Stones Unturned (Meade Lake Series Book 2)

by Taylor Danae Colbert

  My dad looks at Franklin sheepishly then wets his lips.

  “Yes,” he mutters.

  “If every executive forfeits their raises and bonuses and agrees to take a salary reduction of just three percent over the next fiscal year, you can save upwards of fifty positions.”

  “And what about the rest?”

  “I can cover those salaries with a one-time payment that will provide enough overhead for the next six months. All you need to do is sign this.”

  I slide another packet of paper toward him, and Jeffrey pipes up.

  “What you see here, Mr. Jennings, is the change of ownership agreement. You’ll want to have your lawyers look this over and sign that so we can get the ball rolling on making Mr. Sommers the owner. The next page is the diversity agreement.”

  “What the hell is that?” my father asks.

  “It’s a fair hire clause. It says that, moving forward, Jennings Technology will make a conscious effort to diversify its workforce. Oh, and there’s one more thing. Kaylee?”

  I clear my throat.

  “Under this agreement, I would be a partner of the company. Any return on investment will go back into salary increases for everyone except the executives. As CEO, Franklin will also appoint a Diversity Oversight Committee to ensure that the agreement is followed through.”

  There’s a long pause, and I hang up with Jeffrey and Tony.

  Finally, my father looks up to me.

  “Franklin, can you excuse us?” he says. Franklin nods and stands slowly. Our eyes meet, and I can see there’s so much he wants to say, but he doesn’t need to. He closes the door behind him, and I turn back to my dad.

  “What if I refuse?” he asks. I sigh and bend down to put my things back in my bag. My time here is almost done.

  “Then, when you have to let go hundreds of employees, that’s on you,” I tell him.

  He rubs his temples then folds his hands together in front of him.

  “I’ll do it,” he mutters, and I nod. It’s a sweet victory, but one that comes with its own black cloud of truth: this is it for me and my parents. I stand up and walk toward the door.

  “You have till the end of the week to have everything signed. Jeffrey’s information is in the folder, so you can send that over to him.”

  I pull the door open and walk out into the hall when he calls my name.

  He stands with his hand on the door jamb, looking down at the ground.

  “How could you do this?” he asks, his voice shaky. There’s so much to say, so much I want to scream. But I’m stilled by an overwhelming sense of calm and clarity. I ignore his question. I ignore one more example of his manipulation. My eyes pierce his.

  “Be honest with me, Dad. Did you make Mom give her up because she wasn’t yours, or did you make her give her up because she was black?”

  My question leaves him completely dumbfounded. Completely shattered. He’s a shell of the man I once knew and loved. The man I thought could rule the world. Turns out, he’s just a man who trampled on a lot of other people to get where he is. When I realize he has no answer, I turn to walk out of the office.

  “We choose family.”

  I look up to him, our eyes meeting one last time.

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  I round the corner to where Franklin sits, but his desk is empty. When I walk out to the elevators, he’s there, waiting. He smiles as he presses the button.

  “I thought we could take one last elevator ride together,” he says, holding the door open for me.

  We’re quiet as we ride down, and I think of all the early-morning conversations we’ve had here.

  “That was...that was a really amazing thing you just did, Kaylee,” he says just as the car is pulling to a stop on the ground floor. He turns to me. “You just changed a lot of people’s lives. Including mine.”

  He pulls me in for a long hug, and I squeeze him tight.

  “You’re going to do amazing things,” I tell him.

  “You already are,” he tells me before turning toward the doors. As I walk across the lot and pull my keys from my bag, I’m reliving the last few moments. The sheer terror on my father’s face, the gratefulness on Franklin’s.

  “Kaylee.” My mother’s voice rattles me from my thoughts just as I point my key fob toward my car.

  “Mom,” I say. “How did you know I was here?”

  She shrugs.

  “I didn’t. Supposed to be meeting your father down here to go to dinner,” she says. There’s a pause. “So this is what we’ve become, huh? Mother and daughter who don’t even know when the other is in town?”

  I look down at the ground.

  “You made your choice, Mom. And I won’t make the same one.”

  “Wait,” she says, putting her hand on mine before I open the car door. I look at her hand on mine, then back up to her, my eyes carrying a warning in them. She peels her hand back slowly, like she’s afraid.

  “Tell me one last thing,” I say. Her eyes are wide and pleading. “Is her father Billy?”

  My mother closes her eyes, tears streaming out of the sides of them. She nods.

  “How can I find him?”

  She sniffles and reaches into her purse to grab a pen and an old envelope. She writes down a phone number and hands it to me.

  “What is this?”

  “His phone number,” she says. I look at her.

  “You still know it by heart?” I ask. She nods. I fold the piece of paper up and tuck it into my bag. Our eyes meet again before I slip into my car and turn on the ignition. I pull out of the spot, out of the parking lot, and onto the main road.

  My mother fades away in my rearview mirror, along with every trace of the life that was once all I knew.

