by D. L. Wood
Anticipating the energizing brew, she started a cup of French Roast, noting that the small trash bin beside it was empty. If there were other inn guests, they weren’t up yet. Normally she loved the conviviality of bed and breakfasts. Often it was the best way to get an insider’s view of a locale. But today she was thankful for a few moments of solitude as she added enough French vanilla creamer to her coffee to turn it the color of butterscotch.
She walked to the front window and sipped the hot drink. A fat sparrow was perched on the tiered, concrete birdbath positioned beside a well-trimmed row of low hedges. A large oak, perhaps planted when the house was built in 1892, had decorated the lawn with its shed leaves of red and russet. Fall had definitely arrived.
“Hello?” a voice called from behind. Chloe turned to see the innkeeper that had checked her in the night before, a gentleman in his late fifties, white-headed and smiling.
“Oh, hey. Morning, Derrick.”
“Good morning. Did you sleep well?”
“Great, actually.”
“Good. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll have breakfast for you in the dining room, right across the hall.”
“Great, I’m starving,” she said, not realizing how true that was until that moment.
“You’re the only one staying with us right now. So any special requests? How do you like your eggs?” he asked, as he finished tying on a spotless, starched apron.
“Over-easy? With toast?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
Breakfast turned out to be a heavenly combination of perfectly done fried eggs, lightly toasted sourdough bread, a small cup of berries drizzled with honey and yogurt, and the gooiest cinnamon roll she had ever tasted. All this with hot tea served in bone china.
“This was fantastic,” Chloe praised, as Derrick whisked her empty plate away. “Best cinnamon roll I’ve ever had.”
“It’s from Merridee’s, a bakery and restaurant one block from here, just right off Main Street. You can get there through the alleyway just to the left of the house.”
“I may run over there. I was going to head down to Main Street anyway to get my bearings, maybe check some places out.”
“Well, nothing else really opens until ten a.m., except for Starbucks and maybe a couple of the other restaurants. And here,” he said, sliding a typed sheet in front of her. “It’s a list of the things to do around here—historical sites, shopping, antique shops, ghost tours—”
“Ghost tours?”
Derrick nodded. “Been on a couple of those. Lots of fun. Anyway, when you mentioned the article you’re writing, I thought this might help.”
After savoring the last bit of tea, she slipped upstairs for a light jacket and her camera, then headed out, anxious to get a feel for the place. Instead of the alley, she walked just half a block to the town square that she and Reese had run across the night before. The marble statue of the Confederate soldier rested atop a granite shaft that had to be at least thirty feet tall. This time she stayed on the sidewalk, going left past a red brick building with massive white columns. A historical marker declared it to be the original courthouse from the early 1800s. Ironically, it now was positioned adjacent to a Mellow Mushroom restaurant, most definitely not an original from the 1800s.
Main Street itself was extremely well-preserved, with two- and three-story brick buildings lining both sides, some painted, others not, but all in keeping with a very traditional Southern scheme. Many of the buildings were a century or more old. There were a few chain stores, including an Anthropologie clothing store, but most were independent shops with specialty merchandise. Clothing, linens, gifts, china, jewelry—the list was endless. And the windows rivaled that of any Manhattan Fifth Avenue store. They were elegant, intriguing, whimsical—Chloe hated that she would have to wait until later to get a better look.
She snapped a few photographs of the more interesting ones, then turned left at the light. A bright blue banner heralding “Merridee’s Breadbasket” hung outside a doorway on the opposite side of the street. Hustling across illegally, she swung the heavy wooden door open and stepped inside.
A symphony of vanilla sweetness, bacon, and a dark, nutty roast enveloped her. The place was packed, clearly a favorite of the locals. There were a lot of suits, and Chloe suspected many had business that morning inside the current, modern-day courthouse positioned just across the street. Exposed, rustic wood adorned nearly every surface—wide wooden floor planks, hefty wooden columns, and an exposed beam ceiling. Woven baskets hung from the beams and dark brick covered the walls. As she approached the counter, a waitress walked by with a plate of cream cheese-stuffed French toast that almost had Chloe ordering a second breakfast. Instead, she ordered a half-dozen cinnamon rolls to go and a latte for herself.
