The Long Road Home (These Valley Days, #1)

by Bethany-Kris

  Something was clearly wrong.

  Malachi opted to get himself ready and dressed in clean clothes right there while Gracen finished up her phone call. Once she did get Delaney off the phone, he’d already pulled on everything except a clean shirt and a pair of socks. Barefoot and chested, he waited for her to explain the situation after she tossed the device to the bed.

  Instead, Gracen raked her fingers through her wet hair before putting her hands in her head. “I’m gonna head across the bridge and help Delaney and Margot close up early, if that’s okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  She peered up at him from her hands when he came to stand a foot away from the end of her bed. Her shoulders rose and fell with a heavy breath.

  “Did something happen?”

  Gracen frowned. “Sort of?”

  “Whatever it was, it bothered Delaney?”

  At that question, she sighed. “Delaney’s uncle showed up, I guess?”

  “You’re asking me?” Malachi questioned with a little laugh.

  “No, I’m just trying to think out loud.”

  “Go ahead, then. I’ll listen.”

  Gracen smiled, but it faded when she moved to the details of the situation at the salon that urged her friend to call. “Delaney hasn’t talked to him in years, but he walked into the salon today while she was washing out a color for a client to tell her that Bexley would no longer be in contact with her, and Alora wouldn’t need her services for the upcoming wedding.”

  Malachi blinked. “I didn’t know she was helping with that or—”

  “Delaney’s cousin is a friend.”

  Right.

  She’d mentioned that before, he was sure.

  Gracen’s stare narrowed at something on the wall, but the white paint remained bare of any objects for her to find. “The problem was when Delaney told her uncle that her cousin and Alora could let her know she wouldn’t be needed themselves. She said he got really cold, repeated what he said the first time, and made it clear she wouldn’t like what would happen if she tried to contact them herself.”

  “Is he part of the church?” Malachi asked carefully.

  “Yeah, her whole family. Extended, too.” Gracen’s pained expression dropped from his view. “Delaney said the girls—her cousin and your sister—they removed her from their socials and chats. Or she was blocked on some of them, apparently. She checked before she called me.” She looked up again, her brows high and blue eyes wide. “That’s strange, isn’t it? It’s not normal that their church controls everything about their life right down to who they’re allowed to talk to, right?”

  Malachi remained unruffled at the fast fire of her questions. “You don’t really need to ask me those things. I think we all know the answers.”

  Except the members of the fundamentalist sect didn’t know anything different. A good majority of them had been born into the church as it was strong and growing in the community and surrounding areas for longer than he had even been alive. Facing punishments like shunning from their family and community should they leave, the world probably seemed like a scary place. Speaking from experience, Malachi knew it to be a fact.

  “You didn’t mention Delaney having any issues with her family over the past couple of weeks,” he noted.

  Not accusingly.

  Malachi just put two and two together.

  “Is her uncle showing up just entirely out of the blue?” he asked.

  Gracen cleared her throat, but it took a beat or two before she answered. Like she had to think about it. “Maybe.”

  “I’m gonna need more details than that.”

  Gracen didn’t hide her cringe, then, or the worry in her blue eyes when she peeked up at him again. “Don’t be mad at me, please?”

  “Whoa, hey.” All at once, Malachi dropped to his knees. In front of her, so he could place both his hands on her thighs. “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “It could be because I went on a walk with Sonny,” Gracen said, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Okay.

  Now he understood her preface.

  Malachi didn’t remove his hands still cupping her upper thighs. “A walk.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  She shrugged. “Not because I wanted to. He showed up at the end of the day asking to have a chat. We went over every reason why he should never show up and ask me for anything ever again, and then he walked back to the salon alone.”

  Holding back a smirk, Malachi let out a chuff. “Oh?”

  Gracen nodded, saying, “I did a circle on that side of town and walked home alone.”

  He had a few questions. Some for his own selfish reasons, and others because of the little green monster hiding on his shoulder. Jealousy was a real bitch, but Malachi wasn’t the kind of man to stoop down to that level.

  Instead of giving into those feelings, he asked Gracen, “Did it help—the walk with Sonny?”

  Her past was a bag of pain she carried on her back everyday. He blamed it on the lack of answers, and the fact she wouldn’t allow herself to grieve. When the only path forward was getting on with one’s life, it didn’t leave a lot of time to linger in the past, but it made it harder to forget, too.

  “It didn’t make things worse,” she settled on saying.

  “That’s good.”

  Gracen grinned a bit.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Could you say that without your jaw clenching around the word good?” she returned.

  Malachi shook his head. “No, this is as much as you're gonna get for that, sorry.”

  He was a man, after all.

  Even if he was a reasonable one.

  Gracen’s hands slid over his on top of her thighs. “Anyway, that’s the only thing I could think of that might make somebody mad from Delaney’s side of things. Not that I understand why—they never seem to have very valid reasons for the way they treat her.”

  “They find ways to justify what they do,” Malachi said, “but it always fits their narrative.”

  “Sonny—”

  His fingers flexed around her thighs.

  Gracen laughed, and slapped his hands. “Be nice.”

  “I’m trying. It’s an involuntary reaction to a name I’ve never really liked.”