  25

  It’s a little past twelve noon when I finally make my way back over Meade Bridge, and seeing the water beneath me breathes life back into me that I so desperately need. A full day of driving combined with a last, life-altering encounter with my parents has left me feeling like a shell, but I don’t have time to sit around. I have shit to fix.

  I asked Jeffrey to call the meeting at his office, and he did just as I asked. I pull into the parking lot at the firm and head inside. Tara is at the front desk, perfect smile on her face.

  “Morning, Kaylee,” she says. “They’re all back there.”

  I nod.

  “All of them?”

  She smiles.

  “Yes. Your sister is there. Derrick’s there, too,” she says.

  I turn to the conference room at the end of the hall, take a breath, and push the door open.

  Around the table, every business owner that May ever made deals with, or planned to, sits. They’re chatting, probably wondering why it is Jeffrey called them here today. Probably wondering what the fate of their endeavors is going to be. When eyes start to land on me, a collective hush falls over the crowd. I clear my throat and stand at the front of the room.

  “Morning, everyone. Thanks for all coming in on such short notice.”

  My eyes meet Derrick’s, and they’re wide and full of question. He and Haven sit at the back of the room together.

  “I know there have been some questions, since the death of my grandmother, on the status of loans and projects. I just wanted to let you all know that all loans will still be processed, and any projects slated for this year will continue as planned.”

  A few people whisper yes to themselves; a few actually clap.

  “Thank you so much,” one woman says.

  “This is such a relief,” another man says.

  “Jeffrey will be working on the agreements for everything,” I tell them, “but expect to get back to where we were within a month’s time. I also wanted to note that I’ll be moving to the area permanently. I’ll be at May’s house, so feel free to stop by anytime.”

  I look at Haven.

  “That is, if my roommate will still have me.”

  She smiles at me from the ba
ck of the room, a twinkle in her eye.

  “She’ll still have you,” she says. I smile and nod in her direction.

  They all stand and shake my hand as they leave, grabbing paperwork from Jeffrey and making appointments with Tara at the door. I take a deep breath and walk toward the front door just as someone grabs my hand. When I whip around, I see it’s Ryder.

  “You don’t know how happy this makes us,” he says, pulling me in for a hug. Mila wraps her arm around my neck and joins in.

  “We’re so happy you’re sticking around,” she says. “We’ll see you real soon.”

  I walk down the hall, but I don’t see him anywhere. I walk out into the parking lot and see him leaning up against his truck. When I walk by, he pops off. I stop in my tracks, directly in front of him.

  “You came back,” he says just above a whisper. I nod.

  “You were the one who told me I wouldn’t become my parents. I had to prove that to myself,” I say with a shrug. “But I’m back now. For good. I was never leaving here. I was never leaving you.”

  He takes a few steps toward me, slowly at first then faster. He stops just inches in front of me.

  “What have you done to me, girl?” he whispers then bends down, letting his lips crash into mine, scooping me off the ground.

  26

  One Month Later

  “I think that’s him!” I say, shaking Derrick’s arm from the backseat. I look at my sister in the passenger seat, staring out of the windshield. She’s clutching onto the bracelet I gave her, spinning it around nervously.

  A white car pulls up in the lot across from us and parks. We’re in the lot of a recreational park in Virginia where we agreed to meet, and we got here early. We’ve been keeping busy by stuffing ourselves with snacks and playing I Spy, but now, the time has come.

  The man gets out of the car and closes his door, and we follow suit. Haven gets out slowly, clutching onto the door handle for dear life. I stand next to her and take her hand. We walk to the middle of the parking lot, and we can make out his face.

  He’s got some wrinkles around his eyes, but they point to light-brown, speckled irises—sort of like Haven’s.

  He has smooth, round lips, just like my sister’s. And dark skin, like my sister’s.

  “Billy?” I ask as we get closer. He nods.

  “That’s me,” he says. I look at Haven, and her chest heaves up and down as she stares at him.

  “You must be Haven,” he says, his voice trembling. She nods slowly. “I’ve been waiting your whole life to meet you. I just didn’t know it until right now.”

  With that, she lunges forward, wrapping her arms around him. Derrick takes my hand as we all fight back tears.

  Billy squeezes her tight, and they sway together for a moment. “I’m sorry I’ve missed so much,” he says. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have missed a second. But I’m here now, and I’d really like to not miss much more.”

  27

  One Year Later

  “This is the only place in town still open today, I think,” he says as he reaches through the window of the snow cone shop and grabs two for us. I kick my sandals off and hook my fingers through them then take my cone from him and plop down in the grass.

  “Don’t spill on your dress,” he says, eyeing my wedding gown as he tugs on his tie to loosen it. I smile.

  “I only plan to wear this sucker once,” I say, nodding toward it, “so a little color won’t hurt.”

  He smiles and leans forward, our snow-cone-chilled lips touching.

  “You look beautiful, Mrs. Thomas,” he says just before stealing a bite off the top of my cone.

  “Hey! Watch yourself, Mr. Thomas. When I said, ‘what’s mine is yours,’ I did not mean my snow cones.”

