by Eve R. Hart
“I’ll call you later.”
With a nod, I hit the end button.
He was right and I knew it.
I took in a few deep breathes trying to get the tightness in my chest to ease up a little.
Then got my shit together. Or at least enough to get up off the dirty ground.
As I looked at the door one last time, my fingers brushed over the cracked and peeling design of the magnifying glass.
I knew now that Art had been avoiding me. All my calls going to voicemail had been deliberate.
I almost didn’t expect to find him at home, but as I pulled up to his house, I saw his car sitting right there in the driveway.
I banged on the door so hard I was sure the whole neighborhood heard it.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” A moment later the door opened and he didn’t look surprised to see me. “Come in.”
I stood there for a long moment taking the place in as he walked back to the middle of the room. There were so many boxes everywhere. Half of the living room was already packed up.
“I take it you’ve already seen it by now,” he said, his back to me as he wrapped something in a sheet of newspaper and tucked it away in a box.
“Why?” I said still shocked at what I was witnessing.
“Sit,” he said as he pointed to the couch while he flopped down in his old recliner.
“You sent me on a bogus case just to get rid of me so you could… Why?!”
“Because it was what he wanted.”
I gaped at him. There was no way that this was what my dad wanted.
“No,” I said shaking my head almost violently. “No, this was his business. It was his dad’s. It was our family’s. He set it up for me to take over. He taught me everything so when the time came I would be able to run things. He…”
“Didn’t want to leave you with a burden. Come on, Bridget. We were never going to be able to pull ourselves out of the hole.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Your dad left it up to me but he said that if things didn’t turn around soon then he wanted me to set you free. He knew you wouldn’t be able to do it yourself. You’d go down with the ship, and then what? You’d have nothing. This way he figured you have enough to find something that calls to your heart.”
“This isn’t just some job. This is my life. This is what I know, what I was taught.”
“Bridget, you have a lot of skills that you can use throughout your life. This isn’t the end.”
I shook my head, unable to believe what I was hearing.
“But how? I read through the will, there was nothing in there about this. I own the business. How could you close it without me?” I looked at him wondering how this all was set up.
“And he taught you to always read the fine print. Which was why he had it worded the way it was. You own the name. I own the building.”
“Ahhh. Smart. You sold the building, taking away everything. I have… what… a name and a license, for now.”
“It was never meant to be mine. Your dad trusted me. I deposited the money into your account. All of it.”
“And what becomes of you?” I asked because I did care about him and I hated to see him left with nothing.
“I’m moving in with my sister. She is showing signs of dementia and I need to be there for her. I have a place, Bridget. It’s time for you to find yours. That’s all he ever wanted for you.”
“But.” I stopped because I didn’t know what I was trying to say. I was still in shock and couldn’t believe that they would both do this to me behind my back. “This is my life. This is what I want to do.”
“Is it?” he asked pinning me with his old, wise eyes. “Is it what you want to do? Being a PI makes you happy? It’s not that you feel some sense of obligation? All your dad wanted to do was be a great father to you. He felt stuck with this burden handed down from his dad. But he took it and he did the best he could with it because it gave him the chance to be there with you.”
I swallowed hard and tried to hold back the tears.
“The last thing he wanted was for you to feel the same thing.”
“So why all the training. Why did he groom me for this life?”
“Don’t you get it, Bridget?” He let out a sigh and rubbed his temples for a moment. I could see how I was giving him a headache but I had to know everything. “It was all he knew and all he ever wanted to do was spend time with you.”
“Yeah…”
“Damn right, yeah. That man loved you beyond words.” There was a long pause. I knew my dad loved me, I felt it every day. “Being a private investigator isn’t like it was in the old days. It’s not like how it was back in your grandpa’s day. Things are… not as glamorous.”
I let out a short laugh. I honestly didn’t think that would have been the word my granddad would have ever used to describe it but I got what he meant.
“It was the last piece of him that I had,” I whispered admitting the truth of why the business really meant so much to me.
“Oh, damn,” he grumbled. “You’re going to make me get all emotional and wise on you now.”
I smiled at him. He was a hard man, made that way by his lonely life. But underneath that all, there was a beating heart.
“He’s alive within you. In here.” He pointed to his head. “And in here.” He moved his hand over his heart.
We talked some more, mostly remembering stuff about my dad. He set my mind at ease a fraction when he told me that he’d saved my granddad’s desk for me and that it was safely stored away in a climate controlled storage unit. Silly as it may have been, I wanted to keep that desk in my life. It seemed that Art had taken care of everything— with a little guidance and instruction from my dad, I guess. By the time he was shooing me out the door saying he needed to get packing, I felt a little better.
“You’re going to be okay?” I asked as I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.
“Yeah, gonna be just fine.”
“I’m going to call and check up on you. You better answer my calls.”
“I will. I promise. Take care of yourself.”
I went back to my apartment still a little shaken and emotional.