  “Just listen.”

  Malachi tipped his chin up. “Okay, I am. Sonny, what?”

  “I didn't ask for details, but some of the things he said made it seem like his fiancée’s father makes things hard just because he can. If someone saw us on the walk, and passed the message along, would that be a problem?”

  “Frankie Beau can make anything into a problem if it suits his needs,” Malachi said honestly. “No doubt, there’s a passage he’ll find in the bible to make it into truth for anyone who says anything different, too.”

  Gracen scowled. He could still see her guilt swimming behind her eyes.

  “If it was because of the walk with Sonny,” Malachi added, “it’s really not your fault, babe. I got the impression Sonny knew what he walked into with my sister and her family.”

  It wasn't his anymore.

  He wanted the distinction clear.

  “The best thing any one of us can do when it comes to that church and its people is to leave them be,” he murmured.

  Gracen let out a hard breath. “How does that help, though?”

  “Well, if everything is exactly as everybody wants it to be, then you don’t have to worry about what someone might do otherwise, right?”

  Her brow knotted at the question. “That’s how that pastor gets away with everything. He bullies and—”

  “I know,” Malachi interjected.

  Better than anyone, he opted not to say.

  He didn’t need to.

  “It doesn’t change the fact that you can’t help those who don’t want it, and you can’t fix what’s not broken,” Malachi explained. “If someone from the church has put in place rules and Delaney’s cousin or my sister follows al
ong, there’s nothing anyone can do.”

  “What about when someone wants out?” she asked. “Or when the intimidation turns into something else?”

  On the back of his mind, the burnt pizza joint and his once-friend’s apartment came to the forefront, but Malachi pushed the red flag back down. He simply saw the warning for what it was.

  “Listen,” he told her, standing up but not before dropping a quick kiss to her forehead and then the tip of her nose. “There’s not a lot you can do, so if Delaney’s fine with keeping a distance because she was told to, that’s what you should let her do. It’s better for everyone involved.”

  Malachi shrugged, adding, “Including you, babe.”

  “I don’t like it, though,” she insisted.

  Well, what could they do?

  “You don’t have to,” he muttered, turning away for his bag again.

  As he dug through it, Gracen asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for the bike keys. I tossed them in here before I jumped in the shower.”

  “The bike is fine.”

  “I’m gonna move it to the backyard,” he said, giving her a look over his shoulder. “If you don’t mind.”

  “I mean, there’s a fence door that opens to the back. The bike could fit through it. I don’t care if you park it back there.”

  Good to know.

  “That’s where it’ll go, then,” Malachi told her.

  “But why?”

  Aha.

  The keys had fallen to the bottom of the bag. He produced the keyring for Gracen to see, but she didn’t seem all that impressed by the sight. Probably because she figured out exactly why he intended to park the bike in the back.

  “You’re worried somebody from the church might see it,” Gracen whispered. “You don’t think anybody would make an issue with you being here, right?”

  “I’m just thinking ahead, babe. Trying not to add to any other problems already going on, you know? The last thing I want to do is make issues.”

  It wasn't a big deal.

  He didn’t want her to worry.

  Her expression said too late.

  Chapter 27

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  Gracen’s comment finally tore Malachi out of his head. He snapped up in the passenger seat, no longer intent on twisting the ear loops of the blue medical face mask like he’d done from the second she pulled into the manor’s long, winding drive.

  “I’d like to meet your grandmother,” Malachi said. “I want to.”

  “You just seem ...” Gracen trailed off and gestured at the mask now hanging from his thumb. “Distracted, I guess. I parked a minute ago.”

  Malachi glanced out the window, noticing the surroundings had come to a standstill with the engine of the car turned off. He’d not stopped fidgeting with the mask when she had taken out the keys from the ignition, either.

  “It’s fine,” Gracen told him, but it took effort to hide her hurt. It wasn’t okay at all. “I didn’t bring up a visit with her, and not everybody is comfortable coming to the manor, so—”

  She’d grabbed the car keys from her lap and extended them across the middle console for him to take, ready to tell Malachi he could drive himself back down the hill. She could call when her visit with Mimi ended to get a ride.

  Malachi snatched the keys out of her hand the second she offered them, only compounding the new ache in her constricting throat. It was enough to make her want to cry, but Gracen had the kind of nerves that wouldn’t allow her to do so in front of the person hurting her.

  Then, he tossed the keys in her purse at his feet. Gracen’s surprise came out in a gasp.

  “We’re here to see your grandmother,” he told her, his tone leaving no room for argument. “I said I wanted to, and I do.”

  “So, what’s the problem?”

  Malachi’s steely gaze wandered to the front entrance of Valleyview Manor. He flapped the mask with an annoyed sound. “I don’t know if this thing is enough to keep someone from noticing me, or—”

  “Stop it, nobody who might recognize you is going to make a big deal about you visiting a resident in their home,” Gracen said. “Because at the end of the day, that’s what this place is. Their home.”

  The very same thing she’d already explained to him when the topic of visiting Mimi first came up. She’d only been concerned with making sure her grandmother saw her like usual on Sundays, but Malachi brought up a couple of things Gracen couldn’t ignore.