While she waited for the order, Chloe curled up in one of the leather chairs in the corner and pulled out her cell. She had been using an app that offered up a daily Bible verse, and lately, in light of her impending meeting with Reese, she had opted to focus on ones about forgiveness.
Forgiveness. This had traditionally not been a strength for her. With the exception of Tate, whom she had forgiven anything and everything, forgiving others had not come easily. Faces floated through her mind of people that had once been in her life, but, because of some transgression, had been plucked from it and tossed aside like weeds in a garden. It wasn’t that she set out to be harsh. It was simply a matter of self-preservation.
But now, this strategy seemed to fly in the face of what she was learning about God’s take on forgiveness. God forgave her. Every time. Even when it was obvious that she wasn’t perfect and might fail again. And he was pretty clear that he wanted her to do the same. But the idea of just letting Reese off the hook still pained her, clashing with her sense of justice. It just seemed wrong.
So, of course, the verse that popped up for that day was Hebrews 10:17: “Then he adds: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice for sins is no longer necessary.”
Chloe sighed, wishing again for the kind of compassion that would help her understand what that truly meant. It was such a great mystery to her, how God could not only forgive, but not even remember the sins any longer. It was hard to imagine ever forgetting the damage her father had done. Her moving on was one thing. Giving Reese permission to do the same was something else altogether.
The clerk called her name and she shot up to retrieve the bag of warm pastries and steaming latte. She took a swig of the vanilla-laced coffee, chasing away any last remnants of morning grogginess as she headed out the door, its bell ringing in her wake.
EIGHT
Chloe knew something was wrong the moment she turned onto Reese’s street. A white patrol car emblazoned with the “City of Franklin” logo was parked right in front of the house. She pulled ahead of it, parked and got out, her gaze drawn to two police officers standing near the front door, taking photos and writing on a clipboard. It wasn’t until she was at the front steps that she saw why. A large box, dripping with what looked like blood, sat on the top step. Written across the step in the same red liquid were the words, “BACK OFF OR ELSE.”
“Is that…that’s not blood, is it?” Chloe gasped as the officers turned towards her.
“Ma’am?” the female officer on the right said, starting towards Chloe. “Ma’am—”
Reese flung the door open, looking exhausted and a bit surprised.
“It’s fine. She’s fine,” he said, waving them off. “It’s my daughter,” he explained further, glancing at his watch and shook his head. “Sorry. I had no idea it was this late already. It’s been…well, if you could just come around to the side.”
“Sure,” Chloe said, leaving him and walking down the driveway that extended down the length of the house to a small porch and side entryway. Reese met her there, opening the door and ushering her inside the kitchen where she was immediately hit with Emma’s angry voice. “Dad, I told you, I’m sta
ying here today. I’m not leaving Tyler!” Emma shouted.
“Emma, look, please. He’s fine. Just go to school. I’ll be with him.”
“Yeah, right. A lot that’s worth.” Emma looked past Reese. “Chloe, you get it, right? I can’t leave him. He’s too shaken up.”
Chloe held her hands up in surrender. “I don’t need to be involved in this.”
“Well somebody needs to be because he is refusing to listen—like always!” Emma bellowed, followed by Reese starting in, their voices competing with one another in escalating fashion.
