apologise is enough to lift a weight from my soul. Merely having him back in front of me, real and tangible and in the flesh, makes things that much brighter.
It’s not much, but it’s a start.
‘Thank you,’ I say quietly. ‘I… I needed to hear that.
I look up at him, and see that he’s smiling – an honest, open smile. I get the feeling that he’s as relieved to have opened up as I am. ‘So…’ he says at last. ‘How about we get that beer?’
Chapter Five
The inside of the trailer is dark, even with the shutters pulled open. There's a thick coating of dust on the windows that stops much of the summer light coming through, and even the beams that do manage to end up in here don't find much to illuminate. The place is small and cramped and untidy, with things piled up on the countertops. At the side of the sink, I can see a drying rack still covered in plates; once washed, now covered in dust yet again. Jim Fischer obviously hadn't been expecting company when he died.
It feels less like a home and more like a time capsule – a moment trapped and left, forgotten about, for the world to pass it by, like the rooms in old colonial houses, set out the way they would have been three hundred years ago. A snapshot of a life lived.
And yet some things are new: unmistakeably Hale's. There's a duffel bag on the floor, fastened up tight. On the counter sits a six-pack – now a five-pack – of beer, waiting for us.
‘Sorry it's not colder,’ he says as he hands it to me. ‘The place doesn't have power. Probably got turned off years ago. I should probably see about getting a generator. I meant to when I was in town, but–’
He lets his words hang in the air, unspoken.
But then I met you.
Is it wishful thinking, to dream that I might have had such an impact on him? That I might have flustered him enough to make him forget what he came to town for? Hale doesn’t get flustered, is the thing – or at least, he never used to. Sure, he used to bubble over into anger sometimes, but that’s all it ever was: a slow build, like a pot of pasta on a stove. Before, he was able to control it; after, it was like nothing had ever happened, but in those moments when he really got a fire lit under him…
Well, I’d never seen it, but I’d seen the damage to his knuckles when he had to defend himself. Hale wasn’t a boy who pulled his punches, that much was clear. Not when the red mist set in.
But that was one thing; being distracted was quite another. That was unheard of. His quiet intensity had always made him seem in control of the situation, like it grounded him, somehow. Even when he had walked out of the diner, I got the impression that his final words to me had been carefully chosen – although to what end, I couldn’t have said. To hurt? To maim?
Don’t dwell on that now, I think. There are more important things you need to be focusing on.
‘I heard about your dad,’ I say, opening the beer and taking a sip. Lukewarm suds do little to fight my nervous cottonmouth. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ There’s a flash of disgust across his face. ‘Not on my account, anyway. I don’t have any sympathy for him. You know what kind of man he was.’
I do know. I saw the scars he left on Hale, emotionally and physically. I saw the damage that was left.
There’s an awkward pause between us. I take another sip of the beer, but it can only distract me for so long. Ask him, a little voice in my head says. If you want answers, you’re going to have to ask. Hale’s not going to volunteer them willingly.
Begin at the beginning, then. It’s the only way. But after a decade, how do you even remember where the beginning is?
‘So why are you back here?’ I say. If I start small, I figured that maybe we can build from there. Perhaps that’s the only way we’ll be able t
o do this without it overwhelming me.
One look at him, though, and I can see that I’m not the only one in danger of being overwhelmed. Hale has been standing this whole time, propped up against the counter in what passes for the kitchen, but I see his body slouch a little. ‘I don’t know,’ he says at last. ‘Not really.’
‘That’s not really good enough.’
‘It’s all I’ve got. I wish I had a better reason, but…’ He shrugs. But I don’t. But it is what it is.
Neither one of us says anything for an age. Glaciers form and retreat back in the silence – because what else is there? I want to push him – need to push him – but Hale is the ultimate immovable object. He won’t be pressured to reveal things he doesn’t want to, least of all when they’re so close to his chest. Not by anyone. Not even by me.
I wait for him to be ready, but I stand my ground. I’m not going anywhere until I get what I want.
‘My dad owned this trailer,’ he says at last. ‘Just about the only honest thing he did own, probably – and even then, I think he won it in a poker game. But either way, it was his. And now he’s dead, it’s mine.’ He doesn’t say it gloatingly, although there’s no love in his eyes. Jim Fischer lost his right to his son’s affections a long time ago.
‘You’re not thinking of moving back in, are you?’
Hale give a harsh bark of laughter, like a dog caught off-guard. ‘Oh, fuck no. I just wanted to fly under the radar a little bit. You know what Eden is like. Roll into town in the morning, and everyone and their dog will know about it by the lunchtime rush. Who needs that?’ He has a point. The Chambers Street Guest House might have fresh, clean sheets and hot running water, but Polly Kimble has got a keen eye and a sharp tongue and a prime view of what goes on in town. If you want to keep something on the down-low, that isn’t the place to do it.
But even with that in mind, there’s no way this is a better option.
Reckless: A Bad Boy Musicians Romance Page 5