The place felt different and the moment I walked through the door, I wanted to turn around and run. I wasn’t sure why and I had no fucking clue where it was that I wanted to run to.
I was maybe a little lost on what to do.
It seemed like Art already had a plan for himself.
My dad had a plan for me only that plan didn’t have a final phase. The strings had been cut, I was free, but I didn’t feel like it.
I felt antsy and hated it, so I decided to throw myself into some cleaning.
I started with the refrigerator because I knew there were a few things in there that needed to go. I went as far as taking everything out and wiping all the shelves down. The coolness surrounded my sweaty skin and I pushed passed the strange feeling it gave me.
I gave everything a new home as I put it all back in. Pickles went on the top shelf on the door instead of the middle. Ketchup went to the bottom. The cheese remained in the cheese drawer because, duh, that was where it was meant to go.
I strangely decided that when I bought fresh milk and eggs that they weren’t going to share the same space anymore. They weren’t going to sit side-by-side and be best friends. No, they would have to make new ones and have new adventures.
And I realized that none of that made sense to a sane person which furthered my point that I was just plain crazy now.
But was there some kind of underlying statement I was trying to grab onto with that?
Things were all different for me. My life was pretty much tossed into chaos. Or not… was it the opposite now because I didn’t really have anything to do with no firm to run? Sure, soon I was going to have to nut-up and face the fact that I needed to figure out what was ahead.
Only first, I just needed to process the huge changes that had been forced on me.
I moved
to the stove. I hated cleaning the stove and so I always put it off every time I thought about it. There were stuck on bits all over the place. Random toppings from the many frozen pizzas and burnt cheese stuck to the wire racks. There was a spot that was sticky and didn’t want to come off no matter what I did. With deadly determination filling my veins, I yanked the metal spatula out of the drawer and started to attack the offending mess. A chunk flew off and hit me in the forehead but I didn’t stop.
I finally gave up and collapsed back against the cabinets when I could no longer move my arms and my fingers were completely black.
This wasn’t helping me but I didn’t know what else to do. It was late, I knew I should try to sleep but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to happen. I took a shower, hoping to wash the dirt and grime and day away.
As soon as I turned the water off, I heard my phone ringing in the other room. I rushed to wrap the towel around me and wring my hair out at the same time.
“Why now?” I said out loud as I stared at the video icon from Lake. “Why can’t you just talk on the phone like a normal person? Or text. Yes, that would be better sometimes.”
“What was that?” he asked and I hadn’t realized that I’d swiped to connect.
“Uhhhh…”
“Were you talking to yourself?”
“No,” I said defensively and he gave me a look like he didn’t believe me even for a second. “Fine, yes. Why do you have to do the video thing? Especially right now. And you weren’t supposed to call me.”
Yes, I scolded him. I should have done it the first time he called, but I was a mess then and wasn’t even really thinking as I talked to him.
I should have let it go but I couldn’t handle this now. I couldn’t have him calling when I may have really needed to hear his voice. When I needed to feel like I had someone that was there. That cared.
It would have been so much easier if he’d just let me go.
Maybe.
Okay, I knew that was kind of a lie.
“Because… I missed your beautiful face…”
Okay, awww.
“And I told you I’d call you,” he said with a tiny upturn of his lips. “But if now is a bad time… wait, are you… uh, um.” And that was the moment it set in that I was freshly out of the shower. Oh, and he was blushing.
“I swear to God if you say something about phone sex right now I will hang up on you.” I was maybe only half-joking.
“What?!” His eyes widened with shock. “I wasn’t even thinking that. Well, I wasn’t until you said something about it. I would never ask something like that. Unless… you wanted to…”
“Lake,” I said with a hint of a warning in my tone though I couldn’t stop the smile from spreading on my face. “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry. There is a lot that happened today and I think I’m still trying to catch up to it all.”
“Wanna talk about it?” he asked and the lust was cleared from his eyes. I could see that he really meant that he would be there for me if I needed him right now.
“Okay, fine.”
I tossed the phone on the bed knowing he would have a great view of my dusty ceiling fan while I got dressed without perverted eyes. I yelled across the room as I began to fill him in on everything. Once I was decent, I came back to the phone, giving him my face as settled back against my headboard.
“I have no clue what to do now,” I said sounding completely defeated.
“When is your lease up?”
“Uh,” I paused to think. “Three months.”
“Okay, that’s good. This is a simple enough fix.”
“You say that like my life didn’t just get turned upside down. The rug is gone, Lake. Pulled out so fast that my feet are still kicking mid-air trying to land on something.”
“Take the three months. Figure out something that would make you happy. Do that. Try a bunch of different things, if you aren’t sure. And maybe…”
“Maybe what, Lake?”
“Maybe when your lease is up, if you haven’t found your footing again, you could try someplace new. Just a thought.”
He didn’t specifically say where that place might be but I had a feeling he was talking about somewhere more north. About ten hours north, to be exact.