  He laughs and kisses the tip of my nose. We snuck out of our own reception to get a breather. We look out over the water, snuggled up against each other, my hair slowly sliding out of the beautiful updo Haven had put it in.

  Everything is quiet, peaceful, until he laughs to himself.

  “What?” I say, folding up the paper of the cone and setting it down on the ground.

  “I just can’t believe this is where we are now,” he says, looking down at the new shiny ring on his finger. “I can’t believe you’re mine.”

  I smile back at him, nestling into the crook of his neck.

  “May would have loved that we got married, huh?” I ask. He smiles that same smile that made me fall to my knees a year ago and still does today.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I won’t lie; she loved me. She would definitely approve.” I laugh as he pulls me closer, kissing my temple. “I’m sorry your family wasn’t here today.”

  I look up at him and smile.

  “They were.”

  Prologue

  In Winters Past, Meade Lake, Book Three

  “Jules, where do you want this one?” Kaylee asks me as she carries another box in from my car.

  “What’s in it?” I ask. She shrugs and sets it down. We’ve been unpacking in my new spot for about three hours now, and Kaylee’s the only one who hasn’t quit on me. I think it’s because she’s the new girl of the group, and she wants to stay on my good side. But whatever the reason, I’m taking all the help I can get.

  I start digging through it, and it doesn’t take long until I realize it’s a box of stuff from high school. Yearbooks, movie stubs, concert tickets, and stacks of old photos. Kaylee sits down next to me on the hardwood and grabs a handful of pictures from the box as I start flipping through yearbooks. Eesh. No one should have to look at my freshman school photo. No one.

  I grab the next book. Sophomore year was a little bit better.

  My heart skips a beat when I realize what year that was. The year I met him.

  I close the book and hop up, walking to the kitchen island and grabbing another box to see where it needs to go.

  “Oh my gosh,” Kaylee shrieks. “Is this Derrick?”

  I walk over to peer down at the awkward photo she has of all of us, the summer after senior year. The summer before everything changed for all of us, the summer that life really took hold. I chuckle as I take the faded photo, stroking the corners as I look down at it. Me, Derrick, Ryder, Luna, and Kirby, all jumping off a dock at the same time.

  “Yep,” I tell her. “Cute, huh?”

  “Oh, gosh, look at Luna here,” she says, handing me another. “Was she ever awkward?”

  I shake my head.

  “Nope. Been a Greek goddess since day one. Does wonders to have someone like that as your best friend,” I say. Kaylee looks at me and rolls her eyes.

  “Oh, stop it. As if you’re not gorgeous,” she says, then turns back to her photos.

  I find a box of towels and start pulling them out, walking them toward the linen closet at the end of the hallway. I’m already loving having my own space, my own organization, my own system for how things should go.

  I wasn’t always ready to leave my mom’s house. In fact, there was a time when I thought I’d never be able to. But once I was, I got out of there as fast as I could, and found this little place up on the mountain that’s perfect. Close enough to my mom’s where I can check in, far enough away for me to feel like I can actually breathe.

  “Hey, who’s this?” Kaylee asks, holding another photo in my direction.

  I walk back to her and take it out of her hands, peering down at it. My eyes widen into big saucers, my pulse picks up its pace beneath my skin.

  I remember this day so well, the day after one of Shane’s big wins. He’d broken one of the state records in the 200 freestyle, and Tommy and I had painted our whole bodies, almost from head to toe in navy blue paint with Shane’s initials on our stomachs.

  “That’s Tommy,” I tell her, running my finger across his perfect grin, that one that’s burned into my memory, stamped on my heart. She nods. She’s heard about Tommy. She knows I lost him years ago.

  “And is this…?” she asks, holding up another photo
, one that nearly brings me to my knees. I nod slowly, staring down at the two teenagers in the photo, looking at each other with such loving eyes that I know everyone around us had to suspect something.

  He’s hoisting me into the air, and I’m holding his face, peering down at him after yet another one of his wins. This photo doesn’t look like two best friends. It looks like two people who found everything they could ever be looking for in another person.

  “Yeah,” I say. “That’s Shane.”

  She nods again. She knows I lost him, too.

  I lost them both that year, in different ways. Tommy didn’t want to leave me. He didn’t want to leave us. He had so much more life to live.

  But Shane, Shane chose to leave. He decided to live his life. Only, he decided to live it without me.

  The Meade Lake Series

  Did you enjoy Stones Unturned?

  Read Back to Shore, book one in the Meade Lake series, now!

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  In Winters Past

  Moving Mountains

  Acknowledgments

  This book is so damn special to me, because it’s the first book I ever wrote. The bones of this story and these characters are over a decade old, and I am still just as crazy about them as I was back then. HUGE thanks to you, sissy, for always reading, loving, and encouraging me to keep doing this. I think you love my stories more than I do, and that means the world.

  To my amazingly supportive tribe of writers and bloggers and readers who are CONSTANTLY supporting me, reading blurbs, looking at covers, and commiserating with me, I adore each and every one of you, and I would be totally lost without you.