“Nice way to start off the morning, eh?” came a voice from behind Chloe. She swiveled to find Holt Adams standing in the space leading from the kitchen to the front foyer, a wry smile on his face. His thick, wavy hair was spot-on again today, almost too perfect, and Chloe wondered briefly if he had a stylist at home. A sharp, charcoal gray suit and Brooks Brothers wingtips finished off the fine-tuned look. As the battle between Reese and Emma raged louder, Chloe stepped past Holt into the hallway behind him, discreetly attempting to get as far away as possible. He kept pace with her, till both slipped sideways into the dining room, the first room off the front foyer. The walls were painted a serene tone of neutral gray, with decorative white panels and molding covering the bottom third. An oblong cherry table sat in the center, covered with a multitude of papers—files, photographs, printouts—all stacked and sorted. Pens, paperclips, and other sundry supplies littered the tabletop. An open laptop occupied the space at the head of the table, perched precariously on what appeared to be some kind of legal text. Emma had not been kidding about Reese bringing his work home with him. Chloe doubted many family dinners ever happened in there. She turned back to Holt, who pulled a face as Emma roared indistinctly in the background.
“Wow, she’s loud today,” Chloe remarked, her eyebrows rising.
He shrugged. “She’s seventeen and at war with the world. She’s a good kid, really. Just blustering.”
Chloe nodded, remembering what it was like to be seventeen. “You’re here awfully early,” she noted, wondering if Reese normally had law partners over at this time of day, or if this was an exception because of the box on the porch.
He smirked. “I’m guessing somebody filled you in on who I am?”
“Emma said you work with Reese.”
He held out a hand and she shook it. “Holt Adams. Reese and I are law partners. He called me after they found it. Thought he might need some help juggling the kids and the cops.”
“That was nice of you.”
“I pitch in where I can. I’m kind of fond of his little family.”
Though she was sure it was unintentional, his words stung a bit, and she wondered whether and how much he knew about her place in Reese’s “little family.”
“So was that blood out there?” she asked, gesturing towards the front door.
“Nah. Just paint.”
“It looked awful.”
“Yeah,” Holt agreed. “Unfortunately, Tyler found it. He went out to grab something from his backpack this morning and saw it from the driveway. Poor kid thought it was a package from Amazon or something and went running over. It really spooked him.”
“I’ll bet.”
Holt nodded. “Ran upstairs for his dad and hasn’t come down since. Emma doesn’t want to leave him. They’re thick as thieves.”
“What was in the box?”
“Empty,” Holt answered, shoving his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “They were just making a statement with the fake blood and all. Too bad they weren’t more clear about what that statement is.”
Chloe thought about the message written on the steps. “Seemed pretty clear to me.”
“‘Back off or else?’ Back off of what? It could mean any number of things, from any number of people. They should have been more specific. Reese tends to make a few enemies in his line of work.”
“What do you mean ‘his line of work’?” She knew Reese was an attorney, but didn’t see why that would put him in a special category of people who should expect bloody boxes on their porches.
“Our practice is primarily criminal defense and divorce,” Holt explained. “Sometimes people get upset when we represent certain defendants, especially if the crime they’re accused of is nasty. Sometimes, in divorces, the opposing spouse lets their hatred for our client bleed over onto us—no pun intended here.”
“So something like this has happened before?”
“A couple of times. There was a dismembered squirrel with a note attached on the side porch once. That was pretty gross.”
Chloe’s eyes widened. “How did the kids react to that?”
“Fortunately, Reese found it before the kids got to it.”
“So he doesn’t know who left it, what they’re mad about, or what they want him to stop doing?”
He eyed her with keen approval. “So, you see the problem.”
There was a knock on the front door, which opened slowly. An officer with the name plate “R. Tomlinson” entered, carrying a digital camera. “We need to speak with Mr. McConnaughey,” she said, her gaze wide as she overheard the tirade coming from the back of the house. “Could you possibly ask him to come back out?”
“Um, sure. Just a second,” Holt said, then turned to Chloe. “Don’t go anywhere.”
No promises, she thought as he headed down the hall. This whole debacle was causing her to consider again whether this reunion simply wasn’t meant to be. She had expected that confronting Reese would be hard, but this was bordering on ridiculous.
Holt was back in half a minute, with Reese in tow. “Hey, Rita,” Reese said, smiling thinly at Officer Tomlinson. “You guys finished out there?”