Only I had too much on my plate to try and make my life even more complicated. I needed to be taking things off, not piling more on.
But I figured for just a few more minutes, I’d take advantage of what he was giving me. His time. His calming voice. His smile that was somehow cute and sexy at the same time.
Yeah, I needed all of that a little bit longer.
As I talked to him, I had a feeling that this wasn’t going to be a one-time thing. Even if in the back of my mind, I kept trying to tell myself that I would walk away after today.
I wouldn’t.
I knew it.
He would call again.
And I knew I would answer every single time.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lake
A month went by.
In that time, B-ry had his fight. It did not go well and though I wasn’t there to see him go down, I saw just how hard he went down afterward. Hey, someone had to take the patrol shift that night, it wasn’t like I didn’t want to support my brother. It took him a few good weeks to recover. And Laurel, well, she was pissed. I suspected it had more to do with the fact that she wasn’t told about what he was doing until it was over. Not like we could keep it a secret afterward because you couldn’t exactly brush off the kind of bruising he had as something else. ‘I tripped and fell’ wasn’t going to be believable.
Though he lost and Pyotr said he was going to put money on B-ry, there hadn’t been any blowback from it. By the way some of the brothers that had been there went on, it seemed like Pyotr was oddly amused that B-ry lasted as long as he did. And it wasn’t like the guy didn’t make a killing from that night anyway, from what I’d heard.
Thanksgiving came and went and it was all I could do not to drive down to Florida. It was the last holiday that Bridget got to spend with her dad. She wouldn’t come right out and say how hard it was hitting her, but I could tell. She tried to stay strong and I did my best to let her.
That wasn’t to say that I didn’t call her and spend the night watching her beautiful face on video as she ate her sad frozen meal of turkey, cranberry slop, and green beans with almond slivers. She said it wasn’t so bad but I knew it was nothing like the homemade spread that Gwen, Abigail, and Chris had made for everyone. I tried not to brag too much. Just enough to let her know what she was missing.
It was hard. I wanted to push her into making a choice. And the only one that I thought was acceptable was the one where she moved here. But I didn’t. I held back and let her know that I missed her without being overbearing. In the end, I wanted her to make the choice that was best for her. I just prayed that it was me.
We hadn’t put any sort of label on what we were doing. I think that neither one of us could handle that right now.
Me, well, I knew that if I told her that I wanted her to be my woman— for lack of a better term— I knew it would shatter me if she ended up staying in Florida.
And for her, I figured it was best if she didn’t have the pressure of a title.
That said, I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. I wasn’t even looking.
Let’s be honest, when you had the best thing ever, why would you even try to find a substitute? Not only were the women that hung around not appealing, they just didn’t do a single fucking thing for me.
Bridget was unique. Irreplaceable. Everything.
“Hey, man,” Mouse said slinging an arm around my shoulder.
We each had a fresh beer and the bar was full which wasn’t surprising for a Friday night.
“Hey,” I said smiling because even though Bridget was miles away, I was determined not to let it get me down.
“Knock that shit off.”
“What?” I asked with a joking innocence in my
tone.
“Look, you miss her, I get it. But either go for it and lay it all out there or move the hell on.”
I eyed him for a long moment feeling like he was almost trying to say something more in his words.
“Look, that chick at the bar has been eyeing you all fucking night,” he said in a drunken tone, which was a little loud.
I took him in with semi-sober eyes for a moment before turning and looking in the direction he was. There were two women sitting at the bar. Their bodies were turned toward one another, only the brunette’s head was looking in my direction while her blonde friend chatted away.
My body did not respond in any kind of way.
But that didn’t matter because Mouse was now pulling me by his hooked arm around my neck in the direction of the two.
“Mouse,” I tried to say but it did nothing to slow him down.
“Hi,” I said with a forced smile because I was feeling super awkward.
“Hi,” the brunette said back breathlessly. “I’m Carla and this is Amber.”
Mouse gave a hello that was smoother than I thought he’d be able to give in his intoxicated state.
Okay, I just had to say something because Mouse was not a drink-to-get-drunk kind of guy. I could probably count on one hand the times I’d seen him drunk and most of those happened the last few months. I couldn’t pinpoint what the hell was going on and I felt like I really should have pulled him away and asked.
But before I could even do so, he was trying to start up a conversation with the brunette’s friend and I was left alone to play wing-man or some shit.
I wished he would have gone over the plan before he dragged my ass over here. Though listening to the other woman, she didn’t really seem interested in Mouse right away. Or being here, really. I got the feeling that it wasn’t her idea to come here and that she was just here for her friend. And that should have made me laugh because it was clear that Mouse was either slightly attracted to her or just looking for a distraction from whatever kind of shit was going on in his head. It sucked that it looked like Mouse was failing so bad.
“I like your hair,” Carla said, running her fingers roughly through it.