  Like his sister working there.

  Other church members who were also employees.

  Guests were required to sign in and out to keep a record of who was inside the facility at any given time or day should something arise that manor had to look back on. Malachi even fretted about putting his name to a paper as if anybody ever really looked at it and not like it just got filed away for a rainy day.

  Of course, it was impossible for Gracen to know Alora’s work schedule—let alone anyone else’s in the manor—unless she made it a point to break the facility’s code of conduct for all employees to breach the girl’s privacy and check her posted schedule. That wouldn’t happen, but also, Gracen hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  She shouldn’t need to make an entire plan to visit her grandmother just so she could introduce her to a new person in her life. That was supposed to be most important. It had nothing to do with a church—of which Gracen had never once seen the inside—filled to the brim with its own issues or the people who chose to attend it.

  Simple as that.

  “We might talk to the girl who works the front desk while we sign in,” Gracen told Malachi, “and one or two support workers in Mimi’s wing. Well, I’ll talk. You can find an excuse to do something else. Keep the mask on and nobody will see your face—lots of visitors wear them to keep viruses down. You’re overthinking it.”

  “I’m not,” he insisted, his gaze swinging back to hers immediately.

  Gracen shrugged in the driver’s seat. “Feels like it to me. That’s why I thought something else was the problem. Like you didn’t want to meet—”

  “Jesus.”

  That was all Malachi muttered before shoving the passenger side door wide open. After unbuckling, he stepped out of the car with a shake of his head before slamming the door closed behind him. Gracen tried to hold back her smile while she took her time getting her bag and exiting the Civic as well.

  Across the hood of the car, Malachi stared hard at Gracen. “I want to meet your grandmother.”

  “Yeah?”

  Her question came off defensive, but she didn’t mean for it to.

  Malachi sighed. “Yeah. You spend at least two hours a week telling me about your visits with her, so it kind of feels like I already know her. It’s not about your Mimi, Gracen.”

  Her shoulders loosened.

  Barely.

  Something else worried her instead.

  “Okay, but just a heads up?” she asked carefully.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t exactly told her about you. She forgets a lot when it’s mostly conversation, you know what I mean? So, having you here is making a physical memory. She’ll be able to draw back on it. Maybe not after the first time you visit, but—”

  He waved the news off. “I get it—her strokes, right?”

  Gracen let out a breath she’d been holding. “Mostly. Her primary doctor thinks there’s some Alzheimer’s going on, too, but—” She couldn’t finish the sentence; the idea of Mimi someday forgetting Gracen was devastating. She pushed beyond that to say, “She struggles a bit—like a stutter—with sounding out the letter N, but on a good day, if it weren’t for her scooter, she almost seems okay.”

  “On the good days,” he echoed.

  Gracen shifted back and forth on her feet. “Well, yeah. As it stands, her memory isn’t getting better as time goes on, so the best way to get her to retain the important stuff is with repetition.”

  Rounding the front of t
he car, Malachi held a hand out to Gracen. “Okay, so today’s day one of however many she needs to know my face. No worries.”

  Guilt gnawed at her heart from her earlier feelings—she needed to give Malachi a little bit of rope while not assuming he would somehow hang himself with it where they were concerned. Gracen couldn’t keep looking for the next thing he hadn’t even done yet to break her heart.

  That’s not what he was here for.

  She locked the car, and then took his palm in hers.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Gracen smiled with a nod. “Get your mask on.”

  *

  “So, Mimi,” Gracen said, pushing her grandmother’s wheelchair down the corridor of her block, “I thought we could do something special today.”

  “Gracen-n Elizabeth Briggs,” Mimi scolded.

  That was the only thing her full name meant.

  A verbal whipping was on the way.

  “What?” Gracen asked.

  Her walk, and the wheelchair, both came to a stop.

  Mimi tipped her head back to meet Gracen’s stare to which she narrowed her gray eyes suspiciously. “When-n you say it like that—so; you drag it all out—you keep secrets from me.”

  A twinkle gleamed in Mimi’s eye. Telling the truth that she wasn’t very mad and only joking with Gracen.

  But.

  Mimi was also right.

  “I only used to do that when I was a teenager,” Gracen tried to deflect, pushing the wheelchair forward once more.

  Mimi scoffed. “Right. Like that time you sn-nuck out of the house to go to the party in the field. Where the cows shit!”

  Her grandmother crowed in the chair, pleased by her own delight in the memory.

  “Oh, oh!” Mimi added like she remembered something else, too.

  “That’s enough, Nan,” Gracen muttered. “I’m well aware of the stunts I pulled, thanks.”

  That didn’t stop Mimi.

  “The sour booze, too,” she all but shrieked.

  Oh, God.

  That was a terrible memory.

  Well, mostly because of the hangover. The weekend camping trip with friends had been great until they opened that twenty-year-old bottle of wine one of her friends had stolen from their parents’ liquor cabinet. The seal must not have been good on the damn thing because they’d barely been able to stomach drinking it down. Gracen couldn’t remember a time when she had puked so hard that she’d honestly thought her stomach would come out of her throat.