“Yeah. You think we could have a word outside?” Reese nodded and followed her out the front door, leaving it cracked behind him.
“Does he know her?” Chloe asked quietly.
Holt nodded. “He knows a lot of the officers. When you do as much criminal defense work as he does, you get pretty familiar with the police.”
“Don’t they hold his job against him?”
Holt scoffed good-naturedly. “No. Actually, they respect him a lot. He plays fair and doesn’t bad-mouth them just to make points. Although,” he grinned impishly, “they definitely don’t like that we win cases as often we do.”
“So he’s good at it—being an attorney I mean?”
Holt smiled. “Yeah. He’s good at it.” He paused for just a nanosecond. “We both are,” he finished, and unleashed that grin again. The cockiness should have been off-putting, but for some reason it just came off as likably confident. Chloe snorted softly, amused, as her cell buzzed in her pocket. Reaching for it, she saw a number she didn’t recognize.
“Hello?” she answered curiously.
“Chloe, it’s me. Emma. I’m upstairs.” Her voice carried none of the rage from her argument with Reese minutes earlier. Instead, it nearly vibrated with excitement. “Wanna come meet Tyler?”
NINE
The Camry rolled away from downtown Franklin, out towards the western part of the county. He had stayed in McConnaughey’s neighborhood just long enough to see a patrol car pull in. After that, he felt it wasn’t safe to stick around, just in case they canvassed the area.
After leaving the package, he had parked down the street where he had been able to keep an eye on it. He had wanted to be sure that somebody found his gift. It turned out to be the kid. Screamed his head off too. He bet that boy wouldn’t sleep for weeks.
Maybe now McConnaughey would take him seriously. If not, he had no problem taking this thing to the next level. Part of him hoped that’s how it went down. A little violence tended to go a long way.
TEN
As Chloe slowly made her way up the stairs her heart suddenly began beating harder in her chest. Why am I so nervous? she thought. It’s just a little boy. It’s no big deal.
But she knew instinctively that this was a lie. It wasn’t just a little bo
y. It was a little boy that might look like Tate. Move like Tate. Speak like Tate. And that was a very, very big deal.
She slowed as she reached the top landing, sucking in a breath just as Emma stuck her head out of a room two doors down on the left.
“Over here,” Emma called to her, gesturing for her to enter and sharing what Chloe suspected was an uncharacteristic grin.
The boy sat cross-legged on a low bed built to look like a red race car. A bright yellow “52” adorned its sides. The walls were the same off-white as most of the rest of the house, with built-in-shelves showcasing books, sports paraphernalia and toys. A World Wrestling Entertainment poster hung beside the closet.
Chloe stared at Tyler, words failing her. Whereas Emma differed from her in every physical way, Tyler resembled Tate greatly, though with small differences, as if he was the product of someone who had tried to draw Tate from memory. He had tawny hair, wavy and short, with round, amber eyes, just like Tate’s. And hers. The shape of his face was almost exactly as Chloe remembered an elementary-aged Tate, though Tyler’s nose was a bit longer and his skin just a shade darker than Tate’s had been. A heart-wrenchingly familiarity washed over her.
“Hi,” Tyler said, peeking out at her from under his eyelids. Apparently she wasn’t the only nervous one.
“Hi,” Chloe answered, moving further in the room. “So you’re Tyler?”
He nodded, the bill on his baseball cap pumping up and down. “So you’re my sister?”
Chloe’s chest tightened. “I am.”
She eyed him and a growing sense of pity filled her. This was hard for him. Having your family reoriented like this would be scary for him—was scary, even for her—so, of course, he would be tentative. She glanced at Emma for some kind of cue, and she nodded encouragingly.
Chloe moved to one of the bookcases, zeroing in on a shelf that held a row of paperbacks. Seven Harry Potter novels were lined up in a row, their colorful spines a literary rainbow. The books were worn, the pages dog-eared.